I kind of care for period correctness, yet at the same time I realize that it’s kind of impossible to make a truly period correct case for several reasons:

- date of announcement != availability. Case in point: my latest build with the first ATX motherboard. Announced in 1995, made it to the market in 1996 and was bought by the original owner in late 1997;
- even if something was available in any given year doesn’t mean it was mainstream. Case in point: Pentium III SL4KL. 1000 MHz, Slot 1, 100 MHz FSB. Released in March 2000 when you also had Socket 370 Pentiums, Slot 2 Xeons, and Pentium 4 would be released later that same year. SL4KL was basically an upgrade part for old servers/workstations — most home users didn’t even realize there was such a fast CPU in a SECC package. So while pretty cool it’s definitely not a typical 2000 CPU;
- the nature of PCs. Real computers got upgraded all the time. Not all upgrades made sense;
- many parts were just prohibitively expensive and wouldn’t be mentioned even for magazines’ “dream PC configurations”.

In the end I want my builds to be “interesting”. That means having a retro look and using unusual parts. It’s tricky — I’m mostly into late 90s ATX computers. But I do believe you can even make a Pentium 4 build interesting that way.

period correct to me just means a configuration one would have reasonably been able to build at that time, not the most recent hardware from that period, though also not using anything long outdated by then.

It seems that a lot of people here start out to build one retro computer and before you know what happened you are a hoarder, buried in old computers and stuff. But this is no different than many other hobbies where people get carried away and accumulate too much stuff. As for period correct I figure no one cares what I put in an old computer anyway so I just concentrate on making myself happy. It's not like anybody else really cares about my computers or what I do with them. As long as my hobbies don't affect my real life I don't worry too much. Do what makes you happy--life is short

what I (and many others here I'm sure) particularly enjoy is taking a given platform and maxing it out

like see what the best 286, 386, etc. can do - even if it means using parts that came out years after the CPU

Since everyone is sharing their personal views, I may as well I suppose.

I approach the matter in two ways, because there are two different kinds of builds I do.

One is the (mostly) time accurate builds I have in my signature. These are made to run software from a (usually) three year period and tend to have the creme de la creme hardware from the last year of this era. I build these, then move them to storage. I will keep them there until 2040 or so. Basically they are my retirement project; I will (presumably, considerimg I'm alive by then) have all the time in the world to enjoy the hardware and games of my youth on authentic equipment. Yet, even with these I take liberties. For one, while I try to be faithful with the media type (CD-ROM vs CD-RW vs DVD-ROM vs DVD-RW depending on era) I do not try to find the exact optical drives of the time (52x CD-ROM in a 486 for example). For another, I do not bother with using authentic Hard Drives; I often go with the maximum capacity that the system supports so I can have the ISOs and whatnot stored on the PC itself, and if the PC supports 8GB or less, that means it's something I will use for MS-DOS at most, and it gets a CF-IDE adapter. Lastly, I take liberties with using hardware from a year beyond the target date when there is a logical upgrade path for the system that will greatly help it play the games of its period. A Voodoo card for my Pentium 133, an X1950PRO AGP for my Socket 754, a GeForce 4 for my Tualatin etc.

The other is the fuck-it bonkers builds I have that I built for a specific reason and actually use. These can be things like a 486DX4 on a PCI bus with a Radeon 7000 because I want to capture through DVI or S-Video, or a Voodoo 3 system with a Duron 1300 and multiple soundcards from an Adlib to a Santa Cruz because I want to try and record multiple things on it.

And I love either approach.

I suggest you don't get stuck up about one true way of doing things and miss out. The moment you let other people tell you you are having 'wrong fun' is the moment the fun goes out of a hobby.

