New Year, New Retro PC thread

[Anonymous No.10570629]

Alright chumps, it's that time again. Discuss the games and hardware you had and played with, as well as the ones you salivated over.

Not gonna lie, this rag had me hyped. I was on a 466 MHz Celeron at the time, and I couldn't believe we were already reaching the gigahertz. Kinda funny, though, that when I did get a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4, I mostly just played Starcraft.

[Anonymous No.10570639]

i bought an alienware pc with a credit card in 2003 :3

[Anonymous No.10570643]

>>10570629
Where is the Palm IIIc games threads?

[Anonymous No.10570814]

>>10570629
Fuck I had that magazine

[Anonymous No.10571009]

>>10570639
This one, I'm guessing? Wasn't this fucker like $3500?

[Anonymous No.10571025]

>>10570629
Why would you WANT to install FOUR OSes?

[Anonymous No.10571036]

>>10570639
>alienware
>2003
did you play halo PC on it?

[Anonymous No.10571042]

how retarded am i for thinking about getting a tandy-1000 to play dos games even though there is literally no reason to

[Anonymous No.10571046]

>>10571025
In 2000? Just taking a stab at it, but maybe Windows 2000 for general work stuff since it was more stable, Windows 98 for multimedia, gayming and DOS compatibility, some flavor of Loonix if you were a developer, and that's all I can think of to be honest, maybe some other obscure OS for something super niche.

[Anonymous No.10571108]

>>10571009
yep, it was that case but black with silver eyes
>>10571036
i played black and white, max payne 1 and 2, unreal tournament 2003, doom 3, painkiller. during this time i played far more on xbox. i played halo 2 online for years and years and continued with halo 3 until i got burnt out on it. nowadays i play primarily on pc

[Anonymous No.10571107]

>>10570629
I was born in '92, and PC gaming was the most magical thing I could've imagined growing up with. My brother is a huge nerd and he's 10 years older than me, so I always got to play the cool shit by proxy. We had Win 95 and 98 PCs and a Mac at the house. We played Durandal, DOOM 2, Quake 2, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Myst and a bunch of weird shit I can't even recall. Then around 2001, we got a Sony Vaio desktop, and that was the golden age. We played a lot of Quake 3, Diablo 2 and StarCraft, Command & Conquer: Renegade and emulated a bunch of SNES games. He got us into the Ragnarok Online iRO beta in 2002; I'll never forget playing that for the first time and being awestruck at this huge world filled with other real people. I had experienced online games before, but nothing that felt like a living world in the way that RO did. Being 10 years old and seeing something like that right at the start, it had a profound impact on me. Those days seemed so much brighter and more hopeful, even though I didn't know it at the time. It saddens me that children today will never get to have those kind of experiences, but man, I'm glad I did.

[Anonymous No.10571141]

i have a copy of patched madou monogatari 1 and i want to upload it somewhere because the patch on romhacking and github come with the most fucking obtuse instructions and patchy98 is a nightmare to use. where can i upload this?

[Anonymous No.10571197]

>>10571042
pretty retarded

[Anonymous No.10571404]

I have many retro PCs but this is my favorite. I even installed fans with twist ties to make sure it lasts 26 more years.

[Anonymous No.10571424]

>>10571042
Hardware that old isn't really a good idea to get a hold of nowadays unless you're really into 80's PCs as a hobby and have the skill and know-how to maintain them, not to mention the money. A Tandy 1000 is only worthwhile if you want the best 4.77 MHz 8088 to play all those early-to-mid 80's games that don't run properly on anything else, but let's face it, those games are so rudimentary you've got to really have strong nostalgia for them and the hardware of the time period to go through the trouble.

[Anonymous No.10571437]

>>10571042
If you have to ask, don't get one
You can emulate that specific machine in 86Box which is very accurate

[Anonymous No.10571630]

>>10571437
inb4 >emulate

[Anonymous No.10572547]

>>10570814
haha you're so old

[Anonymous No.10572557]

>1 year ago we could barely play PS2 games for 200$
>In one month it will be possible.

