2004 - CreepingNet P200MMXT - in 2004 I had a GEM Computer Products 386/20 system that I upgraded from a Pentium Super Socket 7 system, to a Pentium III system. That meant I had a perfectly good, working, leftover socket 7 system to give a home, and on e-bay, there was a place called bjsurplus that had some New-Old-Stock XT clone cases from the late 1980's, never used, to purchase. So I bought one, waited 2 weeks, had to take the case off my neighbor (who was in the hospital at the time) front porch, and built this machine which was only in use for about 2 yeasr before I tore it down and built it's next incarnation.

2006 - CreepingNet XT II - In 2006, through Terry Yaeger on the VCFED Forums, I managed to snag 2 IBM motherboards - PC/XT class of course (one was from an Industrial PC, the other was from a Portable PC). I later modified the motherboard to have a full 640K RAM - oldschool style (Multiplexer ICS, 41256 DRAM DIP Chips, and a Soldering Iron), and it was a beast of an XT. It had an ATI VGA Wonder in it with auto-switching ports, an NEC MultiSync 1 JC-1401P3A Monitor, an IBM Model "F" 83-Key keyboard, and a Microsoft Bus Mouse II from the original box with original software. XT II was used until 2011, when the Tandy 1000A took over as my main (and later only) PC/XT class machine.

2012 - CreepingNet 486 - In 2011, I'd downsized my vintage PC collection, thinking nothing of it, regrettably. What ended up happening, was I wound up wanting to get back into it as Lazy Game Reviews was gaining attention, and the bug bit again, and it bit HARD. So once again, on VCFED, I managed to snag a $25 First International Computer 486-PVT motherboard, as a Xmas present to myself, and started work on what would become this machine.

The original 2012 incarnation was really stripped down. I had no L2 cache, with the sockets filled with incompatible chips and no TAG RAM, 32MB of RAM (later upgraded to 64MB), a 52x CD-RW drive so yellow it looked like it was made of lemon cake, the GEM 286's original floppy drives, a leftover 486 DX2-66 CPU I had laying around because the DX4-100 from the CAT Computers machine it replaced had a pin ripped off. It had a 15GB Maxtor HDD with 4 2.1GB Partitions and some leftover space on it, slapped on a single channel "Super I/O" controller - Local Bus of course, an S3 805 VLB Video Card with 1MB VRAM, SoundBlaster AWE64 "Value" edition (512K Wavetable RAM), some kind of Ethernet card - I think the 3COM that's in my Compaq now, and I think that was about it. The whole thing was setup with Windows 3.11 For Workgroups and MS-DOS 6.22, and paired up with a very very cantankerous HP 1024x768 4:3 LCD panel, Chicony 5661 XT/AT Switchable keyboard, and a PC-TRAC serial trackball.

By 2013, the computer now had a Lian Li RH37 5.25" "Mobile Rack" - aka, a HDD Caddy System as I call it - in black, which mismatched the face of the computer. The HP LCD was so cantankerous I had to unplug it from power and plug it back in to get it working again - my Windows desktop would freeze onto it - the computer still working, but something about that S3 and the controller inside the LCD panel refused to work together correctly. This monitor was smashed out of frustration and replaced with a Dell LCD. Which was short lived as a drunk throwing a beer bottle at a party cracked that particular panel!

Somewhere about early 2014 I lucked out and found a nice, used, CTX SVGA CRT monitor in a Craigslist ad for free, and I had that for about a year. in that time, we moved to a new unit in our complex due to mold problems with the old one. About 3 months after the move, the monitor died, and was replaced with a 2-in-1 solution of a AOC HD LCD that had HDMI and VGA in Tandem. I still have that monitor today.

In 2015 or 2016, the original 150 Watt power supply in the PC/XT case died, so it borrowed the GEM 286's case for awhile, I even considered leaving it like that for a time as it made it a lot easier to work on, however, starting in 2017, I started a plan to upgrade and build up the system into what I wanted. Also during this time, I found another CRT at Computer Surplus in REdmond - a scrapped NEC MultiSync II JC-1402HWA - which I bodge wired back together, and it came with the VGA cable adapter, so I was able to use it with my VGA machines, as well as my Enhanced CGA Tandy machine. I still have that monitor today, and it might be making a return on the 486 this winter.

In 2017, that's when Creeping Net 486 grew the most. The L2 Cache was finally built out to be 512K using carefully researched DRAM modules. The video card also got a bump up to 2MB VRAM. The CPU was replaced by an AMD Am486DX4-100 SV8T - with WriteThrough Cache capabilities like an early pentium (but only 8K L2 Cache), and I bought a POST Card. The rebuilt machine was a total beast now and could run anything I threw at it. I also started down the procession of Lian Li RH17 Mobile Racks in Beige - since Computer Surplus had those, I also picked up some 2.5" 44 pin to 3.5" 40 pin converters so I could start using old LAptop hard drives in the machine as well.

