leileilol wrote:

A P200 for 'games 1994 and before'? There's some games from that year and the year before that would run way too fast to be playable on a 200.

Yeah...
200mhz was like late 95 or early 96. And as fast as the tech industry sputtered cpu's out (the rush for mhz)
I remember people running all 94 games fine, on 486dx2-80 or P90 cpu's just fine back then.

candle_86 wrote:

if a VM worked even half the time for gaming I'd give away my left Kidney.

And the right testical too... Hehe.

I see this Part 1 as an introduction. Wait until he starts actually building the thing and runs into some minor quirks, then maybe we can all welcome a new member.

TELEPACMAN wrote:

I see this Part 1 as an introduction. Wait until he starts actually building the thing and runs into some minor quirks, then maybe we can all welcome a new member.

or its been known to happen part2 won't happen because they couldn't actully get the system working, so they abanoned it and simply forgot, ive read a few part 1's on toms, that never had a part 2 🤣

There is a lot of wrong ideas and information in that article, but I don't really think it was that bad. Some of those comments (as always) are way worse. 😀

brostenen wrote:

Too shallow an article of bull-shit. As we all know, there is much, much, much more to this than just slamming some random parts together.

That't the thing though, many of use know so much about this topic that pretty much any article written will have it difficult to impress 😀

The amount of options and decisions is just overwhelming. In a lot of ways retro gaming is about compromises and the more I muck around with old hardware, the more I make recommendations on a per-game basis.

But I agree, there are a lot of "general recommendations" that will make retro gaming life a lot easier and we all see a trend of retro builds here on Vogons that do an excellent job at covering an extremely wide range of gaming years. Socket 7 / Super Socket 7 and Slot 1 440BX chipset systems for example.

wow, there are alot of mistakes and choices I would not make personally, no 440BX? Katmai for optimal Warcraft II gameplay? "socket 270"? 40GB on a i815 chipset (which will support much more)?

I get that this is meant more for beginners , though in that case there are easier systems to put together than what is recommended. if he really wants to focus on DOS , I would go no faster than a sub 350mhz PII , and even thats pushing it. a slot 1 system should be easier to work with too.

Well...
My machine, that covers games such as Warcraft-II, is this.

For the motherboard, I have an Epox MVP3-C, because the original board's HDD controller just died.
For the cpu, I have chosen an P-133 non MMX.
For memory I have chosen 32mb PC-100.
The GFX is an Cirrus logic PCI. (not shure of the model number, it has 2mb ram)
The sound system is my old trusty SB16 (think it is the 2910, not shure).
Sometimes it is given a treat, by temporarly installing my GUS-ACE.

Yeah... I know SS7 boards are not true to the first Pentium cpu's, yet it works a bit better.
Somehow, it can run some tricky games, and perhaps it was actually the first board that were a bit more defect.
Or just that MVP3 chipsets are a bit better. I really do not know. It's old hardware and I am sluggish at testing.

Anyway.
This machine is good at games such as Warcraft2, and would perhaps suit the article a bit better.
As he is aming at 1994 games, and not 1997 games.

What do you all say. Should we actually try and give our own "fictionally" build for what is amed at in the article?
Just for the fun of it?

For what is was it wasn't bad, Article for the masses.
Thought it a bit strange to specifically mention the Dell motherboard thing a valid point but pretty specific and simply say a SB compatible soundcard without a mention of the trouble of PCI cards vs ISA which I would think catches many more people.
Also the TNT or TNT2 cards seem to be limiting himself if its a Win9x PC, any early Nvidia card would be ok as a start.
He did seem to get a bit lost, is this a Dos, Win9x or machine for both? But as an introduction it was OK.
Am interested in where this ends up. As they say any publicity is good publicity!

I could write a better article - a P200 is way too fast for most things 1994 on back, heck, it's too fast for some stuff from 1996 on back!

I set it up like this, there are far more "ages" to gaming....

EARLY DOS ERA
Either an 8088 or a slower-clock-speed 286 with a turbo button will do the job. CGA/EGA would be the appropriate video, and DOS 3.31 or DOS 5.00 would be order of the day as those were two popular versions. Adlib, GameBlaster, or Tandy 1000 DAC preferred for certain titles that take advantage. 640K is a must.

GOLDEN DOS ERA PT1 - 1988-1992
A 386 DX, or an early low-clockspeed 486 (486 DX-33) with a Turbo Switch, VGA video minimum, and DOS 5 or 6.x, possibly Windows 3.1 installed on the machine for compataiblity with early Windows titles. Adlib, SoundBlaster, Gravis Ultrasound, and the like being sound of the day. 8-16MB of RAM is the optimum.

