building a retro gaming PC for dos/win95/win98 games

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GodOfGaming

Limp Gawd
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Apr 9, 2012
Messages
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Hello,

I want to build the ultimate retro PC for gaming. My first PC was with Windows XP, so I've never owned a pre-XP era PC, and now I have a modern PC with core i7 and Windows 7, but I'm not quite satisfied with retro games on this modern PC, no matter how well can features be emulated, I came to the conclusion that to get the best full experience of old retro games, I'm gonna need to build a retro PC.

I guess I should use Windows 98SE or Windows ME as the OS of choice, I think I shall have no problems at all with DOS and Win95 games on a Win98SE machine, right?

I dug around the internet to research the limitations of Win98 and found out that it does not support multithreading, so I guess anything more than a single core CPU would be a waste. It has stability issues with more than 512MB ram, so I guess I should get 2 sticks of 256MB for dual channel. I think it cannot support more than 128GB HDD, so I should probably look for a 120GB HDD. Or is that 128GB partition? If I get, say, 250GB HDD, can I make 2 partitions 120GB each and have no issues? And it doesn't support SATA so everything should be IDE, and it doesn't support PCI Express either.

Now, let me say this, I don't want just a cheap budget retro PC, I want to assemble the ultimate retro PC with all the best parts possible. So don't pay that much attention to the price of parts.

First, choosing the motherboard. As far as I'm aware, AMD single core CPUs outperform Intel single core CPUs, so I guess I should look for AMD. From what I can see, Socket AM2 and Socket 939 have useless PCI Express slots. Then the choice is between Socket A(462) and Socket 754. Probably a bit of a no-brainer, the 754 is newer and should be better. Is there any reason to choose the 462 over the 754? I read somewhere that the best 462 motherboard is DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B, so if you say 462 will be better, I guess I should look for this motherboard. If not, I don't know which is the best 754 motherboard, but I see some guy is selling a Chaintech ZNF3-250 which looks very nice and has 1 AGP slot and 5 PCI slots. Anyhing better than this?

For CPU, I think some old games like Daggerfall and NFS Porsche Unleshed have trouble with CPUs over 2GHz... or is that over 2.1 GHz? I don't know if a 2GHz CPU would be fine, so I guess 1.8 GHz is a safe choice. If going with socket 754, the best 1.8GHz CPU should be Athlon 64 2800+ right? If 2GHz is safe, then Athlon 64 3000+?

For RAM, obviously I should go for a pair of 256MB DDR1 400MHz sticks, right? I have no idea what is the best brand and model though.

For graphics card, I guess the main should be the most powerful one that would work, and I think that's Sapphire HD 4650 AGP, which has Win98 drivers on sapphire's site from what I can see. I also want a graphics card for games that support Glide to get the full enjoyment out of them, is 3dfx Voodoo5 fine, or is there a reason why I should look for one of the older models? Is there another retro graphics card that I might need to experience something in specific?

Sound cards, here it gets interesting, since there doesn't seem to be one ultimate sound card that fits all, looks like I will have to have several different ones for different games. To begin with, Diamond MX300 for games that support A3D. For games that support EAX, what would be the best sound card? Creative SB Audigy ES I think? Though Im not sure if it has Win98 drivers. Or Creative SB Live? I really don't know. I also heard there was a third choice at the time, something called Sensaura, which many different sound cards supported, any details on that? For the oldest games like DOS games what do I need for the best experience, something like Gravis Ultrasound?

For the case I'll choose something modern, with a side panel window so that I can show off the nerdfest inside, not sure what yet, maybe a FD Define R5 or something. I want to use modern 80+ PSU if possible, I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work, but how much watts would I need? 400W enough? I really don't know how much power do these old components suck out.

Finally, monitor, I guess I should find some sort of CRT monitor, those old games work in all sorts of different resolutions but I do think they will end up looking better on a CRT than a LCD. I don't know which CRT monitor to go for though.

Any help and tips highly appreciated! I'm jumping into unknown territiry here...
 
Honestly, if you go past a Pentium 4 you'll have issues with Windows 98 support. You'd be best off getting a Pentium 2/3 or Athlon (Slot A or Socket A) to play old Win98 and DOS games.

