batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:52:

Bit more info is that I'd like to run games from half life, Dino crisis, tomb raider but also a lot of dos games like Duke nukem, redneck rampage and, Sierra and Lucas arts titles.

Would like to build something that can handle later games nicely but still play dos games.

That can be tricky. While most later DOS games such as Duke3D and Tomb Raider run fine on a fast system, some older games are speed sensitive and need a slower CPU.

To summarize, if your system is good enough to run Half-Life and Unreal Tournament at 60 FPS, it's probably too fast for older DOS games. This can be somewhat remedied with slowdown utilities, but results may vary depending on your hardware.

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:55:

Hi, I've not heard of glide.

There are a lot of dos games I want to play too like Sierra titles and Lucas arts adventures, and FPS of the time. Also some of the more demanding games like half life and some into the early 2000s if possible?

I looked into first at building a Windows XP gaming machine but as far as I've read it's then harder to run older games in the DOS era.

If you also want to play those DOS titles then you'd have to stick to Windows 98 (SE). The most important thing with DOS is that your soundcard and videocard are compatible enough to play most titles. The most important feature of the soundcard should be that it's Soundblaster (Pro) Compatible. Most cards of the later 90's are SB PRO compatible and many late 90s on-board soundcards are too. You'd have to do a little research on those, but some golden picks are the Soundblaster 16 and the ESS Audiodrive ES1868 / ES1868F. Note that these are ISA slot cards, so you'd need a motherboard that can has those. ISA was phased out near the late 90's.

The graphics card needs to cover the most used DOS video modes. There is a great table for that here: https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/ . As you can see cards from S3, nvidia and 3dfx are pretty compatible with DOS. If you also want to play late 90's 3d games or even early 2000s, the s3 cards (they use the PCI slot) will not be powerful enough. It's better to pick a card that uses the AGP slot, like the Voodoo3, 4 or 5. Those cards are very expensive at the moment, so you're best of with an nvidia GeForce card. Geforce 2, 3,4 or even later models. Check that table for reference.

The Voodoo cards are often mentioned because of the Glide rendering that they offer. Back in the late 90's there were a few games that would ONLY run in Glide mode, so you'd need a Voodoo card to play them. Most games also feature Direct3D or OpenGL, which are present on most AGP videocards. So you don't really NEED a Voodoo card to play the games you mentioned.

So if you want the broadest range, from say 1993 to 2003, pick a motherboard that has AGP and ISA. That would put you at a Pentium 3, which needs a Socket 370 motherboard. The Pentium 3 has variants from 500 to 1400 Mhz. If you go the AMD route then you'd be off good with a Athlon (or Athlon Thunderbird) or Duron processor. The Duron was the low-cost variant of the Athlon. This requires either a Slot A or a Socket A motherboard, depending on the exact model of processor. As long as it still has an ISA slot for reasons mentioned above.

People have probably mentioned that DOS games can be speed sensitive (they would run too fast if you have a powerful processor). This is true, but mostly for early DOS titles. And even then those can still run at the correct speeds if they weren't programmed in a certain way. Most DOS games from the mid 90s will still play perfectly fine. The ones you mentioned will run without any issues even on fast processors.

Hope this helps a bit 😀

Hezus wrote on 2021-05-22, 08:09:

If you also want to play those DOS titles then you'd have to stick to Windows 98 (SE). The most important thing with DOS is that […]
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batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:55:

Hi, I've not heard of glide.

There are a lot of dos games I want to play too like Sierra titles and Lucas arts adventures, and FPS of the time. Also some of the more demanding games like half life and some into the early 2000s if possible?

I looked into first at building a Windows XP gaming machine but as far as I've read it's then harder to run older games in the DOS era.

If you also want to play those DOS titles then you'd have to stick to Windows 98 (SE). The most important thing with DOS is that your soundcard and videocard are compatible enough to play most titles. The most important feature of the soundcard should be that it's Soundblaster (Pro) Compatible. Most cards of the later 90's are SB PRO compatible and many late 90s on-board soundcards are too. You'd have to do a little research on those, but some golden picks are the Soundblaster 16 and the ESS Audiodrive ES1868 / ES1868F. Note that these are ISA slot cards, so you'd need a motherboard that can has those. ISA was phased out near the late 90's.

