Late 90s 'Time' Retro Rig - Advice needed!

Crayfis · 9 Aug 2013 at 14:08

Hi guys,
I've wanted to put together a late 90s desktop for a long time, for using old apps and dos gaming etc. I would really like to install Windows 95 and a period correct graphics card, but I am looking for advice from the knowledgeable posters here on what would be the best OS & graphics card combination to work with my base PC unit while trying to be as 'historically correct' as possible, ie I have heard that that Win95 can be problematic on newer hardware so I might be forced to Win98 etc..

So I recently purchased a really period perfect 'Time' desktop from around 2000ish (I think it must be 2000 because it was bundled with Windows ME!). Its a 850ishMHZ AMD with 512 meg of ram, so its really a bit newer than the period I had in mind, but I'm glad of the extra power, if it doesn't cause more problems that is. Here is it:

I really love the styling, very 90s and much more exciting than most of the beige boxes that proliferated back then. The carry handle is functional too, a really great feature since, like allot of PCs back then, its built like an absolute tank. I got a matching Time branded 17" CRT with it also and even a mechanical mouse (unfortunately not Time branded), so I really want to stick with this base system.

The main game I would like to run well is Quake 3 Arena. Im not bothered about games later than that, but but the system must run Quake 3 and most earlier games, especially dos games, well. To keep with the period theme, I would really like a 3DFX card, although I hear they don't run the Quake engine games brilliantly.. I was actually offered a free Voodoo3 AGPx2 which is perfect, but unfortunately it seems my MB has PCI slots only.

Does anyone know what the small brown slot is marked on my photograph. Its brown like an AGP slot, but seems way too small, and strangely placed to be one?
*The slots are at the top becuase on this system the MB is on the right hand side of the case and upside down*

So, any advice people can give me is very welcome moving forwards.
Will I be able to use Win95? Or will I be forced to use Win98?
What would be the best card for my gaming needs, and to work well on this system, while remaining historically correct?
The power supply is one of those that feeds power 'out' to the monitor also, will I need to replace that if I get a dedicated gfx card or can I just plug my monitor into a separate power socket to ensure enough Wattage?
Can I replace those ribbon cables to tidy the inside up a little, or are that period connectors only available as ribbons?
Any thing else you can think of?

Please keep any suggestions as plain speak as possible, as you can problaby tell I am not the most tech savvy person. Thanks!

Crayfis · 9 Aug 2013 at 21:37

Thanks for the input guys, good to clear up the slot mystery. Just to follow up on some of your feedback.

Might there be an actual problem with installing Win95? You cannot install Win95 on hardware after a certain period no? Might this system have compatibility issues? Win98 seems like the safest bet, and its period correct and has full dos functionality, but still be cool to have 95. Windows ME is ofc the historically correct OS for this PC, which is rare and cool, but I am going for a slightly earlier period (95-99) and more importantly, ME was the first version to remove access to dos which really kills half the reason of this rig. Win 2000 is more a business focused version no? Don't know about dos in that version either.

Good news about the PSU. Watching some vids, even the last Voodoo5 dual GPU only required a molex.

The ribon cables are wrapped round each other really messily, I think maybe because of the strange MB placement. Perhaps I could move the drive bay arrangement round to help this a little too. I'ts got to be tidied up eitherway..

Yes Voodoo2 in SLI config is the setup I always wanted for a retro rig, but I hear that 3dfx doesn't run the Quake Games very well and it could be expensive getting 2 Voodoo2's no?
If I can find a pair of Voodoo2's for a decent price, I'll certainy go for them. I have a feeling a later Voodoo will be a bit more realistic a prospect tho..
Just came accross this vid while doing research. It was high times and all smiles at 3DFX here, just prior to Voodoo2's release:
'3dfx employee interviews 1997 vintage':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIPStpvkSwE
How times changed..

Thanks again guys, more updates soon hopefully.

Crayfis · 10 Aug 2013 at 11:14

Magicboy, yeah crazy amounts of expansions needed back then. This is a pretty interesting vid of a guy putting together a no limits, ultimate year 2000 build. So many slots, and thats without a separate 2D-3D setup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EipIq8nnwas
One question, why does this guy have 2 soundcards in this setup? I really love the Creative Soundblaster Platinum front bay control panel, one of those would look sick on my setup.
If you want to donate that Voodoo3 PCI to an extremely noble project where it would find purpose and self respect again, let me know

This pc has presumably onboard gfx so I wouldn't need a 2D card whatever setup I get no?

P.S. Anyone fill me in on the Win95 query in my previous post?

