ratfink wrote:

I went through a phase of buying all sorts of old gear to try it out, because I'd read a review or because it had a cool name or […]
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I went through a phase of buying all sorts of old gear to try it out, because I'd read a review or because it had a cool name or whatever. Now I focus on what I need to play the games I have the way I want to play them, plus some extra bits for particular needs, or that I like due to sound or video quality or nice user interfaces, or flexibility, or weirdness.

I use dosbox where it works well, but for some games I get very petty and insist on having a retro box just in case. An athlon 700 or socket 7 is good enough for my purposes. I found 386s and 486s too time consuming and fiddly and the end results are often not as good as using dosbox anyway. I do like my big crt for older games, but I like my u2410 too 😜.

With limited space my approach is:
- dosbox where possible, and at most 1 "retro" box for dos games [fm synth, speed sensitivity, sb16]
- two other "retro" boxes for fast glide, dx6/dx7/dx8, a3d and eax
- everything else I have is more recent

Wait, wait. You too! You're also one of the earliest people I got acquainted when I joined Vogons. It was a discussion about 3dfx, wasn't it? How to run Voodoo1 games on Voodoo5, or something like that.

Well, Great Hierophant posting on the first page of this thread made me remember again about a guy with 256 color Sherlock Holmes avatar answering my questions about MIDI during my earliest Vogons days. Yup, I was full of questions when I joined Vogons. Yep, and I met keropi too! It was on the PC subforum before the hardware-related discussion moved to Marvin. Soon after, I started posting a lot in Milliways and started asking questions aboiut games, and met DosFreak, el_pusher, and leileilol in the process . Heh, all the nostalgia.

Anyway, back to the discussion. Yep, I too, focused on games that do not run well on DOSBOX, like late 1996 DOS games that are too slow when being ran in DOSBOX. And Windows 9x games.

My focus on vintage hardware is based on these factors:
- late DOS games/Windows 9x games
- 3dfx
- Aureal 3D
- fastest GeForce cards for late Win9x games, especially flight sims
- MIDI for DOS games
- ISA sound cards for DOS games
- fast processor for DOS games (like Pentium II/III) to run hi-res (640x480) 3D, non-accelerated DOS games

Like Malik, I also tend to overpower my system, mostly because of the unpleasant experience of running non-accelerated 3D DOS games like Jane's ATF or Novalogic's F-22 Lightning II on Pentium 100. 🤣

I'm dependent on my retro computers for performance evaluation of new content so it becomes less of a guilty pleasure and more of a necessity - especially since those newfangled OpenGL ES-powered devices are probably as slow as them despite speccing high in the GHz.

Stuff like this screenshot here where i'm supposed to design a pretty menu that looks 'stable' on various hardware including the Voodoo2. This menu runs 60fps except for alpha-heavy pages like the options pages which it'll drop to 40fps. But, its far better than the 10fps it gets with Team Arena's main menu 😀

My vintage project is kinda finished 😐

My journey started a few years ago when I signed up to VOGONS and got a hardware collection box from ebay with a ton of mainboards, CPUs, RAM and all of that. My project was time machine gaming, the combination of vintage parts with modern ones to have games run authentically but with some comforts of the modern world like a nice PS/2 optical mouse, quiet PSU and all of that.

Now my man cave has everything I set out to do. I am interested in a specific time period from the early 90s to late 90s and that has been achieved. My Super Socket 7 time machine runs all these games, I have all the Roland MIDI modules available, played with CMS, got most Creative cards as well and now its all done. I am on the lookout for Super Socket 7 boards, but they have gone up quite a bit in price.

I unfortunately do not have much time lately. I enjoy adding new GOG.com releases to my 30GB partition and burning the CDs, labelling them and all of that. But I admit I hardly played any games so far. Simply no time. Every once in a while I fire up the machine, listen to a game on Roland and shut it down again 😀

The newer 3D stuff is interesting but not nearly enough to start collecting or building something. Now that I know what works well together and what doesn't I am thinking of slowly selling some gear, but there is no rush as prices are going up anyway and I don't need the space or the money right now 😀

So I mostly see me installing all the GOG.com games on that machine and having every DOS GOG.com game from my time period installed and ready to go. I could also do more videos but not sure what to cover as it has all been done and is well documented.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

My vintage project is kinda finished 😐

Every once in a while I fire up the machine, listen to a game on Roland and shut it down again 😀

Have to admit I'm guilty of that too 😀

For me, I'm much more of a video game person than a computer person when it comes to retro stuff, with the major exception of DOS. Computer systems like the Amiga, C64, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, even Apple IIs and early Macs, my experience with them is very little to none.