The graphics card needs to cover the most used DOS video modes. There is a great table for that here: https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/ . As you can see cards from S3, nvidia and 3dfx are pretty compatible with DOS. If you also want to play late 90's 3d games or even early 2000s, the s3 cards (they use the PCI slot) will not be powerful enough. It's better to pick a card that uses the AGP slot, like the Voodoo3, 4 or 5. Those cards are very expensive at the moment, so you're best of with an nvidia GeForce card. Geforce 2, 3,4 or even later models. Check that table for reference.

The Voodoo cards are often mentioned because of the Glide rendering that they offer. Back in the late 90's there were a few games that would ONLY run in Glide mode, so you'd need a Voodoo card to play them. Most games also feature Direct3D or OpenGL, which are present on most AGP videocards. So you don't really NEED a Voodoo card to play the games you mentioned.

So if you want the broadest range, from say 1993 to 2003, pick a motherboard that has AGP and ISA. That would put you at a Pentium 3, which needs a Socket 370 motherboard. The Pentium 3 has variants from 500 to 1400 Mhz. If you go the AMD route then you'd be off good with a Athlon (or Athlon Thunderbird) or Duron processor. The Duron was the low-cost variant of the Athlon. This requires either a Slot A or a Socket A motherboard, depending on the exact model of processor. As long as it still has an ISA slot for reasons mentioned above.

People have probably mentioned that DOS games can be speed sensitive (they would run too fast if you have a powerful processor). This is true, but mostly for early DOS titles. And even then those can still run at the correct speeds if they weren't programmed in a certain way. Most DOS games from the mid 90s will still play perfectly fine. The ones you mentioned will run without any issues even on fast processors.

Hope this helps a bit 😀

Thanks, that all makes sense, I think most of the games I want to play are between 1990 and 2000 so it seems like I should be ok with those.

I'm going to have to have a study on parts and make a list, the hardest part now is budget and getting the parts.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-05-22, 08:05:

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:52:

Bit more info is that I'd like to run games from half life, Dino crisis, tomb raider but also a lot of dos games like Duke nukem, redneck rampage and, Sierra and Lucas arts titles.

Would like to build something that can handle later games nicely but still play dos games.

That can be tricky. While most later DOS games such as Duke3D and Tomb Raider run fine on a fast system, some older games are speed sensitive and need a slower CPU.

To summarize, if your system is good enough to run Half-Life and Unreal Tournament at 60 FPS, it's probably too fast for older DOS games. This can be somewhat remedied with slowdown utilities, but results may vary depending on your hardware.

Sam and max and Indiana Jones are on that list 😭.

Would this be any good?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pentium-4-Windows- … 4.m46890.l49286

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:29:

Would this be any good?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pentium-4-Windows- … 4.m46890.l49286

Could be, if that onboard soundcard has good DOS compatibility. You could ask the seller what brand or chip manufacturer the soundcard is from. But chances are that it won't work properly.

Since it's a pentium 4, it'll probably not have an ISA slot, so that would make it a little harder to switch it if the onboard sound chip ends up sucking.

There are some PCI slot soundcards that have some DOS compatibility but that's quite the gamble. More info here: Recommend a PCI Sound Card for DOS

That GeForce FX soundcard also troubles me. It's likely it's a fx 5200.. which is widely known to be a horrible piece of garbage, 🤣

So, I'd say no to this pc. Also because of the price. Ebay prices are often way too high. You can still pick up these systems for quite little money through local ads or thrift stores. I was given a pentium 4 system for free last year from someone who was cleaning out the attic. No reason to pay 100 pounds for this.

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:29:

Would this be any good?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pentium-4-Windows- … 4.m46890.l49286

A custom PC without specs nor even pictures of the machine? I´d say NO because this seller has provided so little information, it´s almost insulting 😁

As for recommending a solution, describe a bit more specifically what you´re looking for your machine: do you want high-performance, and stability so that you can play games up to ~2003 without hiccups (Pentium 4, GF4, etc.)? Or do you want a machine that´s more period-correct with ISA slots and so on?

khyypio wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:50:

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:29:

Would this be any good?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pentium-4-Windows- … 4.m46890.l49286

A custom PC without specs nor even pictures of the machine? I´d say NO because this seller has provided so little information, it´s almost insulting 😁

As for recommending a solution, describe a bit more specifically what you´re looking for your machine: do you want high-performance, and stability so that you can play games up to ~2003 without hiccups (Pentium 4, GF4, etc.)? Or do you want a machine that´s more period-correct with ISA slots and so on?

