Building a retro PC

Narj

Narj

Narj

Soldato
Joined
19 Feb 2010
Posts
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Location
London
Hi all,

I'm looking at building a Retro Gaming PC for Windows 98SE seeing as VMWare Player and VirtualBox just don't cut it.

I was hoping that I could build something in a very small case from old parts which should be cheap as chips by now.

Would anyone have any idea of what the highest end stuff I could get away with would be before Win98 refuses to recognise it? I'd hope for SLI Voodoo2 cards as well :D

Last time I ran Win98 I think it was on a 440BX Mobo with a P3.

Advice would be much appreciated!
 
Yeah I think I'd go for a P3 800MHz or thereabouts with 256MB of RAM. Even that's overkill, but Windows 98 shouldn't have an issue coping with it and it'll be plenty for any game of that era.

You could maybe look for an AGP board and get one of the higher-end Voodoo 4 or 5 cards instead of a pair of Voodoo 2s. Would surely be faster, though I'm not sure what price point they go for these days.
 
Thanks for the Voodoo4/5 shout - any recommendations on a small mobo I could use that would fit in an HTPC case?

I'm hankering to play Incoming, Rogue Squadron and Red Alert again... :p
 
scwba06 said:
Rogue squadron! Now there's a blast from the past
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Seriously, trying to get a load of these old games on virtual machines is stupidly frustrating. :( Stuff tends to run OK in DOS mode but I'd prefer it ran in Win9x mode. Also, getting sound to work properly can be a real pain.

Windows compatibility mode often turns out to be just as much of a nightmare.

If I can just build a little box that will play all these old gems I'd be happy! Maybe I'd be best off looking for an older small form factor Dell or something and just chucking the video card in there?
 
PianoBasher said:
Seriously, trying to get a load of these old games on virtual machines is stupidly frustrating. :( Stuff tends to run OK in DOS mode but I'd prefer it ran in Win9x mode. Also, getting sound to work properly can be a real pain.

Windows compatibility mode often turns out to be just as much of a nightmare.

If I can just build a little box that will play all these old gems I'd be happy! Maybe I'd be best off looking for an older small form factor Dell or something and just chucking the video card in there?
Click to expand...

I'd try posting in the small form factor sub forum, they're used to small form perfection and I'm sure ul find someone with a knowledge of ancient hardware. I used to play rogue squadron on my first ever family pc when I was like 9 or 10 when I could nick my dads my dads ancient, unresponsive and unpredictable joystick
 
Athlon Thoroughbred or Barton 1700+ to 2600+ in a 462 socket Nforce mobo with 2 GB DDR PC3200 ram. An AGP video card or you may find a board with PCIe.

Pentium P4 478 pin mobo with Rambus or DDR memory ditto.

I was still running Win89se on hardware up to my Athlon x64 3800+ dual core 939 pin though so that generation should be fine giving PCIe, DDR2 etc. most drivers still available.

I still use win98se on a Toshiba satellite 4600 pro (PIII) at work which runs some ancient DOS programs. These don't work on newer 32 or 64 bit operating systems.
 
Red Alert works perfectly well on my Win7 x64 box :)

Not sure on old school mobos though, will have a rummage round at home see what I have got
 
mrbell1984 said:
@PianoBasher

Why not ask in the MM if anyone has any bits laying about?
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Aye I will ask a few friends what they have laying around first though, never know what I can scrounge! If no joy then I'll ask, good point!

Thanks for the suggestions peeps!

Nikumba: How did you get that working? I downloaded the ISOs already. :) I suspect I won't have as much joy running a load of the other games on Win7 though, especially Glide titles.
 
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