Great idea. Really nice, and looking forward to read about it.

For the hardware..... Try to match as much as possible, in order to get it as era-correct as possible.
8088's should of course have CGA or EGA if possible and stuff like K6-III's should have something like V2-SLI or V3.
And you could make a couple of machines that actually show what hardware people used back in a specific year.
With that I am thinking about building one or two machines with the exact hardware people in you'r area used in a specific year.
This way, people can experience whatever slowdown people might have experienced in that year, because of the hardware price.

Install the correct operating system and software (drivers/games/programs) according to the correct year stamped on the hardware.
Then manage the cables and tidy up some loose end's. Stuff as cleaning the outside of the machines and hardware.
Make some "menu-cards" like the ones you see on the table of an restaurant/bistro that explains the stuff.
Don't forget to manage the right cabeling and alternatively you could make a "real-late-90's" office/home-desk with a computer.

Thanks. I will be definitely writing a report once things are in motion 😀

Most of the people visiting the expo will most probably be high-school students and I don't believe being 100% period correct will be of much concern to this lot. I'm aiming more at demonstrating old operating systems on genuine hardware. Windows 95, 98, ME and 2000 all looks very similar to each other and I'm not sure whether or not people would notice the difference. That's why I don't know which one of them I should demo 😀

Here's what I have so far. I'm also setting up Windows 1.0 and Windows 3.1 to finish off the selection. What do you guys think?

#1 DOS 3.30
Processor: Sony V20 8MHz
Motherboard: PC XT generic clone
RAM: 640KB
Hard drive: 20MB
Video card: Hercules clone
Sound card: PC Speaker
Network: nothing yet

#2 DOS 6.22/Windows 3.11
386 something not yet spec'd

#3 Windows 98
Processor: AMD K6-2+ 550ACZ
Motherboard: ASUS P5A-B
RAM: 128MB
Hard drive: 40GB hard drive
Video card: GeForce 2 MX400
Video card #2: Voodoo 2 12MB SLI
Sound card: Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Network: I don't remember

#4 Windows 2000
Processor: Celeron 333MHz
Motherboard: Intel BI440ZX
RAM: 256MB
Hard drive: 4GB Fujitsu
Video card: Ati Mach64 PCI
Sound card: on-board
Network: Intel PRO/100

#5 Windows XP
Processor: Celeron 1300MHz
Motherboard: ASUS TUSI-M
RAM: 768MB
Hard drive: 40GB Maxtor
Video card: on-board
Sound card: on-board
Network: nothing yet

I would add in there a 486/Pentium machine for late DOS stuff, running some cool demos from that era, to round it off.

Otherwise it looks great! Sure hope it goes well. When is the expo?

On the Dos 3.3 machine id also install Windows 1.1, just for the history that also shows, Windows at the start.

The expo is planned to last up to three weeks from October 10th until the end of the month.

Thanks, I was considering using #1 for Windows seeing the low hardware requirements. It will also be the only DOS machine to feature Internet access via mTCP 😀

I want to make this expo more interesting and theme oriented. At least one day I would like to make a game day so I'll be compiling a short list of games that will be demonstrated:

Tetris
Prince of Persia
Prehistorik
Flashback
Wolfenstein/Doom
Monkey Island
...

If time permits, I will also try to demonstrate how games progressed through the years by genre although this might be a bit too much 😉

As far as demos go, I'd really love to be able to show 8088mph but I haven't got a proper CGA card.

I will be showing other demos like Future Crew's Second Reality and Three Shades of Gray.

Half-Saint wrote:

Tetris Prince of Persia Prehistorik Flashback Wolfenstein/Doom Monkey Island […]
Show full quote

Tetris
Prince of Persia
Prehistorik
Flashback
Wolfenstein/Doom
Monkey Island

Don't forget classic platformers like Jazz Jackrabbit, Hocus Pocus, and, of course, Commander Keen. If you have Keen you should display some of the new Keen games being made (Atroxian Realm for example, or the unofficial Universe is Toast series) to show the new development being done for DOS 😀

How's it going so far?

The exhibition started on schedule and is now well underway. I already had to replace the 386 because it developed a bad battery and has some issues with HDD, the controller or both 😀 Also had to replace my Windows 2000 machine because of a bad SFF PSU which I don't have a replacement for.

So far so good. I still have to establish a network connection and hopefully that's it.

A few pictures (that's my son in the first pic):

Half-Saint wrote:

The exhibition started on schedule and is now well underway. I already had to replace the 386 because it developed a bad battery and has some issues with HDD, the controller or both 😀 Also had to replace my Windows 2000 machine because of a bad SFF PSU which I don't have a replacement for.

So far so good. I still have to establish a network connection and hopefully that's it.

Looks like you have some nice pieces there.

Half-Saint wrote:

A few pictures (that's my son in the first pic):

He looks like he's of an age to be a handfull. Is the blond hair natural, or has he gone super saiyan? 🤣

Pretty cool that you're able to put this much time into the hobby! I think it's healthy for people to have an understanding of where home computing really started. It's sometimes easy to forget, I think.

Yeah, lots of nice stuff 😀

I used to be blond as a child but my hair grew darker with years. Hopefully he'll remain blond but I'm not counting on it.

As for the exhibition, I'll be making more photos the next time I'm there. Still have to do a guided tour for the museum staff 😀

The guided tour for museum staff is scheduled for next week. Hope I can prepare some interesting demos in time.

On a more somber note, I must say that I was and still am quite disappointed by how little input/feedback I got from Vogons. I expected much more enthusiasm from a retro oriented community such as this one.

Half-Saint wrote:

On a more somber note, I must say that I was and still am quite disappointed by how little input/feedback I got from Vogons. I expected much more enthusiasm from a retro oriented community such as this one.

Don't get discouraged! I think this exhibition was a great idea, and from the pictures it looks like a lot of care was put into it! I would definitely pay a visit if I wasn't on the other side of the world 🤣

Good luck with the rest of the exhibition and congrats for the final result! 😀

Half-Saint I think your idea is great and I have tons of respect for that exhibition 😀
Really neat, for some people there it probably was the first time encountering retro computers!

Have computers been very common in slowenia in the 90s?