I think when they said, "Minimum system requirements", they really meant that. They had tried the weakest system that can run the game in the lowest settings possible. I always look for "Recommended system settings" for choosing what i can play with my retro-pc.
I second that. Unreal released in August 1998 plays really choppy on my Pentium II 333, a CPU released in February that same year. I should not even mention Unreal Tournament from 1999...
It's often overlooked that 15-20fps was considered "playable" for a lot of people then. I know for me, if I could get a game to 30fps, that was my idea of silky smooth.
A period correct machine is great but for beginners or people who just want to play the game, building a time machine is a lot more convenient and more accessible.
@@someguy3186 there not ridiculous there rare it wasn’t what is was like 7 years ago when these things were considered junk now there considerd rare retro sleeper builds
I like period mostly correct options, but also like building time machines, so I have multiple of both options 😊 For me the hardware is more fun than the actual games, endless combinations
I agree, but now I have four active period correct machines running with all games installed.. I have to start playing games.. there just is no more space to build more here! I have them hooked up to KVM switches, to save space only two CRTs and one keyboard and two mice and one large pair of Altec Lansing, it's cramped. My solution is I use a code with random generator to select a system and then a game, and then I force myself to play that random game for a while. Otherwise I always play the same three games.
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I love all flavors of machines! At the end of the day, I think tinkering with hardware (and configuring software!) can be just as rewarding as playing our favorite games. Part of my computing experience is linked to troubleshooting and getting things to work back in the day. I expect some of it nowadays too as I go back in time and fiddle with old hardware. Still, I totally get it when people have limited time (and budget!) and want things to "just work". As long as we keep playing and sharing our experience the retrogaming community as a whole wins. As usual, thank you Phil and everybody writing comments for helping to keep this hobby alive! I really enjoyed reading the comments and stories! In the spirit of sharing, here is my personal setup related to this matter: Personally, my period-correct setup is a Pentium 2 with 16 megs of RAM, a SoundBlaster 16, and an old hard disk that I'm surprised is still working. I think it may soon need to be replaced with a small SSD or a CF card. This machine is hooked to a Compaq 14" CRT monitor with a "bubble" type of screen. I got lucky because the motherboard features AT and ATX options. So I got a recent PSU powering it and retired the original AT unit. Overall, I love playing on this machine because of all the little mechanical sounds it makes (monitor turning on, noise from the hard drive reading stuff, and a slight static sound from the speakers which becomes obvious at high volumes). My Pentium 4 seems to have bitten the dust due to a PSU that went bad. I'm still checking which parts are (not) working so that I know what to save and what to send to an electronics recycling center. It was my WinXP machine and I was looking forward to upgrading it with something better than the GeForce MX 4000 it currently has, alongside more RAM (only 1GB!). It is now disassembled, each part in its own anti-static bag. The new star of the show is a time machine type system. I feel it is way too recent and quite overpowered for the stuff I usually play, but since it was just laying around the house with no use, it is a low-cost substitute for the P4 system. This PC is a WinXP build with a Core i3 4160, 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM, GTX 650 and an SSD. The catch is that I play it using the peripherals that belong to the P4 system: a Samsung 15" CRT monitor, an old MS keyboard, and even the case that belonged to the P4. This PC runs basically all of my GOG library and a bunch of MS-DOS games (I love D-Fend Reloaded!) and SCUMM VM with no issues. I still have some CDs and floppies from back in the day and I enjoy using those. As it sits on the table, the only difference is that you won't hear the hard drive read/write noises. This made me think about something: as time passes, I am under the impression that backing up those disks and using them as image files in the time machine is much more realiable (obviously) than subjecting the old discs and drives to some more wear/tear after some 2 decades. There is also the convenience of buying games digitally instead of scouring through marketplace listings. I guess this is why my GOG library (and wishlist!) keeps growing.
Personally, a period-correct build with a CRT monitor gives me the right feeling to immerse myself in the game. In the end, to avoid subjecting my old hardware to too dangerous stress, I often use emulators for convenience. I invented some middle ground with Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 with XP and thanks to the DOS Box and glide configurator, with the Sound Blaster Live and the CRT monitor I can cover from 1993 to 2005 with retrogaming with an ancient flavour😉. Thanks for the content, greetings from Italy
I agree, using the right monitor is the key to get "the feeling" if you played the games back in the day. Using modern LCD monitors to play 320x200 games it's ok but it's a totally different experience!! The art of the game changes a lot b/c those EGA and VGA games were created to be played in CRTs.
@@net_news totally agree with you. To avoid the risk of frying my 3dfx (I love collecting them), I installed nglide configurator on my Pentium 4 equipped with WindowsXP and I do great with many glide titles such as Tomb Raider 1, Quake 1 and 2, Unreal, Need for speed Porshe etc ... with my old 17" Syncmaster. Even the old glorious MS-DOS titles are faithful on that monitor emulated with DOS BOX and configured with the audio of the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy II.
Do you get the correct resolutions and refresh rates and scalers and other stuff right with DOS-BOX? I heard you need some fiddling with custom resolutions.. For me the reason I built a P233MMX was to have smooth scrolling with Jazz Jackrabbit 😅 And some other side scrollers.. but pretty much all else runs fine on Dosbox yea
I lucked out and found a Windows 98 machine in a basement of a house I was renovating. P2 400MHz in a P2B rev 1.12, Rage Pro Turbo AGP, and a DOS compatible soundblaster. It must have been abandoned to upgrades at the end of the 90's/ early 2000's. I am currently doing a 98SE/DOS build to pair with my modern custom loop gaming rig. My office is filling in nicely with a mix of old and new:)
Nice! A friend if .ine was cleaning out old stuff, and gave me an old Compaq Deskpro 386. I am still trying to wirk out how to put a gotek in it and will probably add scsi with a zuluscsi. I like a mix of old and new.
Simple answer for me : I love both. Very nice feeling to play with slot one boards with Dos and w98se. It accept a plethora of processors from p2 233 to Pentium 3 1Ghz, very versatile. Same for graphics cards from old school 2d ones up to overkill Geforce Fx i love also playing with a more modern like p4 , athlon 64, Core 2 or athlon Fx for W98se or Win Xp. Here in France, you can easily find localy old computers like this for 50 / 100€ Thank you for your video.
Half half is good in my opinion. I use Windows 7 era hardware to play Windows XP stuff. It’s easier to get max performance and graphics so your Pc doesn’t struggle. Sometimes the older gear isn’t very reliable because of its age and it’s harder to find good condition stuff.
Both! But the time machine is a bit more fun. Over-spec'd Win98 or XP builds are super fun and ultimately the main point for me. I want to build something better than I had growing up! Like a P4 w/ 1GB ram on Win98se.
I do mostly period-correct systems, but I almost always replace the mechanical SCSI/IDE drive with a solid-state replacement. I also go with the highest spec components of the period with max RAM etc.
I think I found the trick for using an SSD, after many failures. I created 3 Fat32 partitions on a 120gb SSD and windows 98 installed on it. I couldn't believe it. Now I have used this on 3 machines I have from the 90's.
So do I! HDD are real bads, so I replace with SSD! I replaced the PSU and the case too. Apart from that, I usualy keep the rest upgraded to the max and period correct! I have a P3B-F with Pentium III 550Mhz (Katmai) with 1gb mem SDR, Geforce 3 Ti 200 and Win2K! I tried W98SE, but it's justo too bad, specially the lack of NTFS support, so I kept Win2K.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it probably wouldn't even be possible because of environmental legislations and all that, basically making them illegal to manufacture. Remember these were made with lead and all other sorts of harmful stuff. As much as I'd absolutely love to see CRT technology revived, it's probably not going to happen. Getting new old stock tubes and someone somehow building a chassis around them would probably be the best we could get, and it wouldn't be cheap to boot.
That's the sort of product that only makes sense to manufacture at a large scale, unfortunately, using equipment and expertise that has been honed over decades. It would be like trying to do a small run of laserdiscs: basically impossible. You'd have to recreate an entire industry for the sake of a single product line
If you don't already know, there is a modern lcd monitor that looks like a CRT you can buy from Stephen Jones. So not a CRT but at least it can look more appropriate.
My Time Machine is designed for Windows XP, and uses some of the last supported devices. Gigabyte Q67 ITX motherboard, Intel i7-2600, 480GB SSD, and an nVidia GT 740.
I go hybrid: period correct for the core components (CPU, motherboard, RAM, extension cards), and modern for the rest. Having a classic beige case is nice, but the ones in good condition are increasingly harder to find. I have seen many many old cases in the last two years. They usually have bent side panels or a bent motherboard tray (I don't know what people do with their PCs). Things that I definitely don't miss: 1) low quality noisy power supplies that always exploded at the end of their lifetime, 2) small noisy fans everywhere, 3) bulky blinking CRT monitors that gave me headaches, 4) slow noisy hard drives that gave me even more headaches, 5) floppy disks: every second one did not work. Today I have a modern power supply and emulate the drives with compact flash cards and Goteks. For the CD-ROM drive I mostly use images and Daemon Tools, as those were also slow and noisy.
I like both. But mostly period correct hardware. Because, with a period correct machine I know it's from the past. The actual hardware. To have the real machine from the past makes me feel the past is so much more real instead of a distant memory.
Just one. I had a beautiful 19" NEC flat screen CRT back in the day. I'm so annoyed with myself for selling. My current 17" Viewsonic gets the job done though.@@dallesamllhals9161
I _do_ have a CRT and love to use it.. but do so very sparingly.. I'm very scared it's going to die and (although I'm probably quite a hoarder), having surplus CRTs lying around is not really something I can do :( Apart from knowing the basic theory about how they work, I'd have no idea how to, or even if it's possible, to fix them if something happened
I usually build systems that look period correct, but then I tend to maximize performance. Getting the fastest possible processor for a motherboard, maxing out the ram, putting in a GPU that is a few years younger than the build, Pata SSD or SD card, those kind of mods really improve performance and playability and just let you get the most out of your build. They usually aren't really visible and benchmarking them and comparing to period reviews is really fun imo. My last build is something like that: PCIII Orchid Systems Portable Case (with WXGA display), AT Shuttle HOT569A, AMD K6-2+ 400, 128MB SDRAM, 128GB PATA SSD, Geforce FX5500, ISA Avance Sound ALS100, PCMCIA PCI Slot, Network card, Multiboot : Win98, DOS7.1 and WinXP. I want all the things :)
I've never built a full-on time machine, but I never hesitate to use modern PSU and storage. Bought a big box of sata to molex adapters so I can use modern power supplies with any hardware. I sometimes install an HDD for the sound, but generally prefer CF and sata adapters for convenience and reliability. I will die before I give up my CRT.😅 Great topic!
Wing Commander III was the first game to really make me upgrade. I ended up getting a VLB graphics card... I think with 1 MB. It also made SimCity 2k run out of the box which I bought at the same time. Those two games had me occupied for some time
Having recently gone through a build there is nostalga but also convience. I've gone for modern storage (exception CD ROM) for my build via Compact Flash and a GoTek Floppy. Everything else parts from the late 90's. I like the quiteness and relibility of modern storage compared to mechanical from 25 years ago still being in working order.
What i really like is to mount a "top of the line" period correct with a little newer gpu. For exemple a Tualatin 1.4 with a fx5900 gpu is great. It flies on win9x.
I think i'll meet you halfway on this. I won't give up on having some classical stuff, such as a CRT, but i'm willing to adopt modern conveniences whenever possible and practical. This is true for retro PC gaming, but also for my ZX Spectrum experience. I had a modest collection of ZX Spectrum machines, and I donated most of them to the local ZX Spectrum museum (only keeping the TC 2048 clone from my childhood), because every time i get back to those old machines for any period of time, the different keyboard layout kills my brain. I just cannot handle retro keyboards (like on the ZX Spectrum or C64). However, i have to admit i have a few old PCs, from 486 to Pentium and Pentium II range, and I'll happily play MSDOS games from the late 80s / early 90s on those (and prefer those to modern machines) edit: yeah so that means i often emulate my ZX Spectrum stuff on these 90s PC machines. Ah, and give me an optical mouse. I've tried using a serial mouse with a mouse ball again, and i can do without the frustration of the mouse getting stuck when dirt sneaks in :) So i guess it's half / half for me
There is a board that you can connect to that slot A CPU to modify its multiplier. Also you need to apply thermal paste between the slot casing and the heating at least. I remember the casings paste application was bad but the heatsink has absolutely 0 thermal paste leading to very hot temperatures very quickly. After the thermal paste fix it’ll run very cool. I had an 800 MHz version of that.
