Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Diablo, Duke Nukem 3D in high-res and Quake II.

devius wrote on 2026-05-10, 20:19:

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Diablo, Duke Nukem 3D in high-res and Quake II.

Duke Nukem 3D and Quake/Quake II sound like swell ideas. As for BG 1&2 and Diablo, I have those on way too many computers I think, and play regularly 😀)

I'm thinking Sierra and Lucasarts games. I've been coming back to Monkey Island 1 & 2, but there's more out there and I'd love to replay those.

I thought you meant period appropriate games for those specs 😅

devius wrote on 2026-05-11, 09:42:

I thought you meant period appropriate games for those specs 😅

To be honest, from all the reviews I had come to the conclusion that Intel 740 is a terrible graphics card. Today I tested it out, and well, getting 36-39 fps in Quake 2 hardware accelerated is not bad at all for a 1998 graphics card. About the same in Quake 1 in software mode. So I may have gone a bit overboard, and you know what, Intel 740 actually delivered. Sure it was 640x480, but I had every graphics setting maxed out. It performs well in Direct3d and OpenGL. Sure it's no Voodoo and I think TNT and Rage128 might be better, but if I had this card in 1998 I'd be in love. Every game from this era I threw at it, it delivered, even had some fun with Half Life 1 later.

I honestly expected it to be a 2d card with terrible 3d implementation because of the whole AGP aperture texture memory thing. Instead, I got a card with awesome VESA 2.0 and even 3.0 (in Windows) support, great 2D performance and really nice 3D performance in 640x480. It played Twisted Metal 2 like it was nothing.

It's alive! It's alive!

I've hooked up my oldest retro PC (System 1 from this thread), which has been disconnected for the last ~1.5-2 years, I think.
To my half-surprise, other than the CMOS battery being drained and BIOS settings lost, everything seems to work.

Here it is running some of my favorite DOS games, that I had spent hours playing as a teenager (some later).

And some Windows games as well.
I recall, even before the disconnect, Win98SE was already not so stable on this machine. It tends to crash after a while.

I like how you've dedicated a special space for it. Very nice system!

Is that an IBM DeathStar? Probably not, considering it still works...

Hey everyone, I'm new here. Not new to PC's at all, I've been into PC's since the early 386 days! This is my current resto project I'm just about finished with. It's a 1998 Micron PC Millennia. Pentium II 350MHz. with 192MB of RAM. It is all original except it used to have a Real3D StarFighter i740 GPU and a Winnov Videum AV-WAVI 97 ISA Sound and video capture card. There was no need for the sound card as this Intel 440BX Motherboard had a built in Yamaha YFM-740B-V XG-MIDI on board and I had a Nvidia GeForce FX5500 from another pc that would of been super weak so I used it since it's fully compatible with DOS/98 and would run everything I need it to perfectly. It does have a newer 80GB WD IDE drive from around 2002ish. Otherwise this machine is all stock with the Zip100, 1.44 floppy and Sony 4x CD ROM, I even have the MicronPC Keytronic Keyboard and Keytronic mouse. The machine runs GREAT and is my Late Dos/98SE Gamer! I have a few other projects here I'm working on ATM I may share in the future.

Some more pics

Some nice hardware you have. The BX is a great Slot1 board.
I have the same Altec Lansing Sub & satellite speakers for one of my builds. They sound great.

AndrettiGTO wrote on 2026-05-23, 00:31:

I like how you've dedicated a special space for it. Very nice system!

Indeed. The lack of desk space was the primary reason it had been disconnected. Now there is room for it again.

devius wrote on 2026-05-24, 21:18:

Is that an IBM DeathStar? Probably not, considering it still works...

I think the most notorious "Deathstars" were the 75GXP series. These were failing consistently. Mine is the 120GXP, for which there is only anecdotal evidence (and possibly people confuse and conflate data). Not sure these fail more than the average hard drive.

BadFox_1 wrote on 2026-05-26, 21:06:

It's a 1998 Micron PC Millennia. Pentium II 350MHz. with 192MB of RAM. It is all original except it used to have a Real3D StarFighter i740 GPU and a Winnov Videum AV-WAVI 97 ISA Sound and video capture card. There was no need for the sound card as this Intel 440BX Motherboard had a built in Yamaha YFM-740B-V XG-MIDI on board and I had a Nvidia GeForce FX5500 from another pc that would of been super weak so I used it since it's fully compatible with DOS/98 and would run everything I need it to perfectly. It does have a newer 80GB WD IDE drive from around 2002ish.

Nice one! Somehow I skipped over the entire P-II and P-III era in desktops, and now I think it may have been a bit of a shame, as there is surely more oomph potential to them compared to an SS7 K6-2/III system.

BadFox_1 wrote on 2026-05-26, 21:06:

...Otherwise this machine is all stock with the Zip100, 1.44 floppy and Sony 4x CD ROM...

Did you mean 24X CD-ROM?

devius wrote on Yesterday, 09:26:

BadFox_1 wrote on 2026-05-26, 21:06:

...Otherwise this machine is all stock with the Zip100, 1.44 floppy and Sony 4x CD ROM...

Did you mean 24X CD-ROM?

Oh, 4x did indeed exist. I remember spending 150 Deutsche Mark on one from NEC. 😉
But good point - 24x would be way more authentic for 1998.
By the looks of it, it may well be the former.