I also continued to accumulate cheap hard drives from Computer Surplus including a bunch of 40 and 80GB ATA-133 IDE Drives in 2.5" and 3.5" form factors. These were all setup for Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 95 OSR 2.5, Windows 98 SE, and later FreeDOS 1.2. I picked up a few bits at RE-PC as well, including the NEC "weapon" (named such because it weighs 10LBS and has a cable thicker than the wiring for the ABS system on my truck) keyboard that matches the one LGR used initiall on his Woodgrain 486 (stamped with a military asset tag on top, lol). Honestly, I always found it amusing that my machine seems to share DNA with both LGR's Woodgrain 486 (CPU, Keyboard, L2 Cache), and DaveJustDave Retro's 486 build (he had the same case I do - almost looks like my computer to a T, wonder if he bought the other PC/XT clone case bjsurplus had).

In 2018, I got a Micron SVGA monitor with a NEC Ready 9522 that I sold off. I still have the monitor, but it's since gone to the Compaq if I was to do a room-full setup. the Lian Li mobile Rack was replaced a second time upon moving, and this time I decided to leave the keylock in place to turn the drives on and off. This is when some of the wildest experiments began for me thoug. In the winter of 2018, we went to Silicon Valley where my wife's auntie used to live, and I got to wipe out some shelves at the local Fry's Electronics. One item I snagged in the midst of my techie debauchery was a KingWin ADP-06 SATA to IDE Converter. And so now, CreepingNet 486 is a SATA system - keeping me with a working pool of hard drives for the next forseeable 20 years at least - including some SSDs.

I did a lot of experimenting with hard disks on it including getting a full 4x 64GB FAT-32 partitions in Windows 98 SE on a 256GB 6gb/s SSD on that computer - so much bloody space on a 486 I don't think I'd ever use it all! I could probably download every single piece of Abandonware on the internet and still have enough space left for 2 centuries of Savegames! I even tried putting mSATA 128GB and 256GB drives on it - they worked too using a 44 pin adapter I bought on e-bay for like $7. The secret is during the last upgrade, I moved to a dual IDE PTI-255W Super I/O VLB Controller with a Western DIgital chipset. This drive still had drivers on files.metropoli BBS, and I could basically run it in PIO-4 and it RIPS! So it finds some blasphemously huge hard disk drives on this system! Seriously, there's a tempting idea to use a 500GB SATA drive with ALL my different OSes and whatnot on it, and then, multiboot it using GRUB, so I could put a i486 core version of Ubuntu on there as well - and use a modern PC operating system on it. Because of the decoupled IDE optical drive in the setup, ripping optical media, even some DVD's as I upgraded to an LG DVD-RW Drive around the same time as the move, has only ever taken 15 minutes at the longest. ALL of my DOS virtualized ISO files are ripped on this computer using that DVD-RW drive using omi (a part of the SHSUCD CD-ROM tools suite for DOS).

Since then it's pretty much remained much the same. In 2020, I managed to snag a 17" CRT during COVID, a Dell that is like brand spankin' new save for the busted up base. This is perfect with that monster-power video card it has. I run Windows full-up at modern resolutions on that beast and it's easy on the eyes, and the scanlines in mode13h (320x200 @256 colors - the most common DOS Game resolution), especially emulators or even EGA/CGA resolutions - make the monitor feel "Retro" even though it's a very bright, crisp, modern CRT.

In it's current state it has 4 Mobile Rack Drives: 8GB Seagate (which might be getting replaced by a bigger drive for DOS7/WFW311 after experimenting with it on the FMAK9200D), a couple 40GB Drives, and an 80GB Drive with FreeDOS RC4 1.3 on it. All of these run in a multiboot configuration that allows me to boot the PC into DOS, any version of Windows it has, and allows multiple DOS configurations so I can run games in their optimal environments, free up lots of RAM and run networking for internet access, and disable networking entirely when I'm not using it (Network Security). It also runs Windows 2000 Professional with Mozilla Firefox ESR on it - yes, a 486.....that runs FIREFOX.

Hencefourth, this is why I consider this computer "The Creeping Network" rolled up into a ball, because it's got parts from almost every system from 2001 to now on it, and I'm STILL pushing the limits of the i486 era "Wintel" platform in 2023 and beyond - which means the smearing and deliberate ignorance of minimum system requirements continues to be a thing. I've almost gotten The Sims to load on it, I got Five Nights at Freddy's to bring up the title screen for a few seconds before crashing in Windows 95 (yes, I ran Scott Cawthon's Indie game on this computer....crazy huh), It runs Diablo like nobody's business, and Postal is actually quite comfy on this monster. Most people call this a "tweener" - because it can go between the vintage machines, and the modern machines, and do the jobs of both, though a bit slow for the modern stuff, and a bit too fast for the vintage stuff. This one is the 100% "keeper" of the Collection.