I like both! I enjoy refurbishing old PCs and all that involves. Just finished stripping down, washing, greasing, and painting an AT system with a 233MHz Pentium MMX system.
It`s always nice to have a Vintage period correct system if you can afford to. but with the cost and hard to find parts a Time Machine is the easier option. i am lucky to have a good mix of both but it has taken many years and a lot of work . Still a great hobby. Thanks for the video.
I'm weird and never really liked beige, I usually prefer simplistic black or silver PC cases. I like to use an SSD and I have a DELL 2007FPb 1600x1200 for some awesome hi-res 4:3. You should see if you can get your hands on a ASRock P4i945GC, it's a P4 board with DDR2 + PCIe.
I'm a "combination" kind of guy. I don't have time to bother with making old IDE harddrives work - so for that, I use SD2IDE or similar. Same goes for Floppies, where I tend to go with GoTek out of convenience. I rarely need floppies for anything besides the initial setup of DOS or whatever is required to partition and prepare the machine. Rest stays somewhat "period correct" , so motherboard, graphics card , PSU, case, monitor.
One of my projects currently is building a period correct windows 98 machine. For the case, I'm using an old atx mid tower that I saved from back then that has housed numerous parts for me over the years. It has 4x 5.25 bays, and I decided to use 1 for a cdrom and with the other 3 I found a 3D-printed bracket for a 120mm fan that fits perfectly in them. So I'm doing a little bit of case modding with that to improve the cooling capability of those older towers.
I had an IBM P200 Trinitron monitor way back when - I almost cried when it quit working. I still have a Gateway 20" CRT in the basement, but I haven't used it in years...
My strategy for time machines have been working quite well. Basically I aim for super budget builds for a certain Windows era to use on the previous one. For example my Windows XP build is a Athlon X4 with a Radeon HD 7750 which is 2012/2013 super budget gaming components. A computer my friend bought at the time and used for almost 10 years with Windows 7. I got it for free, cleaned it out, applied new thermal paste, put in a SSD, a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS and installed Windows XP. The components are crazy powerfull compared to the current high end hardware of XPs later years. It runs everything amazing, has a low power draw and has great driver support to boot.
Really like your videos. Your content are unique in a way that you concentrate on an era of vintage computing which not many other content creators pay attention to, keep up the good work
I have both but for me my favourite system to use is my (now called thanks to this video) Windows XP Time Machine. I went for a New old stock "gaming" case with a window, loaded with LED fans and fan controller etc so it looks like the style I had back in the day with new parts. I Run a gigabyte socket 775 motherboard, core2quad Q8200, modern watercooler, 4gb ram, an Nvidia 660TI along with a 500gb SSD (lets me LOAD IT UP with games!!!). New PSU, new optical drive, modern gaming keyboard and mouse along with for me, the best part, a brand new Phillips IPS LED 19Blp monitor, 1280x1024 @ 75hz and old-school non widescreen aspect ratio! Granted my games I play are generally 2000-2006 ish era but I've never had a single issue so far with compatibility and the machine never breaks a sweat! If I'm playing older games I bring out my old beige period correct Pentium II with Win 98 and mechanical hard drive, I sometimes bring it out just to hear the HDD spin up when I press the power button!
I've got both a period correct and time machine PC setup, with an AT to PS/2 adapter for the keyboard, USB to PS/2 for the Microsoft mouse and a VGA+PS/2 KVM switch so I don't need to swap any cables. -Celeron 500 (Celeron Slotket using the 500's stock cooler), Intel SE440BX-2 (has integrated YMF740C+SBLink), Awe64 Value, 12MB Diamond Monster 3DII, 16MB Savage4 GT (lacks the required VBE for Duke3D's Vesa modes), 3.2GB Seagate Medalist 5400+20GB Seagate UX (originally used a 6.4GB Quantum Fireball EX - not big enough however), 386MB RAM (SPD functional to prevent the memory count on each boot), 12x 1995 Matsushita CD-ROM, 50x 2001 Asus CD-ROM, Windows 98SE -Athlon XP 3000+ (400MHz FSB), NOS MSI KT6V-LSR, Audigy2 Value, 20th Anniversary Leadtek 128MB 6600GT, 20GB Maxtor D740X-6L, 250GB Samsung 2.5" SATA HDD (only SATAII drive I know of that works on the VT8237R), 2GB DDR400, Lightscribe capable DVD burner (late 2000's, think it's 20x), Windows XP Pro (due to having no idea what drivers work for the Audigy in 98SE - have multiple Live! Value however). The boot drives were chosen purely based on the sounds they make when in use (Medalist with seek, Maxtor with motor spin up, running and spin down). I have both going through my main 1440p screen as the image looks sharper compared to my OG 1024x768 screen and free 1366x768+1080p screens. It also helps that I can set the aspect ratio to 4.3 or 5:4. 32" 1440p IPS that has VGA, mini DP, 2x full DP and 2x HDMI - and it was the cheaper than my first modern LCD (1080p 24" LG that replaced my 1024x768 85Hz in early-mid 2014).
I remember at the time playing Tachyon on my Celeron 800 with a 32mb PCI Radeon 7200 that the experience was pretty ok. I couldn't tell you what frame rates were, but it wasn't often that I felt like the machine was holding anything back for software/games at the time. Also played Tachyon with my MS Precision Pro 2 joystick. Still have this machine and joystick. Definitely plan to keep both forever as they're each firsts for me. First PC bought with my own money. First major gaming peripheral. The system only had 2 PCI slots for expansion, so I opted to install a USB2.0 card at the time to add network, WiFi, CD burners, etc at the time and used the Intel AC97 sound. Certainly prefer to use a SB card now, but what I had at the time.
Something we can all agree on is that it is fun to build both but surely more convenient and costs less to build a time machine + you have a huge variety of options when it comes to what parts you want to use.
Whether period correct or emulator beast, cheap available parts or holy grail hardware, I think all of these are valid, so long as we are happy with what we build! I look for hardware natively compatible in MS-DOS - so, ISA sound cards - but also insert modern conveniences such as flash storage, USB 2.0 and a fast NIC for times I've booted into Windows.
Awesome video again Phil. I run both types of systems. Can you use Deus Ex for benchmarking? I always found back in the day, even though it uses the unreal engine it was always more taxing on systems than unreal tournament. It wasn't until I got a 9600xt that I could run it maxed on full specs.
I think the biggest distinctions are experience vs convenience. If you want the "true" experience that goes outside the games, you want all the baggage that comes with the period. If you want convenience and performance, you'll want the "time machine." Personally, if I want convenience or performance, I'll just use my 5800X3D/RTX 3070 and ExoDOS/ExoWin/86Box.
went time machine with all of my builds, i have the nostalgia of the games, not of the performances (or lack there of), and playing those games with all bells and whistles in 1600x1200 or higher with silky smooth framerate is the best feeling when you didn't had the money to get decent hardware back then. thanks a lot to this channel for helping me pick the best parts for each of my machines BTW, let me build the most overkill win98/2k and winxp pc ever ^^
Period correct is cool to have, but not practical for many people, especially as time goes on. (Availability of parts dwindles, parts break over time, extra machines take up space...etc.) I still have my period correct Windows XP PC, but if/when it breaks I don't think I'd replace it with another period correct one.
Great video as always. Period correct hardware is normally an issue due to the age of components. As most of the viewers can note that capacitors, hard drive mechanics and crt as a whole are a reliablility issue. I have been in this arena since the '70's and really do not have a desire to go back too far. In the '90's, PC's in general began the slow climb to great gaming platforms. When I bought a Orchid Voodoo 1 in 1998, gaming became visually spectacular. At the time I played Quake 1 off and online. Final comment, the only retro games I play these days is UT99 and the Quake III/Arena on a win 10 system.
I recently recapped a Socket A board and put a Amd 2500xp in it. I have other boards that need recapping but simply dont have enough cases or space for them. At least not at the moment.
Due to your videos I ended up with a period correct Win98/Dos PC. Original Wingman flight stick, CRT monitor, TNT2, Awe 64, MT-32, Roland Speakers, Pentium MMX 200 and motherboard that was released in 1998. It's installed in a beige period correct case. I found a new old stock external CF card reader that connects through printer port. This lets me transfer files from my modern computer to the Win98/Dos pc. The only modern convince upgrade I did was replacing the mechanical hard drive to one of those industrial ide dom's. That was the best decision for me.
A time machine is absolutely the way to go. My WinXP machine is an overclocked AMD FX-8320 with both a Geforce GTX 780 and a Radeon 7970 installed to handle games with rendering issues on one or the other (Star Wars KOTOR only works properly on Geforce, Mass Effect only works properly on Radeon for example). Only has 4 GB DDR3-1600, no point having more with 32-bit WinXP. It's great being able to run everything silky smooth maxed out on my 1440p display. When you crank up the image quality driver settings you can still push the machine though. For example despite being an old game, running Star Wars KOTOR on the GTX 780 with driver-level AA maxed will pull 230W on the GPU alone. Have to have a dedicated WinXP PC just for the EAX goodness with the X-Fi Titanium.
I forgot to mention, I still do make the odd nostalgic compromise. Out went the Samsung SSD and in went a WD Raptor mechanical drive. Noticeable slower, but makes the right noises for a WinXP machine. It's fast enough ...
Kind of reminds me of cameras in a way. I travel around as a photojournalist and focus mostly on portraits/capturing people in the moment of daily life or events. My main kit is an Olympus E-M5 Mark III and a Lumix G9, both Micro Four Thirds. MFT is a format that people like to say can't really do portraits well, yet I've never had clients question my gear choice. I also have a Pentax 645Z medium format body with a fairly large 645 lens collection stretching decades from the earliest days to the most recent. That system produces results that almost look painted or fake if your technique and lighting is correct. The point is, regardless of the gear or tool, if it gets the job done, it gets the job done. That said, if someone really wanted to really learn photography I would tell them to start with a fully manual film camera or to shoot digital fully manual with file constraints (you only have 36 shots, not 6000, focus on making them count). The same goes for old computers, original hardware will help you learn a lot about what's going on if you're interested in more than just playing games. I use an Apple IIGS and Mac iici all the time, but I rarely play games on them. I focus more on programming different tools or demos to push the hardware and my ability to optimize/problem solve. If I were just playing games, with how expensive retro computers are getting due to demand and increasing scarcity, I'd almost say just use an emulator unless you're beyond serious. This channel has shown dosbox is getting insanely good, start and explore with that for dos games.
I have had a lot of fun watching your videos for years they're always helpful and actually spurred me on to flesh out my collection of retro computers! Have started dabling in old Apple PPC and intel based systems too! It's nice to branch out with the systems and I know this has nothing to do with gaming but they look lovely lol :D
I have four period correct setups spanning MS-DOS to Windows XP, with an IBM ThinkPad work computer running Windows 2000. Period correct hardware IS the time machine, and brings me back to when I used each throughout my life. I love managing older tech, no matter how cumbersome it is.