Sartre was right. "L'enfer, c'est les autres." You do you.

ole smoky2 wrote:

It seems that a lot of people here start out to build one retro computer and before you know what happened

🤣 yep. wanted to build a dos/win98 socket 7 computer but then ended up with multiple P3s and boards, athlon xps, a P4, now plans for a beasty XP machine with spare parts i had used with a previous win7 daily driver pc. was thinking of merging the role of the XP/P4 but i like lots of hardware and tinkering.

as for time accuracy i dont -really- care, but its always nice to see something that "fits". i was running my socket 7 in a scuffed ATX case that came from the P4 mentioned above. then i found a celeron 400 pc in a nice AT case that i now put the socket 7 stuff in. certainly gives it some identity as the case just screams "i'm from the mid-late 90s, lets play DOS games!" now. it still has a huge compact flash card, more ram than anyone could afford and also 2 sound cards from different "eras" as well as a DVD drive but at heart it's the cpu/mobo/gpu that matters the most to me. we're doing this for gaming!

foil_fresh wrote:

but at heart it's the cpu/mobo/gpu that matters the most to me. we're doing this for gaming!

yep, that's pretty much what does it for me, maybe also add sound card to that, but I don't plan to use spinning disks or "period accurate" power supplies in any of the machines I will use more often ^^

One more thing came to mind. To me period correctness doesn't mean I'm limited to the average HW of the time or what I could've bought then. If something was available (even with a ridiculous price) then it's fair game. Now you can find these high valued items for pennies, or even if they are expensive they usually go for much less than what the cost was 20-30 years ago.

Isn't it weird though how you can get so attached to an old computer. when you step back and look at it you realize that you hardly ever use it but it just gives you a happy feeling just looking at it. my problem is I get this feeling about most all of them and usually regret it eventually when I do get rid of one. it is an obsessive hobby for sure.

sf78 wrote:

One more thing came to mind. To me period correctness doesn't mean I'm limited to the average HW of the time or what I could've bought then. If something was available (even with a ridiculous price) then it's fair game. Now you can find these high valued items for pennies, or even if they are expensive they usually go for much less than what the cost was 20-30 years ago.

I agree with that. As I've stated before I don't fret too much about period-correct, but even if I was going to I'd still hold the position that hardware being available to market makes it "correct" regardless of asking price.

A variation of "period correct" that I'd like to do is rebuild the x86 PCs my family had back in the 90s and experiment with them in various ways.

I'd like to rebuild our old 6x86 430VX from ~1997. Then I'd like to benchmark it and explore upgrade options that I never ended up doing. But that motherboard has some broken I/O issues now.

I'd also like to recreate our PCChips 486 from 1995 and see if it's possible to make it stable. But that motherboard is gone and I'd be insane to buy another one.

Finally I'd like to go back to our old 386SX, which had a soldered CPU that was painfully slow at about 6 months of age when games weren't written for 286s anymore. I'm curious if it could be overclocked. Maybe there's a jumper, or an oscillator that could be swapped out. Maybe it could have run fast enough to be decent.

GigAHerZ wrote:

I get a kick out of "architecture accuracy". […]
Show full quote

I get a kick out of "architecture accuracy".

I have 3 machines - a Am386DX-40 with ISA slots, 32MB of 30pin ram and 256kB cache, a Am486DX4-100 with ISA + VLB slots, 64MB of 72pin ram and 256kB cache and a Pentium MMX @ 266MHz with ISA + PCI slots and 256MB of SD-RAM.

What you might notice is that for example in case of ram it's ludicrous amount. Yet, i use the type of ram that is "architecture correct". I don't search VLB boards for 386 or pentium and i don't want to have PCI on my 486. Same goes with everything else. Top notch configuration, yet still using the architecture correct components.