The thing for me with all these old systems is that I much prefer the actual feel of these things for playing the games that were made for them. Old Colecovision games are just not the same without that phone-shaped controller and its button-sized joystick. NES games will always play best with my NES Advantage joystick... with a few exceptions like Krazy Kreatures and Tetris. N64 games absolutely REQUIRE their strange three-handed controllers as they feel weird to play emulated or even with other kinds of controllers.

But when it comes to DOS games, I'm much more about the software than the hardware. Old PCs can be quite a mess to get working properly, and even once they are, you have to worry about the condition of your disks, what kind of hardware you have installed, the IRQs and DMAs of said hardware, whether or not the game you want to play will even WORK with said hardware... DOSBox is like a godsend in those regards and all of you here who've contributed to making that thing deserve several medals and trophies made of win. :)

Basically, old hardware is fun to toy with, but if I can avoid having to prep an old system to play something, then I will. :B

I am definetely a vintage hardware lover.

I started building my retro machines when i saw my old 386 AT case getting rusty. That 386 was upgraded several times through the years.

From a 386 DX 40 it went to a 486 DX 66, later to a 486 DX 100 when me and my brother got a CDROM on it. Later to a Pentium 150, that one of my friends sold to me quite cheap. Then after a couple of years same friend sold me his board and AMD K6 300. And the system stayed like that for years, and never was switched on after we got our Athlon XP 1400+ on a brand new ATX case back in 2001.

So about a year ago i went to see stuff i had in the attic, and i felt it was a crime to let that case rust in peace. So i started recovering it. The decision, was pretty much build it originally with the same specs, but that would be nearly impossible because i had no idea which motherboard it had. My brother actually got all the manuals and documentation on garbage. All i remember is that the motherboard had an IDE connector onboard which was pretty rare on a 386. I don't know how many boards came with one, maybe i should start investigating it. Anyway i got a random board that satisfied my needs and that case is now restored to its former glory.

Soon enough, i wanted more. So basically i wanted a system that did everything for me, so the Super Socket 7 was the solution for me. Got a MT-32 and i'm in the process of building my SS7 rig. I'm still short of some hardware though. I've been planning a sort of a web show, for fun and the love for this vintage hardware. As soon as i get this all sorted out, i'll start working on it.

Vintage hardware is getting very expensive, sometimes crazy expensive. There are still quite a few things i wanna grab, and that i feel are essential for the purpose of the web show.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Well, Great Hierophant posting on the first page of this thread made me remember again about a guy with 256 color Sherlock Holmes avatar answering my questions about MIDI during my earliest Vogons days. Yup, I was full of questions when I joined Vogons.

You mean this guy? 😉

Great Hierophant wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Well, Great Hierophant posting on the first page of this thread made me remember again about a guy with 256 color Sherlock Holmes avatar answering my questions about MIDI during my earliest Vogons days. Yup, I was full of questions when I joined Vogons.

You mean this guy? 😉

Aha! I see your great avatar is back! 😁

In my case I am a lover of vintage hardware. I started collecting CPU. Later collecting motherboards to test the CPU and then video and sound cards 🤣 . As had all the elements I started with building of systems. Vintage games are secondary to me, but it's really gratifying build a system and then sitting down to play

Great Hierophant wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Well, Great Hierophant posting on the first page of this thread made me remember again about a guy with 256 color Sherlock Holmes avatar answering my questions about MIDI during my earliest Vogons days. Yup, I was full of questions when I joined Vogons.

You mean this guy? 😉

Yes, but he was unanimated the fist time he came around. 🤣

Vintage hardware/software only. I like the nostalgia and bringing back memories from my childhood with it. I am not a collector. But I enjoy hunting down cool stuff when I feel like it / time permits. I also like cool projects. Once I find items / complete projects I move on though. 🤣

badmojo wrote:

If I'm being honest with myself - I'm not always - I'm forced to admit that I enjoy buying and playing with hardware more than playing games. My projects are always aimed at getting the best hardware to cover a given period, and I have several beautiful PC's and consoles as a result. But once I finish a project and sit down to rock some games on it, my mind starts wandering and before I know it I have some other project on the go.

There is some guilt involved with this process for some reason, I need to let that go. There are worse addictions out there!