Ive got machines from every generation, but my favourite retro system i use is athlon xp 2400+, running windows 98, audigy 2zs, voodoo 5, with a 21" Panasonic CRT, just finished another play through of unreal gold, and now half life 1. Best of both worlds glide games at constant 60fps
Great topic, and one that can be debated endlessly. :) Generally, I prefer period correct hardware for older stuff, e.g. DOS. I really like the 486/Pentium era hardware and love playing with that. Once I go into WIn98-era and later, I tend to do hybrid builds. I have lost patience for tinkering with hard drives and old keyboards/mice so they're nearly always modern. Same thing with monitors - I've had so many CRTs die over the years, it's sad. Nowadays I use a fairly old Eizo 1920x1200 LCD that still works great, and mostly run at 1600x1200 or 800x600 for older stuff. One thing that keeps me busy is whenever I find a game I really want to play through, I sit down and theorize the perfect build for that game, and attempt to build it. That's a lot of fun I think, and I get to play with many of my old parts regularly. Keeps my collection relevant, and forces me to use parts and ensure they're still working. The one big thing I've had lots of problems with, is power supplies. I've had to trash so many over the years, and finding good working ones is quite hard & expensive these days. Would love to hear about a modern solution for classic AT-style systems, if there are any? Cheers Phil, hope your morning coffee is good!
I sort of went with both, I setup my socket 7 K6-2 550 with a SATA to IDE adaptor and used a 120GB SSD along with a Radeon 7550 LE to make an underdog machine like I had back in the day.
I built one of those "hybrid" machines you mentioned at the end. While I'm mostly in the "period correct" camp because there's just something so special to me about that older hardware from the time when all of this was still like magic, I have upgraded my build with certain modern conveniences too. I've got a 1GHz Slot-1 setup but I consider USB2 and SATA PCI cards to be must-have add-ons. I went solid-state for the storage but in hindsight I really miss the hard drive noises. The game controller was probably the single trickiest bit, as I want a modern handheld controller with high-quality analog stick but I also need DOS joystick compatibility. Thank God for the USB4VC Kickstarter project, as it finally filled that void! I can run a brand-new XBox controller and it works in Win98 AND DOS! Lastly, a nice CRT monitor is a must-have for me. I've tried really hard to find an LCD setup that's "good enough" but so far it just doesn't seem to exist. Some day my 21" Sony Trinitron CRT will die and it will be a very sad day for me.
There was a clear drop in build quality of motherboards between the 90s and 2000s The market became very competitive and it into a bit of a race to the bottom for a time. Prices came down as well, but that's perhaps not as relevant to us today.
Regarding input devices/joysticks: Back in the late 90s and early 2000s I loved to play my 3D spaceship games with my Logitech Wingman Extreme, but when it finally broke, I switched to the newer version: The Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D. This joystick came with an adapter from gameport to USB and thus can still be used on modern PCs as well! In fact, I still use this stick on my Windows 10 machine, mostly when I fly jets and helicopters in games like the Battlefield series. :)
I think I prefer a little bit of both. I like the air flow of newer cases, the stability of a new power supply, and the speed of solid state storage. However, I love using original motherboards, video cards, and sound cards. Especially with Creative sound cards, the drivers just work in DOS, Win9x, or later. You can’t beat that. (I especially like the late beige Antec cases that have better air flow options. They still look relatively period correct, but help keep Voodoo cards cool.)
I do a mix. Original hard drives come with too .any issues, and I prefer CF cards so you can swap set ups. For example, I am building one with Win98, DOS, OS/2 Warp and OpenStep. Getting the right hardware that works for those is part of the fun! Apparently Matrox is one of the few video cards that have great support for all. Ironically, it probably works worse in DOS...
I usually go for a period correct "look" with a CRT monitor, PS/2 keyboard/mouse and beige cases for Windows 9x machines, BUT I also opted for 19" monitors, CPUs one generation newer than supposed to, bigger HDDs and the biggest amount of memory that the OS officially supports. Getting period correct high end GPUs card is sometimes very hard/expensive, so having a computer that can squeeze out more performance out of period correct mid-range GPUs is a good compromise. By the way, Windows 98 can run on HDDs bigger than 120GB if you replace the default IDE driver (ESDI_506.PDR) with a patched or updated version with 48-bit LBA support. Mine works perfectly fine on a 320GB HDD dual-booting with Windows 2000 on one single partition.
Hi Phil, regarding the motherboard that you usually use - the GA-K8VM800M : I've heard that VIA chipset motherboards have some bug that severely degrades performance under Windows 98. Does the GA-K8VM800M have that same issue, i.e. are its benchmarks way below in Win98 compared to WinXP? If the bug is present, any way to fix it? I'm considering buying one, but really need to know this before investing in it.
I don't know about this exact mobo/chipset, but I remember that "back in the days" it was a common knowledge that only chipsets worth purchasing were intel or nforce. Seems like everything else had usually weird compatibility issues with either ATA (sometimes weird slow reads), GPUs, or just sucked under one specific OS. This is why we always build all those gaming PCs with intel/nforce chipsets and used slightly cheaper via/sis for office computers. Not sure if the problem was real, or if this is some weirdo coincidence, but following this rule always worked out fine for me and my collegues. No complaints from customers and family.
@@y4si0 I see, thanks! I asked about GA-K8VM800M since Phil uses it so much, so I was curious. Another (admittedly very silly) reason that I'm curious about this mobo is that its BIOS has that energy star logo in the top right corner when it boots up, and when I was a kid my PC used to have the same kind of boot screen with that top right logo. So if there's any motherboard that can properly run Win98 (with high end GFX like X850) and also has that kinda boot screen would be exactly what I need. If there's anything like that to your knowledge that comes to mind, lemme know? If not, thanks a lot for the pointers regardless :D
Not sure but as you say I use the board in many projects and seems to be running just fine haven't noticed anything. I post all the benchmarks and so far nobody mentioned that something is off.
@@philscomputerlab So the issue isn't that the benchmarks are bad in Win98. It's that the benchmarks MIGHT be way lower in Win98 as compared to WinXP for these K8VM800M boards based on what I've heard. This seems to be an issue with some VIA boards
To be fair, the requirements were based on being able to run the game at 30 FPS, similar to how consoles of the time would run heavy games (think Fable or Doom 3 on the first XBox). 60 FPS wasn't really something mandatory at the time. It was early 2000s, we were still recovering from the shock of switching to polygon graphics.
I am fortunate in that I still have my original P233 MMX AT machine I bought 20 years ago for $100 (I was a poor college student at the time). It's mostly original parts but with the capacitors replaced, storage upgraded to an SD card, and using a more modern ATX power supply. Tonight booting up Win98 and installing from CD then playing some Sim City 2000 felt like I got into a time machine and went back to the 90's. Perfect nostalgia. But just as you said it struggles with many demanding games that came out just after like Half Life and Quake II. Well struggles compared to what are pampered with today. Back then 20-30fps was considered more than playable as we were far more interested in graphics and games being pretty than silky smooth 60+ framerates! Thus nowadays I tend to play games on 1-2 newer generation hardware instead. Full specs: Asus P/I-P55T2P4, P233 MMX, 96MB EDO Ram, Soundblaster 32, ATI Rage 8MB, IDE to SD Card adapter, 8GB SD Card, CD Rom, 3.5 floppy, Win98SE.
if you can, your screen should be a multiple of the resolution most games should play at, you can sorta brute force and "fix" the issue if you use your modern high DPI display, though you may need adapter circuitry.
By your definition I have several time machines and only one period correct tower, but I also play games up to the mid to late 2000s, so up to Crysis and GTA 4 on these systems on a 1920x1200 display, so in the fastest of the "retro" systems is a phenom ii x4 975 and a GTX 670 running Windows Vista for DX10 support. The period correct is an AT style Zida Tomato socket 370 board with a PIII 600 and a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP, HDD and Windows 98SE, I don't have a CRT though.
There’s a difference between any random period correct build and a period correct build from exactly the last moment that build still was correct. So Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME extended support ended on July 11, 2006. Up until about that time, windows 9x compatible hardware was still built. Until around 2003, I actually still dual-booted my PC with Windows 98 and Windows XP. I guess what I’m saying is, one should pick a specific year (and maybe month) to be period correct about the system one is assembling. I’ve also recently came to the conclusion that building a PC from, for instance, 1998, and upgrading it with y2k appropriate upgrades is also very satisfying (not talking about hybrids). Perhaps an idea for a new video (series), @Phil?
I like using a mix of original and new components. I use a s478 P4 with a Voodoo 3, in a new case with good ventilation and a modded new cooler, to keep these old components working a bit longer
Im fairly lucky in that I started picking up my retro pc stuff from 2017 and spread out some of the costlier purchases (3dfx cards etc). Def need a lot of spare parts though as ram and cd drives tend to fail. Motherboards though still going strong touch wood
The old 4:3 HP and Dell monitors (examples: HP 1740 and 1950 or Dell 1704) are a good alternative to a CRT if you can't find one or don't want one. They made millions of them for businesses.
Yes, I have a 1504fp dell LCD that was made in 2005. It is indeed perfect for win xp / win 2000 gaming where you will be using 1024 x 768 resolution at all times.
I feel like the correct answer to this rhetorical question is somewhere in the middle. Certain components should be period-correct, because if they aren't, there will be massive compatibility issues. The CPU, for one, without some kind of throttling software that isn't always reliable, needs to run at a period-correct clock speed because otherwise, the games will often be unplayably fast. I also think the GPU should be relatively period-correct, because a lot of pre-DirectX or early-DirectX-era games make use of specific features of 3Dfx, Matrox, S3 ViRGE, PowerVR, etc. and while there are wrappers and ways to somewhat emulate the look that these cards produce, those can also be unreliable, unstable, or simply inaccurate. Other components, on the other hand, do little-to-nothing to affect actual gameplay and exist solely to make the boring parts of the system snappier or more efficient. A modern cooling system will extend the life of the machine, an SSD will shorten loading times, as will a newer optical drive. Floppy disk emulators are also faster than an old-school disk drive, some kind of modern networking dongle will get better internet speeds. The one area that's the most controvertial might be sound, as there are so many different period-accurate sounds cards each sounding a bit different, tons of MIDI add-ons, etc. I personally would go with something that is HARDWARE accurate but not PERIOD accurate, something like an Orpheus sound card that contains the proper period-accurate chips for the right sounds but has the versatility to behave as multiple sound cards in one.
I love watching your videos because it's like a time capsule for me. I'm however happy with my modern PC. I can run the vast majority of my old games on my modern PC, and they look and run better than ever. For example Unreal Tournament 1999, this game runs at locked 170Hz 1440p on my modern PC and I'm also using high resolution textures. On period correct PC the same game would run with around 50fps in 1024x786x16 on voodoo3. I can even use the nGlide wrapper if I want to remember how Glide API games looked on Voodoo cards (even dithering filter works).
I found a voodoo 5 and soundblaster live in a dumpster. Initially I just wanted to sell it, but now I wnt to make a 98 game machine! I'm hoping the voodoo is working oroperly.
Thank you for being so inspirational in your videos. I wanted to tell you I finally had success using a 120GB Samsung SSD as an HDD on a Pentium 233 mmx system with an Intel AN430TX motherboard. I made 3 Fat32 partitions and Windows 98 installed. I have tried your other methods with success, but I really wanted to use one SSD. Thank You again, if it weren't for you, I would not have had the motivation to wrestle with this until I got it to work.
Great video and topic Phil! I think you can have fun with any computer and no matter what equipment you own, there will always be the feeling of needing something else. Use what you got and be happy. Don't go in the FOMO trap. I love both vintage and retro computers - and everything in between. However, when it comes to games from the pre-3D era, I prefer vintage and period correct hardware. Playing an old CGA game on an old IBM PC can't be beat IMHO. But for Windows 9x games and up, I want the fastest compatible hardware I can get my hands on. When I want to go retro I just use an Intel NUC. It works great for DOSBox and GOG games. The biggest issue for me is space, so compromises have to be made, but less is supposed to be more...
I run the best of both worlds... Modern PC with a CRT monitor. The iiyama Vision Master Pro 455. =P Keyboard used to be a dell "Bigfoot" before a cat dumped tea over it.
I date the machine by the CPU/motherboard combo. Then add the best RAM I can. Add to that a GPU about 2 years newer - I like to assume I would have upgraded it once. Then the games have to be period correct or older than the CPU/motherboard and should work with high settings with that GPU I selected.
