VOGONS


Reply 20 of 38, by The Serpent Rider

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MHO, XP in itself had too long a lifespan to easily cover in a single build .

XP had gaming lifespan of 5-6 years. It can be easily covered with Core 2 Duo, which also can be used for Win9x.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 21 of 38, by Bruninho

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I have three VMs for gaming nostalgia, which are replicated on my iPad Pro as well for fun on the go.

One with Windows 3.11/MSDOS 6.22 for DOS Games of late 80s/early 90s. That machine is replicated on DOSBox-X and VMware Fusion (Mac); and DOSBox & UTM, a QEMU wrapper for iOS (iPad Pro). The reason why I still use iDOS2 (DOSBox) on iOS is because UTM still does not have sound support on iOS for some reason.

Other with Windows 98SE only on my iPad Pro for late 90's games on UTM too (but no sound and Glide/3dfx support, shame. Someone should offer help to the UTM developer and convince him to use the 3dfx/glide patch on his QEMU wrapper).

And a third one with Windows XP + Inexperience Patcher to look like Win98, on VMware Fusion (Mac), with the same games as Win98 above, for 3dfx/glide support.

I think I have all the bases covered for my gaming nostalgia of 80/90's. I have a Win10 VM on Mac, but only for two more recent games I don't even play anymore, but I am tied to them for sentimental reasons...

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Reply 22 of 38, by darry

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-07-10, 03:27:

MHO, XP in itself had too long a lifespan to easily cover in a single build .

XP had gaming lifespan of 5-6 years. It can be easily covered with Core 2 Duo, which also can be used for Win9x.

Good point, I keep thinking about XP's lifespan as being longer because of the Vista fiasco . In that context, a motherboard from 2007 or 2008 would likely not have drivers for Windows 98 SE whose support ended in 2006 .

EDIT: In essence, I believe Windows 9x support is better grouped with DOS in a single machine . XP/Vista/Windows 7 can easily be covered by much newer hardware .

EDIT2 : When XP came out, new software development encompassed it . That means that after 2001ish, software was basically guaranteed to be XP compatible . Support for older software and things like palletized textures, though possible under XP, would not work on the graphics cards required for appropriate support of later XP games (2006 or alter) . This is why I believe spanning 9x and XP support on a single machine, though possible, is not optimal .

EDIT3: Then again, everything is a compromise anyway, so it basically boils down to personal preference int the end .

Reply 23 of 38, by Jorpho

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-07-10, 03:27:

MHO, XP in itself had too long a lifespan to easily cover in a single build .

XP had gaming lifespan of 5-6 years. It can be easily covered with Core 2 Duo, which also can be used for Win9x.

I know you linked to an earlier thread about a C2D motherboard with AGP and PCI-e slots, but surely C2D boards with AGP can't be common?

Reply 24 of 38, by babtras

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It isn't 9x, but I sold a pair of Pentium III toughbooks to an automotive shop recently. They had some expensive diagnostic software on a computer that died. The old version would not run on Windows 7/8/10 for some reason and they'd have to pay some astronomical price ($10k+) to upgrade to the latest version with a support agreement. So they opted to buy a couple of XP machines suitable for use in a shop from the online classifieds. That happened to be me. I was amazed that someone wanted them for something other than retro gaming.

Reply 25 of 38, by Deksor

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Jorpho wrote on 2020-07-08, 19:23:

Don't forget the bragging rights, so you can tell everyone on the Internet that your gaming experience is of greater "purity" than everyone else's. 😜

A virtual machine running XP appears to be a useful solution for running many older games these days, and for games that insist on Windows 98 with hardware acceleration, there's PCem – provided your PC is powerful enough to run it at a good speed. So, perhaps a better question would be: are there any worthwhile games that haven't been ported or modded one way or another that also won't cooperate with PCem?

Have anyone been able to run PCem at pentium 2/3 speeds reliably on any modern x86 ? My 2013 core i5 struggles with any pentium emulation, and since it relies on single thread performance, I can't imagine that it has improved that much with newer and faster clocked CPUs

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 26 of 38, by red_avatar

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"Fun & nostalgia" are two pretty big damn reasons if you ask me. I mean, if you threw everything out that offered only fun & nostalgia ... bye bye movies, CDs, books, games, consoles, etc.

I think modern society is far too much a throw-away society. If something is outdated but still working, we throw it out.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
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i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 27 of 38, by Baoran

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Another reason for having system with older OS like that is that I can play my old starforce protected games. The starforce driver seems to be often locked to specific OS that the game is meant for even if newer OS could run the game itself.

Reply 28 of 38, by The Serpent Rider

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I know you linked to an earlier thread about a C2D motherboard with AGP and PCI-e slots, but surely C2D boards with AGP can't be common?

Depends. Some LGA775 AGP can be modded to support C2D, but there are also plenly of microATX Asrock and ASUS boards with native support still available.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 29 of 38, by Marentis

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To be fair: for pure "gaming" you won't need a retro machine in many cases. But having a retro machine is just fun and nostalgia in my eyes.
It's the same with the 486 I have: I actually don't need it and if I'm honest I'm mostly using Dosbox for my DOS gaming needs because it just works and thanks to adaptable
cycles can handle any game with the correct speed. While sound emulation isn't a substitution for real hardware it's still easier and cheaper to have various cards emulated rather
than owning all of them and that - along with CPU speed - is in my eyes the biggest hurdle when it comes to dos gaming: owning the right sound card.

