• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

VC Restmod?

Eudimorphodon said:
There were still plenty of PCs left over from the early 2000s last I checked and unless they have some video card or whatever the weirdos on eBay thinks is sexy they're worth nothing so, sure, I'd say go nuts. Maybe you'll regret it in 20 years, but... I don't.
Click to expand...
That and last time I checked you HATE the Pentium 4 :p
 
hunterjwizzard said:
That and last time I checked you HATE the Pentium 4 :p
Click to expand...

Well, sure, it sucks, but at this point I don't think computers built around them are necessarily any worse than any of the similar vintage alternatives. The takeaway here is that so far as I'm concerned *any* PC from the 2000-aughts is fair game.

Dirty little secret: by the end of the Pentium 4 era I'd actually usually recommend to people who were looking to build something like a server from scratch that they buy a Pentium 4 plus an Intel chipset motherboard, because I'd started to feel pretty burned by the other chipset vendors, especially VIA, that you'd have to rely on with Athlon systems. My point of view re: the Pentium 4 was the CPU sucked from a design standpoint(*), but at least the Intel stuff was usually reliable, and "reliably mediocre" beats "brilliantly flaky" if you're talking about something you intend to leave in a datacenter.

(* When I say the Pentium 4 sucked from a design standpoint I mean its "people think moar mhz is better, so let's give them what they want even if it's super inefficient" overall archtitecture. There are *aspects* of the hardware design for the P4 Intel did really well. For instance, Pentium 4s were *much* better than contemporary Athlons about not melting into slag if their coolers failed. So... yeah. Life is full of hard choices.)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Well, sure, it sucks, but at this point I don't think computers built around them are necessarily any worse than any of the similar vintage alternatives. The takeaway here is that so far as I'm concerned *any* PC from the 2000-aughts is fair game.
Click to expand...

I'll keep the specifics in mind :)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
For instance, Pentium 4s were *much* better than contemporary Athlons about not melting into slag if their coolers failed.
Click to expand...
(P4m excepted. I still remember the crappy HP laptop that was my daily driver from '04-'09; that thing ran friggin' hot, and eventually melted its own power plug. Lucky it didn't actually catch fire on me.)
 
commodorejohn said:
(P4m excepted. I still remember the crappy HP laptop that was my daily driver from '04-'09; that thing ran friggin' hot, and eventually melted its own power plug. Lucky it didn't actually catch fire on me.)
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah, don't get me started about Pentium 4 laptops. Worst freaking things ever, all of them.

If you ran an OS that was good when it came to power management some of the better built ones (Thinkpad T30 was probably the most competent one I ever saw, and they went down steeply from there) *might* trick you into thinking they were okay if all you were doing was typing an email, but do *anything* more stressful than that and suddenly you're trying to type on a hair dryer.

I'm a huge Pentium M fan because of how bad Mobile Pentium 4 and Pentium 4M were. (Technically they were two separate products; P4M actually *tried* to save power by undervolting the heck out of a Netburst core, while Mobile Pentium 4 is the one that ended up in those YOLO gamer laptops with 20 minute batteries that they didn't even pretend were useable out of sight of a power outlet.) Banias and Dothan were *miraculous* products by comparison. On top of being the best mobile Intel solution they could kick a Powerbook G4's butt soundly; they're the reason Apple threw in the towel on PPC.

Gotta admit I'm curious if any of those monstrosities even still exist in running condition. If you have one, do the world a favor and drive a stake through it.
 
We used AST 486/25 (tripled) laptops running W3.1 & DOS for programming Motorola radio equipment. Motorola finally went with NT4.0 and that was the end of the AST era us. When I retired, I was told that it was off inventory and to go ahead and take which I did not. I do have a similar working AST 486 that I sometimes breakout when I feel like fooling with BASIC.
 
Unknown_K said:
Ever hear of the Thinkpad G40 series? Those machines used a desktop G4 in a massive laptop.

https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:G40
Click to expand...

A guy at work expensed a couple first gen P4 Alienware Area 51m laptops because he had this idea of running an entire virtualized training lab off them. (At the time were about the only “laptop” you could buy that could physically hold 4GB of RAM.) Turned into a complete boondoggle.
 
I'm sort of disappointed that given there's a market for the sleeper gear-- ebay people asking $200 for basic beige no-airflow ATX towers that were $50 when new-- that nobody offers it as a new niche product. Take an existing case design, perhaps older tooling from the era when drive bays still existed, paint it beige, and you're off to the races.

The closest off-the-shelf I can see is the Fractal Pop-- it has 5.25 bays, but not enough of them, and can be had in white, but not off-white.
 
Yeah that is an interesting question. The way they churn those things out you'd think it'd be easy.

Then again are those stupid $200 'sleeper PC' cases actually selling?
 
Hak Foo said:
I'm sort of disappointed that given there's a market for the sleeper gear-- ebay people asking $200 for basic beige no-airflow ATX towers that were $50 when new-- that nobody offers it as a new niche product. Take an existing case design, perhaps older tooling from the era when drive bays still existed, paint it beige, and you're off to the races.

The closest off-the-shelf I can see is the Fractal Pop-- it has 5.25 bays, but not enough of them, and can be had in white, but not off-white.
Click to expand...
You have to stamp out cases in the many thousands to make them cheap enough people would buy them and still make a profit.

Lots of computer stuff from China these days has tariffs that double the price.
 
I don't know about the tariffs but some back of the napkin math indicates you could bring the per-unit cost down enough to make a profit. I did some pricing on Ali Express a while back. Didn't go very far with it but rough estimates were in the $20-$30/ea range for custom-built cases.

If you do something classy like brushed aluminum you could appeal to modern gamers and classicists alike.

I see vintage Lian Li cases sell for $300-$400 USD used. These are from the 2002-2004ish era. All you'd really need to do is design it to be roomy, add mounts for AIO water cooling, and copy the external look. At $300/ea(10x per unit cost) it could be done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top