I’m all period correct stuff (except I’ve started to use SSD drives or CF on some of my systems lately mostly because of the convenience) because hardware including repairs is very important part of my hobby, but then again I have quite many systems so I can tackle different eras. I also have zero interest in late XP era HW or games, so I have no use for some beefy Core2Duo/Quad etc. Many later XP era games can be run on a modern system without any problems, so there’s that too. So, 2003 top-end Socket A system is the latest and it runs pretty much everything from the era beautifully. But I can understand time machines if you want to keep the number of systems as low as possible and it is also much cheaper.
Usually I try to match all parts in my retro PCs so that they are from the same "era". I always use old IDE hard drives, but I normally disconect the Floppy, (most of them are broken anyways...) and although a Geforce FX5200 is cheap and good for Windows 98, some really old games stuggle to run on this "modern" hardware. I mainly use Pentium 3 from 500 to 933 mhz or old AMD Athlon XP.
Even buying for jacked up eBay prices it’s possible to build a great retro pc under €500 which will run a myriad of recognized cult-status games. From the perspective of GeForce RTX prices and what it can be used for that number doesn’t sound too crazy.
@@MrModamanReviews The Europeans are just making money hand over first because they know that hobbyists in North America will pay their prices. The Europeans held onto their equipment for a lot longer than we did. We're just wasteful in the sense.
This video is timely because I have four ideas for retro gaming PCs: One Win98/DOS PC, one Win98/XP PC, one LGA 775 WinXP/Linux PC, and one Haswell WinXP/Linux PC.
A lot of commenters ignore the fact that today we are accustomed to 60fps+ gaming. On the other hand, if commenters were true to period correctness, even with setting their expectations, a 30fps+ gameplay would have been a great experience, especially with non-competitive titles.
I'm in the middle as I prefer CRT monitors, especially for 2D VGA games, but was always a fan of silent PCs, so no HDDs, quiet fans, CD-Rom spin slowdown tools and all in a modern case with noise dampening foam. Still have 3.5 and 5.25" disk drives for my Big Box collection but they are more for disk imaging. Also love that with the 136in1 Pentium 233 MMX I can change the speed depending on the game. Already have enough systems without going into the direction of separate 386, 486 and so on systems. (not counting countless consoles, C64 and Amiga) That being said, I also have a place in my heart for the classic cases like I had back in the day. Especially the ones that show the clock speed in a little display. Always wanted this back then but my PC didn't come with these. Mentioning old price lists of hardware, I have backups of multiple Vobis flyers (Highscreen) because I also love to look at these from time to time. I mean they include my first PC. :D
I find that each have their own advantages and disadvantages that are often complementary. So I tend to run both. I was very lucky when a couple of years ago I got a trio of old Dell Pentium 3 machines dropped into my lap to be recycled that I ended up taking home. They were literally stored in a barn and came to me covered in cobwebs and I had to clean straw out of them. All have identical motherboards, 1 GHZ chips, and maxed out ram with a variety of other components. Its allowed me to keep multiple period correct machines running for basement LAN gaming when my brother visits. But I also find that keeping a time machine or two from some slightly later eras around is also beneficial. When you want to play a game like say Freelancer and want to max out the graphics its nice that I also have some Core 2 Duo, and Late 2000s rigs that let me really run those late big box and small box games silky smooth on maxed out settings.
For me, personally, I mix the PC and TM depending on what I have at hand. I really prefer to make and use a PC computer but I am not willing to sacrifice space, money and time (to find components) for building it, so whenever I need and can, I use the comfort of modern components. For example, I prefer ms-dos to have less than 200MHz CPU (clocked down or native clock), an ISA sound card and a 1-2M VGA that have no issues with old dos games. For Win 95 I go for a CPU with up to 300-500MHz, ISA sound and PCI video, for Win98 or Win2k I go with 750-1GHz CPU, PCI only peripherals and AGP video. For XP I prefer 2-3GHz CPU, single-core or multicore/multithreading and 3-4G of RAM (I like XP computers maxed out, I admit). Always I use modern IDE or SATA optical drives, I am not into 2x-8x speed drives; the newest are more reliable and faster, and for HDD´s as I have many older spinning drives, from 20,40G up to 250, 320G, I use them, even if I need to deal with BIOS limitations. And I always use HDDs with at least 80% remaining life just to be sure (Disk Genius is a great tool to check the HDDs). I am not concerned with the noise, for me the computer IS always noisy (not vacuum cleaner levels of noise ofcourse) and a quiet computer makes me anxious.
While a period correct machine might me more appropriate and immersive, I'm running a modified build of Windows XP on a second SSD on the computer that I'm writing this on (i7-8700k, z370); only compatibility issue I ran into was that XP obviously doesn't have drivers for the 10xx series of GPUs, so I just went out and bought a 730 and plugged it into my second PCIe slot. XP-era games, and the whole OS for that matter, runs so ridiculously fast that if the software I needed still supported it and I dared to connect it to the internet lest my computer be added to some sort of botnet, I'd have no problem daily driving it.
Until the HDD noise becomes worn out spindle motor bearings lol. The 500gb Seagate drive in my Pentium 4 Sony Vaio is getting to that point, can't blame it. The drive is old and high mileage
My first retro build was an Athlon XP and GeForce FX and it is amazing for most 90s games but compatibility is an issue with some. I built a Socket 7 system also, and it's a much better experience for games from 97 and earlier -- everything just works. So I started out preferring time machines, but once I had a period correct system I learned to appreciate it much more.
I remember cribbing about the flicker rate on my 775ft monitor and always wanted a high res and smooth display at higher hz, always wished the hdd noise dissapeared and squeezed the last performance drop from the system, with 1 gb ram in year 1999, it was p3 933 on i815 with a lousy mx440. I say its a lot better to build a time machine but still own period correct stuff
I'm not really into period correct, I used to play Painkiller like it was going out of business with a Leadtek 6800GT and it broke safter a month (memory issues). Whilst waiting for a refund (3 months - ended up buying a Gainward 6800 Ultra GS for $100 less than I paid for the 6800GT), I had to use my old MX400 which must have lacked hardware support for a few features used in the game. One of the bosses (the first one, "Swampy") was totally invisible with the MX400. My _"Time Machine"_ sits on a test bench - an AMD FX-60, DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR Expert, 2GB Corsair TwinX 4000 Pro, MSI GTX295 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS. Storage is a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD and a Seagate 2GB SSHD and runs Windows 7 Ultimate. I splurged with cooling though... I have a modern soft line (EK's ZMT) custom loop - 360mm & 240mm radiators, EK D5 Pump/Res and an Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU block.
My stance has always been that I wanted the best I could get my hands on at any particular time. If I could pull computers from the future, something I actually fantasized about, I'd gladly do it. Therefore "time machines" are more satisfying for me even from a "nostalgia" standpoint because it'd be what I wanted even back then.
For me its about taking my first system and improving on it as if I had the money to do so when I was a child. The only thing "sacred" would be the mobo which is certainly its cap since its a packard bell piece of trash capped at 66fsb lx chipset mATX. Having the mobo and case as a cap will prevent me from just straight up building a separate more modern xp machine.
You should have both More seriously ... older stuff gonna break over the long run mostly hdds. Imagine giving your 30 yo machine another +30. This is why these retro enhancements like SDcard to IDE adapters, gotek and alikes come handy. Sadly we do not have drop in replacements for old Sound Blasters or Voodoo3 cards. I just hope they will get opensourced one day so retro enthusiasts can have their equivalent replacements with newer parts.
There are a few sound card replacement projects. I built a whole PC around an Orpheus 2! But I swap the media out. I need a Gotek-like replacement for optical storage still, but I have fromt mounted an IDE to Compact Flash adapter and Gotek. Easy to swap set ups is very nice. Too bad some of the Alt Operating Systems didn't have great Voodoo support, or I would be set. Matrox Millenniums seem to have some of the widest support though, with drivers for OpenStep and OS/2. Too bad some DOS games don't like it.
@@slaapliedje regardless that SBLive's are still easily gettable and dirt cheap that soundcard you showed me is far from being a "competition" on retroland. If you thinking on using a wide variety of OSes like everything from win9xs,dos,win2k to old bsd, linux versions, that was THE card all OSes supported. Hell that card is so universal and widely supported that it will even work with Windows 10 and 11 these days.
I don't really have the space for hardware retro-gaming (though I am interested in it, especially the cloning of old hardware), so I have to get by on software solutions only (DOSBox and WINE/Proton). What would be a good thing to have would be a modern monitor with a vertical resolution of 2400 lines, as that could get you pixel-perfect resizes from 640*400 and 640*480 (5x/6x and 5x/5x respectively), and by extension 320*200 and 320*240, covering most DOS gaming needs, especially if it'll also do >70Hz to handle DOS refresh rates.
I built a time machine with a 20" trinitron CRT from 1996. Best of both worlds imho. It's a pretty good PC built from (semi)modern parts: An i7-3770k, 16GB ram, SSD and a 2080ti. It's powerful enough to get every older game running at mostly correct speed in dosbox (config file tweaking required in many cases), and retro windows games with modern ray-tracing options (like Quake2) or graphically intensive modern mods run fantastic at the monitors 1024x786 or lower (for some reason I find that some older games look better @640x480 instead of higher resolutions, maybe because of nostalgia). Because it's pretty powerful, I can run PCem up to a pentium 233 flawlessly, which is great for those older games that are very picky which dosbox has trouble with. The only thing I can't get working 100% to my liking is EAX support. It gets close with alchemy in some cases, but it doesn't reach the heights of my windows XP machine with a x-fi card.
I have both period correct, and time machines, and I like both., I got Pentium IIs all the way to Core 2 Quads, strangely enough my main "retro rig" is relatively modern with a i7 4790k, and eVGA GTX 960 SSC
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Yes retro games vastly underestimated their requirements.
Some demanding games needed more CPU power than even existed at the time haha.
The scalability of Voodoo2 released in early 1998 with CPUs all the way up to 2000 is a proverbial example
I think when they said, "Minimum system requirements", they really meant that. They had tried the weakest system that can run the game in the lowest settings possible. I always look for "Recommended system settings" for choosing what i can play with my retro-pc.
I second that. Unreal released in August 1998 plays really choppy on my Pentium II 333, a CPU released in February that same year. I should not even mention Unreal Tournament from 1999...
It's often overlooked that 15-20fps was considered "playable" for a lot of people then. I know for me, if I could get a game to 30fps, that was my idea of silky smooth.
Yeh. At the time around 2002-2003. i played through GTA3 with 10 FPS. Sometimes it went under 1 FPS. I was a kid. I was happy it run. @@jomeyqmalone
A period correct machine is great but for beginners or people who just want to play the game, building a time machine is a lot more convenient and more accessible.
Easier on the wallet as well. As much as I would love to have a good Voodoo build, the prices are ridiculous.
@emdotrod - this sums it up well.
If your not period correct it's like having artificial sugar.
@@someguy3186You don't need a vood$$.
@@someguy3186 there not ridiculous there rare it wasn’t what is was like 7 years ago when these things were considered junk now there considerd rare retro sleeper builds
I like period mostly correct options, but also like building time machines, so I have multiple of both options 😊
For me the hardware is more fun than the actual games, endless combinations
+1 BUT! x86/64-Hardware now's BORING! Bling-FANS-with-BLING! And no slots for anything but GPU 3x..4x SLUTS-when room :-O)
@@dallesamllhals9161 Yeah, for the first time I have an ITX build for my main pc. Only needed the 1 slot for a GPU 🙂
my machines are period correct, i just run 98 on an xp machine and xp on a vista machine lol👍🏼
I agree, but now I have four active period correct machines running with all games installed.. I have to start playing games.. there just is no more space to build more here! I have them hooked up to KVM switches, to save space only two CRTs and one keyboard and two mice and one large pair of Altec Lansing, it's cramped. My solution is I use a code with random generator to select a system and then a game, and then I force myself to play that random game for a while. Otherwise I always play the same three games.