A Creative SoundBlaster Live! is what you'll want because some of those old games are hard coded to specifically look for "SoundBlaster Live!". And the Live has full DOS mode drivers that emulate a AWE64/AWE32/SB16, they work quite well.

For a video card, I would get a 3DFX Voodoo 3, which will be powerful enough and has proper 98 support (Voodoo 4 doesn't). It supports OpenGL, Glide and D3D so it will cover it all.

A modern PSU and case will work as long as everything is ATX. Some older boards have AT power connectors so watch out.
 
so let's see, so far the config then comes up to be:
DFI LanParty NFII Ultra or Ultra B (can't find one for sale right now, let's hope one shows up)
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (1833MHz) (I can see one for only 3 euros)
2x256MB DDR400 RAM (I can see some nice pairs with heatshields by Geil for 4 euros, Super Talent for 5 euros, or Kingston HyperX for 6 euros)
3dfs Voodoo3 2000 (I see one for 10 euros)
Diamond MX300 for A3D (can't find one, is there another alternative?)
Creative SB Live (I see one for 5 euros)

I'm still undecided about case and PSU, but I do want a nice big side window and perhaps a good idea to also have a side fan to blow on the expansion cards. Maybe a Cooler Master K380 would fit fine, but I'll decide after I check my choices some more. I'll also need to check for CD and Floppy drives.

Can I get a big HDD like say 500 GB and make 125GB partitions? Or that won't work? I could maybe get a WD Caviar Blue 500 GB PATA and use that?
 
For DOS games, the SBLive! is really very tricky to set up.

IMO the SB Awe64 Gold! is the best one for DOS gaming, paired with a Roland MT-32 and possibly a Roland SC-55 or SC-88.

you could also get crazy and try to find a Gravis Ultrasound, but good luck with that.

But you would need an ISA slot for the AWE64.

From my research, the best setup if you want an ISA slot is:

Motherboard: ABIT KT7A or KT7A-RAID with the modified bios to support AMD Barton CPUs.
CPU: One of the mobile Barton CPUs so that you can overclock very easily.

Win98: From my experimenting, it is good up to about 1.25GB of RAM. Any higher than that and it freaks out.

SSD for the boot drive - 128GB should be plenty for all your old retro games. You may need to get a SATA card with a BIOS built in so you can boot from it. Just depends on the motherboard you go with.

NFS Porsche - Works fine with higher speed processors. You can even get it working in Windows 7 if you want.

Video card - Voodoo 5-5500. I have mine from when I bought it new :)

Anyway, just a few things to think about.
 
SSD !? in Win 98 !? Seriously? :D
NFS Porsche works with high speed processors, but not fine. Graphics, or to be exact textures, fall back to very low resolution, and everything looks blurry. You can't even read the numbers on the gauges in cockpit view. I had a socket A sempron 1.8 and it was fine, then I moved to core 2 duo 2.6ghz and had to underclock it to fix the graphics.

I don't know if there's any point to wait for a DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B motherboard, I kind of doubt it one would show up anytime soon if at all. I see now one that kind of looks nice, Abit NF7. Is it a good model? It kind of worries me that it only has chipset and USB drivers on its website... What about Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2? There's one real cheap only 9 euros.
 
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An alternative to the Diamond MX300 would be the Aureal Vortex 2 SQ1500 or SQ2500
 
As an alternative sound card suggestion: the best DOS sound card ever created before the Live! was:

The Ensoniq AudioPCI.

This is the same technology that Creative bought and used with the Live! because they couldn't figure out DOS support for PCI cards. It's the best DOS card you can find.

Never once did I encounter issues running older games when I used this on my Windows 95, then Windows 98, then Windows 2000 PCs. It's been a few years, but I recall full support for General Midi MT-32, and it used the same midi soundsets that you selected in Windows (it uses main memory XMS/EMS/whatever for the soundfonts).
 
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horrorshow said:
*shudders

Thank god those days are over....
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Well, but the pain is removed from your hands because their driver automatically handles it! Hence my "whatever" description, because I don't really care :D

Believe me, GodOfGaming is building a gaming system that hearkens back to the golden age of DOS gaming, when every game supported at least VGA 320x200 256 color graphics, intelligent TSRs like EMM386 handled all the annoying memory management crap for you, and Memmaker made higher memory management a walk in the park.

