Do you still maintain an old PC or two for /vr/ gaming purposes? If not, would you put one together if the prices were not so exorbitant?
I find 86box and DOS emulation sufficient enough for my needs, but I wouldn't mind building one if prices weren't crazy right now.
I have several desktops and laptops (from 486 to PIII), but I wouldn’t get into it now because, well, it isn’t cheap anymore indeed.Anyway, here’s some advice for those who are thinking about doing it: unless you’re into tinkering with old hardware, just don’t - even if you have money to spare for a weird hobby. You won’t play much, and all that stuff would take up a lot of free space.
>>12666863My old phone is failing, and I cannot afford these modern phones given the current RAM and NAND prices. It is the only compute I have to maintain working. If I could ever get ahead, or at least have some sort of extra funds, I'd love to complete a time machine for retro gaming purposes. I am so close, yet so far in rebuilding one of my old computers, so long if rent, petrol, groceries, etc. would actually drop in price and employers actually pay a living wage, we could achieve time machines allowing us the happiness to return to the great games. AI has certainly robbed us all as an overall net negative to society.
>>12666924Just sell some of your bullshit collection, you've taken enough pictures of it.
>>12666924Marble table anon, let it be known I hold no ill will toward you. I truly envy the collection you have amassed over the years. But I do not understand you. You say you want to put together a retro PC, but don't have the money to do so. Yet here you are, sitting on a veritable gold mine of rare retro games and hardware, most of which I'm guessing is sitting around collecting dust. You ought to be able to sell off at least SOME of that collection (maybe even just a few things, I've seen you post some shit that fetches hundreds at least) for big bucks with how the retro market is these days.So what is it you really want? Do you want to just collect stuff to sit in shelves doing nothing other than to occasionally show off on your table here on /vr/, or do you actually want to play games?
>>12666889>>12666893Do you not feel like 86box is really laggy? And I don't mean it runs <100%, I mean you press a key and it's just not responsive. You can improve the mouse latency but the overall latency just seems to suck and there's nothing you can do.
>>12666863I'd rather run old OSs on modern machines. 1995 games on 1995 sucked in 1995, I want to see 1995 games running natively on 202x hardware so I can make good on 30 year old dreams of high framerate PC gaming that simply didn't exist back then.
>>12667015I don't perceive it as being that bad. What I do is use the GLcore video backend and disable VSync while having it set to Synchronize with video (not the same thing), and set CPU frames to use smaller frames. That gets input lag down to a pretty good level, I feel.
>>12666924>I cannot affordYou keep saying this but you also keep posting almost every piece retro hardware in existence>yeah I own like 5 Sega Saturns, 4 Neo Geo Pockets, and 3 WonderSwans, but I can't buy a phone broGenuinely kill yourself
>>12667015https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PCBoxanother pcem fork that has some working fixes to reduce lag
>>12666889>>12666893>>12667015>opting for the stupid and retarded accuracy bs of TrashBox and Junk PCem over the pleasures and lusts of qemu_3dfx
>>12667053Hey Killjew! How are you?
>>12666863I've tried to source parts for an older PC but they can get stupidly expensive, and you never know when they're going to work or not. I'm looking to run BeOS and just keep it to fuck around every now and then.
I have several old PCs and there's nothing like the sound when you press that power button in the morning ...and the show is on the road with a roar!
What's the tallest tower case out there/
>>12667141Which parts get expensive? Mobos? Cpu is very cheap and most niggas have old GPUs lying around.
>>12666863I have a bitchin' ThinkPad with a dock that has a PCI slot in it.I also have an iMac G3, but I never use it.
>>12667295Also working IDE and SCSI drives, old RAM, etc.
>>12667774At least in the case of drives, we now have CF and SD card adapters, and many people now opt for those instead.
>>12666924>I cannot afford these modern phonesBut you can afford to buy several $250 FPGA systems you don't even use and keep sealed in their boxes anyway?
>>12666863nono
>>12666863I probably would if I had the space and CRT's weren't a bitch to find anymore, even if just for the novelty.
>>12667015>>12667053That's our Killjew! *canned laughter*
>>12666863I have a few old systems laying around but I haven't done anything with them in years.Pentium E2200, 4 GB RAM, GeForce GT 710 1GBPentium D 3.2 GHz, 2GB RAM, Radeon 9600 Pro 256 MBAthlon XP 1500+, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX 64 MB
>>12666863Stuff I've gotBook 8088Book 386Acer Pentium 3Dell Pentium 4They are most appropriate for their era, I think pc's are the most fun you can have after the 16 bit consoles. The p3 and p4 were free, I still see stuff like that thrown away. Stuff like newer i5's can be used including drivers for the sound hardware.>>12666915If I was doing it again I'd just skip a real 8088 to 386 and just use the mini laptops.>>126670191995 games on 2000 hardware for, strong enough to run software mode in high rez such as Half Life 1 on a p3.
>>12668563Nice, that sounds like it covers almost everything from the DOS era, unless I'm missing something. I THINK there's some games that want a 486 specifically, but I could be wrong.
>>12666863My uncle “gave” me one of his 90s laptops sometime in the mid-late 00s but decided he wanted it back at some point unfortunately. A while later he gave me his monochrome Contura Aero 4/25, which I still have but will have to check and see if it even works anymore, think I got some error last time I plugged it in. Never was able to get too excited by it and would have preferred to keep the first laptop.
