jheronimus wrote:

^^ Almost noone really builds truly "period-correct" machines. In most cases going "period-correct" means "let's get the top parts that were available in year X" and that is absolutely fine.

period-correct means period-correct i.e. did the thing exist or not

whether an "average" person could afford it at the time doesn't mean a damn thing, what is this, poor person simulator?

"Period correct means" whatever you want it to mean.

For people with nostalgia for their teens/student days, unless their surname was rich and famous or their parents funded whatever they wanted, that probably also implies a time when they did not have the cash available to buy the most expensive system available at the time. If you consider >90% of teenagers "poor", so be it, although I'd use different language. Your first car probably wasn't a brand-new sports car either...

Of course, others specifically want to create that dream system that was unobtainable back in the day, or a range of hardware where back then you had to choose. I may have had a GUS Max back then I was proud of, I certainly didn't have the GUS, AWE64 Gold, PAS16 and a slew of other cards, plus a few Roland and Yamaha MIDI modules and Wavetable cards (and the mixer+patchbay to hook them all up) that I have now. I also wasn't into soldering my own cards together back then. It's not all nostalgia 😉

Tbh regardless of available cash, just throwing money at a problem defeats half the challenge and enjoyment. Yes, back in the day you could get a great frame rate buying the P3-450 the day it appeared in the shops - but it was a damned sight more satisfying to equal that performance overclocking a Celeron 300A you paid a fraction of the price for. Same today - if you have money to burn, you can go to eBay and get all those perfect parts. I have a nice job in engineering so am hardly 'poor' - I could choose to do exactly that. But I get a lot more pleasure out of finding spending the time and effort to find gems in piles of unsorted junk, which also lets me spend my money on other things I enjoy.

I think that your period-correct Win98 "dream" build should consist of the following:

Slot1 motherboard based on a 440BX chipset;
600MHz PIII Katmai;
128 or 256MB of PC100 RAM;
Voodoo2 in SLI;
TNT2 Ultra or GeForce256;
10GB Quantum fireball HDD.
Any good quality sound card that doesn't load CPU too much.

Such build would easily run all those games you've mentioned with high "period-correct" frame rates 😉

"Period correct means" whatever you want it to mean.

It's a tricky question.

When I'm building a Socket 8 with 64+ MB of RAM, several ISA soundcards and a high-end solution for video/3D graphics, I'm quite hesitant to say "this is a period correct machine from 1996" — even if all the parts were available in 1996 or earlier. In 1996 I've been lucky to play on my father's 486DX2 laptop without any sound whatsoever, not to mention stuff like 3D graphics, network connectivity or a CD drive. A Pentium Pro is not even a "1996 high-end machine" because such systems were far more likely to be found working as servers and workstations. And when you factor in all the multimedia stuff, you get a machine that a 6-year old me would dream up after reading some ads or reviews in the magazines. It's just that really no one would have a gaming rig like that.

Did many people game on a 800MHz Slot 1 Coppermine in 1999? I don't think so. When I talk to people who bought computers at the time, many don't even realise that there were Slot 1 Pentiums faster that 500MHz. Faster chips were more of a cheap server/workstation territory, not something you would normally get for a home machine. I was actually gaming on a Pentium 2/233 with an Nvidia Vanta till 2002, I think.

There's nothing wrong with building ridiculously high-end stuff. I'm doing this for fun and I actually want to discover how games would look like if you had unlimited cash at the time. Same way I love adding fan-made patches that improve gaming experience — like adding speech to Secret of Monkey Island or playing Gabriel Knight 2 without having to swap a shit ton of CDs.

Is any of that historically correct? I'm not recreating a real experience of playing games in the 90s. I'm recreating a childhood that no one had — me included.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

how about Slot A?

Cewl stuff, but rare and pricy nowadays (mostly working motherboards). Not very flexible for older games though.

MWAHAHAHA... 😈 This is one reason I keep my Slot-A stuff. Quite a few years ago I also found 2 computers that somebody had set out to the curb for the trash. Both of them had Slot-A Thunderbird CPUs in them 😀

I've got a few working motherboards and a few other non-Thunderbird Slot-A CPUs as well.

That platform was the bomb back in the day. Buying lower clocked CPUs and taking of the heat spreader to find out what core was actually there. The 650Mhz core sold as 500Mhz was probably the most known but a lot of the other ones had higher speed validated cores than what they were sold as as well.

They were usually 100-150Mhz higher rated than what they were sold as.

jheronimus wrote:

It's a tricky question. […]
Show full quote

"Period correct means" whatever you want it to mean.

It's a tricky question.

When I'm building a Socket 8 with 64+ MB of RAM, several ISA soundcards and a high-end solution for video/3D graphics, I'm quite hesitant to say "this is a period correct machine from 1996" — even if all the parts were available in 1996 or earlier. In 1996 I've been lucky to play on my father's 486DX2 laptop without any sound whatsoever, not to mention stuff like 3D graphics, network connectivity or a CD drive. A Pentium Pro is not even a "1996 high-end machine" because such systems were far more likely to be found working as servers and workstations. And when you factor in all the multimedia stuff, you get a machine that a 6-year old me would dream up after reading some ads or reviews in the magazines. It's just that really no one would have a gaming rig like that.