And of course newer soundcards like the AudioPCI/Live! handled all those older formats like a breeze, plus took advantage of the speedy PCI bus to move soundfornt synthesis to main memory, meaning you no-longer had to install sample ram on cards.
 
Also, GodOfGaming, you might want a second video card:

A Rendition v2200 card, if you can track one down. Typically games back then either supported either Voodoo Graphics GLide (most likely), Rendition Speedy3D/RRedline, or both. These were the two earliest 3D graphics cards that had both high-quality featureset and high performance, so they became the closest thing to standards.

And then Rendition fell off the bus and took too long to release the v2200, and they lost well before 3dfx crashed and burned :(

If you don't mind the low fill rate, Rendition does have the prettiest version of Quake: VQuake, which features edge AA. I don't recall the OpenGL version supporting that, and you'd have to use a GeForce3 to get MSAA, or scrounge a Voodoo5 for FSAA worth using.
 
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Check out Vogons.org.

It's a forum pretty well dedicated to retro hardware. Lot's of examples of what you want to do over there.
 
GodOfGaming said:
SSD !? in Win 98 !? Seriously? :D
NFS Porsche works with high speed processors, but not fine. Graphics, or to be exact textures, fall back to very low resolution, and everything looks blurry. You can't even read the numbers on the gauges in cockpit view. I had a socket A sempron 1.8 and it was fine, then I moved to core 2 duo 2.6ghz and had to underclock it to fix the graphics.

I don't know if there's any point to wait for a DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B motherboard, I kind of doubt it one would show up anytime soon if at all. I see now one that kind of looks nice, Abit NF7. Is it a good model? It kind of worries me that it only has chipset and USB drivers on its website... What about Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2? There's one real cheap only 9 euros.
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Yep, SSD. Had an extra 128GB laying around.. and it does cleanup internally, so no worries there.

My goal was to put together the fastest system with an AGP and ISA for DOS/WIN98SE.

I've run NFS Porsche on an i7 before. It never gave me the graphics problems you are describing.
 
I see there are USB 2.0 to ISA adaptor boards, how well do those work? If they do fine, I think I could go without a motherboard that has an ISA slot on it.

BTW I learned that I need to look for specific sort of AGP slot for a 3dfx Voodoo card, it doesn't just work on any AGP slot.
 
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GodOfGaming said:
I see there are USB 2.0 to ISA adaptor boards, how well do those work? If they do fine, I think I could go without a motherboard that has an ISA slot on it.

BTW I learned that I need to look for specific sort of AGP slot for a 3dfx Voodoo card, it doesn't just work on any AGP slot.
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According to the site, the DOS support is through Windows... so they would only work for DOS programs if those programs are able to run through the DOS prompt.

Plus they are $150 for a single slot form what I could find.
 
In the first place, is there any advantage to playing DOS games on actual hardware compared to just using DOSBox? Do they sound better or look better or anything?
 
GodOfGaming said:
In the first place, is there any advantage to playing DOS games on actual hardware compared to just using DOSBox? Do they sound better or look better or anything?
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Yes, and no.

I can tell you from direct experience: if you have enough processing power (i.e a single core Intel 3 GHz or higher), you can emulate most SVGA games smoothly.

But there are caveats: some games have tougher timing for the emulation to keep up with, since there are all sorts of things it has to keep track off through the TSR mountain. So it's hit-and miss: most games are perfectly smooth with no sound drops, while others are never smooth no matter how you tweak the cycles. Still playable, just not perfect.

Also, you can't easily experience 3D-accelerated titles unless you go through the trouble of this 3DFX pass-through patch, and trying out the associated GLide emulator:

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=16462

On the plus side:

You don't have to mess with anything for most games. The automatic cycles system is pretty good most of the time.

The sound card quality is pretty good, as long as the emulation is synced and doesn't drop audio.

Also, most of the best 3D games either had Windows executables already (i.e. WinQuake), or have since been created by fans, so you're not missing much nostagia.
 
