I recommend making a list of games that don’t work on your new system then checking the requirements of the oldest and newest games, then checking their system requirements. This will let you know how far back in time your retro PC needs to go and also the most demanding game.
Going from your list Myst is the oldest and really wants Window 98.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein is the most demanding on hardware but still supports Win98. Its minimum requirements are a 400 MHz CPU and 16MB video card. (But you really want something much higher than this)
Win98 doesn’t like Multi core CPU’s so if you can find/beg/steal a decent speed single core system great! Most motherboards of that era should still have Win98 drivers. 512MB Ram is the sweet spot for Win98 so that’s what I’d go with.
The last officially supported graphic cards in Win98 are an ATI Radeon 9800 Nvidia supported 98 for a bit longer till the Gforce 6800 series. Both will run the oldest game and newest game fine, but again you can always check for incompatibilitys on line 1st.
Anything that wants more than the above should be new enough to be supported on at least a XP machine with decent hardware you would hope!

Thanks for the reply. It's been a while since I've worked with Win 98. I still have the Win 98 installation disk, but it's marked "Upgrade". I also have the Win 95 disk, but it's an upgrade also. Written on the Win 95 disk is a product id number as well as the cd key. Assuming that I could find an old legacy system, how could I get Win 98 loaded?

I would want to back up everything I do. I currently use Acronis True Image Home 2009, EaseUs Todo Backup Home Free and Macrium Reflect. Would any of these be backward compatible with Win 98?

About old OpenGL games. They are victims of the "GL extensions buffer overflow" on the new videocards. The solution is simple - find the string "gl_extensions: %s" in the main executable or OGL renderer and replace %s to %p.
The second trouble is - many games aren't working correctly with multicore PCs. Use Application Compatibility Toolkit and SingleProcAffinity fix.
So - many games can install/run on new systems with tweaking.
But yes, the old PC with Win98/ME is the best and radical solution.

To install Win98 Upgrade you would boot from the 98 CD, during install it will ask you to insert your old copy of Windows. (Or something along those lines) Put in the Win95 CD it will do a check then ask for the Win98 CD again and you have a nice clean install of Windows 98.
I’m 99% sure even though it’s an upgrade CD, you still need a separate Win98 key. The Win95 key won’t work.
Whatever you do, don’t install Win95 then upgrade 98 over the top, it’ll just make a mess.

Acronics is semi supported, it says it can back up any system to a CD. It sounds like it just creates an image of the whole system like Norton Ghost which was the big one back in the day.
I doubt the ones mentioned work. But what’s to back up? It’s just a gaming machine right? Once you install the games the system config shouldn’t change much? Its only installing/uninstalling, updating and the internet that kills windows, and this PC won’t be doing any of that.
As long as you have the original CD’s/ISO’s stored somewhere the only things you may loose are savegames, patches and windows itself.
Savegames and patches I’d just copy to a different partition or PC.
You could create a Windows image if you really wanted but it’s not that hard just to reinstall. You may have to do a few test installs the 1st few times testing different drivers etc but once you got a good install I doubt you’ll need to reinstall windows for a good few years.

Thanks for all the good info. I really appreciate it.

I do have a Windows ME installation disk. I didn't mention it because I didn't think it was appropriate. However, come to think of it, it might be pretty similar to Windows 98. Correct??

I think the best approach for me is to try and find an old machine. The problem is how to find one. I checked around on e-bay and it didn't seem to show much. Even if a source is available I'm not sure what to ask for. Also, what video card should I try to find? Would sure appreciate your suggestions.

The last supported videocards for Win9x is - Radeon X8xx and GeForce 6xxx series. Plus - there are drivers for Intel 910/915/920 chipset (PCI Express), but the main target for Win9x is AGP motherboards...
"Find an old machine"? The chance is too low. You must build old PC from a parts.

Gamecollector wrote:

The last supported videocards for Win9x is - Radeon X8xx and GeForce 6xxx series. Plus - there are drivers for Intel 910/915/920 chipset (PCI Express), but the main target for Win9x is AGP motherboards...
"Find an old machine"? The chance is too low. You must build old PC from a parts.

Almost right. The last Radeons with Win9x drivers are the 9600/9800. The oldest drivers for the x800/x850 are 2k/XP drivers.

the "GL extensions buffer overflow" problem with return to castle wolfenstein was fixed ages ago with ati (just played it)
It should be working fine (the op didnt mean the original wolfenstein did he ?)

he has the same problems on all 3 of his very different computers
could it be he is using the default drivers supplied with windows

As has been previously suggested, you need to go into more detail regarding exactly which games you are having trouble running. Yes, in some cases Windows 98 – or at least a suitably ancient video card – are necessary, but with popular games usually there is some kind of workaround somewhere.

sdculp wrote:

I am a fan of the older games such as Obsidian, Castle Wolfenstein, Myst, Uru, etc. Games such as this just don’t seem to be available anymore.

