I love a good 1997 build. Those poor little machines may have had the least staying power of any. You were stuck between a Pentium 233 MMX machine with probably a Riva 128 and an AWE64 with 32 MB of RAM that might retail with all the accoutrements for $2500. Or you could go big on a Pentium II 300 machine with a Riva 128 and a Voodoo with all the same accessories as the other machine for $4000. Which adjusted for inflation comes out closer to $4000 and $7000 in 2021 dollars.

And if you'd picked the Pentium 233 machine, it would be struggling with games inside a year. Unreal, Shogo, Blood 2 and Half-Life would all feel decidedly beyond the capabilities of that machine. Even Quake 2 which probably runs the best of all of them will be running around 15-20 fps if there is a lot of action. All the others will frequently be single digit framerates. And even worse, at the time the Riva 128 didn't have OpenGL drivers, and Unreal only supported Voodoo! I first played both those games in software mode, at 320x240!

A 1997 machine, especially on the socket 7 platform, definitely feels like a machine that is looking backwards. Which can have a charm in it's own way.

Nice system 😀 430TX is such a great chipset for the socket 7 platform. I've also paired my socket 7 with a 233 MMX.

What kind of 1997 games are you planning to play on this (if any)? 😀 The Curse of Monkey Island comes to mind.

Was gonna talk about this when I finish the machine (so busy with work these days). I'd like to try out all 1997 pc games on it first and foremost, but I'm not sure that I have a complete list. Here's the ones I can find having 1997 release dates online:

• Age of Empires
• Blade Runner
• Blood
• Carmageddon
• Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far
• Diablo
• Dungeon Keeper
• Fallout
• Grand Theft Auto
• Hexen II
• Imperialism
• Independence Day
• Independence War
• Interstate '76
• Jane's 688(i) Hunter/Killer
• LEGO Island
• MDK
• Myth: The Fallen Lords
• Need for Speed II
• Need for Speed II: SE
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
• Outlaws
• Panzer General II
• Postal
• Quake II
• Riven: The Sequel to Myst
• Shadow Warrior
• Shipwreckers
• Sid Meier's Gettysburg!
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
• Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
• The Curse of Monkey Island
• The Last Express
• The Lost Vikings 2
• Tomb Raider II
• Total Annihilation
• Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
• Ultima Online
• Warlords III: Reign of Heroes
• Wing Commander: Prophecy
• Worms 2
• Zork: Grand Inquisitor

Am I missing something here? Or are these all of them? Quite a lot of cult titles btw, nothing like what we get in recent years. 97 was certainly a strong year for gaming

To this day I will swear that 1997 was the greatest year in gaming possibly ever. If you include consoles you get everything on your list plus Star Fox 64, GoldenEye, Armored Core, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Final Fantasy VII.

Add a few more months to catch all the 1997 games that slipped their release date and you get Might & Magic VI and StarCraft to name a few. But perhaps that's cheating.

Also, what's really fun is throwing all those 1997 parts in a 1999 Super Socket 7 board, and clocking the P233 MMX at 2.5x100 FSB with some PC100 SDRAM and enjoying a free 20% performance boost. Don't even need to change voltages.

Namrok wrote on 2021-11-28, 15:55:

I love a good 1997 build. Those poor little machines may have had the least staying power of any. You were stuck between a Pentium 233 MMX machine with probably a Riva 128 and an AWE64 with 32 MB of RAM that might retail with all the accoutrements for $2500. Or you could go big on a Pentium II 300 machine with a Riva 128 and a Voodoo with all the same accessories as the other machine for $4000. Which adjusted for inflation comes out closer to $4000 and $7000 in 2021 dollars.

And if you'd picked the Pentium 233 machine, it would be struggling with games inside a year. Unreal, Shogo, Blood 2 and Half-Life would all feel decidedly beyond the capabilities of that machine. Even Quake 2 which probably runs the best of all of them will be running around 15-20 fps if there is a lot of action. All the others will frequently be single digit framerates. And even worse, at the time the Riva 128 didn't have OpenGL drivers, and Unreal only supported Voodoo! I first played both those games in software mode, at 320x240!

A 1997 machine, especially on the socket 7 platform, definitely feels like a machine that is looking backwards. Which can have a charm in it's own way.

This is a great post and I often think the same. Those PC's were so outdated so quickly, yet the PII and PIII had much more staying power.

I think that this applies even to the K6-2 and K6-3 SS7 builds - Half-Life and Unreal are not a pleasant experience by 2021 standards. That being said, if you focus on games that run great, a 1997 build is definitely a lot of fun. A Voodoo 1 (or even a 2 if you want to cheat) is a great addition too.

Progress report, I've been very busy with work past few days so things are going slow, I was able to test the Matrox Mystique 220 with Final Reality to confirm the card works fine, but is indeed inferior to the Rendition Verite V2200, so I'll leave the V2200. I'm ready to start installing OS. I decided to begin with Win95 OSR2.1 but without IE4, Win NT4 SP3, and OS/2 Warp 4. Might have to install two instances of Win95 because of the two sound cards. I'll try to use System Commander for the multiboot as I'm not sure how to best setup the boot loader included with os/2. I now notice I overlooked something important, I do not have any floppy drives or CD drives dated 1997. I could temporarily install newer ones, but I should start looking for period correct ones ASAP. What were the better floppy/CD drive models of 97?

