Trying to cover everything from 80s to 2000s gets tricky trying to pair down down to just 3 computers. It's especially tricky trying to cover specific decades as a whole, not just from a speed perspective but also compatibility.

For the example, in the early 90s you still have speed sensitive games like Wing Commander that need 386 level speed to run properly. Or games like the Commander Keen series that need certain video cards to work properly. So something like a Pentium 3 with a good 3D Windows graphics card would be great for late 90s and early 2000s, but likely not work for early 90s games.

If I had to pick three machines, I'd probably go with:

2000s era - i3770k + GTX 980Ti + X-fi sound card, dual boot 32-bit XP + Win7. This is my current XP build and it covers everything going to back to 16-bit Windows games like Civ2 all the way to late 2000s.

90s era - Something similar to Phil's 136-in-1 build: e.g. Pentium 233 MMX + SetMul utility to cover speeds ranging from 386-era to Pentium 233. This would cover most of the 90s although there still might be compatibility issues with some early 90s games depending on the video card chosen.

80s era - IMHO, this is the trickiest decade due to speed sensitive games in general. The best would be two builds: XT and 286 machine which would nicely cover everything from '81 to '89. If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with a hybrid system like a Tandy 1000 TL.

Based on Bitwrangler's post, instead I'd go with a Tandy 1000 SX + 286 accelerator board. This would provide native XT / Turbo XT / 286 speeds, which should cover everything from 1981 to late 80s.

The one box 80s machine could be a turbo XT with true 4.77Mhz deturbo and a 286 or 386 accelerator card (Which could be enabled/disabled in software) , but those are rare and spendy. But also towards end of 80s you probably want EGA/VGA whereas at beginning CGA/Herc

I would say a line falls around 1986 as where 4.77Mhz locked software should be mostly over and AT and turboXT friendly software became the norm.

In theory, you could get one of those late AMD386 boards with a 40mhz part on, and because it's got a static core, will go right down to 0mhz, you could rig that for a dial-a-speed system with custom oscillator and go 1980-1992, though still at the bottom end even with caches switched off, it might give you instruction timing difficulties on stuff where the programmer thought the only one there ever would be PCs were IBM with the 8088. But most stuff is just too fast, not that super picky.

"crawler gears" always seem to be what the many in one systems are short of, and tend to have lots of notches in the top 2/3 of the speed range where it's least critical and few in the bottom third where it's most useful. That's when you start getting interested in clock chips and abnormally low settings like 12, 16, 20 Mhz on 486 boards etc.

Edit: kinda weird, turned the infamous auction site inside out and shook it, and more Apple II and Amiga accelerator boards fell out than PC, the single obvious example is incomplete, needing the CPU socket hookup. IDK if there's another hiding in the "industrial" boards, nothing stuck out.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-04, 16:07:

The one box 80s machine could be a turbo XT with true 4.77Mhz deturbo and a 286 or 386 accelerator card (Which could be enabled/disabled in software) , but those are rare and spendy. But also towards end of 80s you probably want EGA/VGA whereas at beginning CGA/Herc

That's a good option. Something like a Tandy 1000 SX with a switchable 286 accelerator board would nicely span the XT / Turbo XT / 286 range, plus have the benefit of Tandy graphics and sound.

But also towards end of 80s you probably want EGA/VGA whereas at beginning CGA/Herc

EGA for sure. VGA didn't really become necessary until 1990-onwards.

You can cover 1980-2002 with a PIII on 440BX + Dosbox-X. There is no need for 86-486 except for enthusiasts.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-04, 15:21:

For the example, in the early 90s you still have speed sensitive games like Wing Commander that need 386 level speed to run properly. Or games like the Commander Keen series that need certain video cards to work properly. So something like a Pentium 3 with a good 3D Windows graphics card would be great for late 90s and early 2000s, but likely not work for early 90s games.

Funny thing about the oft-mentioned wing commander is that speed-sensitive games exist in windows 95 as well, one of which is Lego Island. it was written for the pentium1 and required a 3d card, the game offered 3 game speed settings: slow for 90mhz pc's, medium for 120mhz pc's and fast for 150mhz+ pc's. go anywhere past 200mhz and the games AI goes out-of-whack.

I've been using this 3 computer configuration for about 5-6 years now. My setups are:

Up to 1989 build:
- 25MHz 286 Harris CPU running at 20MHz - I find a 386 setup is a bit fast for some games of this time period, even when slowed down via turbo button.
- unidentified - possibly Shuttle or Lucky Star, headland chipset mainboard. SIPP slots replaced with SIMM slots, de-soldered original 16MHz AMD cpu and replaced with DIP40 socket, desoldered crystal oscillator, replaced with socket and 40MHz oscilator.
- 4MB of ram (4x1MB 30 pin simms)
- WD Paradise WD90C31A 512k ISA VGA card
- 850MB Western Digital Caviar IDE drive
- Creative SB PRO 2.0 CT1350 + Roland SC55 (would be nice to have an MT32 but those got stupid expensive really fast)
Runs DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. Can be slowed down to 10MHz via turbo button. Can be further slowed down to 6MHz XT levels by messing with wait states in BIOS. It plays every old dos game I like (mostly Golden Axe, Shadow Knights, Dyna blaster, digger, lode runner, stunts and so on). It also does great with some newer adventure point and click games. It even runs Dune 2, albeit not very well. Most win 3.1 games run on it - like the microsoft entertainment pack games.