>>12668457This crap doesn't belong in this thread, sir.
>>12666863I have a 2002 Toshiba laptop with Windows XP. I also have an old Compaq I need to fix (has the mobile version of that shitass S3 Virge), but it uses some insanely rare adapter, and I couldn't find one for sale.
>>12668943Yeah it works (was just a non-system disk error I was able to bypass by mashing escape), nothing on it though other than Windows 3.1 and Turbo Pascal lol
>>12668965It's my board and I can post whatever I want, so there! :^)
>>12667141Not as cheap as it used to be, but getting DOS hardware is still cheaper than getting a modern system. You can put together a solid Pentium MMX 233MHz Socket 7 system with a 32MB Rage 128, 32MBs of RAM, SB Vibra 16 ISA, PS/2 mouse, keyboard, 20-pin 200W PSU, 40GB IDE HDD, IDE CD-ROM drive, and floppy drive for roughly $250-300. Solid enough to run everything prior to the 3D accelerated era stuff. Video card has Win3.1 drivers available, so you get all of that as well. Should be good enough to run everything from the Apogee and Epic shareware up to mid-90's stuff like Myst, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake.If you want the best SoundBlaster cards, a Roland SC-55, and Voodoo cards, then retro DOS gaming can be pricey. But if you aren't dead-set on having the best possible setup, there's still affordable DOS builds.
>>12670136You can also opt for modern replacements for some parts, which does defeat the purpose a bit, but at least they'd be brand new and have more features that I'm sure we'd have killed to have back in the day.
>>12668932I thought that too but most of the classic 2D games run fine on a fast 386. It was a pretty small group of early 3D games like magic carpet that were really suited to a 486 but it didn't take long for games like Terminal Velocity where you could tell a Pentium was better. Though I get some satisfaction getting a pentium game to run well on a 486.Been playing the Win98 that the kind anon uploaded, I was playing Monster Truck Madness and Solitaire. I can now beat Solitair within about 3 goes usually but a lot of it is luck based but you can make certain choices to win more often. Jizzball seems fun but seems like its impossible to beat level 5.
>>12666927There is some sentimental value to most of what I kept. Most are from old systems I did have back then, but discarded other parts like power sources. The remainder like PicoMEM and PicoGUS are available for less than the effort it takes for me to part with them.>>12666965I want to be able to afford a place that I can house and enjoy playing the games I enjoyed. It is tiring moving from place to place sicne rent is so high in my area that most of the stuff is in boxes. I do play games, but mostly console as it is faster to set up and take down in case a lease expires. However, I have a lot of great memories playing on my old computers, which was why I kept a lot of old parts, but I foolishly discarded the bulky parts like cases, power sources, disc drives, monitors, etc. which was much harder to move but the more essential parts were kept just because I had to keep moving due to rising living costs.>>12667038And a partidge in a pear tree.>>12668457I actually use the DE10nano.
>>12671202Glad you enjoyed the pack, anon. One thing I'm thinking of doing is adding a few extra machines such as one featuring a 4.77 MHz 8088 for those really early DOS and booter games, a Tandy 1000 variant for compatibility with games that take advantage of the enhanced Tandy graphics and sound, and a fast 386 for compatibility with games like Wing Commander and Test Drive III. Might be a cool thing to do.
>>12671301Yeah I tried to do that on a 2gb CF card, I think VK Volkov Commander is better to use than Norton Commander. I could almost put every game up to about 1989. There is cool stuff from the book 8088 hdd image like the cga compatibility test program and demos like 8088 MPH, Magicduck, PakuPaku that can be downloaded from the 8088 book website. I had some issues where they would take out cga modes to save space in the downloads from EXODOS, I think Batman and Xenon. Some cool games I found were Ancient Art of War and Rambo 2 the text game. By 1988 some games were even dropping CGA support but some 1990 still supported it like ZZT. They did actually port Wolf 3D to 8088 CGA and is it pretty fast, for most games about 8 mhz is the best way to play.
>>12666863I have a bunch of old components, but I really only keep one retro rig set up. Right now it contains:AMD K6-III+ @ 600MHz256MB SDR RAMFIC PA-2013 MotherboardATI Rage 128 Pro 32MBVoodoo 2 SLISound Blaster AWE64 GoldPicoGUSIt's about right for a 1998/99 build running Windows 98 and will play anything I can't play on a modern machine. I have much more powerful stuff ranging from Pentium IIIs and early GeForce cards to X79 and a 980 Ti, but I just don't find the use for it. I should really sell most of it on Ebay, but I'm too lazy.
>>12666863I actually just built one. The case I was going to use couldn't fit the motherboard, so I put it in a cardboard box instead. It's supposed to be temporary, but who knows when I'll get around to finding a proper case for it. I want to make an XP PC next, while the parts are still affordable. This PC only ran me about $150 I think, but the specs are middle of the road and I got a lot of parts for free. My advice for anyone trying to build an old computer is to find old parts at an e-waste center, or ask coworkers or relatives if they have anything lying around. Most are happy to get rid of shit for free.
>>12671568i had to find the face you deserve
Not retro, but fuck it. It's been 20 years. "Suck my dick. Choke on it." - Phil FishI still have an unmarked chinaman 9600GT with a copper cooler and a E5200. I've been thinking about building a XP machine, but it's missing a LGA 775 MOBO and DDR3 rams.I know they still sell DDR3, but are these 775 mobos any good?
