Honestly if this was me, I'd set up two PCs. Use your Core 2 cpu , 7000 to 200 series GPU (or any PCI-E GPU you have spare really) and PCI sound card like Audigy 2 and stick XP on it for those 2000 to 2005 games. It'll blitz through those sorts of games.

Then a Windows 98SE PC for games up to 1998 or so. For this I would suggest any game that needs more than 500MHz will work just fine on XP so I'd be quite happy with a 350 MHz P2, it should be fine for those early 3D accelerated games, with a Voodoo 3 and a sb16 or slmrtbint
The slower it is the better compatibility with DOS games I think. Perhaps something Via based so you can slow it right down even further.

I say all this as I've tried making a quick Windows 98 PC but I always found it lacking for those early 2000 games. Things like Medal of Honor, No One Lives Forever, Mafia 1, Morrowind seem to struggle with p3 stuff for me. Especially as you're going for the "Build the PC I could never afford all those years ago", you might be disappointed when it isn't quite as quick as you think, including upping the res to say 1280*1024.

But yeah it's a hardware forum - consider buying the hardware you'll enjoy using and owning the most!

To cover everything well without emulation I'd go for 3 PCs

1. Win98SE (this includes DOS) - something between K6-2 and PIII
2. WinXP 32bit - with a high-end P4 to a C2D
3. WIn7/Win10 64bit - C2Q and above

My choice was 2 PCs. 486 33Mhz pc for speed sensitive dos games like original wing commander and Ultima 7 and Pentium 3 1Ghz system with voodoo 2 SLI and Geforce 4 for Win9x games and dos games that need fast CPU or Glide.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Honestly if this was me, I'd set up two PCs. Use your Core 2 cpu , 7000 to 200 series GPU (or any PCI-E GPU you have spare reall […]
Show full quote

Honestly if this was me, I'd set up two PCs. Use your Core 2 cpu , 7000 to 200 series GPU (or any PCI-E GPU you have spare really) and PCI sound card like Audigy 2 and stick XP on it for those 2000 to 2005 games. It'll blitz through those sorts of games.

Then a Windows 98SE PC for games up to 1998 or so. For this I would suggest any game that needs more than 500MHz will work just fine on XP so I'd be quite happy with a 350 MHz P2, it should be fine for those early 3D accelerated games, with a Voodoo 3 and a sb16 or slmrtbint
The slower it is the better compatibility with DOS games I think. Perhaps something Via based so you can slow it right down even further.

I say all this as I've tried making a quick Windows 98 PC but I always found it lacking for those early 2000 games. Things like Medal of Honor, No One Lives Forever, Mafia 1, Morrowind seem to struggle with p3 stuff for me. Especially as you're going for the "Build the PC I could never afford all those years ago", you might be disappointed when it isn't quite as quick as you think, including upping the res to say 1280*1024.

But yeah it's a hardware forum - consider buying the hardware you'll enjoy using and owning the most!

I might end up doing just that... the only spare PCI-E graphics card I have laying around is a little GT 710 but I imagine it could play games from 2005 just fine. In this 'case' (haha get it? case?.... ok I'm done) all I'd need to buy is another case and SSD + SATA to IDE adapter.

There's a thread/video by philscomputerlab where they put forward the idea that a Super Socket 7 is the best, because it can be slowed down through various clock/cache combinations.

With the parts you have, it makes some sense to construct an 'accelerated sound' retro box. You've got both EAX and Aureal sound cards. Alchemy does not support EAX 1.0, so a Windows XP/Windows 2000 box would make the most sense. It might also be able to run some of the Windows 3.1 games out there that don't run well with WINE for instance. I have a Core2Quad XP/Windows 8.1 box for both accelerated sound, and the small number of games that got blocked from running in Windows 10 and a later 8.1 service pack.

Apart from accelerated sound it's not a great choice for DOS games - it's too fast to run them natively, and too slow to run them in DOSBox (use your modern PC). I've a P2 300 for most of my DOS games, and will be constructing a 486DX40 'Ultima box' to run Ultima 7 natively (rather than through Exult, which is a lot easier).

ynari wrote:

Apart from accelerated sound it's not a great choice for DOS games - it's too fast to run them natively, and too slow to run them in DOSBox (use your modern PC). I've a P2 300 for most of my DOS games, and will be constructing a 486DX40 'Ultima box' to run Ultima 7 natively (rather than through Exult, which is a lot easier).