[Anonymous No.10573290]

>>10571404
>bleem!
How well does that work?

[Anonymous No.10573319]

>>10571141
Why not put it on Github?

[Anonymous No.10573326]

>>10572557
This ain't the handheld thread, retard.

[Anonymous No.10574174]

Switching between Voodoo 3 and TnT Ultra like a boss.
For mere $3500 ($6200 now).

[Anonymous No.10574308]

>>10574174

[Anonymous No.10574451]

dissected an old laptop and it has a pentium iii mobile 1066mhz cpu, kind of want to do a win98 build with it but I have a feeling there's some kind of limitations of being a mobile cpu that's going to bite me in the ass

[Anonymous No.10574512]

>>10574451
Mobile pentiums used a different socket from the desktop cpus so you'd have to use a mobile mobo. I have no clue but I would assume a laptop mobo from that era would be horribly castrated.

[Anonymous No.10574541]

>>10570629
Then why arent there more good win95/xp emulators for phones now

[Anonymous No.10574560]

>collect pc hardware like crazy as a teenager
>mostly used but all in perfect condition that I got for dirt cheap because it was a few years old and therefore archaic
>plastic container full of motherboards, graphics cards, sound cards, memory, etc... from the late 90s/early 00s
>store it in parents' garage when I go off to college
>go looking for it a few years later
>"oh they came around collecting e-waste so we gave it to them"
>literally tens of thousands of dollars of retro components by modern ebay prices
I think about it a lot

[Anonymous No.10574576]

>>10574560
>anon we got rid of that ugly heavy 17'' crt and replaced it with the massive 19'' 1280x1024 lcd! look how light it is!

[Anonymous No.10574620]

>>10574560
E-waste collection was invented to trick dumb parents into giving away their kids' retirement funds

[Anonymous No.10575329]

I saw a s370 PC in a e-waste bin at a hardware store today
If it's still there on Monday I'll grab it

[Anonymous No.10575449]

>>10574560
I get that sometimes some parents are just disrespectful assholes who see everything in their house as part of their domain to do as they see fit without giving a shit as to what their children think, but other times I feel there's just a lack of clear communication as to what should and shouldn't be touched. My mom knew better than to give away or throw away my old things without my permission, outside of shit like really old and torn clothes or perhaps old school notebooks, and even the latter she stopped doing after a while.

[Anonymous No.10575652]

>>10574560

Did you communicate to them that it was not old junk there in the garage?
Think about it from their perspective: What ever wanders into the garage is never seen again. Always the same play, "Might need it later" - you NEVER do.
So to them it looked like
>"Junk, old canisters of paint, hey, this mixer has been defective ever since 1999 - and hey look, Anons old computer electronic stuff, pretty heavy so he never got to carry it to the dump so he put it in here! We REALLY need to throw it out finally."

[Anonymous No.10576061]

>>10571042
I had a Tandy 1000tx. It had no gaems.
I think a Pentium 3 or 4 system with a soundblaster compatible and for bonus points a voodoo 3/4/5 card is the sweet spot for retro PC gaming. It should be able to play anything from early DOS to Windows 2000 games.

[Anonymous No.10576862]

>>10570629
Here's my build. It's the family PC we had from around 2003 until 2007 and it originally ran Windows XP with a 633mhz Celeron and shit-tier integrated video with 256MB of RAM, needless to say it couldn't run anything worth a damn.

Since then I've upgraded it to a Pentium III 1GHZ, 512MB of RAM, added a DVD drive, and gave it a Soundblaster Live along with a GeForce 4 MX 4000 which was a shittastic card in its time but it can play Quake III Arena and UT99 like a champ which is good enough for me. Also runs Halo 1 and UT2K4 fairly well all things considered.

[Anonymous No.10576879]

>>10576862
Yeah, the GeForce 4 MX gets a pretty bad rap, but mostly because of the GF4 branding. Now that it's more or less as obsolete as its contemporaries, it's actually quite a nice card for most of the good retro stuff. DOS compatibility is quite excellent, it has very sharp output, and best of all, it's still cheap.