>>12667154All those wasted slots on the case...you don't even have a cigarette lighter!
Wine works well enough, I don't need extra hardware.
Getting old hardware to work is a gigantic pain in the ass. If you actually enjoy putting all that stuff together, go for it. Otherwise there are far easier ways to play old games.
>>12671598>9600GT with a copper cooler and a E5200Darn, that's nice. I had to get a shitty low profile Radeon for my dual core because the case is small and it was available unused, but it's E7300 not the holy grail yet bretti gud. It's definitely retro af despite the board's rules which are mainly in place because of the consoles.
>>12671568lol how's the temps?
im trying to host a lan party to play UT99/2k4/Diablo/CS1.6/SSFE/Warcraft3 etc since i never got to do it as a kid and started repairing a bunch of late 00s and early 10s computers, so far i've got>Intel 2 Quad q8400 +4gb ddr2 800mhz + 220 gt>Intel Pentium g620 + 8gb ddr3 with its integrated graphics>Intel Pentium E2140 + 4gb ddr2 (still looking for a gpu)if you guys have game recommendations they would be appreciated
>>12672416grim.
>>12672153I'm a zillenial (1 year shy of a zoomer), i drooled over the HD 4890, but i was too shy to beg my parents for one. Tsk.So i did some errands, saved up some money and got myself a 9600GT straight from china for about $45 in a local hardware storeI was really skeptical about it, but i knew i could return if this was a fake card. It turns out it's indeed a pure wasp, honest to god 9600GT.It's from Jetway, but there were more of these chinese brands of fermi/tesla cards. Surprisingly, that particular company is still alive, but they've pivoted towards embeds/manufacturing/industrial electronics.Anyways the lore goes: they were supplies for palit and point of view, but then they stopped buying their stock. So they just sold excess inventory at a heavily discounted price, because the series 400 was on its wayIt came in a packaging like this. Pretty suspicious, but very legit. I guess that's why people were skittish towards picking these one up...
>>12672416Gotta have Starcraft.
>>12672295Not bad actually. The hard drive heats up the most.
>>12672591is it easy to pick up? i think none of us ever played it
>>12673478nta but yeah you can pick it up through the campaign. The first couple levels as each race tell you the basics, then you learn the rest as you go. By the way, hotkeys for any action are gonna be highlighted in yellow letters when you hover over them with your mouse, that'll make em easy to learn. You get the muscle memory for it after a while. Also, after the debrief for the first tutorial level, wait at that screen for a few minutes.
I'm still annoyed my dad tossed a bunch of 90s pc cases we had. They were gutted besides maybe power supplies and needed some rust removed inside, but they were real nice nostalgic looking outside and all i can find now are shitty looking cases from post 2000s.
>>12666889>I wouldn't mind building one if prices weren't crazy right now.Anon, the prices aren't going to get better. As time passes, more and more of these old computer parts break down or are tossed away.
>>12674349At least people are coming up with modern clones now. We have sound cards like the Orpheus series that are Sound Blaster and/or GUS compatible and also have MIDI capabilities, and for drives, we have card adapters, and now floppy and CD emulators as well, and IIRC Voodoo clone cards may be in the works. Motherboards, CPUs, and RAM will continue to be the sticking points, though.
>>12666863From what I understand the only thing you really need for that retro experience is a CRT monitor?
>>12666863I have a Sony Vaio desktop running Windows 98 hooked up to a Minolta film scanner from the same time period. It has a Voodoo 3 in it, good enough to run a lot of games so you can pretend you're slacking off in a Y2K-era photo lab. (Spunky alt-girl coworker not included.)
>>12666863>If not, would you put one together if the prices were not so exorbitant?No. There's no point. I can just use 9x theme and wrappers and Dosbox-x to larp being in the 90s...just without the shit parts like dealing with drivers. It was all about the games and aesthetic, not games bsod-ing the whole OS.
>>12666863I can run Sims 1 on my win10 machine and I have an apple iie emulator so there's no need.
>>12666863I have 2 retro PC's setup a 233 MMX and a 1.4Ghz Pentium 3. That covers my main interest in pc games of 95 to 02
>>12666924>ATXnot retro.
I currently have:-386dx-40, 8mb RAM, DOS+Win 3.11-K6/200, Voodoo 1, Win98SE-K6-2/550+, Riva TNT2, Win98SE-Celeron 500, S3 Savage4, Win98SE-Duron 1200 system currently gutted for parts-Athlon XP 2400+ Win Xp-HP omnibook xe3 laptop with PIII 733 and Win98SEabout 6-7 spare motherboards, about 20 graphics cards and other bitsI could realistically trim some of it down, but why? I would just keep buying more
>>12667154largest I saw was the NCR Systems 3450. It's an entirely custom machine with dual 486 DX50, MCA ports, and a lot of SCSI ports. Note the extra legs at the bottom.
No because getting things to run right on the old hardware was painful, particularly if you want to play things from different eras.
>>12675567>>12675565This is the inside, the top part has 3 boards layered next to each other, one for the "motherboard", one for the CPU + cache board, and one for RAM only.
