First post, by Ace
Just thought I'd share the specs of my 3 PCs that I'm using for classic PC games.
First computer is an IBM Personal Computer 300PL, my primary MS-DOS gaming PC, with these specs:
-Intel Pentium II 266MHz
-192MB of RAM
-5GB hard drive
-ATI Rage II graphics card
-5GB hard drive
-Intel motherboard with Intel chipset
-OPTi 82C929A and ESS AudioDrive ES1868F ISA sound cards(this combination will soon be replaced with a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0, or if I can figure out how to get this sound card to work, an HP AZT1008 with Aztech AZT2320 chipset) plus integrated Crystal CS4235(TERRIBLE sound card with EXTREMELY buggy, distorted and inaccurate FM Synthesis on top of overall buggy SoundBlaster support - this sound card is disabled)
-OS is Windows 95 OSR2.5(not too fond of MS-DOS' text-based interface, so I like to use Windows 95 OSR2.5 wherever possible)
Second computer is one my parents bought in 2000, a custom one put together for them by MicroBytes, a local chain of computer shops(I believe they exist throughout all of Canada). This computer has now become my secondary MS-DOS gaming PC. Specs:
-Intel Pentium III 1GHz(underclocked to 500MHz for the sound card by setting the FSB speed to 66MHz)
-384MB of RAM(originally had 512MB of RAM, but one of the RAM sticks crapped out)
-nVidia GeForce 2 MX graphics card(will replace this by an ATi graphics card, either PCI or VGA, with S-Video outputs)
-40GB hard drive
-Gigabyte motherboard with VIA chipset(caused a ton of problems until I installed the sound card mentioned below)
-HP AZT1008 sound card with Aztech AZT2320 chipset(a gem - its FM Synthesis is EXACTLY like that produced by a real YMF262 or YM3812, but with absolutely zero filtering and the SoundBlaster part is super clear, sometimes TOO clear. Somehow, I got this sound card to work on this computer with the SoundBlaster sound option in the floppy disk edition of X-Wing, something no other ISA sound card I've EVER used has accomplished on this computer due to the VIA chipset. Of course, I did have to underclock the CPU down to 500MHz for this sound card not to output garbage from its cloned(or ASIC-based) YMF262 when playing the floppy disk edition of X-Wing)
-OS is Windows 95 OSR2.5
The third and final PC is an IBM Aptiva E Series 54U in which the motherboard was replaced. This is a PC I put together to play games meant for Windows 9x that have problems under Windows XP. Specs:
-AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
-256MB of RAM(will probably bump this up to 512MB)
-ATI Radeon 9000 AGP graphics card(might mod it to replace the Composite plug with an S-Video jack - before you ask, the circuitry for the S-Video is there)
-20GB hard drive
-Amptron motherboard with VIA chipset
-ESS Solo-1 sound card
-OS is Windows 98 SE
I don't have pictures of these computer or of their hardware, but I'll get to that soon.