VCF West 2025 Builds - The Shuttle SS30G2?
UPDATE: As of early 2026, the motherboard in this system has sadly left us due to what I am assuming is board flex damage. It was already kinda iffy (see the bootloop issues I was describing in the fourth paragraph below) but moving the board to a new chassis unfortunately finished it off. It will only boot if I do NOT screw down the CPU cooler. I have ruled out shorts against the chassis. I wish it was that simple.
The Specs
- Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2GHz)
- 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM
- 256GB SSD
- Floppy drive
- Nvidia GeForce GT640 (with 3D-printed cooler!)
- Sound Blaster Live! PCI
- Windows XP Pro SP3
The Story
This was a machine I never really expected to get, but it kinda fell into my lap.
Zhinu (who's doing the Lisa table this year!) actually bought it from ewaste and had a bit of a time with it, so they offered it up for free and I took it because these little systems from the mid-00s are kinda neat to me. Products of a time gone by, when we'd go to LAN parties to play multiplayer games because the internet wasn't yet super reliable for this and voice communication wasn't as prevalent as it is now.
Unfortunately, as I said, Zhinu had a bit of a time with it, and I had some work to do. The original motherboard was bad, so a new one was acquired (which is from a SS30G2) but the chassis and PSU are from an entirely different Shuttle model. Thankfully the board just dropped in and worked. It was also recapped, so that was one less thing I had to deal with.
The problem it was having with me is that it would constantly bootloop when started and there was a video card installed. I did all the troubleshooting steps you could imagine (including rigging up a much more potent PSU just to make sure it wasn't a pending PSU failure, and it was not). I finally decided to just rip the whole works apart and reflowed the capacitor solder joints because usually in situations like this when work was performed I like to go back over said work and make sure none of the fixes decided to helpfully undo themselves.
Oh hey, cold solder joints! Now, to be clear, I'm not talking smack at those who did the work here: These are some beefy ground planes, and they suck to work with. I had to crank my solder station way up to even have a snowball's chance here. I reflowed them and the system seemed to be a lot more consistent, though still quite angry with certain cards. Specifically, I had acquired an 8400GS from a thrift store, and the card looked like it had failed, with artifacting everywhere.
But I later found putting the card into the Vista build that the card was just fine, it was something in the Shuttle not getting along with it. I did the usual troubleshooting (as in, reducing the configuration as much as possible, removing all RAM but the minimum) and surprise, surprise, it was a RAM failure manifesting as GPU failure. I took out the 4GB of DDR2 and put in two 1GB modules and suddenly it was completely fine, and the old 8400GS worked great. But I wanted more.
So I got the GT640 back out (that previously had issues in here) and it actually worked! Only there was a tiiiiny issue with the Shuttle in this case.
The PCI-E slot is on the very edge of the motherboard, meaning the only GPUs that'll fit in here are single-wide ones. The GT640, as is, was double-wide to accommodate a fan. If I popped the fan off it would fit, but I doubt this card was low power enough to survive passively cooled.
But wait! I have the magic of basic CAD knowledge and a 3D printer! I fired up Tinkercad and got to work, and eventually made a really janky cooling baffle to direct airflow over the GT640's heatsink. It looked like garbage, sure, but it worked!
For a fan I just retrieved a blower fan from one of the many dead video cards in my parts bin.
While I had the Shuttle apart I also stuck a 256GB Samsung SSD in, which is vast overkill. But it also means I don't have to worry about upgrading the storage for a good while, I hope!
Finally, topping the whole works off, I noticed a nice sight on the side of the motherboard, right under the PSU: A floppy header! And I had a slim floppy cable that came out of an SFF Dell Optiplex that fit perfectly. While I could have done like my other systems and put a quick-swap bay in the 3.5" bay, I chose to make this a Real Computer (uxwbill reference) and toss in a floppy drive. Because why not?
Update, August 2025: Right before VCF West I decided to try a last minute upgrade: Seeing if this machine would take a Core 2 Duo. After all, it was running a Pentium Dual Core (which was an Allendale chip, like the early C2D).
Unfortunately, while I had such a CPU on hand (E4600), the Shuttle didn't like it. Looking deeper, it seemed Shuttle only certified board revision BOM14 and newer for C2Ds. Feh. Oh well, the E4500 is only $5 on eBay, let's roll the dice.
It got here, I threw it in, and imagine my surprise when the Shuttle POSTed and actually booted with the E4500 in place. Given the E4600 is the very same chip with a slightly higher clock speed, this seemed surprising (or my E4600 is dead). Either way, I was happy to have a full fledged C2D in here, now, and thankfully it's still thermally sound.
So, what about your XP-erience?
Shockingly, despite having a relatively poor upbringing, I got in on the XP fun fairly early on. I got a burned install disc from a friend of mine, and got to work installing on a computer that had been given to me: One of those HP "bubble" PCs of the late 90s. Had a relatively pedestrian 600MHz Celeron in it and 128MB of RAM. But man oh man was XP a breath of fresh air compared to ME (which is what the system came with).
I remember spending lots of time trying to figure out how to get around activation (and eventually being successful), and also spending lots of time sitting in front of Windows Media Player watching the visualizations just go. Also played my fair share of Unreal Tournament, The Sims, Starcraft and Diablo II. Though for a lot of games I actually used the "family" computer because it had an actual video card in it, versus the integrated video of the HP system I was on. Eventually, that family computer (the Deskpto I mention in the 98 build post) would also get bumped to XP.
Eventually I'd step up to a much better system, a Toshiba Tecra M2 that was rescued out of a dumpster. This would be my first time experiencing XP properly, not just on a machine that could barely run it.
Around the same time, though, the school I went to would build up a media lab, and in it were a bunch of Sony Vaio desktops also running XP. Despite the fact that I started out on 98, by far I've had the most exposure to XP. As much nostalgia as I carry for 98, I really do think I carry the most for XP by a long shot because it was the OS I got to play around with through most of high school.
Even when I would later get a MacBook Pro, I'd dual boot XP on it just to be able to play all the games I previously played but turned damn near all the way up because look, I have a powerful computer now!