40Mhz 486 is bit too fast for ultima 7. 33Mhz is perfect speed.

ynari wrote:

There's a thread/video by philscomputerlab where they put forward the idea that a Super Socket 7 is the best, because it can be slowed down through various clock/cache combinations.

With the parts you have, it makes some sense to construct an 'accelerated sound' retro box. You've got both EAX and Aureal sound cards. Alchemy does not support EAX 1.0, so a Windows XP/Windows 2000 box would make the most sense. It might also be able to run some of the Windows 3.1 games out there that don't run well with WINE for instance. I have a Core2Quad XP/Windows 8.1 box for both accelerated sound, and the small number of games that got blocked from running in Windows 10 and a later 8.1 service pack.

Apart from accelerated sound it's not a great choice for DOS games - it's too fast to run them natively, and too slow to run them in DOSBox (use your modern PC). I've a P2 300 for most of my DOS games, and will be constructing a 486DX40 'Ultima box' to run Ultima 7 natively (rather than through Exult, which is a lot easier).

I like that Idea too. Although my first gaming was in DOS, I didn't really grow up with many DOS-only games that can't in any functional way be run on newer machines.

Off the top of my head the only 'DOS' games I remember playing as a kid are:
text-based Zork adventure games
Lemmings
Kings Quest 1 through 5 I believe, the last one I remember was where you play as Rosella. Mainly played number 3 where you are Gwidyon and have to empty the evil wizard's chamber pot!
a few educational titles in the 'Super Solvers' series
IBM PC port of Activision's 'The Last Ninja'
ASCII art game I think called 'Snipes'
Wolfenstein 3d
Doom

Most of those seem to run within Windows 98SE and 2000 fine (maybe even Xp) so double-digit Mhz isn't a worry - mainly just anything mid to late 90's that can't run properly up in the multi-Ghz range.

I've also been acquiring a small collection of late 90's through ~ 2005ish games that I either couldn't afford / didn't get for Christmas as a kid or didn't know about up through a few titles that came out around 2004-2007 because I got sucked into World of Warcraft and didn't play (or really know about) any other PC games between 2005 and about 2015.

Rosella was the playable character in KQ4 and KQ7.

kalm_traveler wrote:

...ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (sometimes doesn't POST - have to reboot a few times but if it POSTs runs fine, only recognizes 3gb of 4g installed DDR2, supposedly should only see 2gb)...

Had similar problems with my 4CoreDual-SATA2. Turned out it was due to the quite flimsy and generally low quality RAM sockets. Replacing them wasn't an option, don't have equipment for that kind of desoldering jobs, so came up with this alternative solution instead. Just an O-ring on each socket to hold in the retaining thingys:

It works surprisingly well. Guess regular rubber bands would do too 😀

kaputnik wrote:

Had similar problems with my 4CoreDual-SATA2. Turned out it was due to the quite flimsy and generally low quality RAM sockets. R […]
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kalm_traveler wrote:

...ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (sometimes doesn't POST - have to reboot a few times but if it POSTs runs fine, only recognizes 3gb of 4g installed DDR2, supposedly should only see 2gb)...

Had similar problems with my 4CoreDual-SATA2. Turned out it was due to the quite flimsy and generally low quality RAM sockets. Replacing them wasn't an option, don't have equipment for that kind of desoldering jobs, so came up with this alternative solution instead. Just an O-ring on each socket to hold in the retaining thingys:

oring.jpg

It works surprisingly well. Guess regular rubber bands would do too 😀

ah! thank you - I'll see if that's the culprit on mine as well. Haven't touched it in 3 months but I'm getting the bug to have a fully-working retro rig this weekend so we'll see what happens.

Well, I monkeyed around with the Asrock board today and although I got it to reliably boot, this made me realize that what I really want first is a Pentium III rig so I got back to looking at recapping an old Enermax PSU and actually going to be putting its guts into an EVGA shell along with the modular board it (EVGA PSU) came with.

Recapping won't take much time, but to sort out how to graft the modular board I had to figure out which pins were for each rail and ATX pin so that took a bit.

Tomorrow I'll replace all the capacitors and hopefully be able to button everything up in the EVGA shell, then finally be able to test the recapped Enermax unit on the Tyan dual cpu board.