>>12675571Cool machine
I have- C64- 8086 (or possibly 80286, didn't check yet, it doesn't boot)- 486DX2 66- Pentium 233 MMX- K6-2 450- P3 733- Athlon 64 X2 (socket 939 + AGP)after that point I just kept upgrading my current desktop PCs and always sold the old ones. Currently trying to sell the retro machines too, I'm not using them, they are just eating dust and x86box already emulates them perfectly up to the K6-2. The P3 I'm about to sell and the A64X2 I'm keeping so I can have a "modern" machine that still has crap like a SCSI controller that I can easily interface with.
I got 4 old PCs being hooked up via a KVM-switch right now. 2 Win98, one XP and one Win95 PC. It's super fun tinkering with them and play old games like they're meant to be played. Hooked up to a 17inch CRT and an old Cherry keyboar and MS intellimouse explorer.I'm planning to redo the table situation because shit has grown out of control since I started. I can hook up another 13inch CRT that way, for the weaker 2 systems.Replacing failing parts gets more and more expensive. For one PC I bought an ATI 9800Pro for like 40€ around covid, now a 9600 costs about that much. I got a good new old stock motherboard from ASUS for 3(!)€, impossible today. CPUs are still rather cheap, if you ignore the meme products and take a tier lower or older/newer.I was actually thinking about buying a high tier CRT for my main PC, since prices for a good monitor are even higher and there is nothing better than a great CRT for gaming.Win 95 and 98 are so snappy, it's a joy to use them, everything is instant, it's technocratically cold, a product to work with. A farcry from modern MS slop.
i have a intel3700 GTX980ti EAX5.0-soundblaster, Windows XP machine.
>>12666863I have very old pc with XP but haven't boot it up on for like 8 years I was too busy with console emulation, modding and online slop. I could upgrade it a little with old GTX 1060 and new psu from 2nd pc case as have three). It's probably fully covered by spiders by now which is a shame. I don't own any crt or old lcd so old games will look not as good.
>>12667141go outside not online to find the parts
>>12675863Probably not a bad idea, ebay prices considered.
>>12675530AGP is very retro. ATX is a pretty standard size, for smaller, I have this in the ITX form factor. It should do for DOS as soon as I can get a good AGP riser for the case.
Maybe I don't play anything old enough but wine and dosbox get the job doneI do have a full win2000 PC I keep just because it has a working floppy drive and occasionally family or friends will find a stash of floppies and want to know whats on them. It's usually junk.
The only game I ever tried to play but didn't work on modern windows is Jane's F-18, and I don't care enough to set up a different PC just for that.
>>12676078>AGP is very retro.No, it's not. Any game you'd play on AGP cards, you could probably play on a modern PC, at most with a wrapper for some shit Microsoft removed from Windows since Windows 7.
>>12676106>Any game you'd play on AGP cards, you could probably play on a modern PC>with wrappersAnon, i... i have some news for you...
>>12676228emulator != wrapper
>>12666863Got a working XP machine, one with W7 and one with W10. Had one with Vista but it got fried by a power surge the electric company caused and they've never replaced it despite saying they would compensate for broken appliances and electronics.
>>12676270W7 is pretty much just Vista anyway, although some have argued Vista is slightly prettier looking in some respects.
>>12676106You're thinking about edge cases like HD 3850/3870, which can absolutely run some modern games (by modern i mean, anything that supports dx10).Most AGP cards can't even run openGL or go past directX 5, so good luck wrapping your head around that.
>>12676078Damn, that's a nice collection marblemanI caught the twilight of AGP, which was unfortunate because it pretty much came and went after it dunked on PCI, but got absolutely shafted by PCI-E soon afterFrom what i've gathered, AGP has really good latency, but falls of in terms of bandwidth and scalability. And that's why it died
No, I prefer to have sex with Women.
>>12676431I remember my first AGP card. It was some piece of shit Intel that IIRC came with Wing Commander: Prophecy, and could barely run that. It also ran FF7. That's about it.
bump
>>12676106AGP has been phased out due to PCI-E. Still interesting to play around with, but it is technology lost to time.>>12677137Thanks. I too have a fondness for BFGtech since they factory overclocked when most other board partners stayed within the default specs. Best Buy stores used to promote their cards with the best most visible shelf space which was how they caught my interest. As for AGP, this is the only board which allows for playing around with PCI-E, AGP, and regular PCI, this planned time machine has more capability targeting XP, but is nowhere near as far along as the dueling twin J-WIn98SE time machines.
>>12676431>You're thinking about edge cases like HD 3850/3870, which can absolutely run some modern games (by modern i mean, anything that supports dx10).No, I meant anything released 2000 or later. I can play 1999 games just fine on my current AM5 PC on Windows 10, at most I need a DDraw wrapper because they stopped putting 2d support into drivers (it's still there on Windows 7). Shit I played Exception the other day, that's a doujin shmup I first played on an FX5200 card.
>>12680126>HD3850Last unique AGP card was the X1950 Pro. Check out that double molex power input.
>>12681309Man, those cards have shit cooling and sometimes are horrible abominations like soldering two 3770 chips next to eachother...But by golly these fan shrouds were cool sometimes
>>12666863i buy and collect em from neighbors and facebook, evdntually my autism will loop arojnd to old pc games and thry will come in handy
>>12677139You're on the wrong board for that.
