Retro PC Thread

[Anonymous No.10425863]

Lately my urge to revisit old pc games from my childhood has been intensifying to the point I'm starting to look at buying old computers with the ball style mouse. Help me /vr I'm sick. Talk me out of this. Also what were your fav pc games growing up?

[Anonymous No.10425887]

>>10425863
Sorry man, I'm a zoomer but even I fell into the trap and have like 5 retro PCs from the 90s-early 2000s. There's no escaping it, just embrace the beige shitbox glory.

[Anonymous No.10425895]

>>10425863
You are sick. You can play all this stuff on your current PC with minimal effort.
The old style mouse is just worse so why bother. I don’t miss cleaning those out. Bad case of worthless nostalgia

[Anonymous No.10425941]

>>10425863
I know the feeling, but you must resist - you must! Its not worth it.
Right now, my favorite oldschool games were Red Alert, Lemmings, some Star Trek game I cannot remember, and Mechwarrior 2.

[Anonymous No.10425945]

[Anonymous No.10425961]

For me it's Caesar 3. And the Julius open source reimplementation of the game is much better than the original anyway.

[Anonymous No.10425963]

>>10425863
just found a pair of sound blaster SBS20s at a thrift store for $5 and now i feel like I have to build a PC around them

[Anonymous No.10425989]

>>10425863
>with the ball style mouse
waiting for this to turn into the "vinyl is better than CDs" for zoomers. We've already had the return of the mechanical keyboard, mechanical mice is the logical next step in hipsterdom. Companies should cash in on this honestly.

[Anonymous No.10426068]

>>10425895
>on your current PC with minimal effort.
>minimal effort
Where is the fun in that?
>>10425941
>Red Alert, Lemmings, some Star Trek game I cannot remember, and Mechwarrior 2.
Loved c&c and starcraft. Need to definitely play more mechwarrior. I remember playing it a bit at a friend's house.
>>10425945
Beautiful anon. Not helping my disease tho.
>>10425961
I think I played a demo of this back in the day. Seemed like a lot of fun. >>10425963
>sound blaster
Based anon

[Anonymous No.10426072]

>>10425863
>I'm sick
Congrats, you're one of the only paypigs on this board that will admit it. Everyone else on this board can kill themselves, but I hope you make it, Anon! I am here for you!

[Anonymous No.10426078]

>>10425963
There's no way those even sound good.

[Anonymous No.10426087]

>>10425863
>ball style mouse

Are you retarded, or just brain damaged?

[Anonymous No.10426094]

>>10426078
They'll sound....

Kino

[Anonymous No.10426138]

Any LoM fans? Probably the PC game I spent the most time on.

[Anonymous No.10426154]

>>10425863
What games do you imagine require a ball mouse?

[Anonymous No.10426160]

>>10425863
>Help me /vr I'm sick.
The only cure is to stop watching youtubes.

[Anonymous No.10426179]

>>10426068
>where is the fun in that
Because it’s exactly the same. While I don’t give a fuck about revisiting CRTs they are at least different to modern displays. A PC from 20 or 25 years ago? It’s the same thing just more beige.

[Anonymous No.10426182]

>>10425963
These sound terrible. Used to have them.
You are not well.

[Anonymous No.10426197]

>>10426138
I can only beat this game with life warrior or order warrior
So many systems, like magic or thieving, seem to be useless/wastes of time

Love the music and art though

[Anonymous No.10426340]

>>10426197
Order was my favorite both warrior and mage. Also liked playing as earth and death. Thiefs were kinda gay but it was fun sometimes going invisible and knocking out other champions. The custom world making also sucked up a ton of my time. Agreed on the music and art. Some great tunes that I still look up every so often and listen to.

[Anonymous No.10426359]

>>10426138
I love it. I wish there was a sequel or at least a way to create your own missions ala Legends of Urak.
>>10426197
Fire warrior is E-Z to win, give him the armor that casts fire dart, jack up his XP as much as possible, then go straight to Balgoth or whatever his name was. With a high defense you won't take any damage, and as long as you can dodge the magic attacks you should be strong enough to take out his followers. From there, it's just a question of whittling down Balgoth and you've won.
Magic has some depth to it, since it ignores armor. I don't remember most of the exploits, but it can be very helpful. As Order, if you need some emergency troops, you can hire some merc warriors, and with an Order mage, cast the spell that jacks up their stats but kills them at the end of the combat.

[Anonymous No.10426432]

>>10426359
>Legends of Urak
Can't remember most of the legends but I really digged the fire mage mission to free the Lava flow from deep inside the earth. One of the few legends I was able to complete.

[Anonymous No.10426447]

>>10426359
>wish there was a sequel
Same. It wasn't a perfect game but it has charm and a great setting. Maybe a sequel might have ironed out the kinks.

[Anonymous No.10426453]

>>10426432
The actual Order one was the easiest, since that one works like your normal game, except with two enemies, one of which is hidden away until later. I wish there was some way for Mordred to remain in his little hidey-hole so I could play the whole map for once, but alas...
The really hard one was Earth, you needed to survive for a long time with just yourself and some units which just drained your stores of ale, it was almost impossible to reach the area you needed them for before they left. The secret order mission I remember being hard, but not even that hard.