I love all flavors of machines! At the end of the day, I think tinkering with hardware (and configuring software!) can be just as rewarding as playing our favorite games. Part of my computing experience is linked to troubleshooting and getting things to work back in the day. I expect some of it nowadays too as I go back in time and fiddle with old hardware. Still, I totally get it when people have limited time (and budget!) and want things to "just work". As long as we keep playing and sharing our experience the retrogaming community as a whole wins.
As usual, thank you Phil and everybody writing comments for helping to keep this hobby alive! I really enjoyed reading the comments and stories!
In the spirit of sharing, here is my personal setup related to this matter:
Personally, my period-correct setup is a Pentium 2 with 16 megs of RAM, a SoundBlaster 16, and an old hard disk that I'm surprised is still working. I think it may soon need to be replaced with a small SSD or a CF card. This machine is hooked to a Compaq 14" CRT monitor with a "bubble" type of screen. I got lucky because the motherboard features AT and ATX options. So I got a recent PSU powering it and retired the original AT unit. Overall, I love playing on this machine because of all the little mechanical sounds it makes (monitor turning on, noise from the hard drive reading stuff, and a slight static sound from the speakers which becomes obvious at high volumes).
My Pentium 4 seems to have bitten the dust due to a PSU that went bad. I'm still checking which parts are (not) working so that I know what to save and what to send to an electronics recycling center. It was my WinXP machine and I was looking forward to upgrading it with something better than the GeForce MX 4000 it currently has, alongside more RAM (only 1GB!). It is now disassembled, each part in its own anti-static bag.
The new star of the show is a time machine type system. I feel it is way too recent and quite overpowered for the stuff I usually play, but since it was just laying around the house with no use, it is a low-cost substitute for the P4 system. This PC is a WinXP build with a Core i3 4160, 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM, GTX 650 and an SSD. The catch is that I play it using the peripherals that belong to the P4 system: a Samsung 15" CRT monitor, an old MS keyboard, and even the case that belonged to the P4. This PC runs basically all of my GOG library and a bunch of MS-DOS games (I love D-Fend Reloaded!) and SCUMM VM with no issues. I still have some CDs and floppies from back in the day and I enjoy using those. As it sits on the table, the only difference is that you won't hear the hard drive read/write noises.
This made me think about something: as time passes, I am under the impression that backing up those disks and using them as image files in the time machine is much more realiable (obviously) than subjecting the old discs and drives to some more wear/tear after some 2 decades. There is also the convenience of buying games digitally instead of scouring through marketplace listings. I guess this is why my GOG library (and wishlist!) keeps growing.
Personally, a period-correct build with a CRT monitor gives me the right feeling to immerse myself in the game. In the end, to avoid subjecting my old hardware to too dangerous stress, I often use emulators for convenience. I invented some middle ground with Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 with XP and thanks to the DOS Box and glide configurator, with the Sound Blaster Live and the CRT monitor I can cover from 1993 to 2005 with retrogaming with an ancient flavour😉. Thanks for the content, greetings from Italy
I agree, using the right monitor is the key to get "the feeling" if you played the games back in the day. Using modern LCD monitors to play 320x200 games it's ok but it's a totally different experience!! The art of the game changes a lot b/c those EGA and VGA games were created to be played in CRTs.
@@net_news totally agree with you. To avoid the risk of frying my 3dfx (I love collecting them), I installed nglide configurator on my Pentium 4 equipped with WindowsXP and I do great with many glide titles such as Tomb Raider 1, Quake 1 and 2, Unreal, Need for speed Porshe etc ... with my old 17" Syncmaster. Even the old glorious MS-DOS titles are faithful on that monitor emulated with DOS BOX and configured with the audio of the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy II.
Hello to Italy 🙂
Hello from France :)
Do you get the correct resolutions and refresh rates and scalers and other stuff right with DOS-BOX? I heard you need some fiddling with custom resolutions.. For me the reason I built a P233MMX was to have smooth scrolling with Jazz Jackrabbit 😅 And some other side scrollers.. but pretty much all else runs fine on Dosbox yea
I lucked out and found a Windows 98 machine in a basement of a house I was renovating. P2 400MHz in a P2B rev 1.12, Rage Pro Turbo AGP, and a DOS compatible soundblaster. It must have been abandoned to upgrades at the end of the 90's/ early 2000's. I am currently doing a 98SE/DOS build to pair with my modern custom loop gaming rig. My office is filling in nicely with a mix of old and new:)
Dang good find man!
Nice! A friend if .ine was cleaning out old stuff, and gave me an old Compaq Deskpro 386. I am still trying to wirk out how to put a gotek in it and will probably add scsi with a zuluscsi.
I like a mix of old and new.
Beautiful
Simple answer for me : I love both.
Very nice feeling to play with slot one boards with Dos and w98se.
It accept a plethora of processors from p2 233 to Pentium 3 1Ghz, very versatile.
Same for graphics cards from old school 2d ones up to overkill Geforce Fx
i love also playing with a more modern like p4 , athlon 64, Core 2 or athlon Fx for W98se or Win Xp.
Here in France, you can easily find localy old computers like this for 50 / 100€
Thank you for your video.
Half half is good in my opinion. I use Windows 7 era hardware to play Windows XP stuff. It’s easier to get max performance and graphics so your Pc doesn’t struggle. Sometimes the older gear isn’t very reliable because of its age and it’s harder to find good condition stuff.
I just converted a HP Windows 7 workstation laptop to a Windows XP gaming machine and it works very nicely. It was a pain to set-up though.
@@MrModamanReviews Oh man the drivers are the worst.
Native Windows XP support:
Intel 4th generation i7
nVidia GTX960
I suggest maxing out native support for each targeted OS.
Both! But the time machine is a bit more fun. Over-spec'd Win98 or XP builds are super fun and ultimately the main point for me. I want to build something better than I had growing up! Like a P4 w/ 1GB ram on Win98se.
I do mostly period-correct systems, but I almost always replace the mechanical SCSI/IDE drive with a solid-state replacement. I also go with the highest spec components of the period with max RAM etc.
I think I found the trick for using an SSD, after many failures. I created 3 Fat32 partitions on a 120gb SSD and windows 98 installed on it. I couldn't believe it. Now I have used this on 3 machines I have from the 90's.
So do I! HDD are real bads, so I replace with SSD! I replaced the PSU and the case too. Apart from that, I usualy keep the rest upgraded to the max and period correct! I have a P3B-F with Pentium III 550Mhz (Katmai) with 1gb mem SDR, Geforce 3 Ti 200 and Win2K! I tried W98SE, but it's justo too bad, specially the lack of NTFS support, so I kept Win2K.
I really wish someone out there would manufacture a modern CRT.
Demand and profit motive does not exist at the moment.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it probably wouldn't even be possible because of environmental legislations and all that, basically making them illegal to manufacture. Remember these were made with lead and all other sorts of harmful stuff.
As much as I'd absolutely love to see CRT technology revived, it's probably not going to happen.
Getting new old stock tubes and someone somehow building a chassis around them would probably be the best we could get, and it wouldn't be cheap to boot.
That's the sort of product that only makes sense to manufacture at a large scale, unfortunately, using equipment and expertise that has been honed over decades. It would be like trying to do a small run of laserdiscs: basically impossible. You'd have to recreate an entire industry for the sake of a single product line
If you don't already know, there is a modern lcd monitor that looks like a CRT you can buy from Stephen Jones. So not a CRT but at least it can look more appropriate.
My Time Machine is designed for Windows XP, and uses some of the last supported devices. Gigabyte Q67 ITX motherboard, Intel i7-2600, 480GB SSD, and an nVidia GT 740.
GTX 960 should be the last officially supported GPU from nvidia I think for XP.
I go hybrid: period correct for the core components (CPU, motherboard, RAM, extension cards), and modern for the rest.
Having a classic beige case is nice, but the ones in good condition are increasingly harder to find. I have seen many many old cases in the last two years. They usually have bent side panels or a bent motherboard tray (I don't know what people do with their PCs).
Things that I definitely don't miss: 1) low quality noisy power supplies that always exploded at the end of their lifetime, 2) small noisy fans everywhere, 3) bulky blinking CRT monitors that gave me headaches, 4) slow noisy hard drives that gave me even more headaches, 5) floppy disks: every second one did not work. Today I have a modern power supply and emulate the drives with compact flash cards and Goteks. For the CD-ROM drive I mostly use images and Daemon Tools, as those were also slow and noisy.
I like both. But mostly period correct hardware. Because, with a period correct machine I know it's from the past. The actual hardware. To have the real machine from the past makes me feel the past is so much more real instead of a distant memory.
I'm a fan of the time machine with a CRT monitor. Good performance, but it still activates the nostalgia trip I'm looking for.
How many CRTs do you have..now in late 2023? (My LG Flatron 19 died....14 inch = what's left of Org.)
Just one. I had a beautiful 19" NEC flat screen CRT back in the day. I'm so annoyed with myself for selling. My current 17" Viewsonic gets the job done though.@@dallesamllhals9161
I _do_ have a CRT and love to use it.. but do so very sparingly.. I'm very scared it's going to die and (although I'm probably quite a hoarder), having surplus CRTs lying around is not really something I can do :(
Apart from knowing the basic theory about how they work, I'd have no idea how to, or even if it's possible, to fix them if something happened
I usually build systems that look period correct, but then I tend to maximize performance. Getting the fastest possible processor for a motherboard, maxing out the ram, putting in a GPU that is a few years younger than the build, Pata SSD or SD card, those kind of mods really improve performance and playability and just let you get the most out of your build. They usually aren't really visible and benchmarking them and comparing to period reviews is really fun imo. My last build is something like that: PCIII Orchid Systems Portable Case (with WXGA display), AT Shuttle HOT569A, AMD K6-2+ 400, 128MB SDRAM, 128GB PATA SSD, Geforce FX5500, ISA Avance Sound ALS100, PCMCIA PCI Slot, Network card, Multiboot : Win98, DOS7.1 and WinXP. I want all the things :)
I've never built a full-on time machine, but I never hesitate to use modern PSU and storage. Bought a big box of sata to molex adapters so I can use modern power supplies with any hardware. I sometimes install an HDD for the sound, but generally prefer CF and sata adapters for convenience and reliability. I will die before I give up my CRT.😅 Great topic!
Wing Commander III was the first game to really make me upgrade. I ended up getting a VLB graphics card... I think with 1 MB. It also made SimCity 2k run out of the box which I bought at the same time. Those two games had me occupied for some time
I still have my athlon 64 somewhere. I’d love to build a time machine and run windows xp. I had a great time in my xp days.
Having recently gone through a build there is nostalga but also convience. I've gone for modern storage (exception CD ROM) for my build via Compact Flash and a GoTek Floppy. Everything else parts from the late 90's. I like the quiteness and relibility of modern storage compared to mechanical from 25 years ago still being in working order.
What i really like is to mount a "top of the line" period correct with a little newer gpu. For exemple a Tualatin 1.4 with a fx5900 gpu is great. It flies on win9x.
I think i'll meet you halfway on this. I won't give up on having some classical stuff, such as a CRT, but i'm willing to adopt modern conveniences whenever possible and practical. This is true for retro PC gaming, but also for my ZX Spectrum experience. I had a modest collection of ZX Spectrum machines, and I donated most of them to the local ZX Spectrum museum (only keeping the TC 2048 clone from my childhood), because every time i get back to those old machines for any period of time, the different keyboard layout kills my brain. I just cannot handle retro keyboards (like on the ZX Spectrum or C64).