Ideally this system will have maybe a 40gb partition for Windows 98SE and DOS, then about 200g for Win2k which will be my primary on it (only using DOS or Windows 98 if something won't run or won't run well under 2k).

This came about half because I realized on the Asrock board I can't boot 98 to a drive on its built in SATA controller and the PCI-E slot doesn't seem to work with anything other than a graphics card in it so I can't even use a USB 3.0 pcie 1x card directly.

In the P3 board I can use one in an adapter to pci, and there are working Win2k drivers for it.

kalm_traveler wrote:

Ideally this system will have maybe a 40gb partition for Windows 98SE and DOS, then about 200g for Win2k which will be my primary on it (only using DOS or Windows 98 if something won't run or won't run well under 2k).

If the primary goal of the system is to run games, then Win2k is probably not such a good choice of primary OS...

dr_st wrote:

kalm_traveler wrote:

Ideally this system will have maybe a 40gb partition for Windows 98SE and DOS, then about 200g for Win2k which will be my primary on it (only using DOS or Windows 98 if something won't run or won't run well under 2k).

If the primary goal of the system is to run games, then Win2k is probably not such a good choice of primary OS...

Why do you say that? I have a Dell workstation with Win2k that has been working fine for late 90s games so far

You know, maybe I'm just voicing out old misconceptions and some so-so experience I've had with Win2k myself, ages ago.

For most Windows games it may be fine, although 9x may have a slight edge on compatibility. DOS games will typically not work well (in particular, sound is hard to get to work reliably).

You can find this old thread by DosFreak at ArsTechnica that has lists of games that work, games that have issues and these that don't work. The information may not be very up-to-date, but can give you some idea of what things you can run into.

There is also this thread:
PC Game Compatibility List

Obviously, your mileage may vary. 😀

dr_st wrote:

You know, maybe I'm just voicing out old misconceptions and some so-so experience I've had with Win2k myself, ages ago. […]
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You know, maybe I'm just voicing out old misconceptions and some so-so experience I've had with Win2k myself, ages ago.

For most Windows games it may be fine, although 9x may have a slight edge on compatibility. DOS games will typically not work well (in particular, sound is hard to get to work reliably).

You can find this old thread by DosFreak at ArsTechnical that has lists of games that work, games that have issues and these that don't work. The information may not be very up-to-date, but can give you some idea of what things you can run into.

There is also this thread:
PC Game Compatibility List

Obviously, your mileage may vary. 😀

I'd say "slight edge on compatibility" is a fair comment. Out of my games list only Road Rash, Return Fire (both ports) and Need for Speed 3,4 Porsche don't like Win2k. If playing those games I boot into Win98, rest of the time I enjoy the extra stability of Win2k even if it is just a gaming rig.
but yeh, dos games are a no go.

The compatibility differences between XP and 2000 are:
Compatibility mode specifically the database entries included by default with XP. Those can be backported to 2000 though fairly easily.
Programs that require XP or later specific APIs. You can either patch the programs which is what we used to do or just use Blackwingcat Extended core and run pretty much any XP and above program.
Drivers that require XP Specific APIs. For instance my 980 ti doesn't work in Vanilla 2000 so I have to use the Blackwingcat patch.
As for NTVDM there really is no difference between 2000 and XP. XP does include a crappy sound emulation but you're better off using VDMSound which also works fine in 2000 and if your machine is fast enough you should be using DOSBox and then VPC or Vmware for the games that don't work in NTVDM.

I started using Windows 2000 when Beta 3 came out and vastly preferred it over 9x. Will it completely replace it? No of course not but nothing will.

Now that I have my test Desktop up and running expect to see the list updated
DosFreak All System Specs 10-25-2022
PC Game Compatibility List

Never trust what anyone says about compatibility alot of it is not objective and based off a very small subset.

chinny22 wrote:

dr_st wrote:

You know, maybe I'm just voicing out old misconceptions and some so-so experience I've had with Win2k myself, ages ago. […]
Show full quote

You know, maybe I'm just voicing out old misconceptions and some so-so experience I've had with Win2k myself, ages ago.

For most Windows games it may be fine, although 9x may have a slight edge on compatibility. DOS games will typically not work well (in particular, sound is hard to get to work reliably).