This is what makes it exciting to me - the best possible configuration, that would have been achievable back in days when money was not limited. (Though, i'm not interested in specific workstation type of machines)

I agree with this idea. In the configs I build I usually always try to max them out with the fastest/highest amount of expensive components BUT compatible with that architecture/factory design. So I'd no put ipotethically a Pentium on a 386 socket (even if I'd understand and like to test something like that) or an AGP card on a PCI bridge on a ISA whatever... but if a board originally supported 64MB of ram on a 386 board why shouldn't use them all even if 16Mb on a 386 back then were already usually impossible to see around.
For the PCI in the 486 I'd not consider it a problem. If a chipset supported this feature back then even if it were out of time, it's still a architecture correct config in my opinion. Like SATA supported chipsets for Athlon XP boards or dual AGP/PCIEX for Socket 939.
And if this is the main/one of the only hobbies it's not about how expensive (beside when some components becomes so expensive it's really absurd) components are, it's more about the quest of finding it, installing it, testing it.

'Period correct' is extremely vague.
There's a lot of overlap between hardware and software for any given period.
My perception is that people using the term 'period correct' tend to err on the extremely unrealistic side: getting the absolute latest/most powerful hardware based on introduction dates they find on Wikipedia.
Not taking into account that generally it would take many months or even years for hardware to become widely available to consumers, or the fact that the cost would be prohibitive (like the 386 being introduced in 1985, but an early 386 PC costing more than a small car in 1986).

athlon-power wrote:

For me, I do enjoy the games, but I also enjoy the hardware and using the older software itself. I'm not sure why, though I have an idea. I'm not going to get into that because it's an incredibly long explanation encapsulating what is essentially my entire life story, something an old computer forum probably doesn't need nor want to hear.

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't join a community of retro hardware enthusiasts merely to ask for images of driver disks and suggestions on which Nvidia driver to use. It's a community of people with their own histories and tales, and I figure if you're not here to talk to and engage with others of similar interest, why aren't you just going to Wikipedia and Vogons Drivers instead? I.e., if you want to opine away, then by all means, opine away. To me, someone's psychology is far more interesting than yet another question about why a random Socket A board isn't willing to boot. I can adore my hardware alone. I'm here for the social aspect.

OK, to the question at hand...

badmojo wrote:

It gets hard to invent new excuses for building retro PCs after a while but I'm still managing it somehow because I enjoy the process (for the most part). I don't go overboard with the "period correct" thing but it adds some extra challenge and opportunity for obsessive pedantry. Contrived yes, but isn't that the case for all hobbies?

Well said. There's no challenge or sense of achievement by accepting whatever you found at the dump. The goal is up to you -- whatever makes it fun.

For me, I'm looking to accomplish a few things.

1) I want to re-experience the PCs I had when I was younger. This started out as a quest to get my first DIY build, a DX2/66, as it's the most memorable of all my old builds. It branched out from there, as these things do. Now, I have a similar facsimile to the AMD 386DX/33 that my dad brought home as our first family PC, my first OEM 486SX, my first DIY DX2, my old Pentium II, and so on. I have and do cheat, sometimes by way of circumstance but other times intentionally, when it feels right. (E.g., the family 386 clone is a hair smaller case in the same model line [only got so much room!] and is an AMD DX/40 because ... how cool is that?)

2) I also wanted to achieve some hardware goals I couldn't afford, or get ahold of, along the way. The PIII Tualatin 1.0GHz, for example. It was just too expensive to ever make any sense until it was obsolete. Now I have one, and I #%!$ love that box.

3) I want a place to showcase some of my favorite hardware. I adore my old AWE32, Live!, PAS16, Matrox Mystique, various Radeons, I found out (to my surprise) that I owned a Voodoo 5 AGP somehow... And who doesn't love VLB?!? I miss discrete controller cards and 3Com NICs. Got to have some 905C love in my collection.

Things have morphed along the way. I ended up wanting a representative of every generation of CPU (mostly because I was already so close it felt obligatory.) I wanted a way to enjoy the evolution of Sound Blaster cards - most of which I owned at some point, but some I didn't. Plus my foray into MediaVision hardware.

I recently decided I want a couple of my old builds to be accurate depictions of the hardware and software I had at the time:

sf78 wrote:

To me part of it was getting matching monitors and keyboards for the desktop. I only have a few IBM's and Canon's that I would consider "complete" and everything else is just a mixed back of whatever I can throw together.