[Anonymous No.10576932]

>know guy in high school who collects pc hardware
>wait for him to go to college
>show up at his parents' house claiming to be e-waste collections
>"oh, my son has some boxes of stuff in the garage but I think he wants to keep it"
>"ma'am, when was the last time he used any of it? you know how fast computers are advancing, it's old junk, he'd be happy if you got rid of it for him"
>"you're right, I'll open the garage and you can haul it away"
>take it home and store it to sell on ebay 20 years later

[Anonymous No.10577091]

>>10576932
based

[Anonymous No.10577108]

>>10576932

That's the spirit.

[Anonymous No.10577430]

Got myself an xp laptop a few months ago. What other games should I get for it?

[Anonymous No.10577438]

>>10577430
xp is pointless, any game for xp will run better on a modern pc

install 98 on it

[Anonymous No.10577445]

>>10577438
I have a separate 98 one, but that one's too much of a headache for my zoomer brain. Only got vice city and some obscure polish game on it

[Anonymous No.10577482]

>>10576879
Yep, as much as I'd love to have a Voodoo card from that era they're ungodly expensive most of the time now and this old beater does at-least as well as a Voodoo 3 for a fraction of the price.

[Anonymous No.10577487]

>>10577482
you have to shop local, modern ebay caters exclusively to collectorfags with more money than sense

[Anonymous No.10577489]

>>10577430
hearts of iron 2, europa universalis 3

[Anonymous No.10577521]

>>10577487
>you have to shop local
Problem is all the "local" shops and randos do a google search and assume it's worth whatever the max it ever sold for on ebay is

[Anonymous No.10577528]

>>10577521
>probably 100 functioning high end CRT monitors in existence for every person actually interested in buying one
>everyone still thinks the 12'' that came with their Best Buy prebuilt Compaq is worth $400 USD + tip

[Anonymous No.10578829]

>>10577528
Pretty sure at this point there's less CRT monitors than that. Unlike TVs, monitors were typically small enough that even grandma could typically take hers out to the curb. The LCD transition also began earlier, especially in places like offices and schools, which got rid of their CRT monitors en masse. They also took longer than TVs to become desirable retro displays outside a few top-end models like the FW900.

[Anonymous No.10579709]

>going through attic
>find dozens of boxes for awesome dos/win9x era motherboards, soundcards, and graphics cards
>no hardware

[Anonymous No.10579778]

>all these youtube videos of people sperging over 4'' monochrome crt televisions
has supply really dried up to this point?

[Anonymous No.10579791]

>>10577521
It's worse, they check for the current ongoing highest price instead. (Which obviously will never sell)

[Anonymous No.10579807]

>>10579709
I know that feel. I have everything for an Audigy 2 ZS except for the card itself.

[Anonymous No.10580715]

>>10579778
I wouldn't mind having a small monochrome monitor, but it'd have to be one of the green or amber-colored ones. And honestly, in either case it'd mostly be for the novelty of it. I don't see myself seriously using it for long.

[Anonymous No.10581876]

bomp

[Anonymous No.10583520]

>>10575329
nevermind, someone grabbed it already
they left the I/O shield at least, I always need those

[Anonymous No.10584134]

Just got a vintage Pavillion ZD7000 monster desktop replacement (like pic I found) and I love the craziness of it: regular desktop Pentium 4 Prescott at fucking 3.0 GHz shoehorned into a laptop (like having a nuclear reactor in your lap, but it does vent the heat well so lots of fan action), massive 17in screen. Cost thousands in 2003-2004 ish, topped out benchmarks for portables. Weights 10 pounds. Like 120+ watt psu. Full size keyboard, num pad and all.

Still browses the web on Firefox pretty respectably and shit. I love the clunky aesthetic of such a strange machine. Found there was even a forum for them back then , at www.zd7000forums.com but the archive.org crawl doesn't seem very good which makes me sad.