[Anonymous No.10426857]

>>10425863
Nobody, and I mean literally nobody misses ball mice. The ONLY reason why you'd ever want to have one is for use with a PC so old that it doesn't even have a PS/2 interface or the ability to add one. Or, I suppose, if you're putting together a whole original setup, so if you're putting together a Packard Bell with all the accessories that came with it, for example. But yeah, unlike old keyboards and monitors, old mice have zero advantages. They're just clunkier.
Also, my stupid dog once swallowed a steel ball from a mouse that was loose in our yard for some reason. Poor fucker had to go to surgery.

[Anonymous No.10427165]

>>10426087
That's actually the only thing in his setup that seems reasonable to me. I miss that feeling, I feel like a ball is about to drop down every time I lift a mouse and it doesn't... I want that ball back. Ballless mice are only a minor improvement, it's not worth it, we lost too much to gain a little bit of convenience

[Anonymous No.10427171]

>>10426857
You can shake them a bit and feel the ball going up and down. You can lift it up and roll just the ball on the table. It's nice. And what did we gain by going ballless? Was it THAT big of an improvement? I don't play online shooters, I don't require extreme precision, a ball mouse is fine

[Anonymous No.10427190]

>>10427171
It's not even about the added precision. It's being able to use a mouse and never have the pointer not move because the ball got stuck due to the rollers accumulating dirt and gunk and shit. The one thing ball mice had going for them early into the advent of optical mice was being able to use them on literally any surface, and that's no longer a real concern.

[Anonymous No.10427284]

>>10426857
>The ONLY reason why you'd ever want to have one is for use with a PC so old that it doesn't even have a PS/2 interface or the ability to add one.
No. There were optical mice for serial, appletalk, busmouse, and other interfaces. It's also possible, easy even, to convert PS/2 to any of those.
>if you're putting together a whole original setup
Yes. Autism is probably the only real reason. I bought up many stocklots of branded peripherals, particularly mice, specifically because I knew there was going to be a pandemic of autism. Aspies regularly pay $50-$100 for a shitty 2 button no wheel ball mouse because it has something silk screened on it.

[Anonymous No.10427342]

>>10427284
>There were optical mice for serial, appletalk, busmouse, and other interfaces.
How easy are those to acquire today and how cheap are they? Back in the day almost no one, at least not regular consumers, had an optical mouse before '99 when Microsoft released the IntelliMouse Explorer.

[Anonymous No.10427347]

>>10427190
>pointer not move because the ball got stuck due to the rollers accumulating dirt and gunk and shit
People keep saying that and I have no memory of that happening to me. Is that maybe a hygiene issue and not a mouse issue? My ball was always clean and I didn't clean it all that often either. Was that really a major problem for everyone or were you just a dirty pig

[Anonymous No.10427432]

>>10427347
I had that problem too. Apart from the layer of dirt building up on the roller, sometimes shit even got stuck in the roller axle so they'd stop rolling completely.

[Anonymous No.10427504]

>>10426182
And you are not a doctor, probably closer to a hooker (no offense)

[Anonymous No.10427514]

>>10426182
Can’t blame anyone for this. Contemporary art isn’t really offering a lot of anything

Might as well just go back and collect from the generation that had the good stuff

[Anonymous No.10427775]

>>10427342
Pretty cheap and easy to find. They were much more common than you imagine. Nearly everyone doing work that required precision had one, even if they had a tablet. They were regularly advertised in consumer magazines. That doesn't happen if no one is buying them. They were also well within the budget of the average person who could afford a personal computer. I'm afraid youtube has lied to you yet again.

[Anonymous No.10427802]

>>10425945
I was expecting this.

[Anonymous No.10428085]

>>10425863
Frankly, the only reason why you should bother with period set-ups is if you're playing some obscure game(s) that were never digitized (Magic & Mayhem, my beloved ;_;), or those old Japanese porn games that straight-up refuse to work on a VM, and require a native OS environment.

[Anonymous No.10428095]

>>10427504
Hookers are just dick doctors. What are you implying?

[Anonymous No.10428104]

>>10427342
>Back in the day almost no one, at least not regular consumers, had an optical mouse before '99 when Microsoft released the IntelliMouse Explorer
What? What the fuck, WHAT THE FUCK. No, everybody had a mouse by 1999.

[Anonymous No.10428162]

>>10428104
"Optical" mouse, anon.

[Anonymous No.10428181]

For me it's Neverwinter Nights and SimCity 2000.

[Anonymous No.10428209]

>>10425863
Use 86box or PCem to scratch the itch.
Dealing with this old ass hardware is a pain in the ass because there's so many games across these eras that just run into issues with hardware, you'll need a few different retro pcs and it starts taking up space and time

[Anonymous No.10428225]

>>10428209
S3 Trio family + SB16 work with pretty much everything in the post-1990 DOS era. As long as you don't fuck up your IRQ/DMA config, you shouldn't have issues. My first (prebuilt) PC had the SB16 set on IRQ 10, and I had to move it to 7, since some older games couldn't see IRQ past 7.

[Anonymous No.10428426]

>>10427775
I'm just speaking from my own experience, but yeah maybe I just knew poorfags. I've yet to meet anyone who owned one.