GOLDEN DOS ERA PT2 - 1992-1996
A 486 DX2/66 -> Early Socket 4 Pentium device (ie FDIV era P60 or P66), preferably with a Turbo Switch, SVGA video, and a higher end SoundBlaster, preferably with wavetable being the preferred hardware. The newer the hardware, the less memory you can get away with.

Windows 9x Era - 1995-2000
If you are doing earlier non-3D titles such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Postal, anything like that, then you are better off sticking to the lower-end of the early Pentium boxes (ie. P90-P233MMX at most), anything faster is better for the later 3-D oriented titles, which I'm not that particularly familiar with.

Most of the hardware they were suggesting was so fast they might as well have thrown an early release of DOSBox on it, I was running DOSBOX on a PIII 1 GHz back in 2005 because most of the games I had for DOS would NOT run on a PIII 1GHz, even when I was running Windows 98 SE (they were just too fast - you try DepthCharge on a PIII in GWBASIC....the whole game lasts 3 seconds). Even on a P200 that game, and it's other unthrottled pre-1994 DOS games were too fast. Truth be told, I always considered Tom's Hardware only about MODERN systems, and likely they are pretty fuzzy over there on vintage stuff and forgot a lot because that's not their focus.

if I was building for dos, id rebuild my first computer.

Pentium 166mmx
ASUS P5A-B
Riva 128ZX
3dfx Vodoo 2
10gb Hard Drive
Windows 95
128mb PC100

id install Dos 6.22 and dual boot dos and 95

Super Socket 7 board with a mobile AMD processor would be one of my picks. Through software you can adjust the multiplier and L1 cache. A wide range of games will work on such a machine, Not the cheapest option, good SS7 gear is sought after.

Intel 440BX is a classic for Windows 98 machines. Very reliable, easy to work with, wide range of processors. Can't go wrong.

I guess the article could have mentioned GOG or Steam, plenty of retro games available that work on modern machines.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Super Socket 7 board with a mobile AMD processor would be one of my picks. Through software you can adjust the multiplier and L1 cache. A wide range of games will work on such a machine, Not the cheapest option, good SS7 gear is sought after.

Intel 440BX is a classic for Windows 98 machines. Very reliable, easy to work with, wide range of processors. Can't go wrong.

I guess the article could have mentioned GOG or Steam, plenty of retro games available that work on modern machines.

yea but even those games look and play best on a retro box 🤣

candle_86 wrote:

yea but even those games look and play best on a retro box 🤣

True 😀

I don't even mess with DOS games on old hardware anymore. I know....shocking!! I'd only bother if I was feeling nostalgic for some MIDI card. But since I actually prefer FM synthesis most of the time these days, and DosBox does that really well and doesn't take 5 hours to get setup right......

Messing with old 3D cards still gets to throw together Win9x machines occasionally though. Not in a case, mind you, but in a pile of hardware on my foam rectangle motherboard "workbench". 😉

The experience just isn't the same on an emulator. Dosbox does a decent job and if I use it casually. But I do prefer the experience of a retro machine.

swaaye wrote:

But since I actually prefer FM synthesis most of the time these days, and DosBox does that really well and doesn't take 5 hours to get setup right......

I've come back to FM too, after buying / trying all sorts of fancy MIDI stuff. It's how I remember it sounding, it always works, and it's the cheapest option by a mile.

yall with your sound are spoiled, I didn't get sound in my computer until 2000, my dad said it wasn't important, i remember playing Civ II, SimCity 2000, and even Command and Conquer without Sounds

candle_86 wrote:

yall with your sound are spoiled, I didn't get sound in my computer until 2000, my dad said it wasn't important, i remember playing Civ II, SimCity 2000, and even Command and Conquer without Sounds

Hah. I didn't have sound until late 90's when my family bought a new PC, before that we had a Windows 3.11 machine that couldn't even use the PCspeaker because the cable wouldn't reach due to the case.

Munx wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

yall with your sound are spoiled, I didn't get sound in my computer until 2000, my dad said it wasn't important, i remember playing Civ II, SimCity 2000, and even Command and Conquer without Sounds

Hah. I didn't have sound until late 90's when my family bought a new PC, before that we had a Windows 3.11 machine that couldn't even use the PCspeaker because the cable wouldn't reach due to the case.

then again my dad got me a computer so I could be productive and stop crashing their computer with my games.