DustyShinigami wrote on 2024-10-11, 15:37:Oh man, now you're asking... :P […]
Show full quote
myne wrote on 2024-10-11, 15:00:
My advice is to put together a list of what you actually want to play.
Oh man, now you're asking... 😜
Let's see...
- Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
- Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror
- The Secret of Monkey Island
- Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
- The Curse of Monkey Island
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Half-Life
- Doom
- Doom II
- Blood
- Indiana Jones and the Emporer's Tomb
- Under a Killing Moon
- The Pandora Directive (crashes in DOSBox at a specific area)
- Tex Murphy: Overseer (a pain to get working and even then has issues)
- Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
- Dust: A Tale of the Wired West (unavailable to buy digitally)
- Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase (unavailable to buy digitally and doesn't appear to work on modern OS)
- Tomb Raider 1-5
- Max Payne
- Max Payne II: The Fall of Max Payne
- Unreal
- Wolfenstein 3D
- Super Bubsy (unavailable to buy digitally and a pain to get working right, if at all)
- Quake
- Quake II
- Possibly the Zork series
- Theme Park
- Theme Hospital
- RollerCoaster Tycoon
- Little Big Adventure
- Little Big Adventure 2
- Realms of the Haunting
- Sam & Max Hit the Road
- Day of the Tentacle
- Full Throttle
- Possibly Toonstruck
- Possibly Sanitarium
- Metal Gear Solid 1-2
- Resident Evil 1-3
- Possibly Alone in the Dark 1-3
- Beneath a Steel Sky
- Severance: Blade of Darkness
- Blade Runner
- Possibly Deus Ex 1-3
- Discworld
- Discworld 2
- Discworld Noir (this one is unavailable to buy digitally and I'm not sure it works on modern OSs)
- The Longest Journey
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Possibly Earthworm Jim
- Outlaws
- Final Fantasy VII
- Gabriel Knight: SIns of the Fathers
- Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within
- Grim Fandango
- Heretic
- Hexen
- Hexen II
- Hogs of War (unavailable to buy digitally and I'm not sure whether it works on modern OSs)
- Possibly I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
- Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
- Mafia
- Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey
- Oddworld: Abe's Exodus
- Painkiller
- Phantasmagoria
- Psychonauts
- Possibly the original Prince of Persia
- Simon the Sorcerer (this and the sequel were played back in the day we had Windows 95, so - memories)
- Simon the Sorcerer II: The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe
- Sonic 3D
- Possibly the Serious Sam games
- Silent Hill 2 - Director's Cut
- Silent Hill 3
- Possibly Silent Hill 4: The Room
- Possibly Shadow Warrior
- Possibly South Park - the one from the PlayStation and N64
- Possibly Starship Titanic
- System Shock
- System Shock 2
- Possibly The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- The Simpsons Hit & Run (not available to buy digitally)
- The Settlers III
- The Sims
- Thief: The Dark Project
- Thief 2: The Metal Age
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Those are the main ones that come to mind anyway. 😀
I'd suggest an ipxe bootable lan card. Either an Intel e100? or realtek 8139. They were common as dogshit. Intel was better, but […]
Show full quote
I'd suggest an ipxe bootable lan card. Either an Intel e100? or realtek 8139. They were common as dogshit. Intel was better, but whatever.
Ipxe means zero fucking around with cds and floppies.
Hdd absolutely use an SSD. Compact flash or ide disk-on-module will be the least likely to cause headaches. Ide-to-sata adapter if you must.
Don't worry about it having cache ram. It'll be plenty fast without.
That, above should run everything from win95 through to windows 7.
I'm not familiar with an ipxe bootable lan cards, if I'm honest. ^^; That'll be uncharted territory for me 🤣.
these are my kind of games, aside from deus ex3 all are do-able on 1 system no problem, there have been some good suggestions here to build two systems, but based on your requirements there are more suitable options. im also in the UK and finding old parts is near on impossible most shops for parts have all but vanished, and gumtree rarely turns up old computers, and local recyling centres are now a no-go thanks to the council striking a deal with tech recyling companies that are interested in crushing everthing for precious metals, your only option is car boot sales or paying extortionate prices from scalpers on ebay.
im like you in the regard i dont have a lot of space to set up multiple systems, i planned on having one system to do it all, but for the games i'm playing i have two builds, not including my main system, the other issue is available funds to spend on old parts as i have other things that take priority at the moment, especially considering the absolute state of scammers asking a fortune for old parts, i was just looking at a socket 7 board i have on ebay (asus sp97-xv) theres a few ranging from £270-£460, absolute joke!
im all for doing things on the cheap, with functionality and compatibility being the important factor, i think i can advise on a cheap reliable build for the games you have in mind, and it should cover at least 95% or more of the games on your list, like with most systems you will have to make some compromises, that being lower graphic settings in later games as well as resolutions of 800x600. i only have a few AMD pc's so cant really advise on that, ive always been an intel fanboy so thats what ill be talking, be a bit of a long read but ill try to cover everything.
for motherboard go for a 478 socket with an intel chipset, these are common in the UK and were found in most pcs sold from 2001-2005 so should be plentiful and also cheap, they will also be win 98 compatible out of the box also go for one that has AGPx8 for best performance (you can check specs on the manufacurers website or on "theretroweb" site), for cpu go for a pentium 4 the common ones found in these boards were either 2.6 or 2.8ghz, if you can find one thats 3ghz or more even better.
for GPU go for an nvidia fx 5 series, even an fx5200 128mb 64bit will serve you well, and this is where purists will probably disagree with me, ill prove them wrong. 😉
heres my bench mark for the fx5200 im using under win xp, win98 returns a slightly higher score, so long as you pair it with a half decent cpu it will return a respectable score.