Era review: https://books.google.com/books?id=OgIAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=hp+zd7000&source=bl&ots=g0HEHmxWks&sig=ACfU3U3SIzSxOTfWxaVENRwtltzWuM0HQA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkmvyA-8KDAxVnGVkFHSkuD_U4PBDoAXoECAMQAw#v=onepage&q=hp%20zd7000&f=false

[Anonymous No.10584427]

>>10576932
kek

[Anonymous No.10584434]

What the heck you guys? I posted my PC a few months ago and you all said there's no reason to own it. Now I see a thread dedicated to retro PCs.

[Anonymous No.10584470]

>>10570629
i have that issue still somewhere, and i had that processor but i gave it to a dude for helping me change a clutch in my car.

[Anonymous No.10584624]

>>10570629
https://books.google.pl/books?id=EwIAAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=pl&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Anonymous No.10584663]

it always gets me how expensive RAM and HDDs were back then
Imagine if V2 was still cheaper than a 128MB stick of RAM

[Anonymous No.10586278]

>>10584663
Voodoo2 was a year old by 99 So its a discounted price

[Anonymous No.10586345]

>>10584663
Sometimes there were price hikes on storage and RAM because there were problems at a factory somewhere or whatever, so there was that, too. I can't recall if that was the case precisely in 1999, though.

[Anonymous No.10586513]

>>10584663
I guess it's some mid 1999? RAM sure was expensive in the 90s but most games in 1999 were still perfectly fine with 32 Mb.

Also was V3 3500 really worth additional $67 over V3 3000? If I had 200 dollars to spend on a video card in 1999, I'd rather add some 30 bucks more and get TnT2 Ultra.

[Anonymous No.10586537]

>>10574174
>Now bunding GameSpy

[Anonymous No.10586545]

>>10576862
WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAAAY
WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO

[Anonymous No.10586585]

>>10586345
>>10586513
it's from the magazine in the OP, May 2000
the whole thing is here
>>10584624

[Anonymous No.10586597]

>>10586513
the most outrageous for me is that a Rage Pro(launched in 1997) is 2$ more than a Savage4

[Anonymous No.10586947]

>>10586597
Know what I had at that time? A fucking 8MB Real3D Starfighter. It was good enough to run FFVII PC, at least.

[Anonymous No.10587193]

>>10584663
I had a TNT2 M64 16MB. By 2001 it was getting BTFO pretty badly by the latest games.

[Anonymous No.10587290]

>>10576879
>Yeah, the GeForce 4 MX gets a pretty bad rap, but mostly because of the GF4 branding.
No, the GeForce 4 Ti was a decent card for the era. The GeForce 4 MX didn't have hardware texture and lighting, no pixel shader. So even if your computer met all the specs on paper, there were some games that would just refuse to run. V:tM Bloodlines was one in particular I remember not running. And you didn't know the game needed that particular feature until after you installed it and it shit out on you. If you were a pirate back then like I was, it was merely wasted time. If you were buying games, that was software you couldn't return or use.
If it wasn't for that GeForce 4 MX, my old P4 system would have been a real WinXP powerhouse. 3Ghz, 4GBs of RAM, it had everything it needed but a video card with a fucking pixel shader.

[Anonymous No.10587323]

>>10578829
I'm still psyched I managed to get a NIB Dell CRT monitor from my cousin. He got it with his pre-built years ago, but already had a larger monitor, so he stuck the box on a shelf in his garage and forgot about it. Shit is fucking mint condition, and has years ahead of it.

>>10584134
Win7 seems a bit heavy for a computer with only 3GBs of RAM. I'd recommend TinyXP for maximum speed.

[Anonymous No.10587395]

>>10587290
Geforce4 MX does have transform and lighting(T&L)

[Anonymous No.10587465]

>>10587193
Seems like that's the case for just about every generation of cards, even the top-end ones. By year three, they're already struggling, and by year four or five there's already games that straight-up don't support them, period.

[Anonymous No.10587596]

>>10571141
Put it on the web archive like a lot of other romsets.

[Anonymous No.10587931]

>>10586345
There was a fire that burned down a factory that made the plastic for memory chip packages in the 90s that triggered a massive shortage and price hikes.