Looking for something that would be able to run games from 1990 to 2000 without too many problems, whether it be dos games or Windows games. It doesn't have to be super fast, just capable of running everything well.

I'd go with an super socket 7 board with isa and agp slot. I like the same games and that's what I got myself.

Maybe half life is too demanding, I'm not sure, but my 500 MHz AMD k6-2+ runs Drakan just fine and I can play Indiana Jones at the same pc. But you I have to slow it down to 200 MHz to play Indiana Jones or there is no sound, just noise.

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:55:

khyypio wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:50:

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:29:

Would this be any good?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pentium-4-Windows- … 4.m46890.l49286

A custom PC without specs nor even pictures of the machine? I´d say NO because this seller has provided so little information, it´s almost insulting 😁

As for recommending a solution, describe a bit more specifically what you´re looking for your machine: do you want high-performance, and stability so that you can play games up to ~2003 without hiccups (Pentium 4, GF4, etc.)? Or do you want a machine that´s more period-correct with ISA slots and so on?

Looking for something that would be able to run games from 1990 to 2000 without too many problems, whether it be dos games or Windows games. It doesn't have to be super fast, just capable of running everything well.

These all-around machines are quite tricky, especially for DOS games. I´m assuming you´re looking for cost-effective and stable machine, rather than period-correct since those parts are being effectively hoarded away by ebay-bloodsuckers. So, using basic XP-era parts is an excellent to build a high-end Win98 machine. With such a machine, you can play certain DOS games as they are and for the trickier DOS games you can use Dosbox 0.70 and ScummVM 2.1.0., which are the latest that support Windows 98. I think you can even use a Glide wrapper with such a powerful machine.

The latest official version of dosbox and svn works fine on 9x

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:55:

Hi, I've not heard of glide. […]
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mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-21, 18:42:

Hi, and welcome to the forum! To give the best recommendation if might help if you mention the games you want to play. […]
Show full quote

Hi, and welcome to the forum! To give the best recommendation if might help if you mention the games you want to play.

Are you aware of the glide api? How do you feel about glide emulation?

Do you have any ambitions to run DOS games?

Do you have any interest in later windows 98/XP era of games?

Hi, I've not heard of glide.

There are a lot of dos games I want to play too like Sierra titles and Lucas arts adventures, and FPS of the time. Also some of the more demanding games like half life and some into the early 2000s if possible?

I looked into first at building a Windows XP gaming machine but as far as I've read it's then harder to run older games in the DOS era.

Glide is a proprietary API used by 3dfx. There are a small minority of games that let you choose either between software renderer or glide, with glide offering some advantages like better performance (maybe) and texture filtering. Honestly, I think that software rendering on a powerful CPU (like P3 or later) is 90% as good and if you are trying to save money.

If the game runs in windows you can use a piece of software called "nglide", which translates glide API calls to directx API calls. This requires a direct X 9 card or newer - AKA the nvidia FX series or later, or the ATI Radeon 9000 series or later.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the DOS + late windows 98 machine is the most difficult, and often the most expensive type of machine to pull off. There are ways you can do it and stay within a reasonable price range but there will be some compromises or extra work on your part to set everything up.

When it comes to DOS games, you have two options. The first is you run DOS games in pure DOS mode, which windows 98 and windows 95 support. Basically you will go to start -> restart in MS Dos mode and be in real, honest to goodness DOS. This pretty much requires an ISA sound card in order to do properly. When it comes to sound, the DOS landscape is a confusing mess, but you can simplify things for yourself a lot if you go that route.

The other option is to run all of your DOS games in a DOS window within windows 98. Not all DOS games are going to be happy this way, but a lot of the ones you are probably going to want to play will do alright. One advantage of this approach is that windows, with an appropriate driver for your sound card, will provide you sound blaster emulation. You can buy much cheaper PCI sound cards geared for windows and run the occasional DOS game that way. Note that in a dos window you won't get FM music, and not all games are going to cooperate.

Something else to note about DOS games, especially older DOS titles is that how fast your processor is can have an effect on how the games perform. For example, some games will have distorted music, maybe run too fast, refuse to start at all, or other issues. This is a whole other can of worms, and the best platforms that provide the most flexibility in how fast you run your machine are some of the most expensive and most time consuming to setup.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

With all of that said, there is a setup I can recommend that is compatible, high performance, and speed flexible enough depending on how you use it.