[Anonymous No.10428482]

recently been looking into building a retro pc rig, is the market for parts/games super expensive?

[Anonymous No.10428517]

>>10427775
>Pretty cheap and easy to find.
That's pretty cool actually. Do they all require a special mouse pad? If they do, could I get the mouse and pad separately or is it important that it's the right type?

[Anonymous No.10428537]

>>10428482
Socket 1 and socket 370 motherboards are overpriced, also good luck finding a 3dfx voodoo graphics card for a reasonable price. Stick with socket 462 and the via kt133 or kt266 chipset. Also you can get any 9000 series card from ati and any geforce fx 5000 series form nvidia that work decent, mx series works too.

[Anonymous No.10428698]

>>10428426
>poorfags
ew
>>10428517
Some require special pads some don't. Pads can be reproduced. There are different types. As with most things, you'll probably want to do some research before going full aspie.

[Anonymous No.10428710]

>pointless shit
The thread. This is the worst case of pointless hardware ever. Funko pop collector tier.

[Anonymous No.10428726]

>>10428710
I've recently booted up LSL7 on my 1997 Compaq Armada. Looked like shit (fucking DSTN screen) but ran fine (it would still run fine if the 1.4 GB hard drive hadn't crapped itself soon afterwards). And I've played through a fair bit of the Disciples 2 Gold Empire campaign on my 2003 (I think?) Toshiba Satellite.

[Anonymous No.10428735]

>>10427432
That has literally never happened to me and I've been a PC gamer with a ball mouse from 96 well into 00s. You people are just disgusting pigs

[Anonymous No.10428736]

>>10428698
Thanks. All I've found from googling so far are the ones from Mouse Systems that need a glass pad. Don't know yet if the pads are interchangable since there seems to be different sizes? maybe. And then the Xerox ones that used a paper mat, where you probably could just print a copy of the original mat. But I think those only were meant for Xerox computers, so I don't know if they'd work on a PC without the right drivers and stuff..

[Anonymous No.10428783]

>>10425863
>Lately my urge to revisit old pc games from my childhood has been intensifying to the point I'm starting to look at buying old computers with the ball style mouse.
Apart from the mouse (not coming back to the ball unless I need a COM mouse), I've solved my urge with this IBM T42p. Finally all my games from the childhood, all on one small machine that doesn't take a lot of space. And if I want a desktop experience, I can use the dock (with built-in PCI slot) with something like SBLive5.1 and an external CRT.

>Also what were your fav pc games growing up?
All of those on the screenshot.

[Anonymous No.10428797]

>>10425863
Why just one? Get a bunch of them

[Anonymous No.10428831]

>>10428735
Here's the creator of the modern optical mouse talking about it.
https://youtu.be/TxxoWhCzIeU?t=1778

He only mentions they needed to be opened up every couple of months or so, but still more often than never. Though I guess he could be considered a bit biased, being the inventor of their replacement and all kek. Seems like a cool guy though.

[Anonymous No.10428859]

>>10428726
You can play these on your 2023 PC.

[Anonymous No.10428860]

>>10425863
>Also what were your fav pc games growing up?
Year 99 zoomer here. I got the internet back when I was 9.
Before that, my first pc had windows xp, tarzan game, need for speed game, yes not kidding, a game where you shoot chickens and a game with a plane that I can't really remember. I also played a dx-ball game and a game where you are a little paper ball.
Once I got the internet I played naruto mugen and pokemon games.
I also had some chinese console with disketes on em and I used to play with my neighbour all day. We would play games like contra or tmnt games.

[Anonymous No.10428901]

>>10428797
>why just one?
A man of great taste I see.

[Anonymous No.10429349]

>>10425863
Beige box isn't necessary for the simple reason that there's a ton of late 90's laptops that used to be $3500 back in the day that you can pick up for $35 now.
Cheap, runs games perfectly, and easy to store away when you're done.

[Anonymous No.10429368]

>>10429349
I have a c.1998 laptop i found in the trash that fulfills this purpose. Came loaded with win95 and I put 98se on it and a pcmcia card with 2 usb ports and now it doesnt suck ass to use

[Anonymous No.10429909]

>>10429368
>PCMCIA
That standard was surprisingly advanced for the period. I put a CompactFlash card in a PCMCIA adapter, and it works like a USB stick in Win95 (OSR2), minus the bootable drive bit.

[Radiochan !!8R5IcuH3PgQ No.10429959]

>>10425863
Just buy a CRT and a ball mouse + USB adapter. It will be far less frustrating.
t. someone who has 3 dosboxes in the garage

[Anonymous No.10430035]

>>10428736
Size shouldn't matter. I used to print them all the time. Pads aren't interchangeable across the board, but from one model to another from the same vendor they often were. I never saw a glass pad, all the mouse systems pads I had were plastic. Key thing is it has to be reflective. You can print the pattern on a transparency and put pretty much any sort of reflective material under it. I used aluminum foil.
>>10428797
You need a bunch, if you want to be able to run everything, use various addon hardware, etc. Can you even run SPARCshit natively on any of that?

[Anonymous No.10430091]

>>10430035
>You can print the pattern on a transparency and put pretty much any sort of reflective material under it.
Ah cool thanks! So could I use like transparency film for an overhead projector? Does it need to be printed in color?