On the contrary: not only are most of those readily available from GOG.com, but GOG.com somehow has made them run on modern machines with little difficulty. While you can repurchase them from GOG.com directly, if you want, there is probably some way to get your existing versions running.

sdculp wrote:

I would want to back up everything I do. I currently use Acronis True Image Home 2009, EaseUs Todo Backup Home Free and Macrium Reflect. Would any of these be backward compatible with Win 98?

All of those feature the ability to create a bootable CD that can be used to create an image, and thus operate entirely independently of the OS. (The only thing you might not be able to do is browse a partition image from within Windows 98, but there's no reason you would need to do that.)

When I made the statement that “games such as this are not available anymore”, I meant NEW games. And they are not. New games focus on fast action, shooting, keystrokes, war, etc., and I am not interested in them. If I were, I no longer have the eye-hand coordination to deal with them, anyway.

I have not made a list of the games I might be interest in for two reasons: 1. At this point I may not even know what they all are, and 2. Why go to the trouble and frustration of doing so when it might not even be practical to play them?

I see that many of the older games are available on GOG. Your statement “but GOG.com somehow has made them run on modern machines with little difficulty” raises an interesting question. GOG has Myst available and states that it is compatible with XP, Vista, 7 and 8. I have an original boxed Myst which I played years ago. Yesterday I tried loading it into my spare computer, and, of course, it wouldn’t load. I got several errors: The first was “An operation could not be performed because a file handle could not be opened. Try closing existing applications and/or increasing the number of files available. (See the “FILES” command in your DOS manual for more information).” The second was “The Quick Time for Windows instruction has not been completed” and the third was “Myst requires a 256 color palettized digital driver. For more information on display video cards and display drivers, please consult the Myst Troubleshooting card”. Removing the remnants of the game was not easy. Neither Windows or Revo recognized its existence. Using Explorer Search I removed all traces manually and then cleaned the registry with Ccleaner. I suppose it might be possible to make a minor career of modifying my spare computer to play each individual game but that is not something I will do.

The question raised is whether GOG has modified the game code so as to make their advertising valid. Considering patent and copyright law and the time and cost involved in rewriting code to sell a product for a few dollars to a very limited consumer group I don’t see how this is possible.

In the breathless competitive race for speed and subtleties I feel that the video and game designers (and to a certain degree CPU and sound card designers) have completely ignored compatibility over the years. The need to “update video drivers” has become farcical.

How I wish I had not junked my old computers!!

I can assure you that most gog.com games work really well on newer computers. I personally have not had any game I have bought not working. They do modify the game code when it is needed, and remove all drm from games too. They also release patches to their games when the need arises.

sdculp wrote:

When I made the statement that “games such as this are not available anymore”, I meant NEW games. And they are not. New games focus on fast action, shooting, keystrokes, war, etc., and I am not interested in them. If I were, I no longer have the eye-hand coordination to deal with them, anyway.

They're there if you know where to look. Everyone seems to like Wadjet Eye's adventures (the Blackwell trilogy, Gemini Rue, etc).

GOG has Myst available and states that it is compatible with XP, Vista, 7 and 8. I have an original boxed Myst which I played years ago.

If I am not mistaken, Myst has been re-released quite a few different times. As I recall, the version on GOG is the "Masterpiece Edition" commercially released in 2000 with updated code.

Myst in particular is one of relatively few games released in the early multimedia era that may be unusually difficult to get running on a modern operating system. It's probably not impossible, but the time and effort required is probably worth more than the piddling amount GOG is asking for the Masterpiece Edition, which is functionally identical to the original release anyway. (Not to be confused with "realMyst", which is a rather different kettle of fish.)

Alternatively, I think ScummVM supports Myst these days and should work fine with your original copy. (You probably won't even have to mess with the installer.)

You see, there are stories like this for lots of old games so it really depends on what exactly you want to get running.

The question raised is whether GOG has modified the game code so as to make their advertising valid. Considering patent and copyright law and the time and cost involved in rewriting code to sell a product for a few dollars to a very limited consumer group I don’t see how this is possible.

Sometimes the changes required are actually quite minor. And I have no idea what you think "patent and copyright law" has to do with anything.

I think it's great if GOG does this. I tried twice to post an inquiry on their general forum page and it kicked me to a 404 error page twice. From there I got a link to a message to report a login problem, and posted the inquiry again. Then I got an email response from that.

Don't know why the 404 error or what's going on, but will report anything interesting here when/if it happens.

What do you want to know? You have already pointed out that they state "that it is compatible with XP, Vista, 7 and 8". I can assure you they are not brazen liars.

I think their holiday sale is just coming to an end, so the site might be under somewhat heavy load at the moment.

i just ordered the masterpiece edition of Myst. Anxious to see how it goes. I thought it might be a download, but guess it's a disk.

I have no idea where you are getting these notions from, sir. GOG.com supplies only downloads.

(The disc version of Masterpiece Edition is, however, abundantly available on eBay if you really want it.)

Well, sir, I just didn't know where or what to click to find it. Finally did so. Go it and the manual.

what driver version is your 5800 using

Driver version 8.920.0.0

Myst loaded and is running fine. It's great to be back on the island after 18 years!