I've concluded that the answer to this recurring topic is "the one you grew up with" or "the one you spent more happy time on".
Very different systems for someone born in the 70s and in the 00s.

My period of 'retro' gaming covers everything from early 80s to late 90s. There is no single computer that will cover that entire period.

Thus if I could only have a single system, it would be a modern computer with emulation or virtual machines for older systems.

Wooden desk with a small heater underneath. Window with a view of the countryside. Beige desktop case with a bulky 14" CRT on top. Turbo button. Clunky, clicky keyboard. Dorky, tinny, 90s speakers. To the side an MT32 with a SC55 sitting on top. Playing an early Sierra adventure game.

You mean the retro system we already have or one that we dream of building?

Also, do you mean by ultimate is the most period correct high-end build or the one which covers the biggest interval?

Anyway, you can se most of my retro systems if you click on the gear icon in my signature. It's mostly up-to-date.

If it was one I wish to build, it'd be very close to Phil's recommendation here: https://youtu.be/9CgisEFObjA?t=1295
With some minor changes, like for example additional sound cards for Windows sound and EAX/A3D support.

kolderman wrote on 2022-11-17, 21:32:

Wooden desk with a small heater underneath. Window with a view of the countryside. Beige desktop case with a bulky 14" CRT on top. Turbo button. Clunky, clicky keyboard. Dorky, tinny, 90s speakers. To the side an MT32 with a SC55 sitting on top. Playing an early Sierra adventure game.

I can get behind all of that except for the 14" monitor and the tinny speakers. I guess some retro hardware is a bit too "old school" for my tastes, and I'd much rather use a non-period correct but functionally superior alternative. Hence, my CRT monitors need to be around 17" in size, deliver a crisp, flicker-free image and support at least a 100 Hz refresh rate (except for DOS 320x200 where 70 Hz is the norm).

Additionally, I had my share of cheap, crappy speakers back in the day, and I have zero desire to re-experience that kind of sound. Nowadays, I'd much rather use something from Cambridge SoundWorks, Altec Lansing or Roland instead. For similar reasons, I tend to avoid mechanical hard drives whenever possible, and use CF cards or SSDs in their place.

That said, I can understand the nostalgia for the exact setup that someone had as a kid, crappy peripherals included. It's perfectly fine to go that route, if that makes people happy.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-17, 21:58:

I can get behind all of that except for the 14" monitor and the tinny speakers. I guess some retro hardware is a bit too "old sc […]
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kolderman wrote on 2022-11-17, 21:32:

Wooden desk with a small heater underneath. Window with a view of the countryside. Beige desktop case with a bulky 14" CRT on top. Turbo button. Clunky, clicky keyboard. Dorky, tinny, 90s speakers. To the side an MT32 with a SC55 sitting on top. Playing an early Sierra adventure game.

I can get behind all of that except for the 14" monitor and the tinny speakers. I guess some retro hardware is a bit too "old school" for my tastes, and I'd much rather use a non-period correct but functionally superior alternative. Hence, my CRT monitors need to be around 17" in size, deliver a crisp, flicker-free image and support at least a 100 Hz refresh rate (except for DOS 320x200 where 70 Hz is the norm).

Additionally, I had my share of cheap, crappy speakers back in the day, and I have zero desire to re-experience that kind of sound. Nowadays, I'd much rather use something from Cambridge SoundWorks, Altec Lansing or Roland instead. For similar reasons, I tend to avoid mechanical hard drives whenever possible, and use CF cards or SSDs in their place.

That said, I can understand the nostalgia for the exact setup that someone had as a kid, crappy peripherals included. It's perfectly fine to go that route, if that makes people happy.

Maybe I should have just said "dorky 90s PC speakers". There were actually some decent sounding ones.

Probably my Super 7 system.
It's basically what I wished my PC Chips socket 7 system was when I was a teenager.
Pretty middling even then, but I was poor and didn't care, 🤣.

