>>741143517
Pretty much a necessity if you want to use an old Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro to play old games that support it. Can't get it working on modern Windows.

>>741143517
idk, I find a lot of obscure win95/98 titles just don't run on modern hardware. Or don't run well.

Autism

>>741143517
>building
not really and only if you absolutely want to do it
>buying
sure, if you want to put on those pink nostalgia glasses
>point
nostalgia or education, otherwise no point at all, it will be a dust collector after one week

>>741143517
you build one if you are a zoomer retard that wants to larp as one of their favorite youtubers

>>741143691
86box

>>741143802
bitter words from bitter heart

>is there a point in paying a premium on extremely old hardware on a platform that can accommodate the function of old software anyway?
No.

>>741143517
>retro gayming
>no CRT
Why?

>>741143517
>Retro
>That monitor

>>741143517
Only if you like tinkering.
If you just like playing older games? No.

How far along are on saving up for your bottom surgery?

if you want to play anything made before 2000 accurately then yes

>>741143517
Yes there is, even if you don't like a hobby project and just want to play old games. If you don't like building there's plenty of prebuilt solutions that work great.

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These days it isn't worth it - when hardware was cheaper for DOS to win98 era gear it made some sense just to tackle some of those wonky games that have extremely specific requirements (looking at you PowerVR titles) that emulation/virtualisation didn't handle well but these days the cost of the gear itself is absurd and for NT onwards modern windows will run these fine enough (maybe not out of the box but tools like dgvoodoo2 exist) and you have the advantage of modern computing power to get higher resolutions, refresh rates, modern controllers etc etc.

>>741143991
>>741143994
Is not gatekeeping a hobby that difficult for you guys?

>>741144420
>whining about gatekeeping
Sorry your dad left you at a young age

>>741143517
i only used windows 98 when i was a kid and never from a technician point of view. i set up a windows 98 computer in 2015 for work and so it was an interesting experience. many of the network configuration menus havent changed at all. google search page successfully loaded, but wasnt functional.
it was a nice trip into the past but for gaming? just get an emulator for playing games

>>741143517
>building
you can quite literally just get an old boomer office pc for nothing or just use a VM

>>741144195
>tools like dgvoodoo2 exist
Not a magic solution for everything unfortunately. There are a few that really only work well enough on a period accurate OS and that just wouldn't install on newer hardware. Because the games weren't programmed as well as they should've been but the fact remains. But I guess wine will eventually support them well enough.

>>741143517
yes if you want to play games like Half life with proper 3D audio instead of the dogshit software emulation it has
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlxO4Wq5dGM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FYuMQ5M1cU

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>>741143517
No. You could just install modern Windows or Linux and theme it to 9x and play whatever games you want through wrappers. Or if you're super autistic, you could just get a strong CPU and emulate an old PC. Or if you're half autistic, you could just buy an old GPU and use 9x with modern CPU and mobo and pci to pcie adapter. Patched 9x has no CPU limit.

>>741144885
Oh no, I can actually hear what they're saying without the distracting revert! The Horror!

>>741145063
>use 9x with modern CPU and mobo
Where will you get 9x drivers for the MB and SSDs? Some generic monitor driver might work but also not a guarantee.

>>741144420
>gatekeeping
The monitor is unironically more important than the rest. Without it the games just look wrong because they were designed with it in mind.

>>741143517
No. If you want to be a turbo autismal sperg, just use VM and install whatever OS you want. But there is no point to any of it. It's like investing all of your money into copper tools when bronze age ends and the work with iron will soon lead humanit to steel.

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>>741144878
Sure there are outliers but 16bit installers can be gotten around with winedvm and i've had good luck with dgvoodoo2 getting old titles to at least run, even if stuck at old resolutions like 640x480. Where things fall apart are software rendered games but DOSbox and its forks cover that. No idea if there are any win95 games (that don't also support DOS) that are software only.

