So in the process of getting parts for my "totally overkill for its period retro gaming pc" I have gotten myself an Athlon MP 2400+ in its original retail packaging. Never opened.
So - should I pop its cherry and use it, or should I stash it and make mad bux in 20 years?
Also - retro computing general.
My plan is simple. I am making two computers.
One for games from the 1992-1998 period. This one is going to be a downclocked Athlon 1gHz and 768 mb ram along with 4 gig SSD, GeForce Ti 4200 and an ISA Sound Card.
The bitch here was getting a board with an ISA slot, because in the socket A period they were fairly rare. Another annoyance is availability of VooDoo Graphics accelerators and a proper high end sound card. 3dfx cards are expensive regardless of version. AWE32 Sound Blasters are $$ and gravis Ultrasounds are MAJOR $$
The second machine is going to be for the 1998-2004 period, as games made later run fine on my current PC.
This bastard is going to use a 2400+ or 2600+ athlon XP, 2 gigs of memory, several hard drives and radeon 4650 GPU. For its period it is going to be quite an overkill for everything except the CPU.
Don't forget a good CRT.
E.g. Warhammer Dark Omen will fuck your shit up if you try to run it on flat planel, Im sure a few other gems will too
>AMD anything
>valuable
Good luck.
I plan to, but fuck, those are bulky as fuck.
>tfw found a Voodoo 5500 PCI MAC for 5 bucks at the boneyard, got home, flashed it to PC and now runs Halflife on a P3 1ghz retro gamer
Those voodoo cards are Jew prices, some of the V5's go for the price of a decent new card.
>tfw hoarded tons of Voodoo cards when they were being tossed at the boneyard
>tfw could probably sell a couple of them to finance a 1080ti
>tfw still have this
I've got two retro systems in storage:
Dell Dimension L800CXE (2001,Fully intact)
OS: Windows 98SE
CPU: Intel Celeron 800 Mhz Socket 370
Ram: 256mb (128mbx2) PC100
HDD: 40GB
Sound: SB Live Value
Graphics: 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 pci
Misc: CD/RW Drive,Iomega Zip 100,3.5 Floppy,56K Modem, 10/100 Nic
Bad part is that the oem psu is dead, had her since 2001.
Second system is the first one I built from parts (2003, Needs Graphics card)
Intel Celeron 1.4Ghz
512MB or 1GB Ram (I forget which)
Sound Blaster Audigy
Onboard 10/100 lan
20GB hdd
DVD Rom drive
Windows 98se
>AMD retro gaming pc.
It will literally set itself on fire harder than a pentium 4 with hyperthread enabled.
SOPA
>Also - retro computing general.
I am trying to get myself a retro machine going. I got a question for you and others out there. What the fuck is the point of a retro machine that runs XP? You can use a fairly recent computer to run XP and anything that ran on XP will run on modern hardware under XP or under VM with XP.
I am having trouble getting Windows 98 SE to run on modern hardware virtualised or not, Virtualbox literally says about 9x "Slow because VirtualBox is not optimised for it". So I am beginning to think I my next option is to just buy a retro machine of the period, I'm guessing anything from a Penitum to a Pentium III and any machine in between, may try to find a Thinkpad of the period, because it seems 486 and early Pentiums are highly scarce and already sourced for "retro computing".
Crack that bitch open and build your dream machine, user. There's a certain joy that comes with opening sealed retro stuff that money can't buy, assuming you're otherwise responsible with money.
What games are you planning to play on your retro boxes? All of the old stuff I play runs pretty well on modern systems. Diablo has stability fixes and DOOM has some great source ports. Would be nice to try Heavy Gear II again though.
XP is the last system that has drivers for most of the oldish hardware - like Riva TNTs, GeForces below 4 and whatnot.
Socket A athlons had a 'flaw' that they consumed quite some power, but lacked thermal throttling, so running them with improperly set up cooling would kill them within seconds.
Power consumption of those chips was on line with P4 of the era.
>XP is the last system that has drivers for most of the oldish hardware
I understand that but any gaming or legacy software that you can use in XP would, with few exceptions, work on modern hardware with Windows 7/10 or even XP itself. Is the point to simply use the hardware you got around?
I intend to run through some games I missed back then, because I was a poorfag. Especially the 'old' pc is going to see some action with point'n'click adventure games.
The bigger machine is going to be mainly an Amiga emulator, because Amigas cost $texas these days.
Also - call me autistic, but running stuff on dedicated hardware seems more intresting then throwing it on current PCs.
>Is the point to simply use the hardware you got around?