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GodOfGaming said:
You said earlier that the prettiest version of Quake is VQuake, but can it possibly be prettier than Quake on darkplaces engine with texture mods and stuff?

I really love modding, just look at how good can Doom look with a few mods:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfsMz67WTY
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Oh, no I meant ORIGINAL versions. Compared to GLQuake, VQuake is impressive.

But god no, the newer versions destroy VQuake. Just a moment of nostalgia for me and my crappy Hercules Thriller 3D :D

I took this project as if you were a game purist, since most people like myself just make due with DOSBox and modern ports and improvements. Until this morning I had no idea you were more flexible.

ONE MAJOR ADVANTAGE OF DOSBox over an older gaming box you build today: you don't have to chase down gremlins in 20-year-old hardware. Was that a glitch the game code, or was it electromigration failures in some ransom IC somewhere? Or is it a dried-up capacitor? Good luck tracking that one down, since most of the modern tools we have now to vet some hardware (i.e memtest86+, SATA SMART data) don't work on that older crap :(

I have not tried the GLide emulation in DOSBOx that I linked above, but usually VOGON projects are pretty solid, so I'd give it a shot if I were you. That's the only thing really missing from stock DOSBox. Just ran Quake sw rendering smoothly at 1024x768 on my crappy 2.5 GHz Core i3, so SVGA is painless by comparison (in terms of hardware requirements).

All you have to do with stock DOSBox is increase the default amount of ram from 16 to something like 64, and you shouldn't have any problems playing the final era of DOS games.
 
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Well, I'm simply chasing the best possible experience a game can give. I tried building a modern PC with specific parts that will give the best possible experience in all games ever made, but even then I feel like for at least some win95/98 era games it's just impossible with a modern PC. Which is why I thought I might make a retro PC.

As an expample, I tried everything I could to get NFS 2 SE to run natively on Windows 7 without any success. Then I tried using VMWare with WinXP installed in it and direct3d acceleration enabled, and used some sort of glide wrapper which translates calls to direct3d, and it sort of runs now, but is unstable, and it sounds horrible.
 
Honestly, I would highly recommend DOSBox and a nice CRT/Model-M Keyboard on somewhat modern hardware for something like this. I have fond memories of the DOS days of gaming, but it had its share of problems (games timed on a specific CPU clock, incompatible hardware, lack of keymapping, manual configs for memory allocation, etc). DOSBox solves all of those issues, while still delivering a classic experience.

With that said, I would like to either build (or buy) an old machine to play around with someday for nostalgia sake... but if I wanted something just to play games on, I wouldn't mess around with old hardware.
 
Well then, I guess I will leave DOS games to DOSBox, and focus just on Win95/Win98 games. I don't need ISA slot then, I guess. I should find the best motherboard with an AGP slot that supports cards like voodoo. I hear Socket A motherboards are the newest boards where AGP slot like that can be found.
 
GodOfGaming said:
Well, I'm simply chasing the best possible experience a game can give. I tried building a modern PC with specific parts that will give the best possible experience in all games ever made, but even then I feel like for at least some win95/98 era games it's just impossible with a modern PC. Which is why I thought I might make a retro PC.

As an expample, I tried everything I could to get NFS 2 SE to run natively on Windows 7 without any success. Then I tried using VMWare with WinXP installed in it and direct3d acceleration enabled, and used some sort of glide wrapper which translates calls to direct3d, and it sort of runs now, but is unstable, and it sounds horrible.
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Have you tried installing Windows 9x under DOSBox? IIRC, thats the only way that I was able to play Phantasmagoria 2 many years ago
 
No, I haven't, the idea never even crossed my mind. Though, I don't think you could for example use an aureal 3d sound card like that? I don't have any PCI slots in the first place, only PCI-E slots on my motherboard (Gigabyte Z77X UP7)
 
Yeah man, there is no such thing as the perfect gaming box. There are games that sometimes make me tempted to build a classic gaming box.

One example is Master Of Orion 2, which the Windows port is one of a very few DX2 games ever made. When Microsoft rewrote DX8 for greater efficiency they broke DX2 support, making it stop working starting in Windows XP. When you run it, you get mouse rendering issues that really ruin the experience.