>>741143517
no, it won't bring your childhood back

and on modern PC you can do everything you could do on an old one, and more.

>>741143517
this is for people stupid @ computers

>>741143826
i tried running some win9x japanese games on 86box (and some other emulator i cant remember the name right now) and it was running the games really slow. i have a 5600x, which sure, it's a mid-range cpu, but come on

>>741143517
>Is there a point to this thing that people do for its own sake i.e. for fun as a hobby?
If you have to ask, then the answer is no.

>>741144420
You're really going to post that in a thread about a hobby that was totally destroyed by a lack of gatekeeping?

>>741143517
No. eXoDoS and exowin9x (not complete yet but will one day) are incredible compilations that include preconfigured environments that just werk and all the games are patched up and working, including having all the DRM protections removed.

Genuinely the best way to play old PC games.

BUUUUUUT

>>741143991 this anon is right you should try to get a CRT monitor for it. eXoDoS does have aspect ratio corrections and all that built in but the games look and feel like shit without a CRT monitor and no amount of cope is going to fix that. The main reason is that the games were rendered and displayed in a 16:10 resolution and then stretched to 4:3 in "chunkymode", but more important the games target 35fps, half of the 70hz refreshrate. Modern displays just aren't good at that and they'll look like shit.

Also eXoDoS has all the sound cards configured too so you can pick whatever gets you hard.

You don't need to fuck around with old GPUs for VGA out though just get a HDMI to VGA adapter, it's fine.

>>741145192
Check the Omores guy on YT he does these setups. But basically csm mode on mobo (or an uefi thingie if there's no csm) all work on 9x. There are modern ssd drivers for 9x including nvme. You do need sound card however. https://youtu.be/ZBGmhiASz7U

>>741145118
thanks for letting everyone know that you have never played the game

>>741145915
Omores does some crazy shit. I also like The Rasteri's efforts in making the fastest DOS pc possible using an industrial motherboard lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LIPTQjQAPE

>>741143517
you'll get bored of larping after a week. stop living in the past.

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>>741143517
If you have the space for it then yes, it's fun and you can get hardware you could only dream of back then for cheap.

All of the best games in the 90s can run on Steam without any issues even if you're running W11

If you're going retro you just build a peak XP machine to run all the classics at maximum performance

>>741143517
If it exists, no matter how stupid it is, there will be someone who fucks with it

>>741143517
Fuck no try just finding a good XP laptop on eBay and move on with your life if you want to play that unplayable freeware/shareware

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>>741143637
>Pretty much a necessity if you want to use an old Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro to play old games that support it. Can't get it working on modern Windows.
Yes the original FFB is gameport only but the Force Feedback 2 is USB and works in Windows 10, at least with the couple games I've tried it with (Crimson Skies & Comanche 4).

To OP's question, in general having access to a joystick port and high-quality FM and MIDI music via a real sound card was traditionally a valid reason to keep a retro machine going vs. dealing with shitty Dosbox and Windows' software synths. However we're coming to a point where sound emulation via projects like SBEMU and MUNT is close enough that only audophiles can tell the difference. Hell, on my actual Pentium III machine I've started using VSBHDA for DOS mode sound despite having an actual Sound Blaster Live installed because Creative's Windows 9x drivers are just that bad.

>>741146873
>fucks with it
Please go back to wherever you came from.

>>741145915
>There are modern ssd drivers for 9x including nvme. You do need sound card however.
How are you supposed to run an AGP graphics card on a modern mobo? Compared to sound cards where you have a ton of PCI options, there were very few PCI GPUs released with Windows 98 driver support other than some OEM shit like the GeForce2 MX

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>>741143637
Isn't there a software translation layer to emulate the sidewinder ffb to modern stuff?
Like FFBeast or the more recently released Moza AB6/9

you can still run old versions of windows on modern cpus. its a x86 cpu. the biggest hurdle is getting a modern graphics card working on a old os but windows 7 works up to 6950xt which is stronger than ps5.