Is there something like the Macintosh Garden, with raw disk images, patches, manual scans, and cracks/utilities organized as separate downloads on a page dedicated to each title, but for DOS/Win9X games? There are obviously lots of abandonware sites and torrents for crap like Exodos, but usually they only host pre-installed ZIP files for use on FPGA systems or DOSBOX and I just want raw floppy/CD images so I can burn/mount a disk and go through the installation process myself on my actual Pentium III PC. The Internet Archive has a lot of stuff kind of what I'm looking for but it's so disorganized and I've found a lot of stuff to be mislabeled.I've become a bit spoiled recently after playing around with my Mac Mini G4 running Classic Mac OS 9, being able to connect to the Garden an out-of-date Mozilla browser, download games, mount disk images with Finder/Toast and have them just work 90% of the time too bad the whole system is more likely to freeze if you accidentally leave a second program running. Going back to my Windows 98 machine, I've been more bothered by the friction needed to use a modern machine to download games then transfer them to the vintage PC with CD-R or FTP just to find it's a bad rip or warez repack.
>>12681894Guess I'm not allowed to delete my total spoiler fuckup. But still, legit question, is there a better source than Archive for curated direct downloads of disk images, NOT repacks or pre-installed zip files, that might be accessible from a period PC using something like RetroZilla.
I tried to get a XP machine going with a Acer Aspire, then a SFF Dell Optiplex, then back to the Aspire with a different motherboard. Never worked out. Now I just have them stripped and stored.
Been looking into what the best GPU for various Windows OS's would be for retro gaming. DOS is it's own ball of wax.Win 3.1 : Matrox Millennium G400 is the clear winner. 16-32MBs of VRAM means you can do every resolution VGA can reasonably support, and the VRAM is slightly faster than the next best Riva TNT2. The Riva TNT2 is a solid 16MB 2nd place with specs almost on par with the G400. Both have official Win 3.1 drivers.Win9x : GeForce 6800 Ultra on NVidia's side and Radeon X850 XT or XT Platinum for ATI are the most powerful cards with official Win 9x drivers. Of the two the ATI card has a much faster clock but slightly slower VRAM speed, but the Platinum version has slightly faster RAM than the GeForce, making it the clear winner. But ATI drivers were such a clusterfuck back then, you might want to settle for the GeForce. Both offerings are complete overkill for Win9x gaming, supporting DirectX 9.0(the NVidia card goes all the way to DirectX 9.0c, the ATI card only goes to 9.0b) with 256MBs of VRAM.WinXP : GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK or Radeon HD 8990 are the best that have official drivers available. You don't need to go that high end though, since you can get solid 60+FPS performance on the most demanding 32-bit Windows games with a GeForce 660 or Radeon HD 5870.
>>12681305By your "wrapper" logic, Diablo, released in 1997, is playable on any modern system, at most with a wrapper. So therefore it's not retro because it's playable on "your AM5 system"That's besides the point and technicalities. What qualifies AGP as retro is simply because it's a totally phased out technology from a long time ago, in a transitional time between DOS, MS-DOS and Windows (3.1, 95, 98 and XP).There's a solid history connecting with videogames as it laid the foundation to profoundly change the way games were rendered and ought to look.
>>12681351>Man, those cards have shit coolingThey used like 60W power. They didn't need fuck all cooling.
>>12683283>What qualifies AGP as retro is simply because it's a totally phased out technology from a long time agoShit, okay, CDs and DVDs are retro using that logic. So is FM Radio and hey maybe analog jacks too.
>>12683182Very interesting, but yeah, frankly those are all insanely overkill for anything you'd realistically play on those OSes. Even an S3 Trio64 is already more than you'd ever want for Windows 3.x, with a Vision 964 providing higher resolution and color depth than most people probably ever used on that OS, and Windows 9x is frankly not ideal for games past DX7, which is why some people even throw in a cheapo GeForce FX 5200 into their Windows 98 systems.
>>12683182>Win 3.1/DOS 6.22: Matrox Millennium Why? There's basically nothing which can use that sort of power on those two OS-es. As >>12684201 says, something like a Vision 968 with 8 MB VRAM can cover anything from the pre-Win95 era. >>12684201>Windows 9x is frankly not ideal for games past DX7 The "period-accurate" API for Win9x is Glide. I'm, however, aware of the pricing issue.
>>12684201>>12685009Because I wanted to see just how overkill you could go and still find official drivers available. Oh sure, I know I can slap just about any 4MB VGA card in there and get the less-used higher resolution and color modes in Win3.1, but just how far could I go? Apparently, much farther than any sane person would ever need to go. The idea of running a TITAN BLACK under Windows XP is crazy. 6GBs of VRAM is more than the 3.5GBs of RAM the system supports. Meanwhile my old WinXP machine used a GeForce 4 MX 420 with 64MBs of VRAM.Anyone looking to build an old XP machine for flawless 32-bit Windows gaming has a very wide range of hardware to pick from and still get killer performance.
>>12685378Oh yeah, can Windows XP even address that much VRAM, or does it not have the limitation that it does for regular RAM?
>>12685378I think the highest officially supported you can go is GTX 960, i7 4790 and 2x2 ddr3 1600MHzXP SP3 is fine with SATA SSD's, so you can just plug one in, no problems.Titan black is insane>>12685383I think it'll just allocate as much as applications ask for. Then it'll dump and/or shuffle data whenever VRAM budget blows overMore demanding ""retro"" games deliberately limit VRAM usage to 64~256mb. Doom 3 and a couple others, i think, establishes the highest upper limit:1 GB.Most however don't go past 128mb. Some high profile titles don't even take 32mb, like the OG Deus Ex.