[Anonymous No.10430170]

>>10430035
>You need a bunch, if you want to be able to run everything, use various addon hardware, etc.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Seems like to cover the widest variety of hardware and software, you want at least the following:
>4.77 MHz 8088 with CGA composite graphics, possibly best covered by an early Tandy 1000, as that gives you access to much of the Tandy shit as well
>25-33 MHz 386 with VGA graphics and a Sound Blaster 2.0 for both Adlib and CMS compatibility, plus an MT-32 for MIDI
>66 MHz 486 with a VLB SVGA card, SB16 or AWE32 for sound, and possibly an SC-55 for MIDI
>Pentium 90-100, similar setup to the 486 but using a PCI video card such as the S3 Trio64+, plus a Voodoo
>Pentium MMX 233 or Pentium II with a Voodoo 2
After this point, most everything runs on newer rigs without needing super specific hardware, I think. Am I missing something?

[Anonymous No.10430692]

>>10430091
>So could I use like transparency film for an overhead projector?
That's what I used
>Does it need to be printed in color?
For the mouse systems ones I used, no. But there were other mice I was unable to reproduce the pads for which might. I only had access to monochrome printers in the early 80's.
>>10430170
>Am I missing something?
Even if you're only talking about "PCs" sometimes you need a combination of expansion slots that's impossible to get in a single setup. You didn't even mention AGP. Of course there's a buttload of shit that's not "PC" as well.

[Anonymous No.10430730]

>>10430692
>For the mouse systems ones I used, no.
Nice, thanks again man.

[Anonymous No.10431739]

>>10430730
Sure thing.
Full disclosure, none of this actually happened in the original timeline. Some of us from The Legion of Larp went back in time and changed things just to win an argument against a bullshiting incel... Some of that shit still haunts me to this day... TAAL (The Assembly Language Larper) and that kids dads bung hole...That shits just wrong.

[Anonymous No.10431746]

So after weeks of trying all kinds of shit, I finally figured out how to get a pirated version of Roland's Sound Canvas VA software to work with 86box, and it's fucking glorious. Games like Doom and Duke 3D now sound just as they were meant to. For whoever wants to give it a go, well, know that it's a pain in the ass, but it's worth it. First, download the installation files here:
https://tinyurl com/5xwcsr2e
Install both the Sound Canvas VA VST plugin and the Cloud emulator. You may have to go into your hosts file and add some shit due to some drama the group involved got into, but whatever. Afterwards, check out this video, download the recommended MIDI software, and follow the instructions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WumRboSfn90
For me, I ended up putting the SAVIhost exe under Program Data/Roland Cloud/Sound Canvas VA. It'll ask you to authenticate when you launch it, but you can type whatever and it'll work. Finally, set 86box to use System MIDI, and change it to use the port created earlier. It should just work from there.

[Anonymous No.10431758]

>>10428209
Thank god for this thing, I fucking hate dosbox but 86box completely satisfies my occasional nostalgia kicks to play old pre-Windows XP games accurately. Only thing that sucks is you need a beefy pc.

[Anonymous No.10431759]

>>10431746
Oh, I forgot to add, you'll probably have to download some VC redistributable for SAVIhost to work. I believe it's 2008 SP1 or something like that. The program's website will tell you.

[Anonymous No.10431864]

>>10431746
Fuck Roland for being greedy cunts and not releasing the SC-55/SC-88/SC-88 Pro legacy code as freeware. We have Munt for MT-32, but 1) it's not super accurate; 2) it's just for MT-32.

[Anonymous No.10431968]

>>10431746
>Cloud emulator
R2R released a version of Sound Canvas VA with the cloud emulator requirements removed not too long ago

[Anonymous No.10432072]

>>10428537
>Stick with socket 462
Don't do this unless you want to blow up a PSU.

[Anonymous No.10432157]

>>10425945
retrotroon

[Anonymous No.10432640]

>>10431864
There's a guy currently working on an SC-55 equivalent to MUNT, but it's still in the early stages. Hopefully he'll finish it so Roland can finally fuck off.
>>10431968
Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Got a link, perhaps?

[Anonymous No.10432772]

>>10432640
torrent is on rutracker, x64 only

Roland - VS SOUND Canvas VA 1.1.6 VSTi x64
https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5838135

[Anonymous No.10432876]

>>10432772
Much appreciated, friend. More people ought to know about this.

[Anonymous No.10433250]

>>10425863
I'm happy I kept my grandma's old PC around and gave it some love and work to turn it into a pretty competent little gaming PC for 2001 standards.

For the uninitiated though I'd suggest looking into emulators before taking the plunge on real hardware. Regularly check thrift stores and recycling centers (as long as they're not dicks about offering scrap to the general public like some are), and be prepared to have your patience tested as older hardware and OS's are significantly less-stable than modern systems are and you're never going to get an ideal system for every game in every era (though I'd personally recommend a Pentium III and a cheap Nvidia card from the early 2000's to start with, or a Voodoo card if you're lucky enough to find or afford one, getting a Soundblaster Live or another cheap card with DOS/MIDI support is also a good idea).

[Anonymous No.10433465]

here's my retro computing setup of all time. Rate it before you die!

