/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10309270
>everything besides a PC
lol
lmao

>>10225469
>>10225757
>>10227453
I started with a 286-12 which became a 386DX-40, and in both configurations the computer of my youth the Turbo button was always engaged for the listed 12/40MHz. When it was untoggled they both ran at 8MHz. I often used my cousin's Gateway2000 P75 which did not have a Turbo button but had a Turbo LED which was always on to indicate that it was running at 75MHz. It seems weird to me that everyone else had a different experience with the Turbo button that only recently (current decade) do I hear that the Turbo button slows down computers which seems like some poorly perpetuate myth of the past.

>>10076813
Same. The trouble that I am encountering is finding someone willing to do electronics work like soldering. Everyone says it is annoying and very tedious, potentially dangerously fatal, work which is why repair shops has disappeared in my area. Power supplies is another huge hurdle, especially when I don't understand electricity beyond not sticking a finger into the wall socket. Since modern power supplies don't even fit the older stuff, and may not have things like -5V or 1.3 or 12 or whatever arbitrary number that old electronics require. For socket7, I'm just looking for it to do exclusively DOS and no Windows beyond 3.0/3.1/3.11 or GeoWorks. That's why I am glad DOSbox and ScummVM has advanced so much.

>>9984537
I would love to enjoy those halcyon fays I had in what I call the VGA times again. The two biggest hurdles I encountered are finding people willing/able to repair CRT monitors and confusion with power sources. Working on CRT monitors is life-threatening so the price for such dangerous work I imagine would be astronomical if I could even find someone with the knowledge moving towards extinction. Powering the old devices is also a minefield of confusion for me, since there's something like -5V or something that is needed which is no longer produced that these old parts may need; it's all really complicated and difficult for me to process in my old age. Even something more modern like the J-Win98SE build that I am closer to completion ran into the issue with power sources are designed to be mounted on the bottom of a case with a top-facing intake fan, when the ones I had back in the day were mounted on the top-rear of the case with bottom facing exhaust fans. There's so much difficulty that stalls these setups.

>>9763594
That's pretty cool, but the Gotek does offer a USB interface which does come in handy for on the fly file transfer when I forget something. Still nice to have a software solution, but will it eat up valuable compute resources when the systems don't have that much to begin with?

>>9759462
Since I intend on ISA sound card for DOS while having a PCI sound card for Windows, my research suggest I install VXD drivers for windows and disable the ISA device beforehand while installing a different DOS driver for the ISA card. Drivers were a source of issues in those days for old PCs. Nothing is straightforward, especially since I too intend on a Japanese Windows 98SE install, there will be troubles that others may not have documented.

>>9086332
>>9088985
That is why I am putting so much effort into building a time machine to take me back. Every time I make some progress, something disastrous happens and prevents its completion. Car issues wiped out my savings and the rising inflation to incoming recession has robbed me of the chance and keeps me stuck in this timeline.

>>8959345
Yeah, a Voodoo 5 is a bit of overkill for DOS only titles and avoiding Windows. I'm not even sure about its DOS drivers. I'm not too familiar with hard drive bugs, but I remember having to specify cylinders, heads, and sectors when setting up a drive for my 286-12/386DX-40. I think there are capacity limits locally for drives too, like 128GB or so for Win98 so I've been getting some cheap Chinese 120GB SATA SSDs for that purpose.

>>8915791
It should help, since that's around the time of Geforce2-4MX era which should give you good Quake 1 and 2 results. For video that used 1-2MB of memory, I'd stick with DOS only titles that did not really attempt polygons with texture mappings, so adding in a PCI graphics card should give a nice performance boost to games with 3D visuals.

>>8782095
Bump for interest. It is an era of gaming I kind of skipped out on, in that in-between space when the 3D accelerators were offered to personal computers.

>>8757714
>>8758065
I had a 286-12 and the turbo button when toggled on put it at the 12MHz, but without turbo was 8MHz. It was useful for the games I copied from my cousin's 8086 Tandy 1000SL. When my 286-12 was upgraded to a 386DX-40, I remember taking a bit to make the display to 40, but didn't bother to make it display 8 when un-toggled even though it was running at 8MHz when not toggled. It seems like everyone else says that the Turbo button made the system run slower, but that was not the case for me.

>>8462835
Cooling issues are what I am trying to figure out. Thinking of having a friend 3D print some brackets to hold a large fan. It is probably time to replace its thermal paste, so getting the heatsink off and finding a way to keep it back on may be difficult. The ram chips may also need some heatsinks stuck to them as well. However, it is nice that it provides both 2D and 3D graphics on a single card. You may not like that it only does 16-bit colors in 3D opposed to a full 32-bit colors but you will be pretty happy with the performance at 1024x768 being worth giving up the colors on games released before 2000.

>>8405483
It was the price/cost that was a huge downside which lead to more downsides. It was a downward spiral. Since hardware was so expensive, it forced me to the poverty AMD option which was a downgrade in performance. With the exceptionally high prices, I remember being forced into 0day warez which leads to all sorts of new viruses. Even saving some things to floppies had a chance of bad sectors just corrupting the data. Fortunately, things are better for a new generation now, but I was there for all the growing pains.