>>741143691
I use PCem for win 95/98 era games.
Also VMware workstation 17.5.2 still covers XP and manages accelerated graphics. It can take a bit of fiddling to get it working at full speed however. Its an excellent platform to run GOG installers for late 90s windows games that don't run easily on win 10/11.

>>741147023
The better XP laptops come from the capacitor plague era and the era of poor underfill which kills GPUs, and they never had good LCD panels.
It's more convenient in terms of space, but a desktop and a CRT monitor is the real deal.

>>741143826
86box I found to be too slow. It loses speed whenever doing anything graphically challenging. PcEm doesn't have as many hardware options but can handle emulating a PII 300 with Voodoo 3 fine.

>>741143991
It's a larping, underage, soulless faggot. What do you expect?

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I have to maintain industrial systems running on Win95 at work. Why anyone would willingly go back to that I do not understand.

I also need to maintain custom debian distros from the early 00's that communicate through firewire and telnet

>>741149661
How about CPU passthrough + softgpu?

>>741149953
>at work
Here's your answer, it's different when you're doing something for work and for a hobby.
We're talking about a single computer that is trivial to back up and restore.
I have a home server too, but I would never want to deal with networking bullshit for work.

>>741149953
No one wants to return to 9x. It's all about XP or at most 7. The 64 bit 2003 has problems with some games.

>>741149953
What industry do you work on? Do you get any support from Microsoft or are you on your own?

Any of you got suggestions for a cheap-ish okay (<$100) CPU I can grab off ebay and throw into a Windows 7 rig?

>>741150347
You didn't mention your motherboard.

>>741150343
>What industry do you work on?
Automation. Big factory
>Do you get any support from Microsoft or are you on your own?
ahahahahahah

hahahah

ahhhaahaha

>>741150413
Z77-DS3H Gigabyte

Is there a point to playing games made after 2014?

>>741150839
It's so you can confidently say newer games are shit.

>>741150168
9x is appealing because from an everyday usage perspective because it's got very few distracting visual trills, won't ever change its behavior on an update, and its pretty easy to find the files or settings you need until you install new drivers that completely break the system and necessitate a reinstall.

XP onwards is absolutely more stable and compatible, but it comes at the price of having significantly more options and features to configure, given its origins as a workstation OS. Multi-user environments are completely unnecessary for home users and just like with Linux all the niche services for business and networking always running in the background turn debugging the system into a black box mystery. I'm glad Microsoft moved away from DOS/9x but merging the home and business product lines into a single OS was a big mistake.

>>741150814
I would tell you to get 2600k and overclock it but your motherboard isn't great. VRM will most likely cook itself. So instead look for i7 3770.

>>741150679
Figured.
Does it pay well, at least?

>>741143517
Performative idiocy.

>>741143517
sharing pics of your rig amongst the trannies who care

>>741151108
>XP onwards is absolutely more stable
Compared to how trivial it is to break a 9x install yes, but it's still very easy to brick an XP install.
People complained about UAC but Vista and 7 at least don't let the user modify system files unless they explicitly say yes.

>>741143517
Yeah, the fun of it

>>741152438
I would wager 90% of stability improvements of windows over the years is MS kicking drivers out of the kernel and as you say stopping users dicking with core windows files. Why yes, it is more soulful to have some retarded printer drive cause a panic because it doesn't like the look of an audio device. Or how about pulling your headphone jack out too quickly causing a panic, that is a fun chestnut of the win95 days.

>>741153137
Well yeah, it's almost impressive for how long Microsoft considered this acceptable, because the concepts of admin/user accounts and user groups are quite old.
btw as a kid I managed to open the Windows 3.11 .bmp image for the boot screen and drew an ambulance then saved it, from that point on the family computer would boot up showing my poorly drawn ambulance.

