Revisit, Recap and Rebuild of my capacitor-plagued aluminum retro gaming PC tower!

Seven(!) years ago, I tore down and jokingly "retired" my original gaming PC - a home-built aluminum monster that I put together in 2002-2003. In this video, my goal is to turn it into an all-in-one retro gaming PC for DOS, Windows 98 and Windows XP - but at this point, that means almost literally bringing it back from the dead. This PC was built during the capacitor plague era and many of its major components were right at the edge of total failure. Watch as I stop the bleeding with some new capacitors, make some new hardware additions and get all three OS's up and running smoothly, with game demos!

This is a long, long video I know. I thought about breaking it up into smaller segments, but didn't think any of them would be interesting enough on their own. So, whatever - watch it all at once or pause whenever you like and come back to it later. I leave the choice to you! Chapters are included for you to skip around as desired.

00:00 Intro and history
05:16 New additions, BIOS demo
10:10 Teardown
18:45 PSU intro and basics
23:10 PSU teardown and recap
34:28 Motherboard intro and recap
45:38 Completing reassembly
54:59 Testing!
58:32 More "new" hardware and DOS games!
1:03:18 Showing off tri-boot, Win98 and XP games
1:14:07 Outro

[ModernClassic]

Since I was speaking without a script throughout this video, there are a couple of things I feel like need clarification beyond even the captions that I may or may not have added later:

* Sorry about some of the moire effects from shooting directly at the monitor. As you probably know by now from basically every other video shooting directly at an LCD on YouTube, that effect is not visible in real life.

* For the SATA SSD, I did also try the Inland drive with the old IDE-SATA adapter (after it was working, specifically to check if the original problem was the drive or the adapter). It didn't work, and from what I've read it's probably because that original adapter does not have a master/slave jumper. I bought the second adapter specifically because it does have that jumper. Some BIOSes just seem to need that. "Cable select" just doesn't always work (and I remember that from the old days too).

* I waited 30 minutes after switching the PC off before even touching the PSU, and 24 hours before opening it up to let the capacitors fully discharge. I had originally mentioned this but apparently cut it for time. Please make sure to do this if you work on a PSU, and then test it to make sure there's no voltage remaining before touching any of the important bits. And maybe watch some other videos on power supply safety; this video isn't intended as that.

* Yes, I'll eventually need to figure out a TRIM solution for the SSD, since none of the OS's I'm running support it. But it's not that important right now.

[JVHShack]

@Modern Classic For the front panel I/O connector going through the back, that’s a "D-subminiature" connector (example: the joystick connector is a D-SUB 15). I couldn't tell how many pins were in it, but it seems to be very similar to the external floppy drive connector for the OG IBM 5150. If you were to do continuity tests between the connector and the ports on the front, you could build your own dongle, if that's your goal.

[blakecasimir]

Freezes like you're seeing in GTA could also be the IDE channel running the SSD not set to use DMA. Worth checking that in 98 AND XP.

[Chriva]

Woah. Knew I'd been around since the dawn of time but didn't think I'd been around for THAT long. Always fun to watch your videos

[jamesross]

I agree that if you need to change several caps on any board, you might as well replace them all. I have yet to do a recap. But I have several boards w/ caps that are visually bad. So I need to try and learn someday!! I think it's cool to save these older boards. I wish I had kept all the old PC's I had built. Several dozen over the last 33 years. (not that I would have the space to store them all... but...)

[michaelsasse]

I remember going through the "silver" phase. I paired a silver Viewsonic CRT monitor and keyboard with a silver Antec tower case. Beige begone!

[keulloe]

Aaahh, a KT7A. Had that board in my first gaming PC, its CPU was an Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz @ 1404MHz, paired with 512MB PC133, GF4 Ti 4200 & SB Live! 5.1 Digital. Good memories.

[jameshorn]

If you're going to replace all the electrolytic capacitors on an older board like this, this will probably be a moot point. However, you really need an ESR tester to check the internal resistance of these caps. I actually use both a capacitance meter, and an ESR meter to check these older caps. I have found that they can sometimes have specified capacitances using a capacitance meter, but are still defective, with a high ESR. Conversely, I have found caps with acceptable ESR, but then read out of spec capacitances. ESR meters are cheap and a great edition to your testing devices. I also bought a power supply tester, also fairly cheap, that can run most voltage tests on your PSU, once it's been disconnected. Once you've OK'd the voltages, you can plug everything back in and place the PSU under load. This testers can also help find faulty connectors and has most common sockets to plug the PSU cables into. I got both of these devices on Amazon. I do a lot of electronic work and troubleshoot older PCs and video consoles, and they save a lot of time. Just a suggestion. I enjoyed your video and like to watch how other people diagnose things.

[DaveM]

Hello, I might just have been lucky, I have bought the cheapest IDE to SATA adapters from China and used what ever 120 Gb SSD's I had lying around and they have worked, the only difference I can think of is I am using the newer 80 conductor IDE cables, looks like you have the older IDE cables? Like you I have the SSD/ IDE adapter as master no slave. Cheers, Dave.

[TheOriginalCollectorA]

Very cool, looks great! Nice to see another system saved, I’m sure it took a while to swap out all those caps. Definitely worth it though as they aren’t getting any newer, I’m sure it’ll last a long time!

[ajax]

Mouse wheel up / down changes weapon on those GTAs, which that mouse seems to be missing.
There are no cd patches for those games, yes sir.
Best wishes.

[AsmodeusDeviluke]

I had just gone though inspecting recapping the Antec SL300, SL350, SL400 and SL450 PSUs. The high voltage caps were fine, any low voltage side caps are best replaced. I have found most to all had leaked.

[brentgoeller]

I would double check what driver you're using for your Live card. The Dell cards use strange proprietary drivers which is the only reason avoid them. The drivers from Creative seem to have compatibility issues. That being said, to get proper sound in DOS, there is a special driver on the install CD that doesn't load by default. I struggled with this forever and finally, one day, found my original install disk for my Dell SB Live card. The drivers from that original install CD worked perfectly and cleared up all those sound issues you are having. Good luck though.

[chloedevereaux]

sound card should always go in the top pci slot, as its the primary and gets the full 33 / 66mhz bus speed...

[studydude]

I love the Lian Li Aluminum cases, to me they are still cool and all I want to kinda use nowadays, I have one now that I can never part with that I have had for like 12 years now.

[wdd]

That case looks like a case that LGR has. Great video and detailed

[thereallantesh]

Great video. I'm wondering if the issues the SB Live are driver related. Phil's Computer Lab put out some content on this, and in fact he recommended avoiding the Dell version of this card, and going with the standard card. Even then he cautioned to use a specific driver to avoid issues.

[Megatog]

i can't really tell in the video but if your motherboard has USB headers you could just desolder the big cable and build some custom ones. If you don't have a dupont wire crimping kit you'll need one of those. not too tough to learn.

[Erael]

Such a chill build video that I could relax to after work, lying on the couch, with my cat lounging on my gut. Mood.

What's the name of the background track you used during the build phase, btw?

[BrunodeSouzaLino]

I'd say that even if the measured cap is within spec, you should replace all of them, as older capacitors start to fall out of spec after 20 years.