However, i have to admit i have a few old PCs, from 486 to Pentium and Pentium II range, and I'll happily play MSDOS games from the late 80s / early 90s on those (and prefer those to modern machines)
edit: yeah so that means i often emulate my ZX Spectrum stuff on these 90s PC machines. Ah, and give me an optical mouse. I've tried using a serial mouse with a mouse ball again, and i can do without the frustration of the mouse getting stuck when dirt sneaks in :)
So i guess it's half / half for me
There is a board that you can connect to that slot A CPU to modify its multiplier. Also you need to apply thermal paste between the slot casing and the heating at least. I remember the casings paste application was bad but the heatsink has absolutely 0 thermal paste leading to very hot temperatures very quickly. After the thermal paste fix it’ll run very cool. I had an 800 MHz version of that.
I like both! I enjoy refurbishing old PCs and all that involves. Just finished stripping down, washing, greasing, and painting an AT system with a 233MHz Pentium MMX system.
It`s always nice to have a Vintage period correct system if you can afford to. but with the cost and hard to find parts a Time Machine is the easier option. i am lucky to have a good mix of both but it has taken many years and a lot of work . Still a great hobby. Thanks for the video.
Absolutely!
I'm weird and never really liked beige, I usually prefer simplistic black or silver PC cases.
I like to use an SSD and I have a DELL 2007FPb 1600x1200 for some awesome hi-res 4:3.
You should see if you can get your hands on a ASRock P4i945GC, it's a P4 board with DDR2 + PCIe.
I'm a "combination" kind of guy.
I don't have time to bother with making old IDE harddrives work - so for that, I use SD2IDE or similar.
Same goes for Floppies, where I tend to go with GoTek out of convenience. I rarely need floppies for anything besides the initial setup of DOS or whatever is required to partition and prepare the machine.
Rest stays somewhat "period correct" , so motherboard, graphics card , PSU, case, monitor.
One of my projects currently is building a period correct windows 98 machine. For the case, I'm using an old atx mid tower that I saved from back then that has housed numerous parts for me over the years. It has 4x 5.25 bays, and I decided to use 1 for a cdrom and with the other 3 I found a 3D-printed bracket for a 120mm fan that fits perfectly in them. So I'm doing a little bit of case modding with that to improve the cooling capability of those older towers.
I had an IBM P200 Trinitron monitor way back when - I almost cried when it quit working. I still have a Gateway 20" CRT in the basement, but I haven't used it in years...
My strategy for time machines have been working quite well. Basically I aim for super budget builds for a certain Windows era to use on the previous one.
For example my Windows XP build is a Athlon X4 with a Radeon HD 7750 which is 2012/2013 super budget gaming components. A computer my friend bought at the time and used for almost 10 years with Windows 7.
I got it for free, cleaned it out, applied new thermal paste, put in a SSD, a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS and installed Windows XP. The components are crazy powerfull compared to the current high end hardware of XPs later years. It runs everything amazing, has a low power draw and has great driver support to boot.
IMHO Phil - go for both. Why not?
Yes seems that is what many are doing! Especially for storage and power.
Really like your videos. Your content are unique in a way that you concentrate on an era of vintage computing which not many other content creators pay attention to, keep up the good work
I have both but for me my favourite system to use is my (now called thanks to this video) Windows XP Time Machine. I went for a New old stock "gaming" case with a window, loaded with LED fans and fan controller etc so it looks like the style I had back in the day with new parts.
I Run a gigabyte socket 775 motherboard, core2quad Q8200, modern watercooler, 4gb ram, an Nvidia 660TI along with a 500gb SSD (lets me LOAD IT UP with games!!!). New PSU, new optical drive, modern gaming keyboard and mouse along with for me, the best part, a brand new Phillips IPS LED 19Blp monitor, 1280x1024 @ 75hz and old-school non widescreen aspect ratio!
Granted my games I play are generally 2000-2006 ish era but I've never had a single issue so far with compatibility and the machine never breaks a sweat!
If I'm playing older games I bring out my old beige period correct Pentium II with Win 98 and mechanical hard drive, I sometimes bring it out just to hear the HDD spin up when I press the power button!
I've got both a period correct and time machine PC setup, with an AT to PS/2 adapter for the keyboard, USB to PS/2 for the Microsoft mouse and a VGA+PS/2 KVM switch so I don't need to swap any cables.
-Celeron 500 (Celeron Slotket using the 500's stock cooler), Intel SE440BX-2 (has integrated YMF740C+SBLink), Awe64 Value, 12MB Diamond Monster 3DII, 16MB Savage4 GT (lacks the required VBE for Duke3D's Vesa modes), 3.2GB Seagate Medalist 5400+20GB Seagate UX (originally used a 6.4GB Quantum Fireball EX - not big enough however), 386MB RAM (SPD functional to prevent the memory count on each boot), 12x 1995 Matsushita CD-ROM, 50x 2001 Asus CD-ROM, Windows 98SE
-Athlon XP 3000+ (400MHz FSB), NOS MSI KT6V-LSR, Audigy2 Value, 20th Anniversary Leadtek 128MB 6600GT, 20GB Maxtor D740X-6L, 250GB Samsung 2.5" SATA HDD (only SATAII drive I know of that works on the VT8237R), 2GB DDR400, Lightscribe capable DVD burner (late 2000's, think it's 20x), Windows XP Pro (due to having no idea what drivers work for the Audigy in 98SE - have multiple Live! Value however).
The boot drives were chosen purely based on the sounds they make when in use (Medalist with seek, Maxtor with motor spin up, running and spin down).
I have both going through my main 1440p screen as the image looks sharper compared to my OG 1024x768 screen and free 1366x768+1080p screens. It also helps that I can set the aspect ratio to 4.3 or 5:4.
32" 1440p IPS that has VGA, mini DP, 2x full DP and 2x HDMI - and it was the cheaper than my first modern LCD (1080p 24" LG that replaced my 1024x768 85Hz in early-mid 2014).
I remember at the time playing Tachyon on my Celeron 800 with a 32mb PCI Radeon 7200 that the experience was pretty ok. I couldn't tell you what frame rates were, but it wasn't often that I felt like the machine was holding anything back for software/games at the time. Also played Tachyon with my MS Precision Pro 2 joystick. Still have this machine and joystick. Definitely plan to keep both forever as they're each firsts for me. First PC bought with my own money. First major gaming peripheral. The system only had 2 PCI slots for expansion, so I opted to install a USB2.0 card at the time to add network, WiFi, CD burners, etc at the time and used the Intel AC97 sound. Certainly prefer to use a SB card now, but what I had at the time.
Something we can all agree on is that it is fun to build both but surely more convenient and costs less to build a time machine + you have a huge variety of options when it comes to what parts you want to use.
Whether period correct or emulator beast, cheap available parts or holy grail hardware, I think all of these are valid, so long as we are happy with what we build! I look for hardware natively compatible in MS-DOS - so, ISA sound cards - but also insert modern conveniences such as flash storage, USB 2.0 and a fast NIC for times I've booted into Windows.
Awesome video again Phil. I run both types of systems. Can you use Deus Ex for benchmarking? I always found back in the day, even though it uses the unreal engine it was always more taxing on systems than unreal tournament. It wasn't until I got a 9600xt that I could run it maxed on full specs.
I remember this game as quite system resource hungry...
I think the biggest distinctions are experience vs convenience. If you want the "true" experience that goes outside the games, you want all the baggage that comes with the period. If you want convenience and performance, you'll want the "time machine." Personally, if I want convenience or performance, I'll just use my 5800X3D/RTX 3070 and ExoDOS/ExoWin/86Box.
went time machine with all of my builds, i have the nostalgia of the games, not of the performances (or lack there of),
and playing those games with all bells and whistles in 1600x1200 or higher with silky smooth framerate is the best feeling when you didn't had the money to get decent hardware back then.
thanks a lot to this channel for helping me pick the best parts for each of my machines BTW, let me build the most overkill win98/2k and winxp pc ever ^^
Period correct is cool to have, but not practical for many people, especially as time goes on. (Availability of parts dwindles, parts break over time, extra machines take up space...etc.) I still have my period correct Windows XP PC, but if/when it breaks I don't think I'd replace it with another period correct one.
Great video as always. Period correct hardware is normally an issue due to the age of components.
As most of the viewers can note that capacitors, hard drive mechanics and crt as a whole are a reliablility issue.
I have been in this arena since the '70's and really do not have a desire to go back too far. In the '90's,
PC's in general began the slow climb to great gaming platforms. When I bought a Orchid Voodoo 1 in 1998, gaming
became visually spectacular. At the time I played Quake 1 off and online. Final comment, the only retro games I
play these days is UT99 and the Quake III/Arena on a win 10 system.
I recently recapped a Socket A board and put a Amd 2500xp in it. I have other boards that need recapping but simply dont have enough cases or space for them. At least not at the moment.
Period correct is more for hardware/tech enthusiasts and historians. For general retro gamers though, the time machine is the better experience.
Due to your videos I ended up with a period correct Win98/Dos PC. Original Wingman flight stick, CRT monitor, TNT2, Awe 64, MT-32, Roland Speakers, Pentium MMX 200 and motherboard that was released in 1998. It's installed in a beige period correct case. I found a new old stock external CF card reader that connects through printer port. This lets me transfer files from my modern computer to the Win98/Dos pc. The only modern convince upgrade I did was replacing the mechanical hard drive to one of those industrial ide dom's. That was the best decision for me.
A time machine is absolutely the way to go. My WinXP machine is an overclocked AMD FX-8320 with both a Geforce GTX 780 and a Radeon 7970 installed to handle games with rendering issues on one or the other (Star Wars KOTOR only works properly on Geforce, Mass Effect only works properly on Radeon for example). Only has 4 GB DDR3-1600, no point having more with 32-bit WinXP.
It's great being able to run everything silky smooth maxed out on my 1440p display. When you crank up the image quality driver settings you can still push the machine though. For example despite being an old game, running Star Wars KOTOR on the GTX 780 with driver-level AA maxed will pull 230W on the GPU alone. Have to have a dedicated WinXP PC just for the EAX goodness with the X-Fi Titanium.
I forgot to mention, I still do make the odd nostalgic compromise. Out went the Samsung SSD and in went a WD Raptor mechanical drive. Noticeable slower, but makes the right noises for a WinXP machine. It's fast enough ...
Great examples and I like your reasoning!
Kind of reminds me of cameras in a way. I travel around as a photojournalist and focus mostly on portraits/capturing people in the moment of daily life or events. My main kit is an Olympus E-M5 Mark III and a Lumix G9, both Micro Four Thirds. MFT is a format that people like to say can't really do portraits well, yet I've never had clients question my gear choice. I also have a Pentax 645Z medium format body with a fairly large 645 lens collection stretching decades from the earliest days to the most recent. That system produces results that almost look painted or fake if your technique and lighting is correct.
The point is, regardless of the gear or tool, if it gets the job done, it gets the job done. That said, if someone really wanted to really learn photography I would tell them to start with a fully manual film camera or to shoot digital fully manual with file constraints (you only have 36 shots, not 6000, focus on making them count). The same goes for old computers, original hardware will help you learn a lot about what's going on if you're interested in more than just playing games. I use an Apple IIGS and Mac iici all the time, but I rarely play games on them. I focus more on programming different tools or demos to push the hardware and my ability to optimize/problem solve. If I were just playing games, with how expensive retro computers are getting due to demand and increasing scarcity, I'd almost say just use an emulator unless you're beyond serious. This channel has shown dosbox is getting insanely good, start and explore with that for dos games.
Great comment especially about the camera gear. You are right, if the photo is pleasing then nobody questions the gear.
I have had a lot of fun watching your videos for years they're always helpful and actually spurred me on to flesh out my collection of retro computers! Have started dabling in old Apple PPC and intel based systems too! It's nice to branch out with the systems and I know this has nothing to do with gaming but they look lovely lol :D
That is awesome!
I have four period correct setups spanning MS-DOS to Windows XP, with an IBM ThinkPad work computer running Windows 2000. Period correct hardware IS the time machine, and brings me back to when I used each throughout my life. I love managing older tech, no matter how cumbersome it is.
Ive got machines from every generation, but my favourite retro system i use is athlon xp 2400+, running windows 98, audigy 2zs, voodoo 5, with a 21" Panasonic CRT, just finished another play through of unreal gold, and now half life 1.