What would be my best option if I have an old gaming laptop laying around? Currently using Windows 10 ltsc with crtemudriver for retroarch emulation and mpv for old ass anime; works fine for that but have issues when trying to play old pc games.
Laptop is a M17xR2 with i7-940xm and single amd 8970m. ty!

>>741149363
The only thing that I'm aware of requires a DIY hardware adapter and then the use of some open source software. https://github.com/tloimu/adapt-ffb-joy/blob/wiki/HowToBuild.md

>>741149953
>I have to maintain industrial systems running on Win95 at work. Why anyone would willingly go back to that I do not understand.

This. I was testing my old machines recently and setting them up was so fucking annoying.

With that said, win95 on a pentium 233 MMX with 16MB RAM running from an SSD is way, way, way faster and snappier than Win10 on a ryzen 8600 with 32GB RAM. It's insane how you can, I dunno, press winkey + E and explorer pops up instantly.

Why yes, I do use windows 11 to inject framegen and HDR into my games from 1999, why do you ask?

>>741153137
>stopping users dicking with core windows files.
Vista and later have this WinSxS folder, where it stores a different set of system files for EVERY APP that would need them or install them. So they circumvented the problem in a stupid inefficient way, but it makes things way the fuck more stable.

I remember back in 2003 I had to make monthly backups of XP and reinstall it because it broke so often (still have the backups). That was pre-SP2 when you got a worldwide virus every other day. You had a virus that exploited a new security bug whose payload was removing an older virus and patching another security bug the older virus used. You literally had viruses patching bugs. It was wild.

>>741143517
desu I like the retro keyboard aesthetics

>>741155014
You will never own a model M or F.

>>741153137
>I would wager 90% of stability improvements of windows over the years is MS kicking drivers out of the kernel and as you say stopping users dicking with core windows files.
yeah this is one of the things i do NOT have nostalgia for. i did not care at all for having to install new drivers for every single new peripheral and then being SOL if they didn't install correctly. vista was a godsend in this regard.

Plug and play is something I do not want to ever give up. No, I do not want to configure IRQ and wonder why I have no sound because my modem decided fuck you, it needs IRQ 7 and you can get bent if you want to change it.

that sounds retarded
I guess if something sounds retarded, someone will do it...ffs use virtualbox if it doesn't run

>>741155513
5 is fine for SB-compatibles just like it always was under MS-DOS.

>should i waste money on shit that loses in every way to modern office laptops

>>741155575
Both VMware and VirtualBox have been dropping compatibility with older Windows versions over the years.

>>741143517
a win98 vm with the softgpu driver from github can play pretty much any dos/win9x game flawlessly but have trouble with a lot of xp era games. no vm supports gpu acceleration for xp so its actually pretty nice to have an athlon 64 or pentium 4 system around for those

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>>741143826
qemu-3dfx

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>>741143517
aesthetics only
>modern hardware retrofitted in an old case (or a new case that looks retro but not that many exist)
>CRT or old 4:3 LCD monitor
>Linux with 98 or XP theme

>>741153613
>Well yeah, it's almost impressive for how long Microsoft considered this acceptable, because the concepts of admin/user accounts and user groups are quite old.
Microsoft poisoned their own well by convincing everybody that Windows would be backwards compatible with all their old software while constantly delivering new features. So now they're stuck maintaining this monstrously bloated kernel where trying to deprecate something like dot matrix printer drivers will fuck a hundred other things up, which they'll just have to pray people ignore because they added some shiny new AI features.

People shit on Apple for breaking backwards compatibility every few OSX updates and clearly they do it to sell new machines but honestly I think that's a more sustainable approach in the long run, not having to be tethered to hardware from 30 years ago. And for power users those old machines should keep working forever without OS updates as long as they're kept offline, and even then I'm sure Microsoft and Apple make a killing on extended support contracts.

>>741155867
>no vm supports gpu acceleration for xp so its actually pretty nice to have an athlon 64 or pentium 4 system around for those
XP-era covers almost a decade of software Vista never happened so being stuck on some ~2002 dead-end Netburst would restrict your compatibility pretty hard. Wouldn't it be smarter to pick a more modern processor and just make sure you have a GPU old enough to have XP driver support?