Tekram P5MVP-B4
512MB PC133 Cl2
AMD K6-3+ 450mhz @616mhz
SB16 - ISA/Aureal Vortex2 PCI
Voodoo 3 3000 usually(Currently a Geforce 2 GTS)
Whatever Speed Asus CD-ROM
IBM Model M
I have a few CRT's but don't use them anymore

I don't really use this machine very often any more, but it is plenty fast and plenty slow in all the right places.

Pretty much my current setup minus like 2 changes

I've got a socket7 233mmx rig
containing:

S3 trio 64 V2/DX (4mb of vram)
Voodoo 1 ,
NEC PowerVR,
sound blaster 16 ,
AWE64
Gravis ultrasound clone (primax)

and a Roland interface card
connected to a Roland MPU 401 break out box
connected to a MPU 105 switch box
in turn connected to a mt32 old , cm32l , sc55 , sc55mk2 , and Yamaha mu80.

I've also got a sc88 and FB01 which I guess could be included for specific games.

Other stuff in my rig

5.25 1.2mb floppy drive
3.5 1.44mb floppy

though I arguably only use the floppies if I need to install some say drivers
it doesn't feel right not having any floppy drives.

4x cd rom drive

Sony Trinitron CPD-G420 19 inch display
really nice monitor , and can go up to some stupid high resolutions.

2 WD caviar 7200 rpm hard drives , one with dos 6.22 one with win95
I do have some beige Altec Lansing ACS 45.1 speakers witht he woofer not amazing but does the job
I've got two printer port soundcards: Tandy LPT and a CMS LPT(Gameblaster)

The two changes I'd ideally make is swapping the sb16 for an awe32 with discrete opl3 and with a 1703-A dac
and swapping the awe64 for a double opl2 based Mediavision pro audio spectrum , good luck getting those nowadays tho.

Even still I'm pretty happy with my setup , its not the most attractive looking pc ,
or the most period correct , it really is a mish mash of stuff from different time periods
but the whole idea was to build a dos era swiss army pc with most of the main hardware options available for a decent amount of compatibility.
Squeeze everything down to one desk sort of thing.

Depends; for DOS/NT 3.51, probably a Pentium II 350 (375) with a Riva TNT2 Ultra connected to SLI Voodoo2s, 64MB PC133, 440bx OC'd to 150MHz, and Aureal Vortex 2. This hooked up to a single 17" CRT and a nice pair of speakers, a Unicomp Model M in front of me and a decent enough mouse to its side. Or, for something a bit more reasonable, I wouldn't mind a Pentium 90, Intel Thor, and a Riva 128 in the place of the above/leftward components.

For Linux/NT 5.x/Win9x/OS/2 Warp, I'd say I'm in the process of building it. 750MHz Slot A Thunderbird, Asus K7V/-RM/-T, 256MB RAM, Matrox G550 dual head (best OpenGL performance = best Linux/3D modelling and animation software performance) or Radeon 7500 connected to dual 19" 1600x1200@75+ CRTs, Vortex 2 or the Audigy Gold (sb0090) I have somewhere, and my AKG K240 studio headphones. Solid state media, whether on the IDE bus or a SATA card. Try for a bus OC, probably not go too far. I remember seeing the boards start to crash as low as 107MHz. Would have loved for there to be dual Slot A boards, but alas. I suppose I could also do 900 or 1GHz and try to OC it as far as I can get it, hoping for 1350 or 1400. At that point I'd probably pair it with a Radeon 9800 XT and the full 1.5GB the board supports. Or the 8500DV I have lying around...

For the Mac OS, an MDD '03 with a GF4 Ti 4800 and a 1.5GHz 7457 processor card and flash storage.

An A4000 desktop would certainly be nice. As would an SGI Indigo2 or Crimson.

Period overkill. For example: what is the latest video card that still runs on Windows 98? The answer is GeForce 6800. Then it should be the GPU of your Windows 98 rig.

Some people may argue that the latest video card that sill runs on Windows 98 with maximum backward compatibility is GeForce 5900, since it is the last GeForce to support 8 bit palletized texture, so it may be the more correct choice. But the point stays: the ultimate retro hardware is the fastest hardware that can run on your retro O/S with the best backward compatibility for old games, while the ultimate retro system is made of those ultimate retro hardware.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2022-11-17, 22:15:

Probably my Super 7 system. It's basically what I wished my PC Chips socket 7 system was when I was a teenager. Pretty middlin […]
Show full quote

Probably my Super 7 system.
It's basically what I wished my PC Chips socket 7 system was when I was a teenager.
Pretty middling even then, but I was poor and didn't care, 🤣.