>>12685408Retro in quotations mark, because we're all thinking the same thing when it comes to hardware pushing retro games....Doodoo on Doom 3, that game was a piece of shit and ran like ass back in the day
>>12685408>>12685378Reminds me of a video I watched some time back of the highest end PC that can still handle DOS natively with an ISA sound card and everything. I think it was some Core 2 Duo using an industrial motherboard with a lone ISA slot that had to be modified anyway for some reason. IIRC it could play Build engine games at 1600x1200 and DOS Quake at a really high resolution as well.
>>12685423It's possible to get haswell chips to work, but they'll be a little hacky solutions with some troubleshooting here and there...In terms of official support, MMX 233 is the absolute best with 16~64mb pc-100 ram and s-trio 64 / matrox millenium.You can sort of use SSD, but you'll have to constantly align partitions and MS-DOS hates it. Best to use a HDD.
>>12685461IIRC many current DOS builds use a CompactFlash faked up as an actual HDD.
>>12685465Oh yeah, i forgot about that
>>12685408>I think the highest officially supported you can go is GTX 960, i7 4790 and 2x2 ddr3 1600MHzAside from the INF edit to enable higher end Maxwell cards to work, the Z390 DARK from EVGA has official Windows XP support, allowing you to run a 9900K. There used to be a guide on how to get it up and running on the EVGA site, but that's all been nuked now.https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=65618
Just checked in on SFF PCs on ebay, and aiming for something between a C2Duo and a 4th gen i5 for a superpowered XP system, you can get a unit for less than $50 including shipping. In most cases with CPU and RAM included, and including a HDD and a GPU in some cases. Since anything over a P4 with hyperthreading is overkill for WinXP, you could easily undervolt the CPU's to help keep temps down and it will still be more firepower than you need.DOS gaming is a bit pricey if you want the best parts, and Win9x gaming is a shitshow with Voodoo prices, but WinXP is currently at rock bottom prices. Win7 hardware too. Most SBC's worth a damn cost more than this. If you want a solid WinXP or Win7 machine for cheap, this is the time.
>>12685684Forgive my ignorance, but is an Nvidia or ATI GPU combined with a good Glide wrapper not viable for a Windows 98 machine? I know there's a performance hit, but how severe could it be?
>>12685696It's viable, if you use an old Glide wrapper, typically one released back when Win98 was still around. Some newer ones can work if you have a DirectX9.0c compatible GPU. But if you want the current practically flawless Glide wrappers, they typically expect you to be using WinXP or newer. That being said, the earlier Glide wrappers weren't as flawless as the modern ones, so compatibility is more of a gamble, and graphical issues and crashes were more common.
>>12685709QEMU-3dfx uses wrappers based on wine meant for use with Windows 9x, and apparently they work very well, but idk if they can be used on real hardware.
>>12666924>I cannot afford these modern phones Sell your Voodoo 5 and buy a GPU that's not worth a kidney.
Glide isn't even that important IMO
I love my old computersI also own a Compaq Armada 7740MT, Compaq Presario 4540, and currently I'm working on a Slot 1 build with a ABit AB-BH6 and a Celeron 300A
>>12686694I got into semi-serious PC gayming right around when Voodoo cards were falling out of favor, so I would like to know what games make Glide support important for a Win9x build.
>>12687059Nfs2 se, NHL 98
>>12687059Look at the Glide supported games, and try playing them with and without a Glide wrapper. For games like Diablo 2, it's not a huge deal, mostly some lighting effects. For a game like Unreal, it's huge with the reflections and whatnot. It can be the difference between a game looking good and looking amazing.The main benefit for a real hardware build with a voodoo card is compatiblity. Yeah, there is software mode, but it's generally slow and ugly in many cases. And DirectX prior to about 7.0 or 8.0 or so was a horrid clusterfuck of version wars that installing a newer version of DirectX could make previously installed games stop working. I don't think this gets said often enough, but fuck DirectX 5 in the ear with a rusty nail. If Glide is an option, it's inherently superior to early DirectX.
>>12687096>DirectX prior to about 7.0 or 8.0 or so was a horrid clusterfuck of version wars Yea, it's not even about quality, early DirectX was just garbage.
>>12687059for me the main Glide game is Carmageddonit has high res software mode but it's really demanding
>>12687096I just put 8.1 on every fresh install and usually never have to worry about it
>>12666863Yeah, I got an old Win7 laptop hooked up to a small crt monitor
>>12666863I've got a ThinkPad A20m connected to a Dock II with a GeForce 2 MX 200 inside. Does everything from 1990 to around 2001 rather well. It does run a bit hot, however.
>>12687281From what I understand, though, the early Glide games really want a Voodoo 1 and tend to have issues with later Voodoo cards, particularly from the Banshee and up, or require patches or workarounds to work on those later cards. Is this correct?>>12687289I've also heard some early DirectX games don't play nice with 8.1 or 9, but I have yet to encounter one. Still, DX7 to me seems more fitting for Win9x. The games that want higher are strictly in XP territory.
