Pentium generally had more of the marketing blitz (adding a lot to the nostalgia fuel), so they're more valued for that alone than anything about the Pentium itself, becoming the figurative Nintendo of processors. On the other hand, that means more sleeping on K6s/6x86s/Athlons/etc for the rest of us 😁

Also there's issues with older games starting around the Pentium II at the 300mhz mark, turbo pascal games can fail to start and there's sound initialization bugs with many games (Sierra SCI games and some LucasArts games, mainly). Windows 95 will also fail to start without a special patch about it when it's 350mhz or faster.

and pentium aside, processors advancing since the 4.77mhz mark will already regress a lot of older games tuned for that speed made for like 5 years in the 80s.

So a AMD K5 wouldn't be a bad choice for a "Do almost anything" old PC?

I got offered an OrangePC NuBus 386 card, but I'm thinking...why bother with that when a 486 exists? ... and then Pentium?

Unrelated to the topic, I'm mildly interested in a fast Pentium III thingy with old fashioned serial & parallel, USB, Ethernet and DVD capability for old Windows-era games. IDE and PCI of course.

I just recently completed my first, from scratch 386 build, so I've given this question some thought. Here are my reasons to own and play with a 386:

1) Nostalgia - some of us grew up with these systems; I did. My first new IBM compatible PC was a Gateway 2000 386SX. I loved that computer and it taught me a lot. I learned DOS commands, the ins and outs of Windows (it came with Windows 3.1 pre-installed), and how the hardware worked by installing ISA upgrades. It was great back then, and I wanted to experience it again.

2) Simplicity - there's a certain simplicity to the old ISA-based systems. If you know and understand IRQs, DMAs, and port addresses, most components can work really well together in the older systems.

3) The slow - I'm all for fast computers, and retro rockets are totally my thing. But, I wanted to experience a computer that had resource and processing speed limitations just to remember what it was like back in the day. I still pimped out the 386 motherboard with a ton of upgrades: a 486-class processor, 256K motherboard cache, 32MB RAM, enhanced BIOS, etc. It's the kind of computer I wish I had back then. Still, there's a certain charm to that old feeling of waiting a bit for things to happen. It also made me appreciate the software that does run really well on a fast 386/slow 486.

That's what I could come up with. Does everyone need a 286, 386, or 486? Nope. But these systems do mean things to people, and I think they can be a lot of fun to build and operate.

BTW, a 386 can totally run Windows 3.x, Windows 95, and Windows NT (both 3.x and 4.0) very well with enough RAM. I've got all of these running on my 386/486 computer on separate memory cards and running quite well.

I get a surge of the feelings every time I see a tree gold logo on a screen and the longer the logo stays, the more intense it gets. That’s why I boot up the old XT with the MFM drive every so often. If I did it on a pentium, it would go too fast! 😉

Mk.558 wrote on Yesterday, 03:13:

So a AMD K5 wouldn't be a bad choice for a "Do almost anything" old PC?

I got offered an OrangePC NuBus 386 card, but I'm thinking...why bother with that when a 486 exists? ... and then Pentium?

Unrelated to the topic, I'm mildly interested in a fast Pentium III thingy with old fashioned serial & parallel, USB, Ethernet and DVD capability for old Windows-era games. IDE and PCI of course.

There really isn't a single "do everything" PC. You can run into issues with a system being too fast while also being too slow. A K5 is essentially a really fast 486 (not quite Pentium class). It would barely play medium quality MP3's for instance, and you would have a lot of trouble playing Quake due to the low-quality FPU, just as examples. Some speed sensitive games will also run too fast on a K5.

A different way to think about these older systems is what ran really well on them for the time. A 286 ran software well from the early to late 80's. 386's do well with software from the late 80's to the early 90's. 486's and slow Pentiums run software from the early to mid-90's well (the K5 falls in this category), and fast Pentium MMX and Pentium II/III systems run software from the mid to late 90's well.

Of course, other components (graphics cards, sound cards, etc.) also play a role in software performance depending on the application.

Maybe it's ignorance. But as far as I can tell, unless it's the really old games that relied on CPU timings and stuff, most of the time it doesn't matter too much?

It's the small things, I would say.
The processor itself isn't that much of the center here.
Compatibility wise, a Pentium/II/III is still very backwards compatible.