Luckily for the above I can still use the DOS version, now that I have a more powerful single-threaded system that I did ten years back when I first tried it. I was pretty pissed off back then though.

I've sometimes thought about dual-booting Windows 2000 just to get DX7 native, but It's not worth it just for one game. In fact I DID dual-boot it for several years, but just forgot about it. And dual-booting Windows 98 to get even more classic gaming compatibility is completely out of the question because anything over 256MB ram is asking for trouble. (IIRC the 512MB limit includes memory space for all installed devices).

So I'm either stuck with virtual machines or else DOSBox. I simply enjoy too many newer games to justify the effort of building, maintaining, and troubleshooting a dedicated ancient game machine.
 
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Was thinking just now about going for a MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard + Athlon XP 2200+ or 2400+ CPU, which seems to be a perfect choice for Win9x games, but then I noticed a list of DOS games that support Glide. I should investigate if those could work with DOSBox and some sort of Glide wrapper, if not, I guess I'll be looking for an older system, probably with Pentium 3...
 
GodOfGaming said:
Was thinking just now about going for a MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard + Athlon XP 2200+ or 2400+ CPU, which seems to be a perfect choice for Win9x games, but then I noticed a list of DOS games that support Glide. I should investigate if those could work with DOSBox and some sort of Glide wrapper, if not, I guess I'll be looking for an older system, probably with Pentium 3...
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Why are you so convinced you need an ISA card to build a an older DOS gaming system? You don't need an AWE64 card.

In 1998 after I built my Abit BH6 and overclcoked Celeron 300a, I never touched ISA cards again. They are trash. This never once stopped me from playing older DOS games with audio.

You can get large quantities of PCI Voodoo/Voodoo2 add-in-boards, and they work just fine in DOS games. Add a second PCI video card for 2D passthrough, one PCI sound card (Ensoniq AudioPCI or Soundblaster Live! are both fine), and that's it.

What else am I missing here? The A3D cards were all PCI, if you insist on it.

And you can leave that AGP slot empty. You can get more than enough performance for any DOS games out of PCI.

Also, you *should* (I've never tried it) be able to use SATA devices as long as you run them in legacy mode. This is a mode where they send EIDE-compatible signaling over the connection, instead of the new more advanced AHCI stuff. This is the way you installed SATA hard drives in Windows XP without a separate driver. You'd still have to find a smaller drive, but SSDs make that easier now :D

Just remember: your ancient gaming platform doesn't have to play 100% of all titles ever released to be worthwhile. This is because you can also fall back to either (1) DOSBox or (2) virtual machine to try to get it running. You have more tools available for use today then you did back then, so you don't need "the perfect DOS platform." It just needs to be good enough to play 99% of games, and that's what the above can do.

Remember when I said that most purists builders spend more time worrying about the tiny little details than actually enjoying gaming? Don't take that route man, not if this is your first time through :D
 
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GodOfGaming said:
Well then, I guess I will leave DOS games to DOSBox, and focus just on Win95/Win98 games. I don't need ISA slot then, I guess. I should find the best motherboard with an AGP slot that supports cards like voodoo. I hear Socket A motherboards are the newest boards where AGP slot like that can be found.
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Abit KT7A or KT7A-RAID.

ISA and AGP.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Abit-KT7A-Socket-A-VIA-KT133A-Motherboard-/251289273798?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a820205c6

There are a few others out there, but good luck finding any. And the KT7A is the best overclocker and will support Barton chips with the modded BIOS.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley/8850/

I bricked the BIOS the first time I tried it and had to hot flash the BIOS using a different motherboard and then try again.

Buy using the socket wire mod, you can get 2.2Ghz+ with a mobile Barton chip.
http://www.emboss.co.nz/amdmults/
 
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55 us dollars? that's pretty expensive, I can find 2 of those KT7A boards locally for just 10-15 euros. In another forum they say Pentium 3s are better for this though... And they say that those Abit motherboards have very low quality capacitors that will cause trouble later.
 