Crayfis · 10 Aug 2013 at 11:44

tomparker95 said:
I had that PC! Threw it away recently though im afraid otherwise I would have given you some bits!

Oh that could still be real handy tom. Did you do add in a new card or do any other alterations? You could give me some advice on compatibility and such.

P.S really handy page for people looking to use 3DFX cards now:
http://helppage.3dfx.sk

Crayfis · 10 Aug 2013 at 12:03

Sounds like I could be ok with Win95. I only have 512MB Ram and not planning on USB peripherals. I actually have my eye on an external Iomega Zip100 parallel port dive for this! Although using the mechanical mouse could become tiresome, they still make PS2 optical mice right?
Win 98SE was a great OS for sure, I may still end up installing that.

Not too worried about the Hard Drives, wan't to keep it all period and the games I'll be running are all pretty small. Might even run some off Zip!

Crayfis · 7 Sep 2013 at 15:02

Just an update on some swag for the project thats coming together nicely:

*Got 'mint' copies of Win98 & 95 donated from my good friend Deryck along with some new IDE Cables to tidy up the wiring a bit. The Win 98 CD has the holographic Windows clouds all over it and is just about the coolest (and most 90s) CD I've ever seen. Win 95 would be cool, but Im going with 98 as I think it will just be much smoother and more functional, while still retaining that classic 90s dos integrated experience.

*A copy of 'Windows 95 for Dummies' for 99p from e-bay. I have a copy of 'Netscape and the World Wide Web For Dummies' coming also

*A Creative 3D Blaster Banshee that I got for a fantastic £5 from ebay user Neil and his bro who saw the thread and were into the project. Although its not branded as such, this is a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee based card, which itself is a stripped down Voodoo 2 with more memory (16mb) and 2D chipset. This was the best option to go with I think. Voodoo2's in SLI would have been the ultimate, but are expensive and Im not sure how they would work on a system with an integrated graphics chipset since they used that clunky pass through cable tech to get 2D functionality. The later Voodoo cards get mad expensive also, so a Voodoo3 / Banshee was just right in terms of price, compatibility and 'historical accuracy'.
Interestingly, I've since found out that this pc has an integrated NVIDIA Riva TNT2 M64. This like the Banshee, is a stripped down version the companies main gaming card, the TNT2, a direct rival to the early 3DFX cards that helped Nvidia defeat and eventually absorb 3DFX. Its a 32meg card with 32bit texture support (compared to 16) and DirectX 6.1 support (compared to DX3), some of the reasons 3DFX started to fall behind, but this rig is staying Voodoo

*Finally I got a couple of 3DFX stickers from ebay to go on the case to show my brand loyalty

Crayfis · 10 Sep 2013 at 15:41

Cool comments guys!

Having a problem installing Windows 98. Im getting this error:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190984
but when I input the extract command listed, I get the message:
ERROR: Cannot open file: edb.cab

I can't find solution to this online. Anyone have any idea?

Crayfis · 11 Sep 2013 at 11:58

:/ Dang, hope I can solve this edb.cab thing soon, these games aren't going to play themselves..

Crayfis · 12 Sep 2013 at 09:11

The Pentium II machines were amazing at the time. I entered with a AMD 233mhz and the performance on my cousin's P2 was miles ahead. My only regrets about this system are that it isn't a P2 with an AGP slot (just to make it period perfect), but for actual use Im glad of the extra power this system has. Im looking forward to experiencing the Win9x OS again. I've been on XP since around 05.

Anyone have any more ideas about my problem in post #23? ^
Im really stuck until I can solve this.. It is caused by this machine having 2 HDDs as the microsoft solution says. Maybe I will have to try disconnecting the 2nd HDD?

Crayfis · 12 Sep 2013 at 21:22

Guys, which (UK) magazine was it that used to list the top 25 (I think) of each genre of game at the back? Like a listing for RPG, RTS, FPS etc? Was it PC Zone, PC Format? I used to really like that feature, when a big game got reviewed, you would see where it made it into the chart at the back. I remember Half Life held top FPS spot for a long time, and there was some old text based RPG that stayed in the chart right into the late 90s..

Those mags, and especially the shareware CDs that came with them just seemed like landfill back in the day, but now I wish I'd have kept all those..

Crayfis · 13 Sep 2013 at 16:49

No Gamer only came later, it was PC Zone, I found a scan of an old copy.