Though its inner working is different to a 386 or 486, of course.
A Pentium uses super scalar technology and lots of code prediction, for the cache to be efficient.
It also goes away from CISC to RISC architecture and instructions are completed much quicker (cycles).
Strictly speaking the last true x86 CISC was the 386. The 486 already used pipe- lining etc.

This means that some games might "stutter" on a modern system, even if the cache is disabled or if the CPU is slowed down to 386/486 levels.
A period-correct 386/486 system by contrast might be running the game "slow" but more smooth.
Think of games in style of Wing Commander or Commander Keen IV, maybe.

Anyway, what differs more is the architecture of the mainboard, the chipset, maybe.
286/386/486 are clean PC/AT platforms with ISA bus and no Plug&Play and no advanced features such as USB, PCI, AGP or ACPI, APIC (586+ CPU).
This means that there are no newfangled things in the 640KB-1MB area, no unwanted ROMs.
Without ACPI, the IRQ 2/9 remains unused and a vintage network card or an MPU-401 can use that IRQ.
Since it's an ISA or VLB system, likely, the installed graphics cards are old enough to be still truely VGA at the silicon level.
The models are being recognized by the games or applications directly.
Trident 8900, Tseng ET-4000, WDC 90C00, Cirrus Logic etc.

Then there's the look&feel. A 386/486 PC is a classic late 80s to mid-90s system.
The case is a standard beige model (black ESCOM PCs and the Colani series like to disagree), the CRT monitor likely is a 14 to 15" model, big beige speakers do sit on the desk.
A standard beige AT keyboard without Win95 keys is next to them. Mouse is a two button model (no scroll wheel) or a trackball..
Printer is an HP Deskjet 500, maybe.

Of course, these are all not critical aspects.
In most cases, a Pentium with an old PCI graphics card just works same in practice.
In fact, many PCs in the 90s had been assembled from various parts or upgraded over the years.
The Super Socket 7 mainboard of a Pentium 75, 90 or 133 MHz or Pentium MMX was not seldomly installed in 486 era towers.
There were many Pentium 1 systems that still featured a 5,25" 1,2 MB drive and a streamer drive.

What I like about using old systems is that they allow me to dream.
They give me an idea how developers must have felt when they had worked when they wrote their games or applications.
It's like using a Macintosh 512 or SE from the 80s instead of an iMac G3, I guess.
To me, it feels so much more real when playing the early games on a setup that's at least sufficiently authentic (I'm not a fan of absolute period-correctness either).

leileilol wrote on Yesterday, 02:51:

Pentium generally had more of the marketing blitz (adding a lot to the nostalgia fuel), so they're more valued for that alone than anything about the Pentium itself, becoming the figurative Nintendo of processors. On the other hand, that means more sleeping on K6s/6x86s/Athlons/etc for the rest of us 😁

Also there's issues with older games starting around the Pentium II at the 300mhz mark, turbo pascal games can fail to start and there's sound initialization bugs with many games (Sierra SCI games and some LucasArts games, mainly). Windows 95 will also fail to start without a special patch about it when it's 350mhz or faster.

and pentium aside, processors advancing since the 4.77mhz mark will already regress a lot of older games tuned for that speed made for like 5 years in the 80s.

Hm. Was it just a specific version of Windows 95 that exhibited this bug, or do all versions have it?

There are no hard and fast compatibility breakpoints in the PC world, there is a sliding window of supported hardware +/- a few years from when most software gets released. Some software will run perfectly fine on almost anything and some will require features more advanced than can be provided by a 286 while simultanouesly breaking on something faster than a 486.

The PC hardware and software world is significantly more diverse than the mac world, so the lines of support are also much less well defined. However, if you are fine with patching software and are not really strict about having an "out of the box" experience with original media, patches for many games have been made by the community to run software well outside of their support window. Which means that the values of said systems are almost entirely derived from rose tinted glasses.