Best of both worlds glide games at constant 60fps
Nice!
@@philscomputerlab I meant CRT damnit 😅
0:35 BEAUTIFUL wow, love that system!
Great topic, and one that can be debated endlessly. :)
Generally, I prefer period correct hardware for older stuff, e.g. DOS. I really like the 486/Pentium era hardware and love playing with that.
Once I go into WIn98-era and later, I tend to do hybrid builds. I have lost patience for tinkering with hard drives and old keyboards/mice so they're nearly always modern. Same thing with monitors - I've had so many CRTs die over the years, it's sad. Nowadays I use a fairly old Eizo 1920x1200 LCD that still works great, and mostly run at 1600x1200 or 800x600 for older stuff.
One thing that keeps me busy is whenever I find a game I really want to play through, I sit down and theorize the perfect build for that game, and attempt to build it. That's a lot of fun I think, and I get to play with many of my old parts regularly. Keeps my collection relevant, and forces me to use parts and ensure they're still working.
The one big thing I've had lots of problems with, is power supplies. I've had to trash so many over the years, and finding good working ones is quite hard & expensive these days. Would love to hear about a modern solution for classic AT-style systems, if there are any?
Cheers Phil, hope your morning coffee is good!
The retro dream, build a machine for a particular game to run it perfectly!
I sort of went with both, I setup my socket 7 K6-2 550 with a SATA to IDE adaptor and used a 120GB SSD along with a Radeon 7550 LE to make an underdog machine like I had back in the day.
I built one of those "hybrid" machines you mentioned at the end. While I'm mostly in the "period correct" camp because there's just something so special to me about that older hardware from the time when all of this was still like magic, I have upgraded my build with certain modern conveniences too. I've got a 1GHz Slot-1 setup but I consider USB2 and SATA PCI cards to be must-have add-ons. I went solid-state for the storage but in hindsight I really miss the hard drive noises. The game controller was probably the single trickiest bit, as I want a modern handheld controller with high-quality analog stick but I also need DOS joystick compatibility. Thank God for the USB4VC Kickstarter project, as it finally filled that void! I can run a brand-new XBox controller and it works in Win98 AND DOS! Lastly, a nice CRT monitor is a must-have for me. I've tried really hard to find an LCD setup that's "good enough" but so far it just doesn't seem to exist. Some day my 21" Sony Trinitron CRT will die and it will be a very sad day for me.
There was a clear drop in build quality of motherboards between the 90s and 2000s
The market became very competitive and it into a bit of a race to the bottom for a time. Prices came down as well, but that's perhaps not as relevant to us today.
Yes totally agree. The quality of old 386 boards for example is outstanding.
There was also the capacitor plague from '99 to '07.
Regarding input devices/joysticks:
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s I loved to play my 3D spaceship games with my Logitech Wingman Extreme, but when it finally broke, I switched to the newer version: The Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D. This joystick came with an adapter from gameport to USB and thus can still be used on modern PCs as well! In fact, I still use this stick on my Windows 10 machine, mostly when I fly jets and helicopters in games like the Battlefield series. :)
I think I prefer a little bit of both. I like the air flow of newer cases, the stability of a new power supply, and the speed of solid state storage. However, I love using original motherboards, video cards, and sound cards. Especially with Creative sound cards, the drivers just work in DOS, Win9x, or later. You can’t beat that. (I especially like the late beige Antec cases that have better air flow options. They still look relatively period correct, but help keep Voodoo cards cool.)
I like frankensteining it, overkill performance, pushing windows 98 or xp to their limits, then an ssd on top for a silky smooth experience
sandy bridge system will run everything at 1000fps but the 5volt vrm Barton bomb with quirky via chipset will bring you sweet memories
I do a mix. Original hard drives come with too .any issues, and I prefer CF cards so you can swap set ups. For example, I am building one with Win98, DOS, OS/2 Warp and OpenStep. Getting the right hardware that works for those is part of the fun! Apparently Matrox is one of the few video cards that have great support for all. Ironically, it probably works worse in DOS...
I usually go for a period correct "look" with a CRT monitor, PS/2 keyboard/mouse and beige cases for Windows 9x machines, BUT I also opted for 19" monitors, CPUs one generation newer than supposed to, bigger HDDs and the biggest amount of memory that the OS officially supports. Getting period correct high end GPUs card is sometimes very hard/expensive, so having a computer that can squeeze out more performance out of period correct mid-range GPUs is a good compromise.
By the way, Windows 98 can run on HDDs bigger than 120GB if you replace the default IDE driver (ESDI_506.PDR) with a patched or updated version with 48-bit LBA support. Mine works perfectly fine on a 320GB HDD dual-booting with Windows 2000 on one single partition.
Hi Phil, regarding the motherboard that you usually use - the GA-K8VM800M : I've heard that VIA chipset motherboards have some bug that severely degrades performance under Windows 98. Does the GA-K8VM800M have that same issue, i.e. are its benchmarks way below in Win98 compared to WinXP? If the bug is present, any way to fix it?
I'm considering buying one, but really need to know this before investing in it.
I don't know about this exact mobo/chipset, but I remember that "back in the days" it was a common knowledge that only chipsets worth purchasing were intel or nforce.
Seems like everything else had usually weird compatibility issues with either ATA (sometimes weird slow reads), GPUs, or just sucked under one specific OS.
This is why we always build all those gaming PCs with intel/nforce chipsets and used slightly cheaper via/sis for office computers.
Not sure if the problem was real, or if this is some weirdo coincidence, but following this rule always worked out fine for me and my collegues. No complaints from customers and family.
@@y4si0 I see, thanks! I asked about GA-K8VM800M since Phil uses it so much, so I was curious. Another (admittedly very silly) reason that I'm curious about this mobo is that its BIOS has that energy star logo in the top right corner when it boots up, and when I was a kid my PC used to have the same kind of boot screen with that top right logo.
So if there's any motherboard that can properly run Win98 (with high end GFX like X850) and also has that kinda boot screen would be exactly what I need. If there's anything like that to your knowledge that comes to mind, lemme know? If not, thanks a lot for the pointers regardless :D
Not sure but as you say I use the board in many projects and seems to be running just fine haven't noticed anything. I post all the benchmarks and so far nobody mentioned that something is off.
@@philscomputerlab So the issue isn't that the benchmarks are bad in Win98. It's that the benchmarks MIGHT be way lower in Win98 as compared to WinXP for these K8VM800M boards based on what I've heard. This seems to be an issue with some VIA boards
To be fair, the requirements were based on being able to run the game at 30 FPS, similar to how consoles of the time would run heavy games (think Fable or Doom 3 on the first XBox).
60 FPS wasn't really something mandatory at the time. It was early 2000s, we were still recovering from the shock of switching to polygon graphics.
I am fortunate in that I still have my original P233 MMX AT machine I bought 20 years ago for $100 (I was a poor college student at the time). It's mostly original parts but with the capacitors replaced, storage upgraded to an SD card, and using a more modern ATX power supply. Tonight booting up Win98 and installing from CD then playing some Sim City 2000 felt like I got into a time machine and went back to the 90's. Perfect nostalgia. But just as you said it struggles with many demanding games that came out just after like Half Life and Quake II. Well struggles compared to what are pampered with today. Back then 20-30fps was considered more than playable as we were far more interested in graphics and games being pretty than silky smooth 60+ framerates! Thus nowadays I tend to play games on 1-2 newer generation hardware instead.
Full specs: Asus P/I-P55T2P4, P233 MMX, 96MB EDO Ram, Soundblaster 32, ATI Rage 8MB, IDE to SD Card adapter, 8GB SD Card, CD Rom, 3.5 floppy, Win98SE.
if you can, your screen should be a multiple of the resolution most games should play at, you can sorta brute force and "fix" the issue if you use your modern high DPI display, though you may need adapter circuitry.
I like to Mix the best of both worlds.
Always depends on Avail Parts. I have a P4 Mobo with Floppy/IDE/SATA/Firewire.
I can do it all!
By your definition I have several time machines and only one period correct tower, but I also play games up to the mid to late 2000s, so up to Crysis and GTA 4 on these systems on a 1920x1200 display, so in the fastest of the "retro" systems is a phenom ii x4 975 and a GTX 670 running Windows Vista for DX10 support. The period correct is an AT style Zida Tomato socket 370 board with a PIII 600 and a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP, HDD and Windows 98SE, I don't have a CRT though.
There’s a difference between any random period correct build and a period correct build from exactly the last moment that build still was correct. So Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME extended support ended on July 11, 2006. Up until about that time, windows 9x compatible hardware was still built. Until around 2003, I actually still dual-booted my PC with Windows 98 and Windows XP.
I guess what I’m saying is, one should pick a specific year (and maybe month) to be period correct about the system one is assembling.
I’ve also recently came to the conclusion that building a PC from, for instance, 1998, and upgrading it with y2k appropriate upgrades is also very satisfying (not talking about hybrids). Perhaps an idea for a new video (series), @Phil?
I like using a mix of original and new components. I use a s478 P4 with a Voodoo 3, in a new case with good ventilation and a modded new cooler, to keep these old components working a bit longer
Im fairly lucky in that I started picking up my retro pc stuff from 2017 and spread out some of the costlier purchases (3dfx cards etc). Def need a lot of spare parts though as ram and cd drives tend to fail. Motherboards though still going strong touch wood
The old 4:3 HP and Dell monitors (examples: HP 1740 and 1950 or Dell 1704) are a good alternative to a CRT if you can't find one or don't want one. They made millions of them for businesses.
Yes, I have a 1504fp dell LCD that was made in 2005. It is indeed perfect for win xp / win 2000 gaming where you will be using 1024 x 768 resolution at all times.
2007fp is amazing for DOS. 1200x1600 divides evenly into both 320x200 and 320x240
I feel like the correct answer to this rhetorical question is somewhere in the middle. Certain components should be period-correct, because if they aren't, there will be massive compatibility issues. The CPU, for one, without some kind of throttling software that isn't always reliable, needs to run at a period-correct clock speed because otherwise, the games will often be unplayably fast. I also think the GPU should be relatively period-correct, because a lot of pre-DirectX or early-DirectX-era games make use of specific features of 3Dfx, Matrox, S3 ViRGE, PowerVR, etc. and while there are wrappers and ways to somewhat emulate the look that these cards produce, those can also be unreliable, unstable, or simply inaccurate.
Other components, on the other hand, do little-to-nothing to affect actual gameplay and exist solely to make the boring parts of the system snappier or more efficient. A modern cooling system will extend the life of the machine, an SSD will shorten loading times, as will a newer optical drive. Floppy disk emulators are also faster than an old-school disk drive, some kind of modern networking dongle will get better internet speeds. The one area that's the most controvertial might be sound, as there are so many different period-accurate sounds cards each sounding a bit different, tons of MIDI add-ons, etc. I personally would go with something that is HARDWARE accurate but not PERIOD accurate, something like an Orpheus sound card that contains the proper period-accurate chips for the right sounds but has the versatility to behave as multiple sound cards in one.
I love watching your videos because it's like a time capsule for me. I'm however happy with my modern PC. I can run the vast majority of my old games on my modern PC, and they look and run better than ever. For example Unreal Tournament 1999, this game runs at locked 170Hz 1440p on my modern PC and I'm also using high resolution textures. On period correct PC the same game would run with around 50fps in 1024x786x16 on voodoo3. I can even use the nGlide wrapper if I want to remember how Glide API games looked on Voodoo cards (even dithering filter works).