This. Also, nostalgia and wanting to have a dedicated system for these kind of things. The hardware I needed to buy cost $30 in total, so I can live with it.
That is a fair point. My fear now is will I even be able to find the drivers required to make Windows 95/98/3.11 work properly with an older machine.
you are autistic
and I like it
>point'n'click adventure games.
So.. where you sourcing them point and click games..? Any clue where I could find DK Encyclopedias????
Ah, I gotcha. I just didn't know if there were certain games that are just completely unplayable on modern machines you had on your list. That's part of why I listed Heavy Gear. I'm sure there are a shit load of things that flew under my radar too.
It's OK, I'm turbo autistic too, just with classic game consoles, RGB mods, upscalers, and flash carts. Kinda pissed I got a Star Fox 2 cart before the final ROM was revealed this year.
I have a Pentium 2 350mhz Packard Bell Platinum.
All its missing is the original cd-rom and the graphics accelerator.
I keep seeing entire PCs from 87 selling for 75$ each, which makes my 97 Packard Bell look like a pretend bad joke when I try selling it as a collectable or as something expensive.
You type like a fucking mongoloid.
Stay on xp, maybe 2000 or 98SE if you plan to also use an old joystick or controller that came with game port, i have a vivitar WJ2000 and a first generation Sidewinder game pad (the one that came with a secondary female gameport on the back for more joysticks) and you just can't make that port work under vista or 7, and for some reason if i try to convert it to USB the mapping goes batshit.
youre autistic alright
Is 133mhz ram considered SD ram or do I need to go lower?
I was surprised when I started getting buyers for old PC parts, especially deluxe edition graphics cards.
What other things should I hang onto for years to come and how much can I expect to sell them for?
As long as it's a monitor for your desk it won't be that hard to carry. Just gotta make space for it though.
I found a 2005 Pentium M laptop that has Windows 98 drivers for everything except for the Modem and SD card reader. I have a few pics that was from an eBay listing. 1/3
2/3
3/3
It has a 1440x900 display as standard. There's an optional 1680x1050 and even a 1920x1200 display.
windows 98 gets weird with more than 512 mb ram and 2ghz cpu, as they are not supported
You can patch it to use more than 512MB of RAM and Second Edition supports 2.1+GHz CPUs.
the patch is not 100% effective. the issue can still manifest itself. for example, when using ms paint
That's a Barton 2400+ MP
Not really useful since dual Socket 462 are quite rare these days.
If you're running Windows 9x, it'll be easier to just run with 512MB RAM or less. More than that requires some fiddling with settings to make Windows stop crashing. Something to do with the filesystem cache I think.
For that time period, just having powerful hardware isn't enough either. A lot of stuff is speed sensitive, so you must make sure you have hardware that can downclock and perform at proper levels once caches are disabled. Hardware back then supported a lot of different proprietary features too. For 3D there is a lot of games that supports Glide and only Glide, + there are some oddities games that looks better on S3 or Matrox hardware (different features and extensions). The Ti 4200 is good for compatibility with most direct3d and opengl games tho. That paired with a couple of Voodoo2 cards would be a great combination.
in MSDOS, an ISA card is definitely the way to go, but the cards sound very different in different games. For Windows games, an SB Live is probably good enough, many games supports EAX, but there are a lot of games that supports A3D too, so a Vortex 2 card would be a nice option.
Just get a cheap shit Athlon for free. I've seen people giving i3s away.
Also I like this idea. I have my old PC here, Phenom 9600, 4 GB DDR2, GT 530, 500 GB HDD. Should I install XP SP3 on it`?
Do old games like King Kong or Medal of honor run well on a 530 or should I try to get some Geforce top model from the 7000 series?
The other idea was getting a PS2. Most of my old games run on WIndows 8.1 so I don't really need a retro PC. Even Sub Culture (I think 1997) runs.
>Geforce top model from the 7000 series
Do this. a 530 might work well enough, but wont support the features that some games depend on. Stuff like the earlier splinter cell games just don't look right on later hardware (later than Geforce 7000 series) and driver versions.
Thats what I thought of. I could maybe get one for free or cheap. Geforce 6800 or 7800, PCIe. My PC is from 2007.
GOG versions helped me a lot. Anno 1503 runs laggy on modern systems, but the GOG version worked. Same with many old titles and 16;9 issues. I'm thinking of replaying Delta FOrce Black Hawk DOwn just for the childhood memories.
I have a Acer AL17 for titles that won't support or scale with modern screens.
any amiga other than the 600 is more hassle than its worth
DE
>old hardware is hassle
If you don't like the hardware in the first place, just stick to emulators.