RetroLizard wrote on Yesterday, 03:50:

leileilol wrote on Yesterday, 02:51:

Pentium generally had more of the marketing blitz (adding a lot to the nostalgia fuel), so they're more valued for that alone than anything about the Pentium itself, becoming the figurative Nintendo of processors. On the other hand, that means more sleeping on K6s/6x86s/Athlons/etc for the rest of us 😁

Also there's issues with older games starting around the Pentium II at the 300mhz mark, turbo pascal games can fail to start and there's sound initialization bugs with many games (Sierra SCI games and some LucasArts games, mainly). Windows 95 will also fail to start without a special patch about it when it's 350mhz or faster.

and pentium aside, processors advancing since the 4.77mhz mark will already regress a lot of older games tuned for that speed made for like 5 years in the 80s.

Hm. Was it just a specific version of Windows 95 that exhibited this bug, or do all versions have it?

There are timing loops in a number of Windows 95 sub-systems that cause the error on fast K6 CPU's (and newer AMD chips) and Intel chips at 2 GHz or faster. It has to do with how the chips implement JUMP instructions. Regardless, Windows 95 (and 32-bit networking under Windows for Workgroups 3.x) will fail with divide by zero errors as a result of these timing loops executing too fast. Microsoft issued patches for Windows 95 (all versions of Win95 are affected) to fix these issues prior to the release of Windows 98. Windows 98 contains the fixed code.

I have some nostalgia for the fresh smell my 386 came in, but that's long since passed now and i'm not getting that back on a 386 rebuild.

On Pentiums, they're more sensitive to cache and require cache modules and there's been nostalgia about OEMs selling Pentium-flaunting PCs without the cache which pretty much drops them into the 486DX2 tier (see: Packard Bell sufferers)

Well, now I know why Mac classics get turned into terrariums and fish tanks 🤣

If you just want one PC to do everything but very early booter DOS through to early win98 then the Phil's Computer Lab 233MMX many in one setup is probably what you want. Then maybe pick up where that leaves off with a core 2 that runs 98 through XP to vista and 7.

fosterwj03 wrote on Yesterday, 03:42:

There really isn't a single "do everything" PC. You can run into issues with a system being too fast while also being too slow. […]
Show full quote

Mk.558 wrote on Yesterday, 03:13:

So a AMD K5 wouldn't be a bad choice for a "Do almost anything" old PC?

I got offered an OrangePC NuBus 386 card, but I'm thinking...why bother with that when a 486 exists? ... and then Pentium?

Unrelated to the topic, I'm mildly interested in a fast Pentium III thingy with old fashioned serial & parallel, USB, Ethernet and DVD capability for old Windows-era games. IDE and PCI of course.

There really isn't a single "do everything" PC. You can run into issues with a system being too fast while also being too slow. A K5 is essentially a really fast 486 (not quite Pentium class). It would barely play medium quality MP3's for instance, and you would have a lot of trouble playing Quake due to the low-quality FPU, just as examples. Some speed sensitive games will also run too fast on a K5.

A different way to think about these older systems is what ran really well on them for the time. A 286 ran software well from the early to late 80's. 386's do well with software from the late 80's to the early 90's. 486's and slow Pentiums run software from the early to mid-90's well (the K5 falls in this category), and fast Pentium MMX and Pentium II/III systems run software from the mid to late 90's well.

Of course, other components (graphics cards, sound cards, etc.) also play a role in software performance depending on the application.

I had a Pentium MMX 166 PC by the turn of the millennium..
As far as I remember it never caused trouble with DOS or Windows 98 software.
I've even ran early Windows XP on that thing.

Virtual PC on Macintosh emulates a Pentium MMX, too.
Pictures of the manual/box: Re: 1996-1999 emulation status in 2025?

So I tend to believe the Pentium MMX is a good allrounder.
Comparable to how the legendary 486DX2-66 was in early 90s.

PS: It's often possible to use traditional ISA VGA cards on Pentium to Pentium III, still.
So if graphics are garbled or glitchy, installing a "normal" DOS era graphics card is still possible if an S3 Virge325 or Trio64+ (with S3VBE20) won't do it.
The slow ISA bandwidth shouldn't hurt too much in mode 13h games (320x200 pixel at 256c).
For games using SVGA or VBE/linear framebuffer, a DOS-friendly PCI graphics cards would be better, maybe.
Mid-late 90s DOS games with FMVs (full motion videos) simply run better on them.