Did many people game on a 800MHz Slot 1 Coppermine in 1999? I don't think so. When I talk to people who bought computers at the time, many don't even realise that there were Slot 1 Pentiums faster that 500MHz. Faster chips were more of a cheap server/workstation territory, not something you would normally get for a home machine. I was actually gaming on a Pentium 2/233 with an Nvidia Vanta till 2002, I think.

Is any of that historically correct? I'm not recreating a real experience of playing games in the 90s. I'm recreating a childhood that no one had — me included.

I was just a regular 18year old dude in 1996 and I played on the Pentium 166MHz (Asus P55TP4XE, 32MB RAM, 6,4GB HDD, Rage Pro PCI, next year upgraded by adding Voodoo 1) that me and my brother built by raising money working during summer.
In 2001 I played with my Celeron 566@850 running on Aopen AX6BC, early 2002 upgraded to Celeron 1100A running at 1466 and did the slocket mod myself. It was possible to use quite good hardware but obviously one had to set their priorities.

PIII@500 MHz with 256 MB RAM, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, and SB Live! is period accurate for a Windows 98 SE build I think.

Voodoo 3's came to public on summer of 1999 and Windows 98 SE on May of 1999.

I use a k6-3 build with the parts I mentioned for this period, but I will try the PIII at 500 MHz sometime.

I have a Celeron 1.4GHz Socket 370 running Windows 98SE and the Slot 1 that I have will not POST or beep with RAM installed, but without RAM, it beeps. Possible the CPU is shot, but, I am not giving up.

Also, it depends on the hardware, such as HDD capacity, CD drives, and so on. My 98SE build uses hardware from early-mid 2000's internally and externally.

Paadam wrote:

I was just a regular 18year old dude in 1996 and I played on the Pentium 166MHz (Asus P55TP4XE, 32MB RAM, 6,4GB HDD, Rage Pro PCI, next year upgraded by adding Voodoo 1) that me and my brother built by raising money working during summer.

It just so happens that I was reading through a lot of PC Magazine and Byte issues from 1995/1996 just yesterday 😀

Pentium 166 just dropped from 1000 USD to around 500 in Q31996, that's still about 800 USD accounted for inflation. 32 megs of RAM would be pretty significant for 1996, but not too outrageous. 6.4GB was a top size HDD available from Western Digital — even in 1997. 3D Rage Pro was also introduced in 1997 since it was the first ATI's chipset designed for AGP.

Until the middle of 1997 most users were buying the slow Pentium chips.
Also AM486DX4 were pretty common along with the AM5x86 chips during the 1995 - 1997 period.
Pentium and Pentium MMx prices were dropped significantly during the last months of 1997 as I can recall.

SSTV2 wrote:

I think that your period-correct Win98 "dream" build should consist of the following: […]
Show full quote

I think that your period-correct Win98 "dream" build should consist of the following:

Slot1 motherboard based on a 440BX chipset;
600MHz PIII Katmai;
128 or 256MB of PC100 RAM;
Voodoo2 in SLI;
TNT2 Ultra or GeForce256;
10GB Quantum fireball HDD.
Any good quality sound card that doesn't load CPU too much.

Such build would easily run all those games you've mentioned with high "period-correct" frame rates 😉

This right here. You took the words right out of my mouth. Add an SB Live or Aureal Vortex 2 + and you’re good. Plus you can easily add an OPL3 ISA card for DOS games.

Katmai500 wrote:

This right here. You took the words right out of my mouth. Add an SB Live or Aureal Vortex 2 + and you’re good. Plus you can easily add an OPL3 ISA card for DOS games.

SB Live! is very compatible with DOS. Tested by my self last summer during various tests with DOS games.

maxtherabbit wrote:

jheronimus wrote:

^^ Almost noone really builds truly "period-correct" machines. In most cases going "period-correct" means "let's get the top parts that were available in year X" and that is absolutely fine.

period-correct means period-correct i.e. did the thing exist or not

whether an "average" person could afford it at the time doesn't mean a damn thing, what is this, poor person simulator?

"Poor person simulator" might not be a bad idea for a game. 🤣 🤣 🤣

jheronimus wrote:

Paadam wrote:

I was just a regular 18year old dude in 1996 and I played on the Pentium 166MHz (Asus P55TP4XE, 32MB RAM, 6,4GB HDD, Rage Pro PCI, next year upgraded by adding Voodoo 1) that me and my brother built by raising money working during summer.

It just so happens that I was reading through a lot of PC Magazine and Byte issues from 1995/1996 just yesterday 😀

Pentium 166 just dropped from 1000 USD to around 500 in Q31996, that's still about 800 USD accounted for inflation. 32 megs of RAM would be pretty significant for 1996, but not too outrageous. 6.4GB was a top size HDD available from Western Digital — even in 1997. 3D Rage Pro was also introduced in 1997 since it was the first ATI's chipset designed for AGP.

You are correct. I went to the garage and checked the machine (still have it, though upgraded) and the original card was 3D Rage not Rage pro. We raised ~12 000 EEK (roughly around 1100 usd) during 2.5 months of work together for the computer and it was top nothc one. Until in early 1998 my friend bought Pentium II 350 and mobo with new BX chipset, that thing was crazy, just the CPU was 3600 EEK at that time.

Oh, I have this inverted case too. They sure didn't cut corners on thickness of metal parts.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

They sure didn't cut corners on thickness of metal parts.

no, but they cut fingers often enough 😉