1990-1999(ish) PC - this one has been changed a lot and I have several machines that were used for this purpose, from K6-III's to my socket 462 Dell Optilex GX400. Right now I'm sticking with machines that have a physical ISA slot for this time period so I can get the best audio compatibility with DOS games.
- Pin-modded Celeron 1000MHz 256KB L2 (Tualatin) @ 1333Mhz (10x133) @ 1.55v, Titan socket A full copper cooler.
- Abit AB-VH6-II (VIA VT82C694X + VT82C686B), 1 ISA slot, 4 USB ports, Universal AGP
- 256MB PC133 Elpida SDRAM
- STB Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
- 80GB Seagate IDE HDD
- Creative AWE64 Value CT4500 + Roland SC55 MKII
Runs Win98 Second Edition. Boot to GUI has been disabled, instead it boots into a DOS menu witch allows for several startup options, like DOS + CD-ROM and audio, no CD-ROM, EMS, XMS, boot to Win98 and so on.

2000-2010 PC:
- Core i7 950 + Thermalright Le Grande Macho RT
- Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R
- 6GB Kingston HyperX 2133 @ 1600MHz CL8 triple channel
- Gigabyte HD7970 Windforce 3X (used to have a GTX 580 in here but I replaced it with the 7970 to be able to drive my main display at it's native res in most games, as sadly I don't have room for my 21" 4:3 samsung right now)
- Samsung EVO 860 512GB + 2x500GB Seagate SATA HDD
- OCZ 650XP PSU,
- Thermaltake Soprano DX
Runs 32bit XP SP3 and 64 bit Windows 7 SP1 (could probably run windows 10 just fine but win 7 is still surprisingly usable as a modern OS). Steam runs on win7. I play all my windows XP games on this machine, and some late win98 games as well.

The 90-99 system used to have a VIA C3 1200MHz CPU in it witch I'd control via SetMUL - but I've since discovered CPUSPD here on vogons (CpuSpd - A Hardware Based CPU Speed Control Utility for DOS/Win9X Retro Gaming) that can "throttle" most CPUs, I've upgraded to the Tualeron. The 1200MHz C3 is perfectly fine as well - one of my samples can do 1400mhz stable at stock voltage, a speed at which even newer games like unreal tournament 99 and more CPU intensive games like Homeworld run very well. It's more or less equivalent to a 700MHz P3 at 1400Mhz.

I think it can also be a good idea to account the overlap between the decades as well ifone is to try the trio setup as well.
Weren't most of the Keen games compatible with EGA? if so, then the 80s rig could possibly take care of those.
the overlap of 98 compatible games released after 2000 could be taken care of by the 2000s machine, likewise some early 95 games will run on win3.1...
Extra food food for thought anyway. :3

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-04, 20:32:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-04, 15:21:

For the example, in the early 90s you still have speed sensitive games like Wing Commander that need 386 level speed to run properly. Or games like the Commander Keen series that need certain video cards to work properly. So something like a Pentium 3 with a good 3D Windows graphics card would be great for late 90s and early 2000s, but likely not work for early 90s games.

Funny thing about the oft-mentioned wing commander is that speed-sensitive games exist in windows 95 as well, one of which is Lego Island. it was written for the pentium1 and required a 3d card, the game offered 3 game speed settings: slow for 90mhz pc's, medium for 120mhz pc's and fast for 150mhz+ pc's. go anywhere past 200mhz and the games AI goes out-of-whack.

True, I've found some early windows 3D games, DX3 DX5, not usually AAA stuff, tried them on faster machines and they are overfast and crashy. There was a motocross game was too fast on my PII 366 Armada, not madness, a me-too version. Didn't put any effort into solving it, was just going through random disks.

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-04, 20:32:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-04, 15:21:

For the example, in the early 90s you still have speed sensitive games like Wing Commander that need 386 level speed to run properly. Or games like the Commander Keen series that need certain video cards to work properly. So something like a Pentium 3 with a good 3D Windows graphics card would be great for late 90s and early 2000s, but likely not work for early 90s games.

Funny thing about the oft-mentioned wing commander is that speed-sensitive games exist in windows 95 as well, one of which is Lego Island. it was written for the pentium1 and required a 3d card, the game offered 3 game speed settings: slow for 90mhz pc's, medium for 120mhz pc's and fast for 150mhz+ pc's. go anywhere past 200mhz and the games AI goes out-of-whack.

Yep, I know some of them: Havoc, Laserstrike (this one tends to throw the Runtime Error 200 message and it isn't a DOS game) and Pandemonium!

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-02-05, 00:40:

Yep, I know some of them: Havoc, Laserstrike (this one tends to throw the Runtime Error 200 message and it isn't a DOS game) and Pandemonium!

Interesting for Pandemonium!... is that a known thing for other crystal dynamics titles? I ask this because i intend to grab a copy of Blood omen: legacy of kain for a fair price when the time comes

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-05, 00:48:

Interesting for Pandemonium!... is that a known thing for other crystal dynamics titles? I ask this because i intend to grab a copy of Blood omen: legacy of kain for a fair price when the time comes

AFAIK, Gex (the 2D platformer) isn't speed sensitive. I can't confirm if any other title from Crystal Dynamics has this issue or not as I don't have them.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-02-05, 01:00:

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-02-05, 00:48:

Interesting for Pandemonium!... is that a known thing for other crystal dynamics titles? I ask this because i intend to grab a copy of Blood omen: legacy of kain for a fair price when the time comes

AFAIK, Gex (the 2D platformer) isn't speed sensitive. I can't confirm if any other title from Crystal Dynamics has this issue or not as I don't have them.

Thanks, that helps regardless...