[Anonymous No.10588709]

This should be comfy enough for a 386, right? I don't like EMM386, for some reason it breaks compatibility with some of the games, so I only turn it on when a specific game needs that EMS. Meanwhile, with the aftermarket solutions I can have this much conventional memory, why would I ever need more?

[Anonymous No.10588784]

>>10588709
>IDE caching program
Is there any point in using one when emulating?

[Anonymous No.10588797]

>>10588784
It's the real hardware, but I'm still not sure if it does anything on a CF card

[Anonymous No.10588845]

>>10588709
>386
Does your BIOS support EMS directly? If so, you can get EMS without using EMM386. Often it's not EMM386 or EMS the games are complaining about, but being forced into Virtual mode by EMM386. If your BIOS supports EMS, then you can get the additional RAM without having to switch over to Virtual mode.
There are other UMB providers besides EMM386. but they all require switching over to Protected mode, so they'll have the same compatibility issues.

[Anonymous No.10589287]

>>10588709
You can also use a custom boot menu so that it loads only the drivers you need when booting into DOS, as well as load only conventional memory if needed.

[Anonymous No.10589428]

>>10589287
That's what I'm doing, I found out that there's no config to rule them all. But it's basically either this, or rhis with EMS and stuff getting loaded into UMBs.
>>10588845
Yeah, I've already found out that it's the source of my problem, but other UMB providers seem to be chipset-reliant and they refused to run on my cheapo PC-Chips mobo, so I've decided to roll with what I have. I guess that's what I would've done back then (except for the lack of the aftermarket drivers)

[Anonymous No.10589574]

>>10584134
I also had a desktop replacement with a 3Ghz P4. By Acer. What a load of shit. Overheated on more demanding titles, ran like shit because of horrible mobile GPU and drivers.
That machine drove me away from Laptops for a decade and forever off the thought of having a laptop as a main computer.

[Anonymous No.10589617]

>>10589428
I've just discovered a UMB provider that keeps the CPU in real mode. EMM286. Try giving that a shot, and you might not need multiple configs or a boot menu.

[Anonymous No.10590195]

Is a GUS or modern-day clone worth getting nowadays, or is it mostly a meme? I never experienced it back in the day.

[Anonymous No.10590846]

>Pentium 4 3.0ghz
>Sound Blaster Audigy
>GeForce FX 5900
Win9x games fear me. Just need to find a better storage solution than antique IDE HDDs that could fail at any second.

[Anonymous No.10590864]

>>10589574
Fun story about Acer: had a notebook from them that would crash randomly. Sent it in for repairs, tech support for Europe was in the Czech Republic at the time. They sent it back claiming that they replaced the entire motherboard. Ok, cool. Same shit though, nothing was fixed. So I took it apart, marked the main board with a black marker, took shitloads of pictures for photo documentation, sent it back in again. They send me a supposedly fixed laptop with the same note, "motherboard replaced", still crapping up constantly. Take it apart, sure enough it's the same fucking board. Went to one of these customer protection organisations with the whole documentation, they sent Acer a strong worded email citing specific customer right laws etc. - got my money back. Never bought anything from them again, fuck Acer.

[Anonymous No.10590873]

>>10590864
acer a shit
bought a gaming monitor a few years back, barely went a year before caps started bursting, replaced them, worked for about 6 months then the psu or something went out

I literally have monitors 80s and 90s including lcds that function like new despite never having any maintenance

[Anonymous No.10590903]

>>10584134
I have an Pavilion N5495. Spent a retarded amount of '00 bucks on it for college but the thing was so loud I was embarrassed to turn it on in class so it basically turned into a portable anime machine for breaks.

[Anonymous No.10590919]

>>10590195
If you really like Jazz Jackrabbit or Epic Pinball

[Anonymous No.10590995]

>>10590195
You can build one out of an rpi or some shit these days. Someone should make a DIY Voodoo3+...

[Anonymous No.10591012]

>>10590995
why stop there? with modern off the shelf parts you could build some kind of insane omni-gpu that emulates all the era-appropriate gpus but with 100x the performance

[Anonymous No.10591061]

>>10591012
do it

[Anonymous No.10591137]

>>10590995
Or just dosbox it. There's no reason behind this hobby, only desire. I, for one, embrace my dark urges.