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GodOfGaming said:
55 us dollars? that's pretty expensive, I can find 2 of those KT7A boards locally for just 10-15 euros. In another forum they say Pentium 3s are better for this though... And they say that those Abit motherboards have very low quality capacitors that will cause trouble later.
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Well, that is what is available in the US. They are getting pretty rare around here.

I was "lucky" and got one brand new in box.

First time I fired it up, some of the capacitors exploded. I contacted the seller about it and he refunded me 50% and I replaced the caps with ones I salvaged from a different dead board.

A large number of boards from pretty much every manufacturer from that period had faulty capacitors. It was a huge mess a a couple years after all those boards were sold.

And Dell had an even bigger mess with their Optiplex 260-280 line where pretty much every board had to be replaced due to faulty capacitors.

PIIIs are going to be a lot slower. I actually have another system I might eventually build up that has a Tyan S1854 motherboard and a PIII 933.
 
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You said there's modified BIOS for the abit kt7a that makes it accept mobile Barton CPUs? Where can I find that and is it only available for that particular motherboard? Because I've been digging around and found quite a few other kt133a motherboards that have an ISA slot
 
GodOfGaming said:
You said there's modified BIOS for the abit kt7a that makes it accept mobile Barton CPUs? Where can I find that and is it only available for that particular motherboard? Because I've been digging around and found quite a few other kt133a motherboards that have an ISA slot
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I put a link to the page that has it available in post #27.

I do not have any experience with other KT133a board with a modded bios, but it does look like that page may have 1 or 2 more.
 
From those motherboards on that site with bioses, I checked them all and the kt7a is the only one for Bartons that has an ISA slot... Well thanks, I will dig around google, I might find some more stuff for other boards.

BTW, how hard is replacing all the capacitors on the board with better ones? I do have a soldering iron but I'm not confident I could do it without damaging anything...

edit: I decided, I'll go the Abit KT7A route. I finished my research, and this and the Epox 8KTA3 seem to be the highest performing motherboards that still have an ISA slot, and there are no 8KTA3 boards for sale locally, while I'm finding 3 of the KT7A boards, dirt cheap too. I'll try to replace the caps, if I fail, I have 2 more tries :). I'll use some Athlon XP-M, I quickly found a dirt cheap 2500+ 1.8ghz barton, but if I look some more I might find a better one. Rather than overclock it as high as it will go, I think I may try to undervolt it instead. Now, all that's left is to choose PC133 SDRam sticks. I have to see what would be the nicest ones that I can find.
 
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cyclone3d said:
you could also get crazy and try to find a Gravis Ultrasound, but good luck with that.
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I kind of wondered what you mean, I think I know now, there's 2 for sale, an Ultrasound PnP 1.0 + 1mb ram for $175, and an Ultrasound ACE 1.0 for $238... those are prices for a modern high-end sound card! AWE64 is dirt cheap in comparison :D
 
It should be easy and cheap to get a used system to do this. Heck, I've got a P3 933/768mb ram/Geforce2 rig in the basement running 98se/XP.

I don't know about the Voodoo card.....I've never used them, I've always used Nvidea. A TNT2 or Geforce2 would be plenty I'm sure.
 
GodOfGaming said:
I see there are USB 2.0 to ISA adaptor boards, how well do those work? If they do fine, I think I could go without a motherboard that has an ISA slot on it.

BTW I learned that I need to look for specific sort of AGP slot for a 3dfx Voodoo card, it doesn't just work on any AGP slot.
Click to expand...

You do not need a special AGP slot for Voodoo cards, you just have to follow spec.

The problem is that there are multiple versions of AGP, and compatibility is not guaranteed.

In general you can divide the APG standards into 2x, 4x and 8x. As time passed they went to higher speeds and lover voltages on the AGP slot, see below.

2X: 3.3 Volt and 533 MB/s
4X: 1.5 Volt and 1066 MB/s
8X: 0.8 Volt and 2133 MB/s

Due to the different voltages, you may end up frying something if you mix them.
I fried a Super Socket 7 motherboard many years ago by putting a Geforce 2 into the AGP slot, it ran fine for about a month or 2 and then it just died.

In the case of the Voodoo 3, it's a AGP 2X card, so find the manual or equal minded people online and check if the motherboard is compatible with the card.
 
