The upside is that it was able to boot from any USB device I threw at it (USB floppy, USB CD-ROM, USB stick)... I've just managed to get my Epia-800 board working (turned out to be missing jumpers stopping it from POSTing) but I'm failing to get it to boot from USB at the moment. Any tips on how to …

Think I see the listing in question, but maybe if you add a good rez pic of your board (front & back) someone might spot a component issue causing the no video / POST problem I think this is the best I'm going to be able to do in terms of photos of the board IMG20230125221246.jpg IMG20230125221311. …

Eventually got the onboard ESS sound disabled, and the USB working properly, by fiddling with the "device security" options in the BIOS. I was still hearing the "thinking noise" even with the ESS successfully disabled. I tried unplugging the onboard speaker, and hey presto, no noise. With the …

Does this look like your board? Yup that's the one - and that's an interesting document - different from the one I'd previously found online. It looks like that document describes a few more of the jumpers than the other manual. I guess it might be worth trying other combinations of some of those? …

I managed to buy a VIA EPIA-800 ITX motherboard, which seems like the "perfect" board for a minimal size retro build - one of the only ones with the VT8231 south bridge which should allow SB Pro emulation. It was an eBay sale described as "untested" ... Unfortunately, when it turned up today, I've …

Finally found the little beggar! :) ...it's the original cable from my own (currently busted) Deskpro SFF P3 450 - I replaced the original working CD-ROM drive and the new one came complete with cable. Thanks to PC Hoarder Patrol's extreme kindness, I've now been able to replace the CD-ROM cable - …

If you aren't going to keep it, are you going older or newer? Well I currently have: Pentium III 500mhz / 128mb RAM / integrated ATI rage / integrated ESS sound / Win98SE - Compaq SFF Core Duo 1.6Ghz / 2Gb RAM / intel GMA950 / WinXP - IBM ThinkPad X60s Core i5 7500 / 16Gb RAM / currently between …

Thanks for all of the replies! It is definitely a 760G chipset, and it definitely has an IGP - which is the only graphics the system has ever had! I don't think I've so much as tried a 3D game on it though. Still, none of the ATI/AMD chipsets have any working form of legacy capability necessary for …

I recently dug out a moderately old machine that has been sat in our garage for a year or two since my other half upgraded to a new small Dell desktop. This was originally an ASUS branded barebones system - which was simply a bundle of totally standard mATX motherboard, case, and generic PSU. I'm …

The correct part number is 314014-001 (should be printed on the cable)...usually described something like " Compaq / HP CD-ROM cable (IDE) ". Think I have a spare somewhere - if you're still looking, and I find it, you can have it no charge :) That would be absolute amazing - incredibly kind of you …

The cable to the CD drive is therefore 50 pin, as it not only transmits audio and data signal, but also provides power to the drive. There's no other power cable going into the drive. Any ideas of what to search for in order to find a replacement for this cable? It LOOKS like all of the 50-pin …

I have one of these in excellent working order if you're interested in a spare. Pretty sure it's the same 500mhz version you have. I have the same 90w power supply but my CPu frequency jumpers have markings up to 700mhz. Thanks for the offer - but I really don't have space to start collecting spare …

Many thanks for all of these very helpful comments! The "kentie" article was very interesting too. Looking in more detail, it looks like I have the older revision of the motherboard PCB, and just a 90w PSU. I was mistaken on thinking there was also a buzzer - will the internal speaker still work as …

Thanks for the reply! Just to clarify: by internal speaker you mean the thing that only makes beeps (commonly referred as PC Speaker)? Actually no, it's not a traditional PC speaker as in BIOS beep type buzzer (there's one of those separately). It's an actual audio speaker that has an internal …

Since I've been getting more into retro games I managed to pick up a nostalgic desktop system to play around with in Win98. It turned out that an early P3 was much more affordable than the kind of Socket7 system I actually remember as my first computer. This is it: a Compaq Deskpro SFF, which …

Inevitably ended up answering my own question... I ended up finding another ISO of Caesar 2 (on Archive.org) that seems to be taken from a different release of the CD - dated 1997. This one seems to have both DOS and Win95 versions of the game, and passes the CD check in DOS when mounted in DOSBox - …

Hi all, New user here - I've been getting into retro and nostalgia computing mainly via YouTube. The thing driving my nostalgia is memories of the first PC I got as a kid, an IBM Aptiva tower Pentium 120Mhz, that came with a set of games and software which included Sierra's Caesar 2. That game …