You can find this old thread by DosFreak at ArsTechnical that has lists of games that work, games that have issues and these that don't work. The information may not be very up-to-date, but can give you some idea of what things you can run into.

There is also this thread:
PC Game Compatibility List

Obviously, your mileage may vary. 😀

I'd say "slight edge on compatibility" is a fair comment. Out of my games list only Road Rash, Return Fire (both ports) and Need for Speed 3,4 Porsche don't like Win2k. If playing those games I boot into Win98, rest of the time I enjoy the extra stability of Win2k even if it is just a gaming rig.
but yeh, dos games are a no go.

Yeah I will keep a 40gb Windows 98SE partition around for DOS games and those Windows games that won't play nice under 2k but so far of my collection I'm not actually aware of any.

Mind you guys as I mentioned I grew up really when Windows 3.1 and 95 were taking off so I don't have many DOS-only childhood game memories and the handful I played all seem to run more or less fine in Win2k (Lemmings is the exception, can't seem to get the colors working correctly even within DOSBox).

Now the main concerns are:
1. whether or not the Tyan S2507T motherboard needs to be re-capped. I believe it was working but I haven't had a strong +5v PSU yet so need to finish recapping and transplanting this Enermax PSU into the new EVGA shell (hopefully today)
2. which sound card to use (I have a SB Live! Audigy 2 ZS, as well as an Aureal Vortex 2)
3. How badly I want ethernet. This board has 5 PCI slots below the AGP slot, but I have an aftermarket cooler on the Quadro 4000 SDI which makes the immediately adjacent PCI slot unusable (though the cooler is silent). I could downgrade back to the Quadro 2 Pro to reclaim that PCI slot but the stock fan is louder than the rest of this system.

As it is, the board is populated with:
two Pentium III Tualatin 1.4ghz chips
2gb PC133 SDRAM (4 x 512mb - yes I know 98SE needs to be patched to run with >512mb)

and the PCI cards I wanted to use are:
sound (probably the SB Audigy 2 ZS)
USB 2.0
SATA2
1gb ethernet
USB 3.0 (found a PCI-E card which works in a PCI-E > PCI adapter and has Win2k drivers - yes I know it will be limited to PCI bus speeds)

Though I suppose it doesn't 'need' ethernet as that could be handled when desired with a usb 2.0 to ethernet adapter.

What do you guys think? Minding that this is primarily for games between say 1994-2002 ish - whatever won't play well on a modern PC basically. I may build an XP rig if there are some games that won't run on either this PIII rig or my modern machines.

I'd prefer transferring files over Ethernet then USB any day of the week, but I guess USB is more flexible, as you say you can always do Ethernet over USB. Not much will happen if you plug a usb drive into a Ethernet port 😜

If you don't plan on any more builds I'd use the Audigy 2 ZS, drivers are less bloated and sound quality is better then the Live! Otherwise they will behave the same in 9x/2k.
The Vortex 2 is also worth considering. Really it comes down to which is more useful for you games, Create cards can do A3D 1 but not 2, the Vortex cards can do EAX 1 but not 2 or above.
Eax games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support
A3D Aureal A3D _3.0_, SQ3500?? also, which A3D card is best?

chinny22 wrote:

I'd prefer transferring files over Ethernet then USB any day of the week, but I guess USB is more flexible, as you say you can a […]
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I'd prefer transferring files over Ethernet then USB any day of the week, but I guess USB is more flexible, as you say you can always do Ethernet over USB. Not much will happen if you plug a usb drive into a Ethernet port 😜

If you don't plan on any more builds I'd use the Audigy 2 ZS, drivers are less bloated and sound quality is better then the Live! Otherwise they will behave the same in 9x/2k.
The Vortex 2 is also worth considering. Really it comes down to which is more useful for you games, Create cards can do A3D 1 but not 2, the Vortex cards can do EAX 1 but not 2 or above.
Eax games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support
A3D Aureal A3D _3.0_, SQ3500?? also, which A3D card is best?

Huge thanks! I'll check my games compared to those two lists!

And I agree with transferring over ethernet any day of the week!

The only reason I might have to forgo the PCI card is that graphics card situation.

I already have the Quadro 4000 SDI which I believe is basically the same as a GeForce 6800 Ultra, but blocks the first PCI slot. Also have the Quadro 2 Pro which would not block it, but is a much weaker card and louder.