My OEM 486SX, for example. I got the original KB and mouse. Using it feels like it did when I was in Jr. High. I would love to have the OG CRT, but the one I had was not a very noteworthy monitor, and is likely going to be difficult to source because nobody was hanging on to those out of love. Space and shipping costs are, of course, an issue as well. In the meantime, I found floppy images of the OEM DOS 5.0 it came with, and MS Works 3.0 (which it also came with), and VB 3.0 Pro (which I used a lot during that time). Works is terrible, as is Visual Basic in general, but these are integral parts of the experience to me, and that's the purpose this computer serves.

It causes a little consternation, though, because the goal for period authenticity throws a bit of a wrench in the neat timeline of escalating platform and sound card pairings I had. Not to mention, the family 386 had a Creative 2X CD-ROM, but the SCSI caddy-loading drive I had found for that build matches the aesthetic better. So I have to pick a compromise, and I've spent the weekend fretting about this to a point that's a little ridiculous even to me. 😉 But that's just part of the fun I guess.

There's a certain kind of joy to sitting down to a replica of your first computer, complete with the software you had access to at the time. I would not want to max these builds out -- in fact, I'm actually planning to rip out the CD-ROM I put in my 486SX, because I never had one in that build back then, and it feels right to have that limitation. I'm also considering keeping one build with PC speaker only, for the same reason. I mean, how many of us ever go back to enjoy the effort game devs put in to the single-tone soundtrack? For a while, that's all I had. It doesn't feel right to gloss over that experience entirely just because I can.

Anyway, this is far too long, and I apologize for the sea of words. I got caught up in the love of the hobby, and I'm going to roll with it, because I want that to happen for everyone here. So let's wrap up:

There's no obligation to define your thrill by someone else's yardstick. You have to figure out what captivates your own whimsy. Perhaps, if you don't have a reference PC of your own from that era to lust after, look up some old magazine ads and find one that you feel you would've wanted to buy back then. Imagine staring at it for hours while you saved up. Then go out and build it, piece for piece, with substitutions if you are so inclined, but there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of having that case, with that CPU, that sound card, and that optical drive. Put out saved searches and acquire the real deal one part at a time.

If you want a genuine period build, you can always pawn off your non-conforming parts to someone else. It may be their dream part, after all. IMO, it's perfectly OK to obsess over details. I'm happy to put up with a 400MB hard drive on a computer that can't ID a 1GB drive, because I can always hop on over to my P4 and have 100GB of space to play with. The limitation is what makes it unique and interesting. Likewise, I can't stand seeing a 52X drive in a 486 myself, but if your dream PC is one you had for ten years and upgraded along the way with parts that span a range that doesn't even make sense, then get to it! Or, just live with it until you can find the right part.

SirNickity wrote:

There's a certain kind of joy to sitting down to a replica of your first computer, complete with the software you had access to at the time. I would not want to max these builds out -- in fact, I'm actually planning to rip out the CD-ROM I put in my 486SX, because I never had one in that build back then, and it feels right to have that limitation. I'm also considering keeping one build with PC speaker only, for the same reason. I mean, how many of us ever go back to enjoy the effort game devs put in to the single-tone soundtrack? For a while, that's all I had. It doesn't feel right to gloss over that experience entirely just because I can.

Anyway, this is far too long, and I apologize for the sea of words. I got caught up in the love of the hobby, and I'm going to roll with it, because I want that to happen for everyone here.

I understand your point of view, also for the time spent on the CD-ROM choice..so much time I spent trying to decide which AGP video card or CPU version had to put as last component before installing the o.s. 🤣
For example I've got only usually one computer built at time and lately unfortunately I've not any 386/486 builds anymore (I will begin again when I'll find a good case, then the mainboard etc..), I've just built a Socket 775 (ok not that old), and couldn't decide if to use the Q6600 or the E8600 cpu and ended up with the last but I'm sure the next will be the Pentium 4 661 being the (almost) fastest most advanced Pentium4 cpu core existing.
So I usually can be interested by the strangest config or the rare components, or the fastest, or the slowest..