P.S. gotta add "An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire" to the list of 1997 pc games above

Unless you're carbon dating your ribbon cable for exact match, I wouldn't worry about what year a 3.5 floppy drive is. Very little change in those through the years. Sure the surface mount looks a bit clunkier on the 1993 vs 2003 ones but most of them are using the same faceplate moulds they began with. However, if you're that committed to detail, let us know how you solve the 1997 battery that still works problem.

Optical drives kinda sort themselves into year ranges by speed, so 16x or 24x drive might be typical of a 97 system.

I can smell that build from here ..you all know that familiar old electronic smell, wish I had the parts to build myself such a nice little rig.

When I was much younger than now I had a lovely little AM-386dx system would love to build another similar to it (To think I started with a Vic 20), spent hours upon hours playing Transport Tycoon on that machine, would leave it running 24/7 at times with the game running.

Lovely build.

Love the build. My 1997 build is very similar, but my Mystique is the slower sibling, but it has the Rainbow Runner expansion.

Nice. I have a similar one, but I skipped the Vortex. I couldn't find one for a reasonable price. However I chose the Mytique over others (my other options were Trio64V+ or ViRGE). My line of thinking is that it supposed to have the best 2D image and I use a Voodoo for 3D anyway. Since then I got a very well priced Diamond Monster V330 PCI and I consider replacing the Mystique.

Vortex 2 is hard to find and usually pricy, but Vortex 1 (au8820) is really not that much of a problem to obtain yet, I see two for sale locally right now for next to nothing. And thats the card here, as its from 1997, vortex 2 is from late 98 (have one too, luckily).

I installed win95 osr2.1, and drivers, and took me several hours to get the vortex and awe64 to work nice together without fighting each other for resources, phew. Should have just installed 2 copies of win95, one for each card, but with the hdd being only 8.4gb large, figured I should try to not waste space. Seeing Final Reality at the end was worth it. The Rendition Verite V2200 was quite interesting to figure out as well. Turned out, if desktop is set to 32bit color, 3d hardware acceleration seems to disable itself, and it seems like it wouldn't auto-switch to 16bit color when launching a game. So desktop has to be set to 16bit color for 3d accel to work in games. So clunky 😁

This leaves Win NT4 and OS/2 Warp 4 for tomorrow, and after that, I guess it's vQuake II's turn first 😀

That 16/32-bit issue with 3d acceleration I think was a generalized Win95 thing. I recall GLQuake said in a readme to make sure your desktop was set to 16-bit color in Win95? I'm assuming it was a limitation of the OS that 3D acceleration would natively try to run at the bit depth of the desktop. So if the card didn't support 32-bit 3d acceleration, it would probably be smart to disable it entirely with a 32-bit desktop in Win95.

I've made the mistake of accidentally running GLQuake with a 32-bit desktop on a Riva 128 in Win95 before. You get about 1 frame every 5 seconds, with horrific sound stuttering, and unresponsive controls so you can barely quit. I'd have rather it just told me it couldn't create an OpenGL context or something.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-12-09, 23:57:

Vortex 2 is hard to find and usually pricy, but Vortex 1 (au8820) is really not that much of a problem to obtain yet, I see two for sale locally right now for next to nothing. And thats the card here, as its from 1997, vortex 2 is from late 98 (have one too, luckily).

Not in my area. There is only one Diamond Monster Sonic Impact S90 offered for sale in the whole country for 45€ and I won't pay more than 20 for one. Aside of A3D support there are other equally good PCI sound cards (YMF2x4, SB100) in the 10-20€ range.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-11-29, 23:23:

Am I missing something here?

1997 had a lot of choppers.

Cobra Gunship
Comanche 3
Extreme Assault
G-Police*
Helicops
Jane's Longbow 2
Nuclear Strike
SWIV 3D Assault**

* flies similarly
** Updated rerelease of 1996 game

Thanks! I wonder why there is no complete chronological list of all PC game releases, anywhere online... Theres pretty complete chronological lists of the games for just about any console, but nothing anywhere near as reliable for pc games 🙁

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-12-10, 15:26:

Thanks! I wonder why there is no complete chronological list of all PC game releases, anywhere online...

Mobygames can do that. Just sort by platform and then by year.

It's pretty easy to see what Windows and DOS games were released in 1997. Not sure about the accuracy though, as they tend to include re-releases as well, such as gold editions and whatnot.

wow, there's over 1000 pc games listed for 1997 on mobygames, thank you... beating all of those on this machine will take a while 😁

Finally complete. Ended up being just a Win95 OSR2.1 with Microsoft Plus! machine. Couldn't find video drivers for Win NT4. OS/2 Warp 4 didn't like the hdd being 8.4gb, seems like it would only install on max of 8gb hdd, so it barelly doesn't make the cut.

AoE doesn't look any different than it did when I last played it on 2003 pc, but it sure sounds a lot different. That Advanced Wave Effects Synthesis sure is something else

1997 also had a lot of odd ideas and software. Many would probably think AWE64's WaveSynth driver to apply reverb on all sources on Windows games was an immersion enhancer (before SBLive did that through hardware and tried to standardize it with EAX)
Desktop themes were at a peak too (long before the turn-of-the-millenium corporate spyware vector takeover of community theme sites). There was a theme for just about every IP then. It wasn't a novelty to dress the desktop up with what you liked, even if the theme was crap (and most were)

It was also the time of the multiplayer boom, especially with loads of the "2D vehicle shoot other 2D vehicles with good predictability over dialup" formula like ARC, Subspace, and many many lobby services for connecting (Mplayer, TEN, Kali, to name a few).

then again it's also a time of poor internet security where viruses and worms over the internet were a high concept as everyone's still recovering from classic high-profile boot sector viruses.