[Anonymous No.10591241]

>>10591137
confirmed never played DOS games on real hardware

not a meme like with NES emulation, the difference between real and emulation here is tangible

[Anonymous No.10591639]

>>10591241
Care to elaborate?

[Anonymous No.10591717]

>>10590195
>individual CD-ROM headers for differing standards
Thank fuck for ATAPI.

[Anonymous No.10593103]

>>10591717
I believe by the time I was old enough to open up computers and work on them, ATAPI was already the standard, so it wasn't until much later that I found out about all those other headers. I think it was when I got ahold of an old 486 with a CD-ROM drive, and I opened it up to check out the parts, and IIRC it had the smaller Sony connector, and I was like wtf is this shit?

[Anonymous No.10593204]

>>10591717
I'm just thankful Gravis was kind enough to actually label which was which. Nothing like seeing a mystery pin connector that just says "CD".

[Anonymous No.10593427]

>>10590846
>Just need to find a better storage solution than antique IDE HDDs that could fail at any second.
some later chipsets support win9x and have sata ports

[Anonymous No.10593443]

>>10573290
Not very well. Just use Duckstation with a modern PC if you want to emulate PS1.

[Anonymous No.10593452]

>>10593427
There's also CF adapters, no?

[Anonymous No.10593458]

>>10593452
like ide to flashcards? yeah, but you're still limited to ide speeds with those, they're an option if you need an ide drive though

[Anonymous No.10593461]

>>10593458
Well yeah, the concern was that IDE drives are old and unreliable, so a flash card with an adapter would make sense in that case.

[Anonymous No.10593464]

>>10593461
bragging about his build so I figured he'd want a high end solution option, win98 on a sata ssd is a gamechanger, almost eliminates the hitching and shit as games load in assets from disk

[Anonymous No.10593527]

>salvaged pentium
>every single pin is bent
>bend them back
>doesn't fit into the holes

[Anonymous No.10593529]

>>10593527
you're probably not going to eyeball every pin back into place, 3d print a guide or something

[Anonymous No.10593563]

>>10593529
Just used a knife to line the pins up then pushed it in once it was close enough

[Anonymous No.10593632]

>>10593427
I may be misremembering, but I recall SATA support being a bit dodgy prior to 7 (or was it Vista? Never used Vista). WinXP installer asked you to insert a diskette with a 3rd party SATA driver during set-up, if you wanted to make a SATA HDD your system drive.

[Anonymous No.10593746]

>>10593632
bios issue, intel 865 mobos work perfectly with sata in win98

[Anonymous No.10593987]

I noticed my old mobo only has 3 pin fan connectors. I guess that means no PWM? So the fans just go full throttle all the time or...?

[Anonymous No.10594286]

>>10593987
even without pwm the mobo can still adjust fan speed by changing how much voltage it provides

[Anonymous No.10596020]

>>10570629
I first used those Radio Shack Tandy computers with the cool green buttons (power and/or 3/5" floppy eject) of my cousin's as my first PC experience. It was probably some 8086 that did CGA and Tandy colors where I played some cat game, 4x4, Wheel of Fortune, and Bird vs. Magic (before Jordan vs. Bird). It pretty much made me familiar enough in DOS when I started with my own PC, a 286-12 that got upgraded to a 386DX-40. I remember the case of that Tandy computer being quite beautiful. Most of the computers I had were put together from separate parts, but I will admit some prebuilts had pretty cases.

[Anonymous No.10596345]

>>10596020
>9800 GT
Recently pulled one out of storage and every single cap had burst

[Anonymous No.10596368]

>>10596345
>had to order some weird capacitors for an old mobo
>find a kit on amazon
>3-4 weeks shipping

[Anonymous No.10598169]

[Anonymous No.10599315]

>>10598169
me on the couch

[Anonymous No.10600461]

>>10596020
>some cat game
Alley Cat? That game was ubiquitous.