>>12687295>he early Glide games really want a Voodoo 1 and tend to have issues with later Voodoo cards, particularly from the Banshee and up, or require patches or workarounds to work on those later cardsyeah, pretty muchI got an AGP Banshee earlier this year and carma and TR1 require patchesthere's probably some games that won't work at all too
>>12681351I just found a video actually about graphics cards and the artwork on it like Ruby :3
>>12687406Mind you, this is on 86Box, but I couldn't get Descent 2's Glide patch working well using a Banshee for the life of me. I tried multiple versions of glide2x.ovl, and on some the graphics are glitchy as fuck, while on others the graphics are totally fine but the FMVs are slow and stuttery, and either way they only ever work within a Windows DOS box. In actual DOS mode, it just doesn't work, period.
>>12687295>I've also heard some early DirectX games don't play nice with 8.1 or 9, but I have yet to encounter one.One of the very early Lego games (islands or racer?) used some very esoteric draw command that was removed from DirectX because it was something that basically only that one game used, ever.
>>12666863This is one of those things that I kinda toyed with the idea of for years but never got around to and now I'm being priced out, my fault desu but damn
>>12687873Like I said earlier in the thread, now's the time to get yourself rock bottom Win XP and Win 7 hardware.Right now on ebay I see a Dell SFF PC with a 3rd gen i3 CPU and 8GBs of RAM that supports a low profile PCI-E 16x 1.0, currently setting at about $30. That's a real powerhouse for Win XP, you just need two 2GB 1600Mhz sticks of DDR3(approx $5 a stick), a HDD/SDD(the cheapest one you can find), and any of a wide range of supported low-profile GPU's(newegg is offering a low profile GT 730 4GB for $45, you can probably get something used for cheaper on ebay), and you're set. If you wanna go high end, you can add a PCI-E 1x audio card, but you don't need it.This might be the last year you can get an overpowered WinXP machine for less than $100.
>>12687032>PC Chips stickerI want one for my 386
>>12687032I feel like I always fuck up the model numbers on these things nglI pulled it out of the bag and it's actually a 7730mt
>>12687961kickass
>>12687032The only thing i don't like about retro computers is the mice available at the time. They all suck in terms of ergonomics...Except for the 1999 intellimouse, which was the absolute king and almost every single pro used this or MX518 for 11 years...Even today, you can still pick one of these and play for hours on end without cramping your hand.It is that good.
>>12688591Yeah, I have no love for the mice back then. That Genius serial mouse is sorta cromulent but it's all I can really use on that machine since as of right now I'm missing the breakout cable for the ps/2 port so I'm kinda stuck with serial for now
>>12688591I use picrel for serial, I really like itfor PS/2 I use an A4tech optical mouse that I had for ~20yrs(OPTO 013D)
>>12687946>PowerhouseDepends what you count as XP era
>>12688591As far as ball mice went, the older Microsoft mice were also quite nice with bretty gud ergonomics. But yeah, the downside is they were still ball mice.
>finally find a CD-ROM driver that works with my setup>it somehow takes up 2MB of memory(out of 8 total)and Dark Forces wants 7MB to runI'll try upgrading to 16megs
>>12683996>Shit, okay, CDs and DVDs are retro>CDs first released in 1982 and DVDs first released in in 1996uh, yeah no shit, retard.
>>12688920this guy is either trolling or deeply autistic to a point where everything has to be litigated to the specifics of specifics....Or just a simple retard (Homo retardus)>>12688775>>12688651Genius and A4Tech weren't as prominent as logitech and MS, but they sometimes had some interesting ideas.Xscroll (which A4tech also copied lmao) was remarkably similar to G100 and came out beforeThey later tried to get into gaming market in ~2010's, with genius bringing GX series and A4tech, bloody. Unfortunately, these were either low quality or stupid, like Deathtaker / Gila, both >200g mice (with weights in case you want to cramp your hand further)
Is it really worth shelling out money for a whole Pentium III system? I already have a 486 and K6/K6-2 to play DOS shit and a really low end Dell Dimension-something with a Celeron running XP that runs the late Windows stuff that doesn't really require DOS just fine
>>12688953>Genius and A4Tech weren't as prominent as logitech and MSGenius and a4 were the most common brands for mice over here, next to Logitech. Microsoft was more expensive branded stuff, best known for their kick ass optical mouse early on.
>>12666863Genuine question to anybody that knowsIs the mister ao486 core at PC replacement levels yet?I remember reading that it would struggle with software a real 486 wouldn't like build engine games
>>12689137I say prominent as in noteworthy in innovation and quality.Yes, genius and a4tech (among others depending where you live) sold like popsicles. But that was it - another day, another dollar.Logi and microsoft seemed to really care about their stuff and gradually set new standards while also trying to make a buck, of course.
>>12688892How in the hell anon? The basic Microsoft CD-ROM extensions and the generic Oak CD-ROM driver that works with most drives doesn't take up nearly that much RAM. Mind posting a screenshot of your 'MEM /C /D /P'?
>>12689575I wasn't entirely correctits 2.5 MB with everything loaded (sound card, CD ROM, mouse, and whaterver else)it was 4AM when I posted that afer a few hours of trying different thingsbut I can tell you that the OAK driver wasn't working properly for me, and the cdrom.sys would freeze the system on boot
>>12688953I have a Bloody mouse. They're pretty much only worth it for Minecraft drag clicking, otherwise they're overpriced Chinesium.
>>12666863No. Electricity is expensive here so I just turn on this one.
>>12689634Seriously, post a screenshot of your mem /c /d /p. 2.5MBs is way too much RAM eaten up in DOS, there's no reason it should be taking that much in drivers alone.