One thing anyway to reason about is the incredible amount of knowledge this forum/users contains, in a world of mass consumer-users that buy things most probably not even knowing what's inside them or for ex. what was an AGP card and how incredibly different on all the possible aspects, even philosophically, were the 90's computer evolution. My only regret is that in the 80's I only had few memories of computer experiences, probably just the Commodore 64, the 386 computer I had was already in the early 90's.

You know, one thing I lament about these days is how much of that tribal knowledge is getting lost. The 90s weren't that long ago, but it was before the Internet had hit mainstream, and the workforce in their prime then is starting to retire. Think about it.. how many people actually know how a floppy drive works? I've gotten curious about this lately -- I've heard for decades about MFM and things like that, but what is the actual mode of operation between a floppy drive and a controller? I realized I didn't even know for a fact whether it is an 8-bit digital bus, an analog signal interpreted by the controller, or what? Some of that kind of detail is hard to find, because Google is too young to have any knowledge of it. Same with, e.g., programming for DOS / Win 3.x.

I know it's hardly a travesty if civilization loses its ability to code real mode drivers for obsolete OSes, and manufacture DIY disk controllers for media that is becoming more and more scarce on planet Earth. But there will always be a population of folks who are curious about that stuff, and I like to see if being preserved for those of us.

I totally get the *appeal* of an 'era appropriate' build. Either to focus on a specific slice of time or to build the computer you WISHED you had when it was beyond your means at that time and you were left running the coolest game at 32fps.

On the other hand, I've been having a lot of fun trying to go overkill with much later, cheaper parts, and creating a machine that runs better than it ever should have in the era. This past weekend I built my Win9X machine, with it running WinME for now:

CPU: Celeron 450 2.2ghz
Mobo: Asrock 775i65G R2.0
RAM 2x512mb 800mhz DDR
GPU: AGP Radeon X800 GL
SSD: 120GB Kingston A400 SATA SSD.
ODD: OEM LG DVDRAM SATA Drive.
PSU: Corsair CX450M

I even put it in a cheap but 'cool looking' glass windowed Deepcool mATX case.

This machine boots WinME so fast I rarely see the splash screen while the OS starts. It goes from POST screen, to black, to the desktop. It's kinda AMAZING. Absolutely no 9X machine I ran back in the day ran this well, but this is the kind of experience I *wish* I had back then. It's rather awe inspiring seeing WinME have better resources than it was ever designed around.

SirNickity wrote:

You know, one thing I lament about these days is how much of that tribal knowledge is getting lost. The 90s weren't that long ago, but it was before the Internet had hit mainstream, and the workforce in their prime then is starting to retire. Think about it.. how many people actually know how a floppy drive works? I've gotten curious about this lately -- I've heard for decades about MFM and things like that, but what is the actual mode of operation between a floppy drive and a controller? I realized I didn't even know for a fact whether it is an 8-bit digital bus, an analog signal interpreted by the controller, or what? Some of that kind of detail is hard to find, because Google is too young to have any knowledge of it. Same with, e.g., programming for DOS / Win 3.x.

I know it's hardly a travesty if civilization loses its ability to code real mode drivers for obsolete OSes, and manufacture DIY disk controllers for media that is becoming more and more scarce on planet Earth. But there will always be a population of folks who are curious about that stuff, and I like to see if being preserved for those of us.

I've seen that subject come up in the context of 1980s arcade games.
There's a youtube channel I watch (John's Arcade) where he was working on a "Firefox" game. That game uses a specific Philips Laserdisc player, and to my understanding you can't just swap any random player into it.
He sent the original Laserdisc player off to a retired guy in Europe who used to work for the company on those types of players. Unfortunately the man was apparently getting elderly and had some serious personal distractions that kept him from dedicating enough time and energy to ever finish repairing it. He did apparently email some updates on his troubleshooting process, which got read aloud on a podcast. That player is apparently a very complicated model, and the issues with it were far from trivial. I think it's safe to say there aren't many people on this earth in the generation beneath him who would be able to replace his knowledge and experience with those players. That player will probably never get repaired, and it's basically an alien artifact at this point that almost nobody knows how to fix.
The game got retrofitted with some modern Flash device that replaces the Laserdisc. It works, but it's not the way it was built in the early 80s.