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 04:07:

Well, now I know why Mac classics get turned into terrariums and fish tanks 🤣

If you just want one PC to do everything but very early booter DOS through to early win98 then the Phil's Computer Lab 233MMX many in one setup is probably what you want. Then maybe pick up where that leaves off with a core 2 that runs 98 through XP to vista and 7.

They get turned into terrariums and fish tanks because the motherboard got eaten by Big Battery and is ruined, or is/was considered worthless. The Macintosh Classic fits this bill nicely: when it was released, it was already outdated, though it was cheap, it also has zero expansion (except for memory) and is worse than the Macintosh SE.

I looked at Phil's site, didn't see such 233 MMX AIO thingy but perhaps I didn't look in the right spot. A thin client sounds nice, as long as the BIOS has a low Suck Factor.

Mk.558 wrote on Yesterday, 04:39:

I looked at Phil's site, didn't see such 233 MMX AIO thingy but perhaps I didn't look in the right spot. A thin client sounds nice, as long as the BIOS has a low Suck Factor.

Phil calls it the "136 in 1 Pentium MMX Project"

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/136-in-1-pentium-mmx.html

Playing games at the wrong speeds is all part of the authentic DOS PC experience.

Architecture differences between 386 and 486...
I just got first real 386sx system since back in the day.
Finally got to play darklands the way we played as I was kid. I've played the game later times on different systems and on dosbox. But it always had some glitches with sound or animations and other weird bugs.
Now when I played it with real 386 machine, sound worked perfectly and game speed was just as I remembered it.

I think it mostly comes down to nostalgia and/or wanting period accuracy. Back in 1995 I jumped from a 286 up to a Pentium 120Mhz. So I have no nostalgia for the 386/486 but I do have nostalgia for some of the games I played on my 286. I did consider getting a 286 but, actually, the games that I played on it actually work fine on a Pentium.

I do, however, want to experience some of the games that I missed due to making the huge jump from 286 to Pentium. Mostly a slowed down Pentium seems to satisfy that need.

Another thing I want to experience is the original PC/XT games. Now those don't work on my slowed Pentium. So that leaves 3 options:

1) Emulation
2) Original PC/XT class hardware
3) Modern system with 8088 CPU

I opted for 3), and bought a NuXT 2.0, as I don't have the skills to diagnose and fix the often failing motherboards of the 80s / Early 90s. Compatability isn't perfect though, as it has a VGA Graphics card. But that's fine with me. I mostly want it for experimenting with x86 assembly, to see if I can experience what game developers of the time had to do (though without using undocumented CGA hacks).

I agree with a comment earlier, there is a ton of hardware and software diversity in the PC scene. That's why a number of folks on Vogons (myself included) have multiple retro PCs to cover different hardware and software eras. You don't have to go crazy, but some folks have a "one of each" approach to this hobby.

I don't personally have an interest in 286s, but I do now have a Baby AT 386DX-class system, a low profile (LPX) 486-class system, and a low-profile, fast Pentium MMX system. I've tricked out each system a bit differently with hardware I like (or wish I had back in the day), and they mostly cover my personal interests in that area of the retro PC space. After that, most of my builds are retro rockets to run old software using crazy fast, more modern hardware (the slowest being a 2.99 GHz Core 2 Extreme).

Sometimes you just want a certain PC because it looks cool! I really like rectangular horizontal beige PCs from the early to mid 90s. It's the quintessential home PC look from my youth. It would be an anachronism if I put a pentium 3 or 4 motherboard into one of these cases because the aesthetic style of pcs had significantly changed between 1995 and earlier vs 1998-2004.

Because I like the look of this era, accessories I have like CRT monitors and keyboards are geared to this era as well. I get more satisfaction out of my setups when the accessories look like they are period appropriate - there's a difference in design language between pre 1995 stuff vs y2k stuff. Even if I bought some kind of black tower windows xp era thing, pairing it with a beige keyboard and beige rectangular CRT that maxes out at 640x480 or 800x600 resolution would feel weird to me and I wouldn't enjoy the setup as much, even if it would all technically function together, and I could run more demanding software with the later era PC. The solution to this I suppose is that I buy y2k era accessories to go with the later era PC, but then I'm back at the personal issue that I don't care for the design language of this era and dont get the same satisfaction from running software on it.