- Joined
- Mar 7, 2008
I can't remember what I was looking for exactly, but I unearthed an old Shuttle computer if anyone still remembers them. Arguably they were the first small form factor systems, with mobos comparable to mini-ITX long before that even existed.
Anyway, I got one, will it run? There's a PSU hanging off the side. I remember the original had died, and I replaced with a similar one from a different model I had spare, but it wasn't a directly mechanical replacement. Plugged everything in, and it booted. Nothing on the hard disk, which I could see was a WD of some sort. Ok. I saw a spare ribbon cable and connected up an old Plextor CD writer. Anyone remember Plextor? Am I sounding old now?
Anyway, couldn't find and old XP CD, but did find a Win2k one. That'll do. It booted and I went to start the install. USB keyboard wasn't recognised. Went and found a PS2 one, which allowed me to go through the setup. This was before the days of quick format, but thankfully the disks in those days were small enough not to take long to do a full write, and not much after I booted to Win2k desktop, in 640x480 in 16 colours. Yuck!
Surprisingly networking worked straight away and I went to Google in IE. What version of IE was it? 6? No, 5! Google still worked. I went to CPU-Z to try and identify the hardware, but the website couldn't be navigated. WCPUID did download and run, showing a 1 GHz Pentium 3 with 256MB of 133 MHz CL2 SDRAM. If memory serves me right, 133 CL2 was high end in its day. Yes, it was a very long time ago!
It also identified the, I can't call it a GPU, the video chip as a S3 Savage 4. S3? Remember them? I found a driver on S3's website but it wouldn't install.
Ok, let's see if Shuttle still exist, and they do. But what model is it? Couldn't see any external model. The mobo did allow me to identify the system as the SV24, and find its download page. I got the drivers and am about to try installing those.
A fun part of all this is since I couldn't use IE5 at 640x480 16 colours, I was using my ancient Nexus 7 tablet to look up things as I went along. That's probably more powerful!
Almost bed time here so after the driver I'll try and do more tomorrow before writing. Will also have to get some photos.
Anyway, I got one, will it run? There's a PSU hanging off the side. I remember the original had died, and I replaced with a similar one from a different model I had spare, but it wasn't a directly mechanical replacement. Plugged everything in, and it booted. Nothing on the hard disk, which I could see was a WD of some sort. Ok. I saw a spare ribbon cable and connected up an old Plextor CD writer. Anyone remember Plextor? Am I sounding old now?
Anyway, couldn't find and old XP CD, but did find a Win2k one. That'll do. It booted and I went to start the install. USB keyboard wasn't recognised. Went and found a PS2 one, which allowed me to go through the setup. This was before the days of quick format, but thankfully the disks in those days were small enough not to take long to do a full write, and not much after I booted to Win2k desktop, in 640x480 in 16 colours. Yuck!
Surprisingly networking worked straight away and I went to Google in IE. What version of IE was it? 6? No, 5! Google still worked. I went to CPU-Z to try and identify the hardware, but the website couldn't be navigated. WCPUID did download and run, showing a 1 GHz Pentium 3 with 256MB of 133 MHz CL2 SDRAM. If memory serves me right, 133 CL2 was high end in its day. Yes, it was a very long time ago!
It also identified the, I can't call it a GPU, the video chip as a S3 Savage 4. S3? Remember them? I found a driver on S3's website but it wouldn't install.
Ok, let's see if Shuttle still exist, and they do. But what model is it? Couldn't see any external model. The mobo did allow me to identify the system as the SV24, and find its download page. I got the drivers and am about to try installing those.
A fun part of all this is since I couldn't use IE5 at 640x480 16 colours, I was using my ancient Nexus 7 tablet to look up things as I went along. That's probably more powerful!
Almost bed time here so after the driver I'll try and do more tomorrow before writing. Will also have to get some photos.