There was a more successful episode where he was working on a Journey arcade cabinet. That game includes a tape player which plays music from the band at a particular point in the game. The circuit board that controls this had failed - I think it worked partially but was causing popping noises or some such thing. I got the impression that this is common - the game itself is rare, and properly working ones are even more rare.
"John" found the PCB schematic on the internet (thankfully it's out there). After struggling to figure out the problem himself, he found the name of the board's original designer on the schematic and managed to track him down somewhere on the internet. Thankfully the guy was willing and able to offer some suggestions (I imagine he was flattered and surprised that anybody cared about this thing he worked on in his youth). They troubleshooted the problem through email and got it working again 100%. Again, there aren't likely to be many people in the younger generation who would possess the knowledge that the original designer does.

SirNickity wrote:

You know, one thing I lament about these days is how much of that tribal knowledge is getting lost. The 90s weren't that long ago, but it was before the Internet had hit mainstream, and the workforce in their prime then is starting to retire. Think about it.. how many people actually know how a floppy drive works? I've gotten curious about this lately -- I've heard for decades about MFM and things like that, but what is the actual mode of operation between a floppy drive and a controller? I realized I didn't even know for a fact whether it is an 8-bit digital bus, an analog signal interpreted by the controller, or what? Some of that kind of detail is hard to find, because Google is too young to have any knowledge of it. Same with, e.g., programming for DOS / Win 3.x.

I know it's hardly a travesty if civilization loses its ability to code real mode drivers for obsolete OSes, and manufacture DIY disk controllers for media that is becoming more and more scarce on planet Earth. But there will always be a population of folks who are curious about that stuff, and I like to see if being preserved for those of us.

I understand the point. Still I think that in the 90's people using computers were generally more interested in how a computer worked and had anyway (maybe not at the floppy disk controller functioning level but) more knowledges of how a computer "worked" beside just like nowdays basically there were probably almost no people that could really explain how things worked at transistor level design let alone nowdays with components having billions of transistors.
But still at least between people I heard, friends, collegues, seems like most did have their own medium-level knowledges/passion around tech. Nowdays if we take the mobile tech for example probably the 70% of their users wouldn't know how their smartphone works even at the simplest logic level; like if there's and what is a system on a chip, a baseband, a gpu, ram, the type of display and its technology.. most would buy not even knowing what and why are buying it. "Is the phone getting slow after some months? Let's change it with a new one cause it's not fast anymore for the modern apps/internet." None asking why is slower when most in the 90's would have expected a new o.s. installation would have been needed or a component upgrade would have been possible. Also when people had to buy a computer, had to consider all the components list before choosing it, nowdays can you imagine people going to choose a phone depending on type of arm core architecture or the gpu capabilities.....?
And as said at that time no internet were available to know these things. I imagine the 80's were even better.

The older the architecture, I think the more difficult it will become to obtain all the "time-accuracy" hardware.
For example, old MFM hard drives are becoming more rare and, for this reason, I decided to build up a turbo XT (NEC V20), XT-IDE card with a Compact Flash connected to it and an 8-bit VGA card installed in it.
This was more of a fun project and I was not trying to be "time-accurate" in this instance.

On the other hand, I also like to build up hardware that was appropriate for that particular era (depending on availability of parts) and I therefore also have XT PC's with 20 MB Seagate MFM drives, 360 KB floppy drives and either CGA or MDA cards installed. Obtaining 83-key XT keyboards seems to be a problem but, I seem to have enough of the switchable XT/AT keyboards.