Ok I disconnected the 2nd HHD and that got past that Windows install error. Win 98 is installed and running.
I tried to install the Banshee card. Wondows recognizes that there is a new PCI VGA adapter present and asks for the driver, when i send it to the location it just ignores it and puts its own one up. So I go the 'show a list of drivers' > 'have disk' route then force it to install the Banshee drivers. I got them installed, but there is no signal coming from the Banshee card, only the onboard graphics VGA output and windows says driver is installed but card not working properly. Now is the card actually not working do you think, or could windows still tell that a PCI VGA card was present even if it was dead?
I should be getting a 2D output from the card whatever no? Could it be a conflict with the integrated gfx set? Surely it should just overide that no?

Crayfis · 14 Sep 2013 at 12:38

Btw guys, I found this great archive of late 90s PC Zone scans. Charlie Brooker actually used to do the game reviews!

http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/PCZone/

Crayfis · 14 Sep 2013 at 17:58

I've actually unplugged the Banshee card and its detecting the onboard GFX as a pci vga card and asking for drivers for that. So for now I've taken out the Banshee and just installed the onboard drivers.
My friend also said something about turning off onboard gfx in the bios, but if the Banshee card is dead, Im worried I won't be able to re-set it with no video output. He said something about unplugging a cable on the board to re-set the bios settings, but I better wait until he comes over before trying that.

Crayfis · 14 Sep 2013 at 18:42

nikonite: Really appreciate the offer m8, but unfortunately this doesn't have a AGP slot, which would have been allot more period correct for the late 90s. Its quite limiting too, most cards like yours from that era that come up are AGP..

There are a couple of great articles here covering tons of the earliest cards:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/video/3d-chronicles-1-page1.html
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/retro/retro2003-2.html

EDIT:
VF, great video m8. The movement physics in Quake 3 are fantastic. Don't know if you are aware of the mod 'Defrag'? Its basically a time-trial race mode done on specially created obstacle course levels:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsrd5205tYU

Crayfis · 19 Sep 2013 at 19:12

Installed this badboy today. Soundblaster Platinum 5.1 with this awesome 'Live Drive' front bay with Creative branding. Wanted this for the system as soon as I saw it and got one real reasonable off e-bay.
It comes with a remote control so you can use it like a player (I guess) but one of the batteries had rusted a bit inside and i duno if thats stopping the controller getting power to send a signal. Eitherway, it looks and sounds sweet.
Riding those 90's vibes*

I put in the two round IDE cables I had to tidy things up a bit, but its still Ribbon Cable city inside. I need another IDE cable, and another of whatever the cable is that links the soundcard to the front panel. Thats the massive ribbon thats running top to bottom in the pic. Its like an IDE cable but with slightly different pin layout.

Crayfis · 20 Sep 2013 at 16:56

jonnyp, yeah I'd like to a build in the same case but a contemporary high spec gaming rig. For this case I think you'd have to do mini itx, mainly because of the curved design, but there were big cases back then that would give you more room.

Regy, sounds like a handy stash for someone like myself..

It turns out that ribbon cable that connects the soundcard/ drive bay is a Creative proprietary ('AUD_EXT') type of cable.. Great. I have seen a round one of these, but its gona be real hard to find one since they are discontinued and only shipped with the systems themselves.. I can only even find one of the ribbon type that I have and thats in the US on ebay.com:
Inside of the case is gona remain messy for a while I think..

Crayfis · 23 Sep 2013 at 13:33

How can I get files onto my 98pc without burning 100s of CDRs!?
Guy does anyone know how its possible to transfer files from a ntfs pc to an fat32 one on removable media? I have an old win98 compatible memory stick (256mb), but I have to format it from one format to the other between my win98 pc and my new pc where I downloading all the files I need. I can burn CDs, but thats getting really wasteful and Im running out of CDRs as I keep finding new files and things I want to transfer over. I have a network drive (HDD connected to my router) but that will also be a modern format, and I've not got my network card working in the 98pc to connect to net / lan yet anyway. I guess if I got the win98 pc connected to the net I could use cloud storage like mediafire, but i dont even know if netscape / IE4 can even access those modern pages.. The ideal solution is if I could make this memory stick work in both formats, anyone know?

(Article) Gaming Like Its 1999: Building A Legacy Windows Gaming PC:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/Gaming-Its-1999-Building-Legacy-Windows-Gaming-PC

Crayfis · 23 Sep 2013 at 14:06

Why can the 98 pc read a shared ntfs folder but not ntfs formatted removable drives? Be good if it works, but still confused as to why one works and one wouldnt.

Using old software like 98 - IE4 etc I kinda like the whole reason for the build. Also Win 2000 removes dos, again kinda kills the reason for building a 9x / dos gaming pc..