Retro PC build rant

Soupy

Soupy

Soupy

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
755
Location
N.Ireland
Well I was all fired up today to built my retro pc for some old programs and games, such fun was the plan ...

Win98SE - Check
Motherboard - Check
P2 350 CPU - Check
2 x 128meg SD Ram - Check
ATI 9700 Pro - Check
and finally
2 x Voodoo2 12meg - ??? - wait, hold on, where's my prized vintage voodoo cards for graphics loveliness ?

After tearing the house apart it looks like in my recent house move one very important box might have been put in the skip pile ... groan :( feel a bit gutted to be honest and the wife doesn't seem to care or understand my pain, been looking forward to this wee project for ages.

And now I've just realised I had a P3 500 in the same box ... good grief ... aaaaargh :mad:

What a crap day!
 
Found my old Soundblaster Live card too, that'll go well with this retro build.

Really enjoying building an old system, apart from the nostalgic memories I'd forgot how picky older hardware was, once everything is installed and happy together I'll optimise drivers etc and see how she runs with some games.

Shame about the beige coloured dell dimension case I'm using, looks awful!

D Brennen: Thanks mate, some silly prices on fleabay too.
 
d_brennen said:
Perhaps check out the Radion 7000. iirc it's a pretty solid PCI card for retro gaming (Win 98)
Click to expand...

Think I'll be ok with the Ati 9700 Pro agp, it's running fine but have a TNT 2 ready as well just in case.

After installing Win98se I then found my WinME disc and for the life of me I can't remember which one was better / stable it's been that long since using either ?
 
Out of interest what kind of retro gaming you going to be doing? I loved MDK with a passion, i'd give anything to play that again :D
 
Games from the 2000'ish era, came across a nice sealed copy of Zax Alien Hunter for £2, I also want to race one of my favourite racing games of all time, Ultimate Race Pro. In fact it was most refreshing when Zax arrived to feel the weight of the package, ah the days when every PC game came with a decent manual and even better when you look at some of the artwork.

As much as I like Starcraft2 I'll be loading the original to play right through along with Brood Wars once again :)
 
Soupy said:
Well I was all fired up today to built my retro pc for some old programs and games, such fun was the plan ...

Win98SE - Check
Motherboard - Check
P2 350 CPU - Check
2 x 128meg SD Ram - Check
ATI 9700 Pro - Check
and finally
2 x Voodoo2 12meg - ??? - wait, hold on, where's my prized vintage voodoo cards for graphics loveliness ?

After tearing the house apart it looks like in my recent house move one very important box might have been put in the skip pile ... groan :( feel a bit gutted to be honest and the wife doesn't seem to care or understand my pain, been looking forward to this wee project for ages.

And now I've just realised I had a P3 500 in the same box ... good grief ... aaaaargh :mad:

What a crap day!
Click to expand...

Hi, don't quote me on it just yet, but down in my basement I have two old sheds, a P2-233 and a P3-450. One of them, I'm pretty certain contains a Voodoo2 card.
If I'm correct, you can have it.
However I can't check til about 4 this afternoon cos I gotta leave for work as soon I as I finish typing this!
 
dougal1331 said:
Hi, don't quote me on it just yet, but down in my basement I have two old sheds, a P2-233 and a P3-450. One of them, I'm pretty certain contains a Voodoo2 card.
If I'm correct, you can have it.
However I can't check til about 4 this afternoon cos I gotta leave for work as soon I as I finish typing this!
Click to expand...

Thanks mate and very generous of you :)

Win98se installed on one hard drive and now installing WinME on another, will do some tests and choose the most stable.

Dug out my old Samsung Syncmaster 151s for 'stunning' 1028 x 768 loveliness ... getting rather excited about all this ... amazing what pleasure a wee nostalgic trip creates :)

Everything just thrown together at the minute but will tidy it up later, some pics (hosted on dropbox)

winme.jpg


xpsr350.JPG


.
 
I also have a PC dedicated to running DOS & Win95/98 games. It's not all period correct, but i don't care as i wanted to run old games with AA and Anisotropic forced on (3dfx Voodoo 5 looked crap and ran slow with AA enabled!).


specs:

-Intel SE440BX2 motherboard
-Intel Celeron 1.4GHz CPU (Tualatin) using a Powerleap iP3/T adapter (and i have a spare :cool:)
-768MB Crucial PC100 SDRAM (3x256MB)
-128MB Gainward Geforce FX5700 AGP graphics card (crap for the games it was intended for, but great for older games with all the eye candy enabled ;)).
-Yamaha YMF724 PCI sound card with SB-link cable (full DOS support)
-40GB Maxtor IDE HDD
-Pioneer DVDRW IDE optical drive
-Suntek Bravo ATX case with 300W Suntek ATX PSU
-Windows 98SE with unofficial service pack installed
 
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Nice setup PowerPie, interesting point regards the Voodoo quality, you've got me thinking that maybe I was remembering my voodoo2 through rose tinted memory neurons and that I'll be better of just using my ati 9700 pro with all the eye candy turned on, it should deliver plenty of AA and AF goodness on the older games, and the 1024 screen res won't tax it to much I wouldn't think.

Glad you posted friend:)
 
Soupy said:
Nice setup PowerPie, interesting point regards the Voodoo quality, you've got me thinking that maybe I was remembering my voodoo2 through rose tinted memory neurons and that I'll be better of just using my ati 9700 pro with all the eye candy turned on, it should deliver plenty of AA and AF goodness on the older games, and the 1024 screen res won't tax it to much I wouldn't think.

Glad you posted friend:)
Click to expand...

The 9700 Pro should be fine when it comes to AA and AF as it's mostly done on the GPU (therefore not hurting CPU performance :)). I think an Nvidia Geforce based card would perform better with your PII 350 though... Higher end ATI cards at the time didn't scale too well with slower CPUs and they also had issues rendering fog in some games.

Avoid Geforce 1 & 2 cards as they were notorious for having poor 2D image quality... Some Geforce 3 cards weren't that great either! It's best to go for a Geforce 4 or higher (I think the Geforce 6 series were the last with Win 95/98/ME support). I settled with the FX5700 after testing many different cards and it's been fine with both DOS and Win 95/98 games :).
 
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Thanks again mate, I have an Asus v8170 128meg card which I is an nVidia GeForce4 of sorts, I pop it in an give it a testing too.

Really enjoying this trip down pc memory lane, so far I've found WinME a bit more stable than Win98SE on this setup. I also have a slot 1 P3 600E Coppermine on the way which is as much as this old motherboard will handle and remain stable ... Oh yea :D

This project has rekindled the PC building passion I first started out with back in '97 and can certainly recommend it ... It's also a sort of therapy harhar.
 
Remember that the GeForce 4 MX series is just a rebrand of the GeForce 2, so they will share its 2d issues.

Also depending on the "era" of the games you want to play, top end 3DFX is a better choice than ATi/Nvidia as "back in the day" Glide was vastly superior to D3D/OGL, basically Unreal Tournament 99 and earlier games look best on 3DFX.

Hey if you have a spare £5000 or so spare then Voodoo 5 6000 quad SLi will destroy the FX5700 :P

21642020600020lolz20qua.jpg
 
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Awesome post, it brings me back to when I was in my teens playing games on my old Pentium 2 and Voodoo Banshee 16MB. Sadly they got chucked long ago, along with all the old PC games I used to have :( Fortunately I can get most of them from GOG but it's not the same as having the physical stuff. Quake 1-3, Carmageddon, Myth the Fallen Lords, Turok 2, Duke 3D, Vampire the Masquerade to name but a few.
 
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