Socket 370 Board with Intel 440bx chipset
1ghz Coppermine CPU
256mb PC 133 memory
Nvidia MX 440 graphics card or Quadro FX 1000/2000
ESS 1868f sound card (for DOS)
Sound Blaster Live! sound card (for windows)
Just about any modern power supply with 20AM on the 5v rails (most of them)
Your choice of SSD (128gb or smaller) + IDE to SATA adapter

I recommend socket 370 as your platform, and in particular I recommend the intel 440bx chipset. It is well regarded for stability and for how well supported it is in software. If you can't find or afford a board by that description, any socket 370 board with an ISA slot is a good choice.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards

For a processor, that is easy, I recommend a Pentium 3 Coppermine 1ghz model. You can find them for about 5$ USD on ebay and they are more than fast enough.

For memory, windows 98 has trouble with more than 512mb of memory. Ideally you would buy 128mb or 256mb DIMMS of PC 133, but if you can't find anything other than PC 100, there is a good chance most of those PC 100 kits will also run at 133mhz.

Next is your video card, and there are a lot of options. You can spend a lot of money on a video card here, and I don't recommend that you do. If you go with a socket 370 system you need to make sure you choose a video card that is either universal AGP or AGP 3.3v. The video card I recommend is the Nvidia MX 440 which can typically be found for between 20$-30$ USD. Another good option is the FX 5200 or FX 5500 which are a bit faster but also typically more expensive. They support directx 9 which opens up the possibility of decent glide emulation. Finally, for a high performance option, I recently bought an FX Quadro 1000 graphics card for 50$ USD which is quite fast and quite worth it at this price point, but similar quadro card and FX card are generally more expensive and likely not worth it.

Next up is sound cards, and this is easily the hardest part. There is a whole world of possibilities there, but to keep it simple and cheap I recommend the ES1868f. It has nearly perfect sound blaster pro compatability (good) and offers ESS sound for the games that support it as well. It is cheap, easy to find, and generally good quality.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ess-audiodrive-es1868.html

While you can use the ESS card in windows I wouldn't recommend it. You want a second sound card for your windows games. An easy recommendation is the Sound Blaster Live!. They are cheap, sound pretty good, and are very compatible with windows 98. They also support EAX, of course, which is great for late windows 98 era games.

One last note, as if you weren't confused and overwhelmed enough, there is some software you will want to grab and learn how to use. This software will help you slow down your 1ghz copper mine CPU so you can run more speed sensitive DOS software. Using one or a combination of these tools, you should be able to get at least most DOS software working.

SetMul
SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86

Throttle
http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/

Mo'Slo
http://www.hpaa.com/moslo/

You will have more questions, feel free to ask 😀. Make another thread when you are ready to tackle midi 😁

If it's just about the games, most of the Glide games of that era work on Windows XP with nGlide, 32-bit color and all the bells and whistles. (You may need GOG installer.)
For sourcing period correct parts, I recommend local eBay (ebay.de for example) or Amibay forum. Much better prices. Basically, good 440BX slot-1 board (sometimes with CPU) can be found for 20-40€. GeForce 2 GTS or MX460 under 20€. You can use Revolut for payment (bank transfer of PayPal) and/or Mailboxde.com service to forward packages to you.
I certainly wouldn't go overboard with something like GeForce 6800, unles it's for nGlide. It's not period correct for '98 and is all around crappy product, even on XP, with games being "broken" depending on the driver. There's no one driver to run it all.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-22, 17:27:

I recommend socket 370 as your platform, and in particular I recommend the intel 440bx chipset. It is well regarded for stability and for how well supported it is in software. If you can't find or afford a board by that description, any socket 370 board with an ISA slot is a good choice.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards

Isn't S370 with i440BX pretty rare though? In that wiki link, only 9 are listed and even those are pretty hard to come by on eBay.

enaiel wrote on 2021-05-22, 21:55:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-22, 17:27:

I recommend socket 370 as your platform, and in particular I recommend the intel 440bx chipset. It is well regarded for stability and for how well supported it is in software. If you can't find or afford a board by that description, any socket 370 board with an ISA slot is a good choice.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards

Isn't S370 with i440BX pretty rare though? In that wiki link, only 9 are listed and even those are pretty hard to come by on eBay.

That's not a very exhaustive list, plus you can always use a Slocket adapter to allow slot1 440 boards to work with socket 370 CPUs.

Preferably 100Mhz FSB Coppermines for slocket.