I removed and cleaned/serviced it I remember it being a Sony and I thought it was a 4X? I may be wrong it could be faster. I have a LOT of hardware it's hard to remember everything... I'm currently building a triple boot DOS/98SE/XP socket 754 build and a T.I. Extensa 570CDT, Programing is done waiting on the NIMH cells to show up to rebuild the battery pack. Just got done refreshing a Compaq 1655 PII 266MHz. What a GRAT DOS Gamer Rig with the JBL speakers and the ESS AudioDrive. Wish the GPU was a little beefier but it's a portable can't ask for everything. It's nice having a Floppy/CD-ROM in the machine at all times. I need to find the CD-ROM for the Extensa as it only has a floppy. For now I'll get a PCMCIA to CF and use that to transfer games to the Extensa. Both Laptops are running on MSATA to 44 pin adapter caddies. Both machines recognize the SSD it's quite funny seeing 16GB Sandisk SSD and 128GB Samsung SSD at boot on such old hardware...

AndrettiGTO wrote on Yesterday, 00:11:

Some nice hardware you have. The BX is a great Slot1 board.
I have the same Altec Lansing Sub & satellite speakers for one of my builds. They sound great.

The Altec Lansing ATP3 is LEGENDARY! Hands Down. It will be paired with my Samsung 2232BW S-panel and eMachines Socket 939 build, MSI-K8NGM2-IL Flashed with retail bios, Athlon 64 3700+ San Deigo, 4GB DDR-400, 250GB 7200 RPM SATA, DVD-RW, Factory Multi card reader, Radeon dual slot x1900 xt and a Sound Blaster Audioligy 2 ZS running xp 64 bit for now if compatability is terrible I'll switch to 32 bit or MAYBE Vista... Anyway Should be a fun build to game on!

Cuttoon wrote on Yesterday, 15:59:

Oh, 4x did indeed exist.

The first PC CD-ROM I ever got was one that connected to a SoundBlaster (Pro or 16) - IIRC it was a 2x!
- I don't think it was IDE - but the connector looked like it.

I think I had one at one time that took caddies that was 1x (but they were rare)

Hi, I'm new to vogons! I've lurked until now but I'll start posting now I guess, because I want to make an effort to spend less time on social media and more time on places like this! Anyways, I'll post specific rigs/specs some other time but for now here's my retro wall!

I'll elaborate on a couple for now, my personal treasures:

Right: My Windows 95 presario (specs in sig) which was my mom's computer from 97-2003. I was born around the time she got the PC, so this was the first computer I ever knew. The sounds of it's Quantum bigfoot HDD are some of the first sounds I knew. 😀
It's such a fun machine, I absolutely love the ESS 1887f chip, playing midis on it is my favorite thing to do. I also sometimes work on midis via cakewalk 6.0 on this. Sadly, it's limited to 48mb of RAM (16 on board, expandable by 32mb), so my early memories with this computer were my mom cussing it for being obsolete junk... It is crazy how useless this thing was next to computers that were only a few years newer, and especially next to PCs from 03. Also note the kitty stickers, which were put on there for me because I was obsessed with cats when I was 3. 😀 I WILL NEVER REMOVE THEM!

Left: My first computer, bought for me from a goodwill in early 2006. An IBM NetVista that ran Windows ME, and still does, the same installation/HDD it had when I got it!
Specs:
Coppermine Celeron @ 566mhz
128MB PC133 (originally 64 but I upgraded it with a second identical stick)
Riva TNT 2 64 PCI (added later, originally it just had integrated graphics which actually played some 3D games very smoothly, like moto racer)
Sound: integrated, bleh
Extra PCI: parallel tasking ii ethernet, some USB 2.0 controller, I've had an aureal vortex 2 installed before but given it only has 3 PCI slots, choices have to be made.

Despite the reputation, WinME never let me down as a kid on this machine, and actually, its improved USB support was great for dumb lil me. I was able to use flash drives, a USB mic and USB webcam all without even knowing what a driver was. I even installed the graphics card in it as a lil kid, and it just worked! I even used the included version of movie maker to make cringe videos, and the included version of media player was very enjoyable to use too. Nothing but fond memories with this machine. By the end of this computer's life as my main system, I was emulating NES, SNES and gameboy games on it quite well and poorly playing some N64 via PJ64 1.6. I asked a lot from this poor computer 😀)

I'll post some of my actual retro rigs some other time. They're mostly 2000s rigs, I'm more into XP era hardware!

2Buck wrote on Today, 15:37:

Hi, I'm new to vogons! I've lurked until now but I'll start posting now I guess, because I want to make an effort to spend less time on social media and more time on places like this! Anyways, I'll post specific rigs/specs some other time but for now here's my retro wall!

What an amazing setup. I only wish I had as much space for my machines! I am trying to fit 15PCs and one laptop in a space only 2.7m x 2.4m. Multiple KVMs required! 😀

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Today, 15:59:

What an amazing setup. I only wish I had as much space for my machines! I am trying to fit 15PCs and one laptop in a space only 2.7m x 2.4m. Multiple KVMs required! 😀

ty!! yeah, space is a huge privilege in this hobby and I'm really lucky to have it! 😀

at some point I'd like to min/max this setup by having KVMs at each desk. one desk for vista era stuff, one desk for XP era stuff, a desk for 9x era stuff and a desk for dos era stuff!