Re: 3dmark99 MegaThread
here is another users benchmark with a core2duo E7500 and a Voodoo 5 5500,with a better cpu his score beats my single core and fx5200 by only 72 points.
Re: 3dmark99 MegaThread
11784 3dmarks with a voodoo 5 5500.
4coredual-sata 2 with C2D E7500
this is my same system under windows 98 ,with a slightly higher score of 12054
and another user with an Athlon XP 2.13Ghz & Voodoo3 2000, with a score thats nearly half that.
Re: 3dmark99 MegaThread
6291 3DMarks
32288 CPU 3DMarks
the only thing with the fx5200's is to avoid the ones with the gimped 166mhz memory, and make sure to get one thats at least 200mhz, the 5200's are common as muck, so cheap and plentiful, if you can afford to spend a bit extra then anything higher like a 5500,5600,5700 or even the top 5900's, even better. the fx 5 sereis has great dos compatibility as well as support for 8 bit paletted textures and table fog, also it runs direct X 8&9 games better than a geforce 4 or a radeon 92xx, if you need support for 3DFX games nGlide works well, also having driver support from windows 95 upto windows vista is a plus, also the vista driver works on win7 under compatibility mode.
as long as you've got an AGPx8 motherboard you will have a decent amount of enjoyment for a small amount of cash, and it will run most if not all the games on your list, aside from deusex 3 🤣.
for RAM i always install and run win98 with a single 1GB stick and i've never had any problems, tho depending on mother board or certain games it may give you some issues, its always a good idea to have a spare 512mb stick handy or even a 256mb, you can swap out if needed. if you go above 1GB then you will need patches.
as for sound card there are many options, some on ebay are going for ridiculous prices, so go for something thats common and cheap, in that regard i recommend a pci sound blaster live, i have 2 i use in my retro systems and they sound great in dos and windows, theres really no need to get an ISA card unless you specifically want a certain sound, the next step up from a sound blaster is an Audigy, under dos you wont notice any difference in sound and also the audigy doesnt have a gameport so you will need the daughterboard for that, if you chose a sound blaster live go for an earlier model (non 5.1) that starts with the model numer "CT" (i use a CT4620 and a CT4760) avoid the ones that start with the "SB" model number as some of these were made by Dell, which use a diiferent chip and are basically shite compared to the genuine Creative cards.
for drivers on win9x iuse the liveware 3.0 cd for simplicity, for later Os's like win 7/10/11 there are the kx drivers, this is what i like about these cards, not only do they sound great they are probably the only cards you can have working in Dos and windows 95 upto windows 11.
if you want a step up from a 478 socket then, you'll need to find a 775 board with a win98 compatible chipset, that would be the intel 865 chipset, these are early 775 boards and are the most sought after so will be harder to find and pricey, the alternative is a 775 board with a VIA chipset, there are many, the board i use is an MSI PM8PM-V and it works perfectly (this replaced my 478 socket pentium4 2.8ghz with an 865 chipset) there arent any of these boards currently on ebay, but they do have the MSI PM8PM-IL, these come from germany and most likely came from medion pc's with medion bios, i also have one which i flashed with a stock MSI bios from "soggis" site, i havent tried win98 on this board yet but its the same spec as the PM8PM-V im using so should work just the same, they also support upto core2duo E6700 or X6800's.
Edit: One thing i forgot to mention is for optical drive go for an IDE drive as you will want the connection to plug audiocd into your sound card
this is the spec for my main Dos/98/xp build, everything worked off the bat with standard drivers, i only had to patch for the ram as i went over 1GB.
Motherboard: MSI PM8PM-V - MS-7222 ver2.0 (LGA775 + VT8237R Plus)
CPU: Celeron D360 3.46GHZ (Netburst, Cedar Mill-512, Single core with x64 Support)
GPU: MSI MS-8917 rev2.10 (Nvidia FX5200 128mb 64bit AGP)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 667mhz (x2 1GB)
Sound: Creative Soundblaster Live CT4620
Storage: 80GB IDE Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 & 80GB IDE Maxtor DiamondMax 20
PSU: Generic WinPower 450W
Media: LG Super Multi DVD rewriter GSA-H55N IDE
OS: Dualboot 98se & XP home SP3
This is the spec for my higher 98 build, problem with this one is it needed unofficial drivers and patches to get working and the chipset wont give me working sound in dos without a specific sound card even then compatibility will be flakey, so i just use this for windows 98 upto Windows 11, mainily windows 7, it will also play some games released current year, tho most of the games i play on this will work on a modern system, so this kind of build is not really necessary and should be avoided as it will involve alot of trial and error and be a headache to get working
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L rev2.0 (using LoneCrusaders Chipset Drivers for ICH7)
CPU: Core2Duo E5400 2.6GHZ OC@3.25GHZ (did upgrade to Q9450 but went back)
GPU: Nvidia Asus en7950gt 512mb ddr3 256bit PCI-E
Memory: 4GB DDR2 800mhz (x2 2GB) UC @ 667mhz for stability with overclock
Sound: Creative Soundblaster Live CT4760 (Liveware 3.0 CD & KXaudio driver for win 7 + win10 version also for win11)
Storage: 80GB 2.5" Hitatchi Travel star for win98 at the moment
PSU: Thermaltake TR2-550 PP
Media: Sony Optiarc AD-7241S Sata DVD burner (only drive i have that will burn cdrs as low as x8)
OS: Windows 98SE upto Win11 mainly Win7 SP1 x64 (Nvidia 309.08 for win 7/10/11)
anyway hope this give you a good idea of the specs needed to run all the games on your list on a tight budget.