I found a voodoo 5 and soundblaster live in a dumpster. Initially I just wanted to sell it, but now I wnt to make a 98 game machine! I'm hoping the voodoo is working oroperly.
hodl it for some more years and it will worth more than a bitcoin
Ach wie schön. Die PC-PlAYER war ein großartiges Magazin. Wurde von mir um die 2000-Wende auch immer gerne gekauft und gelesen👍
Thank you for being so inspirational in your videos. I wanted to tell you I finally had success using a 120GB Samsung SSD as an HDD on a Pentium 233 mmx system with an Intel AN430TX motherboard. I made 3 Fat32 partitions and Windows 98 installed. I have tried your other methods with success, but I really wanted to use one SSD. Thank You again, if it weren't for you, I would not have had the motivation to wrestle with this until I got it to work.
Great outcome, well 👍
In the middle of the year 2000 that was a nice middle of the road middle of the range PC.
Great video and topic Phil! I think you can have fun with any computer and no matter what equipment you own, there will always be the feeling of needing something else. Use what you got and be happy. Don't go in the FOMO trap. I love both vintage and retro computers - and everything in between. However, when it comes to games from the pre-3D era, I prefer vintage and period correct hardware. Playing an old CGA game on an old IBM PC can't be beat IMHO. But for Windows 9x games and up, I want the fastest compatible hardware I can get my hands on. When I want to go retro I just use an Intel NUC. It works great for DOSBox and GOG games. The biggest issue for me is space, so compromises have to be made, but less is supposed to be more...
I run the best of both worlds... Modern PC with a CRT monitor. The iiyama Vision Master Pro 455. =P Keyboard used to be a dell "Bigfoot" before a cat dumped tea over it.
I date the machine by the CPU/motherboard combo. Then add the best RAM I can. Add to that a GPU about 2 years newer - I like to assume I would have upgraded it once. Then the games have to be period correct or older than the CPU/motherboard and should work with high settings with that GPU I selected.
I’m all period correct stuff (except I’ve started to use SSD drives or CF on some of my systems lately mostly because of the convenience) because hardware including repairs is very important part of my hobby, but then again I have quite many systems so I can tackle different eras. I also have zero interest in late XP era HW or games, so I have no use for some beefy Core2Duo/Quad etc. Many later XP era games can be run on a modern system without any problems, so there’s that too. So, 2003 top-end Socket A system is the latest and it runs pretty much everything from the era beautifully. But I can understand time machines if you want to keep the number of systems as low as possible and it is also much cheaper.
Usually I try to match all parts in my retro PCs so that they are from the same "era". I always use old IDE hard drives, but I normally disconect the Floppy, (most of them are broken anyways...) and although a Geforce FX5200 is cheap and good for Windows 98, some really old games stuggle to run on this "modern" hardware. I mainly use Pentium 3 from 500 to 933 mhz or old AMD Athlon XP.
Nice stuff. Period correct parts can be absurdly expensive nowadays.
Which blows my mind... This stuff was e-waste ten years ago.
Even buying for jacked up eBay prices it’s possible to build a great retro pc under €500 which will run a myriad of recognized cult-status games. From the perspective of GeForce RTX prices and what it can be used for that number doesn’t sound too crazy.
@@r.d.7698 It costs far less than that for me. I've been collecting for 25 years.
@@dennisp.2147 That's why it has gotten so pricey. A lot was thrown out.
@@MrModamanReviews The Europeans are just making money hand over first because they know that hobbyists in North America will pay their prices. The Europeans held onto their equipment for a lot longer than we did. We're just wasteful in the sense.
This video is timely because I have four ideas for retro gaming PCs: One Win98/DOS PC, one Win98/XP PC, one LGA 775 WinXP/Linux PC, and one Haswell WinXP/Linux PC.
A lot of commenters ignore the fact that today we are accustomed to 60fps+ gaming. On the other hand, if commenters were true to period correctness, even with setting their expectations, a 30fps+ gameplay would have been a great experience, especially with non-competitive titles.
I'm in the middle as I prefer CRT monitors, especially for 2D VGA games, but was always a fan of silent PCs, so no HDDs, quiet fans, CD-Rom spin slowdown tools and all in a modern case with noise dampening foam. Still have 3.5 and 5.25" disk drives for my Big Box collection but they are more for disk imaging.
Also love that with the 136in1 Pentium 233 MMX I can change the speed depending on the game. Already have enough systems without going into the direction of separate 386, 486 and so on systems. (not counting countless consoles, C64 and Amiga)
That being said, I also have a place in my heart for the classic cases like I had back in the day. Especially the ones that show the clock speed in a little display. Always wanted this back then but my PC didn't come with these.
Mentioning old price lists of hardware, I have backups of multiple Vobis flyers (Highscreen) because I also love to look at these from time to time. I mean they include my first PC. :D
I find that each have their own advantages and disadvantages that are often complementary. So I tend to run both.
I was very lucky when a couple of years ago I got a trio of old Dell Pentium 3 machines dropped into my lap to be recycled that I ended up taking home. They were literally stored in a barn and came to me covered in cobwebs and I had to clean straw out of them. All have identical motherboards, 1 GHZ chips, and maxed out ram with a variety of other components. Its allowed me to keep multiple period correct machines running for basement LAN gaming when my brother visits.
But I also find that keeping a time machine or two from some slightly later eras around is also beneficial. When you want to play a game like say Freelancer and want to max out the graphics its nice that I also have some Core 2 Duo, and Late 2000s rigs that let me really run those late big box and small box games silky smooth on maxed out settings.
For me, personally, I mix the PC and TM depending on what I have at hand. I really prefer to make and use a PC computer but I am not willing to sacrifice space, money and time (to find components) for building it, so whenever I need and can, I use the comfort of modern components.
For example, I prefer ms-dos to have less than 200MHz CPU (clocked down or native clock), an ISA sound card and a 1-2M VGA that have no issues with old dos games. For Win 95 I go for a CPU with up to 300-500MHz, ISA sound and PCI video, for Win98 or Win2k I go with 750-1GHz CPU, PCI only peripherals and AGP video. For XP I prefer 2-3GHz CPU, single-core or multicore/multithreading and 3-4G of RAM (I like XP computers maxed out, I admit).
Always I use modern IDE or SATA optical drives, I am not into 2x-8x speed drives; the newest are more reliable and faster, and for HDD´s as I have many older spinning drives, from 20,40G up to 250, 320G, I use them, even if I need to deal with BIOS limitations. And I always use HDDs with at least 80% remaining life just to be sure (Disk Genius is a great tool to check the HDDs). I am not concerned with the noise, for me the computer IS always noisy (not vacuum cleaner levels of noise ofcourse) and a quiet computer makes me anxious.
While a period correct machine might me more appropriate and immersive, I'm running a modified build of Windows XP on a second SSD on the computer that I'm writing this on (i7-8700k, z370); only compatibility issue I ran into was that XP obviously doesn't have drivers for the 10xx series of GPUs, so I just went out and bought a 730 and plugged it into my second PCIe slot. XP-era games, and the whole OS for that matter, runs so ridiculously fast that if the software I needed still supported it and I dared to connect it to the internet lest my computer be added to some sort of botnet, I'd have no problem daily driving it.
Period Correct ! For me it is the way to go, nice CRT and HDD noise is part of the nostalgia
People in Australia are buying up all the CRTs and hiring them out for $30 a day
Until the HDD noise becomes worn out spindle motor bearings lol. The 500gb Seagate drive in my Pentium 4 Sony Vaio is getting to that point, can't blame it. The drive is old and high mileage
Same amount of torture of old time also....
My first retro build was an Athlon XP and GeForce FX and it is amazing for most 90s games but compatibility is an issue with some. I built a Socket 7 system also, and it's a much better experience for games from 97 and earlier -- everything just works. So I started out preferring time machines, but once I had a period correct system I learned to appreciate it much more.
I remember cribbing about the flicker rate on my 775ft monitor and always wanted a high res and smooth display at higher hz, always wished the hdd noise dissapeared and squeezed the last performance drop from the system, with 1 gb ram in year 1999, it was p3 933 on i815 with a lousy mx440. I say its a lot better to build a time machine but still own period correct stuff
I'm not really into period correct, I used to play Painkiller like it was going out of business with a Leadtek 6800GT and it broke safter a month (memory issues). Whilst waiting for a refund (3 months - ended up buying a Gainward 6800 Ultra GS for $100 less than I paid for the 6800GT), I had to use my old MX400 which must have lacked hardware support for a few features used in the game. One of the bosses (the first one, "Swampy") was totally invisible with the MX400.
My _"Time Machine"_ sits on a test bench - an AMD FX-60, DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR Expert, 2GB Corsair TwinX 4000 Pro, MSI GTX295 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS. Storage is a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD and a Seagate 2GB SSHD and runs Windows 7 Ultimate. I splurged with cooling though... I have a modern soft line (EK's ZMT) custom loop - 360mm & 240mm radiators, EK D5 Pump/Res and an Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU block.
My stance has always been that I wanted the best I could get my hands on at any particular time. If I could pull computers from the future, something I actually fantasized about, I'd gladly do it. Therefore "time machines" are more satisfying for me even from a "nostalgia" standpoint because it'd be what I wanted even back then.
For me its about taking my first system and improving on it as if I had the money to do so when I was a child. The only thing "sacred" would be the mobo which is certainly its cap since its a packard bell piece of trash capped at 66fsb lx chipset mATX. Having the mobo and case as a cap will prevent me from just straight up building a separate more modern xp machine.
I like them all and have both. Thanks for sharing.
You should have both More seriously ... older stuff gonna break over the long run mostly hdds. Imagine giving your 30 yo machine another +30. This is why these retro enhancements like SDcard to IDE adapters, gotek and alikes come handy. Sadly we do not have drop in replacements for old Sound Blasters or Voodoo3 cards. I just hope they will get opensourced one day so retro enthusiasts can have their equivalent replacements with newer parts.
There are a few sound card replacement projects. I built a whole PC around an Orpheus 2! But I swap the media out. I need a Gotek-like replacement for optical storage still, but I have fromt mounted an IDE to Compact Flash adapter and Gotek. Easy to swap set ups is very nice.
Too bad some of the Alt Operating Systems didn't have great Voodoo support, or I would be set. Matrox Millenniums seem to have some of the widest support though, with drivers for OpenStep and OS/2. Too bad some DOS games don't like it.
@@slaapliedje regardless that SBLive's are still easily gettable and dirt cheap that soundcard you showed me is far from being a "competition" on retroland. If you thinking on using a wide variety of OSes like everything from win9xs,dos,win2k to old bsd, linux versions, that was THE card all OSes supported. Hell that card is so universal and widely supported that it will even work with Windows 10 and 11 these days.
I don't really have the space for hardware retro-gaming (though I am interested in it, especially the cloning of old hardware), so I have to get by on software solutions only (DOSBox and WINE/Proton). What would be a good thing to have would be a modern monitor with a vertical resolution of 2400 lines, as that could get you pixel-perfect resizes from 640*400 and 640*480 (5x/6x and 5x/5x respectively), and by extension 320*200 and 320*240, covering most DOS gaming needs, especially if it'll also do >70Hz to handle DOS refresh rates.
Yes and sooner or later CRTs are not an option. One day we will get decent hardware scalers that also have CRT shaders giving us a similar look...
I built a time machine with a 20" trinitron CRT from 1996. Best of both worlds imho. It's a pretty good PC built from (semi)modern parts: An i7-3770k, 16GB ram, SSD and a 2080ti.
It's powerful enough to get every older game running at mostly correct speed in dosbox (config file tweaking required in many cases), and retro windows games with modern ray-tracing options (like Quake2) or graphically intensive modern mods run fantastic at the monitors 1024x786 or lower (for some reason I find that some older games look better @640x480 instead of higher resolutions, maybe because of nostalgia). Because it's pretty powerful, I can run PCem up to a pentium 233 flawlessly, which is great for those older games that are very picky which dosbox has trouble with.
The only thing I can't get working 100% to my liking is EAX support. It gets close with alchemy in some cases, but it doesn't reach the heights of my windows XP machine with a x-fi card.
Beautiful
I have both period correct, and time machines, and I like both., I got Pentium IIs all the way to Core 2 Quads, strangely enough my main "retro rig" is relatively modern with a i7 4790k, and eVGA GTX 960 SSC