[Anonymous No.10433537]

>>10433465
I too am a fan of Grimi.x and Ruclade

[Anonymous No.10434768]

>>10433250
Yeah, from what I've heard, I believe it's possible to get even a pentium III to slow down to around the level of a 386 by disabling caches and such, so it can be quite compatible with older DOS stuff. The issue might be with the sound card, though. The SB Live is just mediocre for that job. You really want an ISA card in there.

[Anonymous No.10434903]

Would this be good for 98/dos games? I have fuck all experience with either.

[Anonymous No.10434967]

>>10434903
Looks like it has a radeon 7500 which lacks some features win 98 games sometimes used. Its ok

[Anonymous No.10434981]

>100 mhz Pentium
>333 mhz Celeron
>700 mhz Pentium 3 laptop
>1.3 ghz Duron
>2.4 ghz Pentium 4
All sitting in storage since PCem is good enough for the first two, and for everything else runs on modern computers.

[Anonymous No.10435053]

Where can I buy beige tower cases and peripherals? I'd like to build a modern PC with a 90's aesthetic.

[Anonymous No.10435161]

>>10434981
PCem has too much input lag to be usable.

[Anonymous No.10435909]

>>10435053
This. I don't care about the internals as long as the outside is big, blocky, and beige. I'm fine enough with running VMs for old programs.

[Anonymous No.10435985]

>>10433250
The unfortunate truth is that the golden age of hoarding old components is long past.
The best times were in the late-00s (especially 2008-2009), when nobody gave a fuck about DOS or Win9x era stuff, and you could find stuff like GUS-es fully populated with expansion RAM, or PCs with an S3 Trio 64V+ and SLI-ed 12 MB Voodoo 2s for a pittance. By the time LGR made his first video about vintage PCs, it was already getting a bit too late.

[Anonymous No.10436083]

>>10433250
>galaxy of games
yeah im thinkin based

[Anonymous No.10436429]

>>10428783
>True Love
hecking based!!

[Anonymous No.10436494]

>>10428537
i'd go with a 478 socket, from 2002-2005 literally everyone had one with a pentium 4, 2.4-2.8ghz, there're so common ive been given 4 boards all 478 socket with P4's, they are guaranteed to be dos/win9x compatible and have chipset drivers.
as for gpu id advise against a radeon if its not a 9800, i have a 9250 256mb 128bit, which is dx8, only the 9800's did dx9, also it only has drivers for 98 up, not for 95.

ive got 3 nvidia fx5200's all 128mb,64bit,dx9 and they perform just as well as the radeon with twice the vram/bus, obviously performance varies with manufacturer, also the fx5200 may not be a performance card it will be more than enough for dos/98, also there are official drivers for 95-vista, also the vista driver works on win7, it may also work on win 10 i forget.

>>10433250
pentium3's and voodoos are literally what hipsters are buying driving prices due to autism over having period correct parts for computers that exiisted before they were born, while most anons not realising they can play the same games on a 478 pentium 4 with an fx5200 both of which are plentiful and just werks, and can be had for a small fraction of the price. as for stability there're pretty good, as we acktually used them back then, most instability problems are caused by people not installing chipset drivers, and installing large service packs for things they dont need or cumulative updates put together by "the community" which are bugged to shit (like the ones for m.e) which result in you having to wipe ur hdd and start over

[Anonymous No.10436524]

>>10435161
How much does it have? I've never noticed any and played through Blood completely on it.

[Anonymous No.10437757]

Tech brainlet here with old pc games in a shoebox. What is the newest pc I can purchase and still be able to play these late 90s early 00s games on?

[Anonymous No.10437828]

>>10437757
Your current machine + pcEM, ignore the retards ITT wasting money on obsolete junk

[Anonymous No.10437829]

>>10434768
Yeah, I'd consider another sound card but resellers fleece the shit out of you for anything truly period-accurate and worth a damn. SB Live isn't the best but at-least it's easy to install and it works.

>>10435985
Yup, if you're not extremely lucky with what you come across I'd honestly argue it just isn't worth the trouble these days.

>>10436083
That was my grandpa's CD. Found it in his workshop after he passed away alongside that Zenith keyboard and I really wanted to preserve them and keep them in use so that's a major reason I went to work on that project.

>>10436494
I think Pentium 4's are kind of shit but if you have a way to cool them properly I guess they'll get the job done. FX5200 is a nice card though no-doubt. And yeah those Unofficial Windows Service Packs are a total waste of time if you're not using a VM, and it's pretty frustrating how you can't just find the official OS updates and patches by themselves anymore without all that stupid bullshit attached to it.

[Anonymous No.10437847]

>>10437828
Thanks fren

[Anonymous No.10437985]

>>10437757
the biggest bottleneck is 16bit applications, but really any 32bit PC of the 00's would be ok

[Anonymous No.10437987]

>>10437985
though if you're only interested in very late 90s games and onward, you probably wont even run into this issue at all

[Anonymous No.10437998]

>>10437985
Funny how even Windows 10 can run 16-bit applications with the right setup. I've seen videos of people running fucking Reversi from Windows 1.0.

[Anonymous No.10438007]

>>10437987
>you're only interested in very late 90s games
Mostly late 90s but Mid 90s as well since I have Tiberium Dawn and Mechwarrior 2.