Tekram P5MVP-B4
512MB PC133 Cl2
AMD K6-3+ 450mhz @616mhz
SB16 - ISA/Aureal Vortex2 PCI
Voodoo 3 3000 usually(Currently a Geforce 2 GTS)
Whatever Speed Asus CD-ROM
IBM Model M
I have a few CRT's but don't use them anymore

I don't really use this machine very often any more, but it is plenty fast and plenty slow in all the right places.

I have the same board, and I want to experiment with 112 MHz bus with K6-2+ CPUs I have. Could you please forward me the patched BIOS because I’m unable to find it over internet

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-19, 05:34:

Some people may argue that the latest video card that sill runs on Windows 98 with maximum backward compatibility is GeForce 5900, since it is the last GeForce to support 8 bit palletized texture, so it may be the more correct choice. But the point stays: the ultimate retro hardware is the fastest hardware that can run on your retro O/S with the best backward compatibility for old games, while the ultimate retro system is made of those ultimate retro hardware.

the topic is your ultimate retro system, so depends on each individual's game library.
I would agree with you and say overkill while been as compatible with as many as your games as possible but some for people it'll be a build as authentic as possible.

For me I'd say it was my dual Slot 1 P3 which I mostly already have.

M/B: P2B-DS
CPU: x2 P3 600 (Ultimate would be 1Ghz but need newer revision of motherboard)
RAM: 1GB
GPU: GF2 MX (Ultimate would be GF4 Ti4600 I have in another build)
GPU: Voodoo 2 SLI
Audio Win: SB Audigy 2 ZS
Audio DOS: SB AWE64

This would play good 80% of my games (only XP era is missing)
and having exotic things like SMP, SLI just makes me happy.

I think it depends on everyone's experience, because it determines everyone's understanding of the word ultimate.
When I was in college, around 1998, I saw a work computer owned by a college teacher: a bare chassis, placed in a random position, I couldn't tell what the motherboard was because there was a very thick layer of dust on it.I just remember hearing from the teacher that it was a K6 CPU ——with a very noisy fan on it.
I thought at the time, why didn't he clean up the dust?
Now I know, he just want act cool.
I think this is the ultimate retro system in my mind now. I want to deliberately sprinkle a layer of dust on the motherboard ，Pretend I have been using this computer for 20 years^_^

qdsong88@ wrote on 2024-02-19, 07:45:

I think this is the ultimate retro system in my mind now. I want to deliberately sprinkle a layer of dust on the motherboard ，Pretend I have been using this computer for 20 years^_^

😀

i like that idea, just make it look old and it will be retro, its kind of true aswell!

more broadly, 'retro' means different things to different people

there are fixed ideas (pre 64 bit, during ISA era or whatever) and there are rolling ideas (eg whatever is other side of 15 or so year 'horizon')

for me it is the system i can experience the best combination of vintage software on, often that's a relatively modern system with emulation, dosbox, gog. But in general its any early 2000's 32 bit system, one that can do all kinds of 9x to xp things and is powerful enough for doxbox too!

For me it is simple. Computers with ISA slot or hardware DOS sound compatibility. After that the computer are just Windows machines with different levels of speed. But ok, there starting to be problems with sourcing good XP/7 machines.

PS. Yest to two small tinny speakers. But no to Roland equipment. Really here in eastern europe nobody had those. All was good with Adlib music and then came MOD and CD music. So really dont even miss it.

I guess I'm in a weird spot where I have two "ultimate" old computers - one for Windows 98 and one for 2000/XP. That's the time period I grew up in. For Windows 98, it would be a Pentium III or Athlon near 1GHz, a Vortex 2, and whatever video card will run what I want (I don't care too much). For XP or 2000, it would be something with dual CPUs.

Right now, I would settle for functioning 3D acceleration, which is something I still don't have in hardware old enough to run 98.