kolderman wrote on 2020-01-12, 02:56:
And no, there is no real reason to get a 3dfx card unless you really care about it.
Lies and slander! I don't care if Glide wrappers are totally indistinguishable from original hardware, it's just not the same 😜 Kidding aside, Phil made a decent video on a Voodoo 5500 alternative.
Wanting to play *all* games is really tricky though. Do you care about ancient early eighties DOS monochrome/CGA games? Then a turbo XT sounds like a good candidate. Do you want to play games with audio closer to that of a typical game console? The the Game Blaster is recommended. Want to try Tandy games? Time for a Tandy 1000 variant of some sort. Curious about early Sierra games and their unique soundtracks? Then a 386 at 33 MHz running an intelligent mode MPU-401 and MT-32 (Old) is now on the table. Do you want to hear dual OPL2 soundtracks for those games? Good luck finding the original Pro Audio Spectrum. Want to try a dual OPL2 solution that's slightly more common? Get a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0, but don't stick on anything faster than a 33 MHz FSB, but try to have it on a 486 of some variety so you can enjoy Ultima Underworld. Oh, shit, I forgot! Ultima Underworld really sounds best with a CM-32L since it has more sound effects. Man, they really outdid themselves on that one...
As you can see, if you try to hit everything you will find some edge cases, as documented here. You won't hit them all with one system, but you can pick and choose an era to start and go from there. My setup has become something running an IBM 5160, a Tandy 1000 TL, a monstrous Tyan K6-3+ board, another K6-3+ board for later DOS games, an Athlon XP 3000+, and a dual boot XP/7 machine running a 4790K and 980 Ti. I might throw a 486 with a Pentium Overdrive in there for good measure. In my case, that's what it takes to hit "everything" and that includes an army of MIDI equipment as well.
If I were to settle on one DOS-heavy machine and one Windows 98-heavy machine, it would be the Tyan K6-3+ board and the Athlon XP 3000+ board. Even then, I'd be running something like five audio cards, three video cards, two 3D accelerators, and an FMV-centric card.
So, with all that word salad dumped above, what game do you want to play first?
I spend my days fighting with clunky software so I can afford to spend my evenings fighting with clunky hardware.