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I have i think an old school p4 2.8 with a motherboard and some ram if you're interested.
 
I screwed around with running Windows 98SE inside of a virtual machine. It does run but games don't seem to work properly, and any mouse and keyboard input was incredibly laggy. I ended up building two machines so I could play with a friend.

System 1
Asus P3B-F motherboard
Intel P3 600MHz (oc'ed to 800MHz on stock voltage)
512MB PC133 RAM
Ati Rage 128 Pro
Turtlebeach Montego II Plus soundcard
80GB ide hard drive and cd-rom
Intel 10/100pro NIC

System 2
Gateway motherboard
Intel P3 500MHz
256MB PC100 RAM
3Dfx Banshee
Integrated Sound Blaster AudioPCI 64v
20GB Maxtor, 10GB Quantum Bigfoot and ide cd-rom drive
Realtek 10/100 NIC

Installing windows isn't the hardest part of building a retro gaming rig, it's actually finding compatible drivers for the hardware. I searched forever to find a driver for the Ati Rage 128 Pro, Ati's own driver didn't work with it. I ended up finding a dell driver that happened to work with it.

Make sure you install the unofficial Windows 98SE service pack 3.43 (LINK) and the generic usb drivers. Without those usb drives don't work and testing drivers is a real pain.

Oh and wide screen monitors are not supported by most of the video cards from this era. I have to use a lower resolution and scale it up to 1680x1050 to get things looking correct on my systems. It's not CRT crisp, but at least the aspect ratio isn't completely screwed up.
 
cyclone3d said:
I've run NFS Porsche on an i7 before. It never gave me the graphics problems you are describing.
Click to expand...

Let me show you what I mean.

4o7MJb2.jpg


^Here's the game running on a 3.5 GHz Core 2 Duo under WinXP.

tVjYjbd.jpg


^This is the game running on the same PC with the Core 2 Duo underclocked to 1.2 GHz. See the difference?
 
Took me a long time to finally be able to build this retro gaming PC, back when I last posted I suddenly had to deal with other stuff so I had to postopone.I finally did build one now, in the last few days. It's sadly far from perfect, but it's usable enough I guess. Here's a pic:

QAmosoT.jpg


What I have here is:
mobo: Asus CUSL2-C
cpu: Pentium III 1000mhz (coppermine)
ram: 128mb + 64mb all pc133 CL3
graphics: 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 AGP (overclocked to 166mhz to match Voodoo3 3000, the fan you see down there is to cool it down)
ethernet: Intel PRO 1000GT gigabit network card
sound: Turtle Beach Montego 2 (Aureal Vortex 2)
storage: WD Caviar SE 120GB 7200rpm
LG CD drive, broken floppy drive, cheap ATX case, 350W no-brand power supply though I also bought an Antec SL300SP that I'm gonna replace the capacitors of and use that.

Future upgrades that I expect to do are look for a cheap TUSL2-C motherboard to replace the CUSL2-C, and then maybe look for a Tualatin 1400mhz upgrade, also a better CPU cooler. I want to replace the 192mb ram with 2x256mb with CL2 timings. I want to add a wavetable module to the sound card, something like that DreamBlaster X2 will probably work great. I want to replace the ATX case with a better case with more fans and better airflow. Most of all I'm unsatisfied with the performance of the Voodoo 3, with late games like Half-Life, Unreal, Quake 3, it doesnt really perform all that well. I'm considering replacing it with an Nvidia FX5800 or Quadro FX2000, plus nglide wrapper. As for peripherals, I still don't have a CRT monitor, I'm looking for a good Sony Trinitron but those are hard to find here, so Im temporarily using an old LCD I had lying around. I bought a Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1A, and will eventually get an IBM Model M keyboard.

From my experience though, it was definitely worth the trouble so far, I'm finally done with testing stuff, and started properly gaming on this PC today. I played a few levels of Half-Life 1.0.0.9, and oh man, it's so much better than Half-Life steam version on my modern PC. Aureal A3D sounds outstanding, and also the game looks amazing with 3dfx MiniGL renderer, gl_texsort 1, gl_overbright 1 and r_shadows 1 :)
 
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