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>>741143517
36 year old boomer here. Unless what you want to play is a bunch of mid AA titles that aren't community patch supported or have a GOG version I don't see the point of this. Half life, system shock 2, red alert, Deus ex, unreal tournament all have a bunch of ways to run them well as many other games. Even Dino crisis and breath of fire 4 got ported recently. What exactly are you building these retro PCs for? I had a windows 98 pc 25 years ago and it fucking sucked compared to technology now, the power button felt cheap, the smell of "it heating it" when it turned on was not a good thing, the size of the screen just doesn't cut it anymore and the resolution is fucking dogshit to look at now.

>>741155961
That is some quality github sperging.

>>741156523
>posting on 4chan at 36 years old
yikes

>>741156978
you're here forever

>>741156046
>aesthetics only
only correct answer ITT

>>741156046
> (or a new case that looks retro but not that many exist)
https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/flp01/
https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/flp02/

>>741157214
these are exactly the ones i thought of when i mentioned retro looking modern ones

I kinda want to get one of the few sun microsystem ATX cases and do the required hacking and bodging to make a modern system fit into it.

Le heckin zoomers have no idea what its like waiting 15 minutes for windows 98 to boot up.

>>741143517
No one here has played the greatest game of all time.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GoXM8m541ac/hqdefault.jpg

>>741143517
You can literally install any windows on your latest and greatest pc so what's the point of buying weak old hardware?

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>>741158154
I have played need for speed III hot pursuit though.

>>741156978
What are you doing in a windows 98 thread?

>>741158263
I played it recently on windows 10. It worked fine game was far worse than I remembered and I dropped it in an hour...

old pc games were trash aside from gems like red alert 2 and arx fatalis

>>741159326
>old pc games were trash
No, modern games are trash.
I'm sick of cinematic games that play themselves and have more cutscenes than gameplay.
I'm sick of open world slop that doesn't respect your time.

>>741159727
old pc games didnt respect your time either
old console games mog them hard

>>741158154
That's not Elasto Mania.

>>741159824
lol
lmao even

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Where did everything go so wrong?

I wish Steve Jobs were alive so he could get cancer and die again

>>741143517
No. All of the old games worth playing are available either on GOG or through emulators

>>741160884
GOG has the unfortunate habit of applying the latest patch or even a fan patch.

>>741156464
no because anything released after like 2008 still works just fine on modern pcs. if you dont want a p4 you could always go for a c2d or athlon 64 x2 xp machine

>>741156046
You forgot keyboard

>>741143517
I have two, one for Win9x and the other for XP

Never use them, I'll get rid of them soon enough

It's a waste of time, money and space.

>>741161518
>anything released after like 2008
2001 you mean? compatibility is barely an issue for anything that worked on XP already

>>741161865
a game i can think of right now that has issues is Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. microsoft fucked up a lot of late 90s/early 2000s game compat with win11. luckily I can just play it in a 98 vm just fine

>>741161707
At least give them away to someone who wants to preserve the original way of playing the games. There are differences even if you can't notice or care about them.

>>741161707
But so is you and this life in general

I could play Motorhead at 20fps or I could play it at 240fps (my current monitor's max refresh). A difficult choice to be sure.

>>741143517
No, only crt monitor, case and old looking keyboard metters

I actually randomly saw an old PC at a thrift store in the middle of nowhere the other day.
15$, I considered buying it just to screw around a bit but ehhhh... I dunno if i'd even find the time you know

>>741165797
You have time to on a whim visit thrift stores and sit on 4chan to tell us about it. I think you have time

>>741166185
I mostly look for books.

>>741158154
Spike for the Vectrex?
weird choice.

>>741143517
I built one for XP before I moved to Linux. Lutris is so good at running these older games that it's not really necessary anymore.