>>12690086One of my all time favorites is Logitech G9, it's such an insanely advanced mouse for its time: side buttons, grip switch, DPI switch, laser technology, grip curves, etc...I don't like logitech, but i gotta hand it to them: they were good back then.
>>12690310I'm a Logitech user. The G502 is the best-shaped mouse on the market today.
>>12690340G502 is quite nice and it feels like an intermediate between a MMO mouse, which is really uncommon.I still think that Zowie EC-1 is the best possible shape for a mouse so far.It's been 17 years now and i have seen some small upgrades, but nothing majorly.They're charging $250 a pop for a EC-2, a 16 year old mouse. And people are still buying it, because much like the intellimouse, it's *that* good.Honestly, i wouldn't buy it nor i would advise anyone to. There are plenty of great EC / FK clones out there...I know some by heart, but i won't say it here because i'm not here to do publicity. Only thing i can say is: don't buy Zowie. It's way, way too overpriced.
>>12690380My EC-1C has been great for me, but apparently they discontinued their wired mice? I tried buying skates and they wanted me to pay like 15 fucking dollars for shipping on a 5$ set of skates you could have easily just put in a 50 cent bubble mailer
>>12690278Here
>>12691254
>>12691259
>>12691264
>>12691254>>12691259And Dark Forces is seriously complaining? Because you have the 8MBs right there, DOS is just using a chunk of XMS to claim it has EMS, and Dark Forces uses Dos4GW or whatever that extender is called, using it's own memory manager. It should work with your setup and available RAM. Your actual ram usage is about 60kb of your conventional, and a bit of your upper/reserved area below 1MB that EMM386 usually grabs.If Dark Forces really complains about not enough RAM when you try to run it, try REM-ing out SMARTDRV in your config.sys or autoexec.bat(can't remember which one it would be in). It does speed up HDD access a bit, but it eats a lot of conventional RAM to do it.
>>12691335good call on the smartdrvnow I get 7200k free and DF stopped whining
Just picked up a Core 2 Duo system I intend to turn into a dedicated XP machine. I’ve got a GeForce 8800GT and an R9 280x lying around: which one of the two would be a better option for my build?I’m looking to only play games from 2000-2010 on this desktop so I’m not sure if the tradeoff in wattage and possible compatibility is worth the increased frames from the newer card.
>>12691892Not retro, but the 8800GT served me well from 2008-2012.
>>12690870Yeah, everything on zowie is expensive as fuck.Even a QcK equivalent is like 3x the price lmao.I'd say, shop around... Forget about that company.>>12691892R9 280X is a bullet compared to a 8800GT, so i'd go for that. It's twice the power consumption however, so make sure you get a decent model (preferably triple fans).Picrel is what i had, pretty good card and ran everything nicelyIn case of 280X, Latest driver support for XP is 13.9Plus if you get bored of windows XP and want to step up to win7, it's just a flick of a switch.
Anything I should look out for in putting newer power supplies in older systems? I don't really have any working psus from back in the day but I have a few more modern ATX ones. the oldest I have on hand is a Corsair CX430M. Will it be okay for Slot 1 machines or is there some voltage fuckery I should be aware of?
>>12688953i accept your concession
>>12692083NEVERMIND LOL it powered on the untested ABit board and Celeron 300a I had with it AND I got the crusty looking spare parts bin Voodoo2 2000 card working, Im fucking elated right now holy shit.
>>12691254Look into cutemouse, shsucdx and xcdrom
>>12692185Also forgot to mention the smiley face here is cutemouse, dunno why it shows up as that
>>12692185Got a link to a working xcdrom? I got cutemouse and shsucdx working, but xcdrom doesn't seem to work. Or maybe I'm not setting it up correctly?
>>12692320xcdrom is set up through config.sys, NOT autoexec.bat Edit config.sys and replace whatever cd.sys (might be MTMCDAI.sys, judging from your picture) with xcdrom.sys
>>12692131>abit slot 1how are those caps looking?
>>12692361I wasn't that anon, actually, but thanks for the tip, I'll give that a try. I'm not EXACTLY hurting for conventional memory, but I did have a game or two complain, which led to me trying a buncha funky shit to try to free some up, so every little bit helps.
>>12692517Pretty good actually, no bulging or anything but I def will recap it now that I know for sure it works
>>12691909Any suggestions for replacing that EC1C? I hate wireless mice and RGB lighting so it seems like slim pickings now. Micro Center seems to be all in on the gamer shit.
>>12693274My local Micro Center (I don't know about yours) has this mouse. (No RGB, is wireless but can also be used wired) (https://www.microcenter.com/product/692308/scyrox-v8-gaming-mouse-black)
>>12690380This is news to me. I remember only wanting the BenQ mice because they were featured as "driverless" which I think might work great with old hardware. My local Fry's had a demo station which had all Zowie mice there and I found the EC2-A suits me best. The only negative of the mouse is the ratcheted scroll wheel.
>>12671290>It is tiring moving from place to place since rent is so highThat's because you have too many possessions that take up so much space, and take up so much time to move. You have a horse-and-cart problem. You complain about financial instability, but that's partly because you are living within too narrow of a margin due to how much of a burden your own choices put you in.You clearly need to downsize in order to be more comfortable.You can't pin the fault for your circumstances entirely on outside forces.