Everything he said. I don't have several beautiful PC's and consoles as a result yet 😐

I'd say more pragmatism than collector - I've built (or re-built) some old machines simply to handle some old games that weren't working on newer OS + system (so that's pragmatism side), but in most cases I use that as an excuse to pick up some older piece of hardware that's interesting or unique to me in some way (more collection side). In general if the games had worked on newer systems I probably wouldn'tve built said old machines though - they take up extra space and it isn't as seamless as having one machine that does everything. But I figured if I'm going to need extra machines, why not have fun with it? 😀

TELEPACMAN wrote:

badmojo wrote:

If I'm being honest with myself - I'm not always - I'm forced to admit that I enjoy buying and playing with hardware more than playing games. My projects are always aimed at getting the best hardware to cover a given period, and I have several beautiful PC's and consoles as a result. But once I finish a project and sit down to rock some games on it, my mind starts wandering and before I know it I have some other project on the go.

There is some guilt involved with this process for some reason, I need to let that go. There are worse addictions out there!

Everything he said. I don't have several beautiful PC's and consoles as a result yet 😐

+1 - except I am glad to say that I do have some "beautiful PC's and consoles" as a result, but everything is still a work in progress to get everything more "period specific" and "more compatible" for certain gaming eras.

I have a feeling that one day when I get a bit more space to tinker with and set up most of my retro gear properly, I will be playing a lot more games and I will become more of a gamer than a hardware guy. I have almost everythting I want regarding gaming consoles and PC's except for an old commodore PET and maybe an IBM 51XX XT system, a Gravis Ultrasound, a NeoGeo, a Panasonic 3DO, a PC Engine, and a Voodoo5, and a few other high in demand items that have been quite elusive over the last few years. Once I acquire those items though, I will feel that I am truly ready to take on almost any old school game that comes my way 🤣 and I think that I will focus more on playing games.

Sometimes I almost would rather not play an old game if I don't have the right hardware to play it at it's highest settings or with it's "best" audio settings. Hence my recent purchase of a couple old Tandy 1000 series computer for example so that I can play some older games with trrue Tandy sound and graphics 😀 . It is truly never ending though unless one draws the line somewhere.

Iam both, collector and need it to use it to play the older games.. Iam born in 1983 so a big period of computing i have grow up with.. In like 2000-2004 ill had already some plans to go building old computers. But back then i cant, because i still lived with my parents, and they warent not agree with it. Because of space and so.. i hadnt the right storage that time. I really like the smell of old isa cards ect and the technology behind it. And how everything come together in a system. I also like it how a system of that time sounds and operates.. Computers are a thing this sitting in my blood.. For my there isnt a better hobby than old computer technology..

I began in 2008 with collection usable parts. I started with i red about one of the systems from a forum member here. But still in 2014 iam looking for parts..Iam do not buy things i think that i cant use them.
My main goal is building up usable / running systems.. Its nice to have to parts, but iam just go for whole working systems. But on the other hand i need them to go back in time and playing these older games i really liked.
Now days games arent that important for me that much, but today better graphics is more important then having a good game with replay value.

I need these old systems because they have just better compatibillity then software sollutions because there are just designed to run all of those game.

LunarG wrote:

Although I do want to play the games, the hardware itself is definitely a big factor. I'm probably starting to show signs of getting "old", with becoming increasingly nostalgic, but I still do think that a lot of the games from back in the late 80's to mid 90's were better than what's being released today. There's more and more focus on graphics and sound. More focus on online multiplayer features and cash shops. A game today, is a product based on what will make the company the most money, not necessarily what gives the player the best experience. It's like they walk a fine line between adding just enough enjoyment to keep people playing (or even better: addicted) and not spending too much time/money on development. I actually think things like Kickstarter just proves this. Gamers are willing to finance games themselves, just to allow the actual game designers free reign to make a GOOD game, instead of making a profitable game. But I digress. I like playing the old games, but I don't feel Dosbox is the best solution. Sure, it's the cheapest and most convenient solution, but there are many games that are fiddly to get to work, and with widescreen monitors and high resolution, the graphics scaling doesn't make the games look as good as they did on the proper stuff. If I was going to buy a CRT, a dedicated keyboard for dos gaming, external midi modules and so on, well, then I may as well have a dedicated system for dos games. I mean, I wouldn't wanna use a CRT as my day-to-day screen on a modern computer, not compared to my widescreen high-res LCD. This allows me the chance to have the computer I always wanted to have 18-20 years ago, but just couldn't afford. I can re-enjoy the fun and challenge of tweaking my dos setup for maximum amount of free base memory to run those difficult to run games, and play things not how an emulator thinks they should be, but as they REALLY should be. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, when I got into computers, they still had a sense of mystery to them. They were simply more FUN than today. So, although I wanna play the games, I most certainly have a great love for old hardware.

