A few months back I finished the refurb of my first proper childhood PC, which wasn’t an already dying hand-me-down.

I had it stored away in my mother’s house for probably 13 years, since the original hard drive died in the thing and honestly thought the capacitors had leaked (it was paint stripper that had leaked onto the case and solidified)

Bought via the ESB Shop Electric and paid weekly over a few years, which was also the way we got things like phones, the VHS and DVD player.

It came with a genuine 17” Philips CRT, Philips DVD-RW drive, TEAC/Tascam CD-Rom, Pentium 4 2.4Ghz processor on a ASUS P4S533-MX motherboard.

The package also came with a few quirky things, like an actual desk (which is still in use), a sort-of digital camera that could take like 1x 0.5MP photo and a small bundle of games from Eidos Interactive… some of which even worked: Championship Manager 01-02, Deus-Ex, Projoct IGI, Lego Racers, Commandos 2 and the Irish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Decided to rebuild it as a dual boot system, as I love that Win98 and XP era of PC gaming. I already had a ton of GOG purchases for XP and a box full of old CD based games that only run on Windows 98. I’ll go into detail about the build in the comments, as with replacement SSDs everything worked (with the exception of the CRT which needs repairs) and a few upgrades I wouldn’t have known about as a kid.

The story of iQon the company itself is a bit of an odd one. Born from the ashes of the original Irish company, which had been acquired by a Venezuelan-owned PC contractor, who were then liquidated and bought back by the same Irish founders to found iQon.

They had contracts with the ESB Shop Electric, (the last of which closed in late 2005) LittleWoods and the Argos Catalogue for a few years, with laptops in their own name and PCs under the ‘Multimedia by Philips’ brand which they held exclusive rights to use.

They went bust in early 2008, running at a deficit of €7.5m a year. This was the era when Dell who had their plant in Limerick, were very aggressive in their advertising to the home market and Apple were becoming the company we know today, with their switch to Intel processors.

A few articles about the company:

Taking on the big boys

https://www.independent.ie/news/iqon-win-5m-contract-with-uk-retailer-argos/26921129.html

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/more-than-100-jobs-go-as-it-firm-closes-with-7m-debt/26346911.html

by PatTheLogicalLiar

16 comments

  1. Details about the re-build:

    Motherboard – ASUS P4S533-MX

    Processor – Pentium 4 2.4Ghz (single core) PGA socket 478 (I have zero intention to overclock it)

    Very much an end of an era motherboard, as it uses a socket 478 PGA, AGP 8x for the graphics card and old PCI, not the PCIe we’re used to. Standard 40-pin IDE cabling instead of SATA, so limited to about 100MB/s transfer rates.

    My Upgrades:

    RAM – 2GB of DDR 1

    GPU: MSI built Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT 128MB

    Soundcard: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS SB0350 (new-old-stock from a seller on Ali-Express)

    The two most important upgrades were, the pair of StarTech IDE to SATA adapters which allowed me to use modern 2.5 SSDs.

    Also the 3.5” card reader, that replaced the floppy drive and attaches into the spare 9pin USB-2.0 header.

    It was only with those adapters that I was able to test the machine out with the last 32bit version of Batocera, to see if it was even worth the restore.

    Monitor:

    The CRT worked for a good while, but it needs servicing which is above my current electrical skill level, it will get fixed though.

    It’s replacement is a beautiful 20” Apple Cinema Display, which can be had for €20.
    It has a matte screen, a DVI-D connection and was intended for use with a variation of my current GPU (6800 Ultra)

    Something that didn’t work:

    I chanced getting a PCI to PCI-e adapter to install a further two SATA ports via another adapter. But the motherboard doesn’t recognise it.

    It won’t go to waste, as I have plans to buy and upgrade an old cheese grater Mac-Pro model which were built here in Cork.

    On the Apple subject… it’s not impossible to install OSX 10.6 Lion on a Pentium 4 machine. I have tried, but my burnt DVD won’t boot and this motherboard doesn’t allow booting from a USB device.

    The final option was to pre-install the OS onto an SSD and swap it in, but none of my Mac hardware is old enough to install 10.6 Lion, which was the last Mac OS to work on 32bit architecture.

    I will get that hackintosh mod working eventually though.

  2. Had a different model , it had clear blue Perspex on the front for, 2002 maybe. Must see if I can find any pictures. The Philips monitor was in use for years after the computer went out of use, and my memory if it was it a decent enough monitor. I’m nearly sure I used it on a Xbox 360 with a vga adaptor of some kind for a few years.

  3. I think this is what the department of foreign affairs must still use, Windows ‘98 too to boot

  4. >Irish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire

    Ah Now Would ya Be After Becoming a Millionaire Yourself?

  5. Thanks for sharing this. It was a great time to be a PC enthusiast. Deus Ex… You have a great taste in games, Sir!

  7. I had a very similar setup. The desktop and monitor are both up in my attic. I also had Commando 2 on it plus Microsoft Flightsim and WW2 Flight Sim. Dial up modem. I bought mine around 1998 and it was upgraded in around 2002. Same desktop. They were great, easy to upgrade.

  8. Think that crowd used to build machines for Compustore back in the day. Got our first PC there in about 96, a Pentium 120 and was about £1500.

  9. I still play Championship Manager 01/02 – just led Southend to the Champions League. The best version of the game.

  11. Thanks for bringing me back to my first real job!

  13. That brings back some memories, that was the first computer we had in the house, I would have been in my early teens then. Have some great memories of playing Sims 1 and Sims 2 on it.

  14. Christ that picture brought back some memories. First PC we had at home. Prior to this I had to go to a local cafe to use a PC.

    Also bought from the ESB and got all the same extras you mentioned. My CM/FM addiction started back then and I loved the Lego Racers game! You might have forgotten about the scanner or did that not come with yours? It was silver like all the other peripherals.

    I used to burn CDs in that bad boy and sell them at school.

  15. Ketchup and mustard. Fuck those thick ribbons are a nightmare for cable management.

  16. I had the exact same PC growing up. Troubleshooting this definitely lead me into working on PCs and eventually getting into IT. We still have it up in our attic somewhere.

    I used to buy all the Sold Out Software games in Xtravision and play them on it. Some highlights from gaming on it back then was Black and White, Morrowind, Dungeon Keeper 2 and Catz.

    Also funnily was the PC I leaned Photoshop on through Photoshop Elements.

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