[Anonymous No.10438014]

>>10437998
the backwards compatibility baked into x86-64 is amazing.

[Anonymous No.10438045]

i'm thinking of making a chan that is usable by old web 1.0 era browsers, would anyone be interested?

[Anonymous No.10438048]

>>10438007
Mechwarrior 2 can run on Windows 11 even with some tweaking.

[Anonymous No.10438065]

>>10438045
as long as I can sign the guestbook and watch the hitcounter tick upward

[Anonymous No.10439410]

>>10426138
Update: I bought a like new copy with everything in the big box for $15 total. Crazy how cheap this one goes for.

[Anonymous No.10439449]

>>10439410
my dad got a disc of it well over a decade or so ago because it was $1. I don't know if he ever actually played it.

[Anonymous No.10439531]

>>10425945
SOVL

[Anonymous No.10439538]

>>10438045
sure

[Anonymous No.10439640]

>>10438045
Just make sure it's unusable by smelly phoneposters.

[Anonymous No.10439641]

>>10433250
ID on keyboard?

[Anonymous No.10439831]

>>10439449
>don't know if he ever actually played it
You should ask then report back. The game isn't perfect but it has soul.

[Anonymous No.10440440]

>>10425863
I know that feeling, but it is a minefield of repairs. The power sources are old and can take everything with it down, conversely new power sources just has trouble generating the specific power some devices require. The weight and mechanical lag of a ball mouse by this point could feel foreign without all the modern features like scroll wheels. I had lots of fun playing Cobra Mission back then since it's battles were pretty fast paced and the graphics impressed me.

[Anonymous No.10440460]

>>10425863

[Anonymous No.10440472]

>>10440460
Forgot to type my damn text with my image but anyway I've posted this in some battlestation threads. I need to take better pics of it but I salvaged this Socket 7 P133mhz from a local computer recycle place on a whim one day. idk what possessed me to call them and ask that day but they said they had an old win95 computer that they'd be willing to part with for free so I said fuck it and picked it up.

I didn't have much clue what I was getting into. Thought at best I could reinstall 95 (they kept the HDD for obvious reasons) and maybe play Duke 3d or some basic DOS games. Took forever just to get win95 installed as I needed both a floppy disc AND a cd to install the OS onto the system. After I managed to get it up and running I asked the question "how much power can I possibly squeeze out of this thing and can I maybe get Half Life or Unreal to run on it?

Well the asnwer was yes and no. I managed to find a decent deal on a Diamond Monster Voodoo 4MB. I also upgraded the sound card to an AWE64 from a SB16. I was able to run Half Life and even Unreal but admittedly Unreal isn't playable. I thought well maybe if I upgrade the processor? So I then attempted to do that only to find out that the mobo was limited to a Pentium 200mhz (non MMX) which was pretty disappointing. A 233MHZ MMX pretty much runs anything and everything up until 1999 (Unreal, Half Life, Baldurs gate 2, etc etc.) and unforunately I'm JUST out of spec for some of those really late 90s games. Planescape Torment and BG2 as well as Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 will never be within my grasp.

Anyway, long story short, TLDR, it was a REALLY fun project and even though a capacitor could poop on me at any second, and the parts will inevitably fail, I absolutely LOVE my retro pc and I'm pretty happy I took the plunge. Original hardware is always better than emulators.

[Anonymous No.10441874]

>>10440472
The Pentium definitely feels like it was a big deal when it finally dropped, though admittedly it took a little bit for it to become truly mainstream, but by the time Windows 95 came out, it was ready for prime time. Those two truly went hand in hand.

[Anonymous No.10443049]

bamp

[Anonymous No.10443273]

>>10425863
Thats too far back. At least get a machine from 2000 or so that plays all of it

Someone said you can play all those on the new ones so I might not care to buy one now. If I did just one though. Can't collect them all like some people

[Anonymous No.10443278]

>>10440472
I just think the design of everything is worse now and it peaked around 1995-2003 for some reason

[Anonymous No.10443674]

>>10425963
This shit wasn't even desirable at the time.

[Anonymous No.10443895]

>>10441874
>feels...dropped
Zoomie opinion disregarded

[Anonymous No.10444386]

When do I have to start worrying about capacitors?

[Anonymous No.10444391]

>>10444386
if it was made in the 2000-2005 period.

[Anonymous No.10444936]

>>10444391
>if it was made in the 2000-2005 period.
If only. I have repaired two Toshiba T4400C laptops from the early 90s. All of the caps inside have leaked. All of them - on the internal PSU, on the motherboard, on the floppy drive, and even on the display controller. The later was so bad that even the soldermask was heavily damaged. Those were the SMD caps though, but PSU had more common through-the-hole ones.

[Anonymous No.10444950]

>>10441874
Zoomer chapion. O ly onr I reguard. (That's rear guard)

[Anonymous No.10444964]

>>10425963
I have the SBS10 which is the same as those but no powered amp. They sounded like shit

[Anonymous No.10445007]

>>10444391
I've got a few Athlon XP and 64 Systems and none of them have leaky or bulging caps. Maybe I just got lucky but I don't want to mess with them until I absolutely have to.

[Anonymous No.10445917]

My disease has progressed to stage 4... it's terminal.. I've bought two PC games already with two others on my watch list and I don't even have anything to play them on yet....