Reply 30 of 38, by Jo22

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- Classic EPROM programmers on LPT port
- Early Flash Cart devices for Gameboy/PS1/SNES/..
- Relays cards for ISA bus or Parallel Port
- Ancient control software for model trains
- Any screwed up legacy software that uses DOS-Win16-Win32 hybrid code

Edit: I forgot to mention old software that relies on VXDs.
Such as old Tele-FAX programs from the Windows 3.1x and Windows 4.x days.
They used VXDs to improve performance of serial ports and so on.
Some programs, such as MOD4WIN, also used 16-Bit Windows DDLs or VXDs as helper programs.

Last edited by Jo22 on 2020-07-10, 16:58. Edited 1 time in total.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 31 of 38, by clueless1

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I have a Win9x machine with Voodoo2 SLI but I've only ever played a handful of games on it:
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Quake II
Half-Life
Unreal
Once I beat all these, I pretty much stopped using it. It's just more convenient to use modern installers and play them on my main system. There's not that much of a difference IMO, unlike DOS games, which just don't look right to me in DOSBox on a modern LCD display.

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OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
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DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 33 of 38, by chinny22

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babtras wrote on 2020-07-10, 06:25:

It isn't 9x, but I sold a pair of Pentium III toughbooks to an automotive shop recently. They had some expensive diagnostic software on a computer that died. The old version would not run on Windows 7/8/10 for some reason and they'd have to pay some astronomical price ($10k+) to upgrade to the latest version with a support agreement. So they opted to buy a couple of XP machines suitable for use in a shop from the online classifieds. That happened to be me. I was amazed that someone wanted them for something other than retro gaming.

I wouldn't say its common but situations like that aren't rare.
Virtualization helps when its just software based limit but if hardware is involved downtime and the risk of 2nd hand parts can still work out cheaper and you can't argue with those facts.

It's pretty cool to think they will still be in front line use but they wont be loved, more like worked to death if anything like where I've worked.

Reply 35 of 38, by gaffa2002

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piatd wrote on 2020-07-11, 17:22:

I'm launching a project on August 27th that will go a long way in answering the OP's question.

I'm looking forward to it, then 😀

Thanks everyone for the answers, I guess a lot of users here go through that doubt. I really enjoy playing with old PCs, but the hardware part frustrates me too much sometimes.
During the past couple of months I had issues trying to put together a nice win98 machine, and so far I had problems with video cards not being compatible, CPUs not being detected correctly, motherboard having problems with my hard drive being over 32GB, games freezing for having too much memory in Windows 98. And finally, once I was finally able to identify and fix those issues, the motherboard's BIOS chip apparently decided to die for no reason and the machine is useless again (probably will try to fix it sometime soon).
I guess the real reason behind this post was to justify "letting go" the idea of having a working windows 98 machine, at least for now 😁

UPDATE: Was finally able to resurrect the damn thing 😁! Had to rewrite the BIOS using hot-swap method with another motherboard

Last edited by gaffa2002 on 2020-07-28, 19:45. Edited 1 time in total.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

Reply 36 of 38, by darry

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gaffa2002 wrote on 2020-07-13, 14:13:
I'm looking forward to it, then :) […]
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piatd wrote on 2020-07-11, 17:22:

I'm launching a project on August 27th that will go a long way in answering the OP's question.

I'm looking forward to it, then 😀

Thanks everyone for the answers, I guess a lot of users here go through that doubt. I really enjoy playing with old PCs, but the hardware part frustrates me too much sometimes.
During the past couple of months I had issues trying to put together a nice win98 machine, and so far I had problems with video cards not being compatible, CPUs not being detected correctly, motherboard having problems with my hard drive being over 32GB, games freezing for having too much memory in Windows 98. And finally, once I was finally able to identify and fix those issues, the motherboard's BIOS chip apparently decided to die for no reason and the machine is useless again (probably will try to fix it sometime soon).
I guess the real reason behind this post was to justify "letting go" the idea of having a working windows 98 machine, at least for now 😁

I hope you can it working again without too much trouble .

I will just add that one of the reasons to set up a Windows 9x machine is because it can be challenging and fun . This is especially true if you mix old and new hardware .

EDIT: To me, getting things to work as well as possible is as much fun as playing actual games .

Reply 37 of 38, by chinny22

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gaffa2002 wrote on 2020-07-13, 14:13:

I guess the real reason behind this post was to justify "letting go" the idea of having a working windows 98 machine, at least for now 😁

Yeh we have all been at that point. In fact I've got a project I wanted to have ready end of August as well, however my original PC no longer boots (suspect dead Dallas chip) and now my 2nd machine is having software issue.
I'm over it and had the urge to play a bit of C&C so screw deadlines, that's what I'm playing . Maybe I'll finish my project in time, maybe end of the year, maybe never.
Important thing is you enjoy yourself and if your not, best thing is put it aside move on to something else, It'll all be waiting for you when your in the mood to tinker again.

Reply 38 of 38, by Law212

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I love having old hardware to play old games. Since I collect a lot of old PC games, and i still have my old collection, many of which i never finished. I have a windows XP machine, a pentium 200 running windows 98, and a 486 66 running windows 95 but its mostly for DOS.