First post, by rishooty
So it turns out, the county I plan to move to has a big gaming and vintage computing community. I found this hole in the wall computer store run by an old guy, that happened to have TONS of vintage stuff as well as new.
I saw a freshly repaired NEC Ready 9716 and I knew I had to have it. It was only $20. It's largely stock besides missing a hard drive (it ran DOS for an auto-repair shop for 20 years, I think the guy re-capped it), and while I need to double check, it looks like it has the full 128MB of ram.
Yes, this is like my fourth attempt at a build. Each and every time I try to simplify it, I STILL get harmfully obsessive and overdo it. Getting all of the best parts, not waiting for deals and just grabbing what's available on eBay, installing every damn patch and optimization I can find. I don't want to give up the hobby, but I don't want to be consumed by it either. Well, I figured I'd take the approach I did with vintage console gaming: spend the absolute minimum time and money to get the best experience. I'm tired of spending more time tweaking and building than I do playing games/enjoying the nostalgia. So my solution to this problem? Buy a well regarded/good condition prebuilt, and let you guys largely handle it.
My goal now is to simply build around the games I grew up with, with anything newer/older as a bonus. If I have to pick between prioritizing one or the other, I'd definitely say the DOS side of things. Looking up the recommended specs of the games I played, considering my parents budget, considering when I was born, etc, I've determined that we had a Pentium 1 or MMX of some kind.
So what do you guys recommend I do with this? Both hardware and software wise? At the absolute bare minimum time and money wise?
Specs:
- Socket 7 - Pentium 200 MMX Preinstalled
- Mobo - No idea, comes with an integrated ATI Rage II
- RAM - Can handle 4x32MB modules, which I believe it already has
- CD - comes with some generic 16x. Missing a CD cable, which is fairly easy to obtain.
- Floppy - comes with some generic 3.5"
- Original PSU - Could be a good or bad thing, depends on if the shopkeeper repaired it. Another thread mentioned it's 200W.
- 3x PCI Slots - Empty
- 3x ISA Slots - Empty
- 2x Free 5.25 Inch Drive Bays - No HDD
High Priority Games (Games I actually played on said Pentium 1 back then)
- Age of Empires Gold
- Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
- Heroes of Might and Magic II Gold
- Quake
- Virtua Fighter
- Virtua Fighter 2
- Zoombinis
- Freddy Fish Maze Madness
- Rollercoaster Tycoon
- Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
- Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland
- Chessmates
- Master of Olympus: Zeus
- The Sims(original)
- Beachhead 2000
- (Captain) Claw
- DK Castle Explorer
Nice to Have: Windows
- Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
- Dungeon Keeper
- Most of the Early Sega Ports: Sonic 3, Sonic 3D Blast, House of the dead, etc
- Heroes of Might and Magic III
- Marathon 2
- MDK
- Quake II
- The Neverhood
- Toonstruck
- American McGee's Alice
- Battlezone '98
- Diablo 2
- Dungeon Keeper 2
- Fallout
- Fallout 2
- FF7
- Half-Life (sierra version)
- Jazz Jackrabbit 2
- King of Dragon Pass
- MDK2
- Messiah
- Pharaoh
- Quake 3 (I KNOW this is pushing it with the current cpu)
- Rune
- Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
- Silver
- Starcraft
- System Shock 2
- Thief: Dark Project
- Civilization II
- Turok
- Turok 2
- Unreal
- Unreal Tournament '99
- Warcraft II
- Myst
Nice to Have: DOS
- BUILD Engine: Duke 3d, Blood, etc
- idtech1 engine: Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, etc
- Day of the Tentacle
- Descent 1 and 2
- Gods
- Jazz Jackrabbit
- Maniac Mansion
- Master of Magic
- Rise of the Triad: Dark War
- Secret of Monkey Island
- Civilization
- Star Wars: Dark Forces
- Warcraft
- Wolf 3D
- X-COM UFO Defense