[Anonymous No.10446203]

>>10444936
sauce?

[Anonymous No.10446889]

>>10446203
Source for what? That's one of my own photo from that repair. In the end I managed to repair both of them. Also for some strange reason both CPU were dead. Luckily it uses desktop 486 so replacement was easy.

[Anonymous No.10446958]

>>10446889
>no sauce blah blah blah
Everything went entirely as expected

[Anonymous No.10447312]

>>10446958
Ok, fine, here's your source. Still powers on fine after the repair (I also need to finish slim openflops drive board for it, original citizen floppy is completely dead).
Also I'm not saying that one has to recap every machine from 90s, that is silly. But you have to at least check those smd caps for leakage, it could be bad. Looks like some companies just bought really shitty caps back then.

[Anonymous No.10447319]

>>10446958
Ok, fine, here's your source. Still powers on fine after the repair (I also need to finish slim openflops drive board for it, original citizen floppy is completely dead).
Also I'm not saying that one has to recap every machine from 90s, that is silly. But you have to at least check those smd caps for leakage, it could be bad. Looks like some companies just bought really shitty caps back then.

[Anonymous No.10447470]

>>10447319
obnoxious shitposter troll BTFO

[Anonymous No.10447825]

I know this is for retro games, but what is some software that you need on a retro PC?
Obviously WinAmp is a given, but all the others I can think of are basically useless because they point to dead services (i.e. MSN Messenger)

[Anonymous No.10447841]

>>10438045
Isn't that just a text board like 4-ch.net?
Though, I'd rather a classic forum so I can break out Photoshop 7 and make myself a sig again.

[Anonymous No.10447851]

>>10447825
benchmarks, daemon tools, winzip etc, pdf reader, codec packs, ps2rate, screensavers, paintshop pro

[Anonymous No.10447883]

>>10447841
>forum sigs
Based.

[Anonymous No.10448073]

>>10447841
>>10447883
>"Ther is no spoone." -The Matricks
Still, there was some charm to it, I suppose.

[Anonymous No.10448718]

>>10447319
>still no sauce blah blah blah
It's hilarious, and says so much about you, that you think posting pictures of your dumpster proves any of your claims.

[Anonymous No.10449965]

Oh, so you're one of those people. Ok, I shouldn't have bothered in the first place

[Anonymous No.10449973]

>when you don't want to look like clown vomit like the speccy so you desaturate your colors almost to grayscale

[Anonymous No.10450745]

>>10447841
>Though, I'd rather a classic forum so I can break out Photoshop 7 and make myself a sig again.
I think I need to find some nice, quiet forums to retire to. 4chan is too much for me now, and so is the rest of the mainstream internet.
It's too much a young man's game...

[Anonymous No.10450765]

86box is pretty good

[Anonymous No.10450928]

>>10425945
>Everytime anon turns the power on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQoIh4VUB9s

[Anonymous No.10452317]

Bump. I like the conversation being had. Hopefully we can have more retro pc threads in the future.

[Anonymous No.10452363]

>>10450765
I cant get internet to work on 86box, I'm using the default network setup and it just never works

[Anonymous No.10453174]

>>10452363
These are my settings.
Card works out of the box in 98SE, just have to setup internet over LAN through Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Connections -> Setup

[Anonymous No.10453225]

>>10453174
ah okay, it works now
thanks

[Anonymous No.10453802]

Speaking of 86box, how do you set it up to use both the AWE32 and GUS at the same time? And should a standalone MPU-401 be used for MIDI from, say, fluidsynth or sound canvas VA?

[Anonymous No.10453960]

>>10444386
>>10444936
Depends on the caps and usage more than anything, sure early 2000's period "capacitor plague" is a thing but even then it depends on more factors than just that.

[Anonymous No.10453964]

>>10428710
>t. Nintendo fanboy

[Anonymous No.10453968]

>>10430035
Bro, just put all the hardware in a single machine, who cares about IRQ Hell.

[Anonymous No.10453971]

Oh noo, hardware hurt poor Windows. Now Windows scared.

[Anonymous No.10453972]

>>10425895
restoring period accurate hardware is fun

[Anonymous No.10453973]

>>10453968
absolute madman

[Anonymous No.10453975]

>>10453973
Thanks.

[Anonymous No.10454374]

>>10428710
If there was a way to make emulation not feel so soulless I'd just use pcEM instead of wasting time maintaining a pile of ewaste.

[Anonymous No.10454380]

>>10454374
literally just fullscreen it

[Anonymous No.10454386]

>>10454374
Get dedicated CRT, keyboard and mouse.

[Anonymous No.10454975]

>>10439641
https://youtu.be/BHkB1Kvl4ZA?si=

[Anonymous No.10455372]

[Anonymous No.10455967]

>>10425989
vinyl is objectively better than CDs. Streaming is better than CDs. Music quality on CD's is dogshit compared to uncompressed vinyl or like fuckin apple music lol

[Anonymous No.10456847]

>>10455967
Flashcarts > actual games (in most instances)
Quality is equal and you dont have to have a bunch of plastic around or take with you to a friends house. no batteries, no lost saves. can play translations and shit on real hw.

