There have been several podcast episodes dedicated to Retro PCs and old computer hardware. One of the first was Episode 121 Extra that discussed picking up a 486 Tower case to kick off the Retro PC YouTube project. After that Episode 132 Extra talked more about the YouTube videos and the common repairs needed to restore Retro PC hardware. One of the last podcast shows was Episode 140 Extra that detailed a Cannonball trip to Seattle to pick up some prime computer hardware that the current owner was having trouble unloading. Dennis was able to rescue a good many components while also putting the Creality CR10V3 3D Printer to good use.
For this episode the duo is doing another a virtual unboxing of some mystery Retro PC hardware that a generous listener has sent in.
The Mystery package included, two motherboards including the popular Asus P5NE using the nVidia nForce 650i chipset supporting Intel LGA775 processors and NVIDIA SLI. Back in the “days” this was a popular motherboard for gamers as it provided access to SLI but wasn’t too expensive while still offering the same basic performance over the more expensive nForce 680i.
There were also two PCI Express graphics cards including the EVGA GTX 650Ti and XFX GTS250. Both are rather low-end when it comes to video cards of the day but, were also extremely popular budget options at the time.
The final item was a Sound Blaster Xtreme Gamer sound card. This is a low profile budget gaming card using an extremely good sound chip for Windows XP. As with most of hardware in this Mystery Box, there are better versions of each component and yet what I find interesting is that it’s a snapshot of what a mid 2000’s budget gamer would have in their builds. What more, these components were also strong recommends from various hardware review sites, like Ninjalane and Hardware Asylum making for an interesting story to tell.
Episode 163 featured music:
Little People - Start Shootin' (http://www.littlepeoplemusic.com/)