Slot 1s with 440BX are more common but Slockets for Coppermines are also hard to come by on eBay 🙁

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:09:

What I still stand by: not installing DX9 on Win98. It is meant for Win2k/XP and can be problematic on Win98.

For sure, there may be circumstances where you prefer DX7 or DX8 over DX9 - but a generalization is wrong! If you want to play DX9 games (w/o fallback) on Win9x, you need a DX9 card and the DX9 runtimes, which i can't remember having any serious issue with.

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:55:

Looking for something that would be able to run games from 1990 to 2000 without too many problems, whether it be dos games or Windows games. It doesn't have to be super fast, just capable of running everything well.

Maybe the best compromise for your intention is an early socket A board with VIA KT133(A) chipset, one ISA slot (if you need an ISA sound card, else forget the ISA slot), an fast Athlon (XP) or Duron, a GF4200/Radeon 7500 (or something like that) and 256-512 MB RAM.

But don't forget to get a well supported motherboard, with this you have already won half the battle.

Joakim wrote on 2021-05-22, 10:17:

Maybe half life is too demanding...

Depends on wether he only wants to play singleplayer or also multiplayer or even with bots. The last two require a more powerful setup, especially if you want to play with 60+ fps (which I really recommend - I was a hardcore HLDM [Half-Life Deathmatch] player myself in the early 00s).

kind regards
soggi

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 09:55:

Looking for something that would be able to run games from 1990 to 2000 without too many problems, whether it be dos games or Windows games. It doesn't have to be super fast, just capable of running everything well.

Batmansquarepants, there are a lot of people on this forum with excellent expertise who are giving you lots of details and opinions. But I think maybe it hasn't been clearly spelt out for you: It is very difficult to build a system that runs 1990 DOS games, 2000 Windows games, and everything in between, well. And it is basically impossible to do so without spending a lot of money.

Here's why:

• During the 1990's technology was advancing extremely rapidly. Especially between 1995-2000, computer parts could double in speed each year and add new capabilities that didn't exist a couple years prior. For this reason, the computers people were using for games in 1999 were very different from those used in 1995 which were very different from those used in 1991.
• Old games from the early 1990s assumed computers were very slow, and weren't programmed to play properly on fast computers. The game developers basically didn't think computers would ever become 4x, 10x, faster than what was around at the time. If you get a mid-90's computer you might be able to 'underclock' it to be slow enough to run these games at the correct speed. If you get a late 90's computer it might not be possible to slow it down enough.
• Computer parts from the mid-late 1990's dropped support for a lot of old features. In particular sound cards that work well in Windows 98 often don't work well in DOS. Graphics cards that are good for 3D games in Windows 98 are often not good for DOS games. Is it possible to find special parts that work well for a good selection of DOS and Windows games? YES! But they are rare, they are sought after, and they are expensive!
• Many old computer parts have been destroyed or thrown away. What remains is sought after by collectors and is expensive. This is particularly true for DOS hardware, and is also becoming true for Windows 95/98 era hardware (Pentium III and older). This is why if you find a cheap old PC it will probably be a Pentium 4 (which will probably run Windows 98 okay but will not be good for DOS games).

So in short, there are a few more realistic suggestions that several others here have mentioned:

1. Build two retro computers: one for DOS and one for Windows 98, and don't expect either one to play games from the other era
2. Build a period-correct Windows 98 computer (Pentium III, Pentium II, AMD K6x, Voodoo graphics, multiple sound cards, etc) but this will be somewhat expensive and still might not play all the DOS games you want to play in pure DOS mode
3. Build only a fast affordable Windows 98 computer using newer hardware that's NOT period-correct (Maybe Pentium 4, maybe Athlon 64) so that it runs the games well. This computer might play some DOS games in the Windows 98 DOS prompt, which is NOT pure DOS. You can also emulate DOS on a modern computer (DOSbox, PCEm, etc)

My personal suggestion is to start with Option 3 and if you change your mind you can always build more expensive stuff later...

I'd hate to see you spend a lot of money, be dissatisfied, spend more money, and only then realize your goal wasn't realistic.

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-22, 06:52:

Bit more info is that I'd like to run games from half life, Dino crisis, tomb raider but also a lot of dos games like Duke nukem, redneck rampage and, Sierra and Lucas arts titles.

Are you familiar with ScummVM? ScummVM runs practically anywhere and will play the old Sierra and Lucasarts games flawlessly. There is very little to be gained from running these on an original Windows 98 machine instead.