>>8085539
I jumped in with my 286-12 and almost immediately got the SoundBlaster 2.0 due to the word of mouth from friends. The first game I played and was impressed with was Wing Commander 2, so much that I bought the speech pack addon as soon as I could afford it. In that time, I do not recall any competitors, it was just SoundBlaster or stick with the PC speaker. I experimented choosing other options like PC speaker, like I did with choosing EGA or CGA, but the experience was always with SoundBlaster. The Yamaha OPL2 is how I remember games like Ultima sounding, despite everyone opting to emulate Roland these days. Kept the SoundBlaster 2.0 through the 286-12 to 386DX-40 to 486DX4-100, it was the one part that served me very well across systems.

>>8085580
I think I entered "Oooooooooooo ..." for funny sounding name for Dr.Sbaitso. It would give me a lot of parity errors for all the swearing.

>>7806567
I would use two separate ones, since there is quite a span of requirements in the 90s. For DOS games that K6-III would do well, maybe consider a Pentium MMX for more adjustable options in slowing it down for various DOS games. The Pentium 3 will do a lot better for later Win98SE games.

>>7180024
I did output 1920x1200 to a FW900 via VGA, but what I really meant was that some older graphics cards will not be able to output at that high of a resolution. At the acceptable resolutions of the day like 320x200, 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 is there a non-CRT monitor I could get which scales that output well? I figure a 1440p and 4k screen could have enough pixels to display the old resolutions without added blurriness.

>>7122437
I hope it means they start on the 2.0 which is the sound I remember for old DOS games that I loved. I did get the new MPU-401k and Orpheus sound cards for ISA. It is nice to have new hardware to help preserve my old memories. While Roland MT-32 is real nice alongside the clean sound from the Orpheus OPL3, I am just more used to the OPL2 that was on the Sound Blaster 2.0 cards.

>>6978301
I think it still gets great attention. Id titles like Doom and Quake continues to stay pretty relevant since their release. A lot of the big companies from back then like Blizzard and Bioware continue to shape popular games for both PC and console games, but recognized for their old history and origin with PC games. Comparatively with consoles, maybe you notice they have a more unified shared experience from hardware that is mostly similar, but with retro PCs, the hardware and experience and wildly differ.

I too had great experiences with a large variety of consoles and PCs, but I would not throw one away as they both defined the games I enjoyed in my past. I don't think of one as superior to the other, but they all are pieces that form a whole.

>>6659428
I have a dedicated 486DX4-100 for my DOS purposes and I have been planning on building a J-Win98SE machine, but that had been put on hold due to the current pandemic. I would like to play around with Geoworks and Win3.0 again from my 386 days, so I have these Socket7 pieces like yours to mess around with once I can save up enough for the rest. I was going to go with the K6-III+, but for Wing Commander and Wing Commander 2, someone here suggested I use the MMX 166 instead. It looks like you have a cool case which accommodates the motherboard, what is it and how much do they go for?

>>6597037
I fon't think they worked well from my memory. Most of the games I mentioned at that time were made to be or become compatible with both 98 and 2000. As for DOS games, I had a dedicated DOS machine for those titles. That's probably why 98 is so popular being built upon DOS for a greater compatibility for a larger set of titles.

>>6597894
That's why I keep reusing the images from my phone. I enjoy making the pics and posting here for fans like yourself.

>>6599935
Oh that pic are parts of my old Win2k system. I am very familiar with the crap drivers AMD provides, they are the bane of poverty builds, but in theory they could be the best price for performance. I was trying to consult /g/ for my J-Win98SE build, but since it was for Windows and not GNU/Linux I didn't receive much help. You are right though, I am looking into FX cards for it. As for the nForce, I am trying to clean that southbridge to attach a new heatsink for the Win2k revival. You seem to be knowledged enough on 98, so I'll ask again later.

>>6580343
I have no idea. It is something I had from long ago and I have no idea if it still works. Once my country overcomes this COVID thing to open up for shipments from China, I intend on saving up for those new PCI Geforce FX 5500 in case.

https://youtu.be/1-w1NziFoLg

I was also thinking of using 98lite Professional to regain the 95 explorer in my J-Win98SE build as I don't intend on connecting it to the internet meaning Internet Explorer integration would be pointless. However a P-MMX era machine would be great for a lot of DOS games.


>>6580562
Good luck to you, as that process looks tedious and difficult. If you have the equipment and ability more power to you. You can do so much good with the ability to solder and desolder.

>>6574721
I'm probably the oldest one here. I do remember Gorilla and Snake in Qbasic but I don't think I tried out the visual basic demo. Back in those DOS days, it is nice those samples were included with MS-DOS, but I preferred playing games like Scorched Earth which had more options and was more visually appealing.


>>6574979
>>6574998
Perhaps OP is referring to Microsoft Chicago. Which was the codename for 95 while it was still in development in '93. Maybe that's why it was visual basic rather than the qbasic I am familiar with.

>>6522395
Still a lot of great overlooked stuff. I guess it is alright as some games had copy protections which required the original documentation to proceed.