I wish you good luck with this project. I have tried to get friends interested in playing network games on period hardware that I supplied before and many of them were not so enthusiastic about it 😄. Even with the tech resolved it may be a challenge to get enough regular business to sustain the operation if the primary offering of the business is multiplayer games of the 90s/00s.

paradigital wrote on 2025-03-20, 06:44:

You misunderstand. […]
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MeatboySupreme wrote on 2025-03-19, 20:15:

paradigital wrote on 2025-03-19, 20:01:

Of course you can. How do you think the modern world works?

Ok, so you have 30 VGA CRT monitors that need to connect to 30 VM's on a server that emulates windows 98. How would that work and what hardware would you emulate times 30, with what resources/ hardware on server?

You misunderstand.

I’m not suggesting to ditch the 30 PCs, I’m suggesting to ditch the idea of using retro hardware for the dedicated servers that will host the games.

It means that the heart of the operation is more reliable and you can ensure that you are only troubleshooting and maintaining the PCs that users are interacting with.

Ok, I understand now, I thought that you were suggesting VMs instead of hardware.

It started as an idea of one computer, than became a man-cave for friends and right now I'm thinking more about a thematic club / cafe, with one or more gaming rooms and all the activity from the game room/ rooms, projected in the bar area. A Blade Runner/ Robocop / Matrix kind of vibe. I know it's a handful, that's why I try to figure out the legal side of things, first, before moving forward. I worry now more about the licenses for the games. Maybe I can still find some on Steam, but I would have to buy as many as I have computers, right? I need to figure something out for the others. A trick of some kind to absolve myself 😀. Maybe make some drives magically disappear? 😀)

What about virtual drives? Most of these games would run without being added to registry. Would the installed legal copies on one PC and shared system drive over local area network, theoretically run over lan? Thanks for all your responses!

I’d love to have lan parties again you just don’t see them nowadays nor finding enough people with enough time and appropriate hardware.
I just came across something when I looked up lan parties in my area there’s a gaming bus you can hire tho it’s all modern crap tho the setup could be a good laugh with an older setup.

I know very little about LAN Parties, I do admit.
However, aren’t they still a "thing" on conventions or similar events?

I mean the retro version the ones nowadays are like mixed esport events and not the games from my youth.

Ah, I think I understand now. I remember playing Mario Kart on Super Nintendo with friends.
It too was different to playing more modern N64 version or Camecube version.

Greywolf1 wrote on 2025-03-20, 18:14:

I’d love to have lan parties again you just don’t see them nowadays nor finding enough people with enough time and appropriate hardware.
I just came across something when I looked up lan parties in my area there’s a gaming bus you can hire tho it’s all modern crap tho the setup could be a good laugh with an older setup.

Yeah, I know. That is exactly the reason why I am trying to bring it back, and figure out the best possible scenario, that could make it viable and sustainable. I figured that there's no half way between having a lan setup for killing time with friends (time that you don't have, friends that don't have time) and outright selling the dream. I'm talking about the best possible setup, no compromise on hardware, a bar/club between the entrance and the "lan chamber", that celebrates the 90's, where you can hangout and drink coffees, even beer/cocktails, all while watching on projectors, the action next door. I would at least have a drink in such a place. Even if I would have not been a gamer, at least out of curiosity, it would be something worth checking out in a sea of clubs and bars that don't differentiate much, they mostly let you be your own entertainment and provide a neutral ambiance plus booze. That type of approach, would probably make it sustainable. But it would be a really daunting project...

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-03-20, 12:45:

I wish you good luck with this project. I have tried to get friends interested in playing network games on period hardware that I supplied before and many of them were not so enthusiastic about it 😄. Even with the tech resolved it may be a challenge to get enough regular business to sustain the operation if the primary offering of the business is multiplayer games of the 90s/00s.

Thanks! Like I said, I figured that it could not be the source of income, it would have to be the place you go to mainly have a drink, celebrate your birthday, or participate in organized events.

So like Chucky cheese, jk.!.
Have mini cinema with only pre Millenium videos and corded dail phones for contacting front desk.

Corded dial phones would fit really well 😀

I would start at the man cave for friends level first. Get a feel for what works and what doesn't.

Remember this hardware is old and temperamental, I've typically got at least 12 machines permanently set up and a few will not be working at any 1 time due to failed hardware or corrupted windows install and that's just me using them!
I've done a few reto lan parties with family friends and something always goes wrong. some game doesn't want to work or whatever, with friends this doesn't matter but if its someone who's paid and made the journey especially it does.

^I second this. Perhaps it's good to start at a small level first and don't rise expectations too high, let's think of it as a test run, rather.
And won't be disappointed if it won't turn out as imagined first.

That being said, I think it's definitely worth a try! 😃
Not seldomly, if we look back at our life, a failure is not nearly as bad as a missed opportunity.
Because we will always wonder how it had turned out.

Also, maybe it works even better the second time we try something.
We might have learned something from mistakes by then.

But that's just my two cents.

That’s so true things always went wrong at the parties at least a third of the pcs wouldn’t connect to the server or host machine even bought my own routers incase the others weren’t able to attend with their equipment leaving us stranded, though we had a computer shop as part of our group so we had good support for setting up, biggest hurdle was power quite a few venues couldnt cope with the power demand.

I am aware there will be failures, that's why I will counteract this in the simplest way, with sheer numbers. At least 20% will mostly serve as backups. Reimaging, and even reimaged hard drives would be handy. I should think about cases with racks, to swap drives immediately...

Actually, Removable HDD caddies like this would be a really good idea.
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/drw115cad

9 times out of 10 it'll be a software issue and the ability to just swap out the hard drive with another pre-configured one is much quicker than swapping the entire PC!

It's also period correct, most my friends had similar caddies. Useful for the file leeching that happened during the big organised lan parties 😉

Thanks! Will look into it... I am now thinking about the mainboards, can't really decide between the 815 chipset and the Via 694 motherboard from alibaba.com. I may have someone in China and I might be able to get them without risk. I know that the 815 is more reliable and slightly faster, but I also like these boards because they have ISA, which, from what I understand is necessary for having sound on old games? Soundblaster Live won't cut it, right? Also I read somewhere that you can slow down the processor for very old games from the Via bios. So many things to consider... I already have 6 815 chipset boards, but it's not too late to jump the train...

Buy and try with one VIA board, but they can be different even with the same chipset if not identical boards (VIA drivers are not the best, but there are workarounds for Win9x).I would go with Intel 815 if it was my choice and price is the same, later 815 boards work with tualatins and these are very good and fast retro cpu-s, even Celerons are fast + lower power consumption.

If it were me, I'd definitely virtualize the server side of it. I run Windows 2000 Server as a VM on Windows Server 2025 just fine, but one of the open source virtualization platforms would probably be better. Like another poster said, this would be really nice because you can just have one decent server machine that can handle all the retro VMs you could possibly need.

Ideally, I would want all the physical retro PC hardware to be the same, then I would set up an imaging server VM and utilize PXE booting on the client machines to create/restore Norton Ghost images over the network. With how often Win98SE bluescreens do to the subtlest of changes, you need a very fast way to roll back to a clean image. Having all the hardware the same will mean you only have to maintain one image for all your client machines.