[Anonymous No.10457151]

Update: Bought a laptop and started playing LoM last night. Everything looks and plays fine for the most part but my mouse is waaay too sensitive. Will need to look into adjusting that more. Ordered Mechwarrior 3 and plan on trying out C&C later this week.

[Anonymous No.10457162]

>>10457151
all things that could be done on a modern machine

[Anonymous No.10457228]

>>10457162
It's a new-ish laptop with windows 10.

[Anonymous No.10457505]

[Anonymous No.10459320]

What's the best DOS audio card in your opinion?

[Anonymous No.10459362]

>>10459320
The one that produces the best version of the sound you want for the game you're playing. Simple as.

[Anonymous No.10459373]

>>10425963
I think I legit grew up with these, part of the family computer... they can't sound very good.

[Anonymous No.10459391]

>>10425989
Music on CDs was horribly compressed, so there's actual logic to the vinyl thing. Mechanical keyboards also aren't that absurd, if it has a more satisfying feel when typing then who gives a fuck? Meanwhile there's no benefit to ball mice, we're not going to see a major return aside from guys trying to recreate old setups. Every person I've ever met that cried "hipster" at something unusual has been a boring insufferable cunt that's deluded themselves into thinking they're counter culture. You're just a jaded old faggot.

[Anonymous No.10459502]

>>10459320
sound blaster pro 2

[Anonymous No.10459517]

>>10425863
Ya I can’t see a reason to get any of this stuff unless you have a ton of extra room in your house for random stuff

Especially when new ones still play it

Can sorta understand buying 1 machine but collecting this stuff does seem a bit cuckoo

[Anonymous No.10459524]

>>10459502
What does it have over the SB16? Do they both not have the same OPL3 chip?

[Anonymous No.10460026]

Reminder that you can thank LGR for singlehandedly killing the retro pc market

[Anonymous No.10460029]

>>10459320
If you'd only have to pick one? AWE32 is the most versatile and best value IMO.
You get real OPL3 and sound banks.

Add a external Roland SC-88 and you're good for most shit.

[Anonymous No.10460062]

>>10459524
supposedly its has better compatibility and I like FM synth

[Anonymous No.10460260]

>>10460026
on the bright side thanks to the reseller market it's slowing down people destroying old mobos and cpus for the $1 worth of gold in them.

[Anonymous No.10460309]

>>10460026
Based Clit

[Anonymous No.10460785]

>>10459524
Worth noting that some SB16 models don't have a genuine OPL3 chip, but rather a slightly lower-quality clone.

[Anonymous No.10460813]

>>10460785
I hate how Creative was all over the fucking place with their models, changing components left and right while still categorizing cards under the same brand name umbrella, or naming them something confusingly similar. They got a bit better with this later on once they started naming cut-down cards with monickers like Value, at least.

[Anonymous No.10462084]

>>10425863
It will feel like shit once you actually get the parts, it's like pretending you're still living in bygone times and it always feels like utter shit when you realize it's all just make-believe, the golden age of the internet and humanity is gone and the trannies, social politics and generally homogeneus and lifeless modern internet is right outside waiting to shit all over your day again. https://youtu.be/-RFunvF0mDw?si=qjP5ZG9yq-tjFDdv

Just play the games on your newer PCs, it's a generally better experience, just run a VM if it gets too annoying to run certain software (vmware is easily pirateable).

[Anonymous No.10462095]

>>10462084
>it always feels like utter shit when you realize it's all just make-believe
You do this all to lie to yourself? I enjoy everything, from the builds, tinkering to playing on them, why instantly start thinking about politics and shit?

>Just play the games on your newer PCs, it's a generally better experience
Unironically not

[Anonymous No.10462103]

>>10462084
It's no more make believe than restoring a car from the 70s is - it's a labor of love and a hobby and a bit of escapism, just don't make it your entire life or it gets sad

[Anonymous No.10462117]

>needing excuses to enjoy something

[Anonymous No.10462171]

>>10460813
>awe 64.dudes! It's awesome!
>it'd an awe32 with a shitty proprietary ram interface

[Anonymous No.10462189]

>>10462171
Don't forget CQM FM synth.

[Anonymous No.10462217]

>>10462084
The internet has been woke since that early 90s. The internet has been normie since 1997

[Anonymous No.10462228]

>>10462217
>woke
Didn't seem like it to me until they started making it obvious circa 2011 onwards
>normie internet
True, but to be fair the heterogeneous nature of the early years filtered most of them until social media started to get truly big circa 2008 - 2009 and they started to abandon their real lives in favor of it and depression and loneliness took over.

[Anonymous No.10462231]

>>10462228
you must be young

[Anonymous No.10463021]

I know this isn't really "retro" but does anyone have experience getting HDMI audio working with nvidia GPU's on XP?

All the drivers seem to be up date but for some reason it wont output through HDMI.

[Anonymous No.10463146]

>>10462084
It's just cool to have, you're overthinking it.

[Anonymous No.10463209]

>>10463146
I guarantee you, no thinking was involved in the making of that shitpost. Only seething.

[Anonymous No.10463365]

>>10460029
There's that one new card, the Orpheus II I think, that has both a proper OPL3 and a GUS clone chip together with MPU-401 support. Seems like that's just about the best of all words so far.