Rant over.

I think about the same, you have it on the right side.. Games today are indeed ment to cash for the devlopers, not as a quality game.
Iam also think that dosbox isnt the best solution to running these older dos games on. Most will work, ok, but not always it will.

I love older hardware but not because it's old. I see a lot of problems with new hardware every day and that's one of the main reasons I enjoy old parts; problems like: stuck at one resolution with DFPs, less innovative sound hardware, everything is black, too much relation with mainstream gaming consoles, GPUs with external power connectors, 1k power supplies, and touchscreens taking over. There might be other reasons but that's all I can think of. One of the coolest things about PCs is they're simple to assemble and that hasn't changed even today. You got a mobo, pci slots, cpu socket, and ram slots; and maybe some mobo expansion headers. It only sucks because AT mobos are gone; I'd much rather choose my own hardware instead instead of take what manufacturers force down my throat.

In some way I do like old hardware because it's old too. It's kind of like having a classic car or something; only better because it doesn't pollute or drain my pocket. Also miss the old days when Linux wasn't really heard of, and Macs were more proprietary (power PC vs x86 e.g.); but I wouldn't want a classic Mac system today that's for sure 🤣. That's also why I like Microsoft and PCs in general; you can assemble a brand new system today but use some really old parts and install a really old OS like Windows 95 with drivers on it. It's great to build a dedicated PC from a past era, but I find it really cool you can still install a classic GPU into a current mobo.

I think PCs are probably the best gaming device on the planet. I have nes, snes, playstation, sega saturn, games and stuff, but it's so cool being able to run an emulator and letting your system sit in storage. It's like taking care of a baby! Dumping your roms is cool (I'm glad my AM3+ mobo has a rs232 port). If I ever want a faster PC, I know I can get one too. I don't need to stick with AMD or INTEL, Microsoft or Linux; I can make my own choice all the time, and always have the same games available. I'd much rather invest in a PC, instead of Xbox or Playstation 4. I can literally play Resident 1 for Windows 95, and Resident Evil 6 on the same PC. PCs just dominate the game world.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Great Hierophant wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Well, Great Hierophant posting on the first page of this thread made me remember again about a guy with 256 color Sherlock Holmes avatar answering my questions about MIDI during my earliest Vogons days. Yup, I was full of questions when I joined Vogons.

You mean this guy? 😉

Yes, but he was unanimated the fist time he came around. 🤣

I finally figured out how to make an animated GIF.

One great thing about vintage hardware is that you are not tied to some donwloading service like Steam or Origin or whatever. With a real DOS or Windows PC, I can use a physical copy of a game. I don't need to be online, I don't have to verify my ownership at any given time and I don't have to worry about the service going out of business.

I tolerate old hardware. I do not like the fact that it takes up space, consumes electricity, and sometimes fails. But the authentic experience simply cannot be matched with current systems.

sliderider wrote:

I love the hardware. It's not just about playing the games of the past, it's about being able to buy the hardware that you were never able to afford when it was new and mixing and matching parts to be able to play the broadest range of games on a single system. Some really rare parts are still expensive due to collector demand, but the vast majority of things can still be had reasonably if you're willing to wait.

Pretty much this for me. I love the hardware and have collected a bunch of stuff that I would never have been able to afford when new. High-end workstation hardware that would have built a computer more expensive than a small family car 🤣.

Also I was only a kid when a lot of the stuff from the 90s came out, so I never would have been able to experience the true potential of most of that hardware from that era. I started out with hardware from the late 90s but then branched off and now have stuff in my collection ranging from the early-mid 90s all the way up to the mid-late 2000s.

Well for me I love the hardware more so than the software, but I need the software also in order to help justify owning the vintage hardware. 😜

Hardware for me. I can't remember whether I read this on Vogons, but the real appeal of messing around with old hardware to me is problem solving. I love getting a build up and running with the best period-specific hardware I can afford. Getting the video and sound cards to play nice with the OS is more satisfying than completing a game. I tend to play a game for only five or ten minutes just to make sure that everything is working as it should. For instance, I loved getting my MT-32 up and running with an SB Pro 2.0 and SoftMPU and then in intelligent mode with a MQX-32M. Now I'm tracking down all those Sierra, Origin, and Lucasarts games more to hear the soundtracks than to play the games.