Solid choice with that Pentium II setup, very similar specs to my HP Vectra VL5 that I love to use for all sorts of mid to late 90s games for DOS and Win9x. Would be prime for a Voodoo2 or 3, but there’s something lovely about good 2D software rendering.
LGR omg LGR I wondered if you would find this video, I'm currently putting together a XPS b800 P3 1gb RDRAM just need the expansion cards and GPU. Inspired by your channel 👍
The reason why I love your videos is that they are extremely well produced. Even though you said half the time you didn't even knew what you were doing, you actually do know. You're not making videos just for the sake of it. You're reviewing pieces of retro hardware that actually give some of us nostalgia and make some of us go back and play games we thought were awesome that we had mostly forgotten existed. Heck, I even bought an original Xbox once again because I saw a video of yours. Keep up the great work.
thanks! when i said that i meant that i dont have a set backlog or idea about my next video. i assume other creators have a good idea of their content throughout the year. i kinda just shoot from the hip :) appreciate the feedback and glad you are enjoying the channel !
@@ModernVintageGamer Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft. -Theodore Roosevelt Ton ted a tall a fed his.... With the cost of modern video game development, I can see why project red did it the way they did. I was hoping for a more sober appreciation for their history, despite being leaned on as a beacon of proof and good will, but selling oneself means keeping with the popular trends. Even if millions of dollars overhead for investment return risk were kind of background noise to the perception of the general audiences sensibility. Remember my point about 15fps PS3 games that also launched on PS4, and not no name titles? I mean you can be offended I told you to shut your mouth, but lets be honest, its not a project red problem. Its a 2020+ industry problem. Something about selling oneself is such a turn off. If the game is mass likeability by carefully tailoring my presentation to maximize this at the side effect of cheapening the overall substance then my approach is very different. The special interest fest of youtube in itself is destructive to sound communication. I might be an asshole but im also right. We are technically on the same team. In my experience with humanity, even people with your caliber of skill arent particularly friendly even when im being polite. Even when we should have the same obvious goal. Its not my personality, look at my contributions even as is; its the people around me. I just know the lottery tier improbability of recognition is a bar so high, its not going to matter if I say shut your mouth. If im going to be a ghost, I might as well actually get your attention and by what I do, not with what I say. If I see major famous people like those associated with Digital Foundry making mistakes thats are objectively mistakes you can rewind and explain logically, since no one else is doing it, Im obligated. Its like a duty. In 24 months from now, my library is going to be an inarguable technological gift. Even if you dont like me, you should respect what it represents. My goal isnt to be popular, its to be intellectually respected on the basis of what I have to in the real world offer people that can actually be used. Im not targeting the most popular way to make a difference either. I understand life isnt fair, but there comes a point its a sort of contribution thats basically a mathematical equation for the title retro enhancement God. If I had ONE programmer involved, it would change the game completely. Step 1 is depth buffer intelligence and the elimination drudgery for other people. Yes other peoples time matters. My channel proves it like 1+1=2. Like im not even a programmer dog. Why am I the one to mass figure out intels compiler and microsofts thread scheduler? Its unique. No one, in the history of mankind cared enough to make it a public resource because thats why im not impressed with my species. I legit shouldnt be the first. This should all, already be done. And it shouldnt be like pulling teeth to find people willing to jump onboard and contribute SOMETHING. Anything. No one wants to, but there are plenty of competitors for views. Thats the wrong mentality to have to get something done because your goals will be shiftier by the second. Mines simple. No one cares about retro enhancement unless its entrance level, plug in that to tv. Raytracing retro is the future whether you are on board or not. It might be niche now, but when its easy to use, works on modern igpus, works on older gaming spec machines, and is all in one place, its going to be contagious. Especially if anyone ever makes it an actual application that automatically enables it on a game detection library basis. I might as well patch every game it detects and windows thread scheduler while im at it, or begin talks with the process lasso developer since ill have a fairly complete enough starting point for it to make sense.
I built my own Retro PC over Christmas and man was it worth it. I love your channel man. I think the only thing your retro PC is missing is the Sony Trinitron CRT Monitor. It's fantastic, a real dream to look at. Anyway, have a wonderful day.
Congratulations on your sub count success as of late. I surmise you'll hit 100K by year's end. You put out well thought out, quality videos that people appreciate. Thank you for your videos & content. Your sub count success is very well deserved.
Guy Crew Beat me to it. Also be sure your flash drive is formatted to FAT32. I remember a bit of frustration once when a larger drive I had refused to work...
Yeah, FAT16 and FAT32 are pretty much the only formats Windows 9x can natively understand without throwing its hands up in frustration and/or confusion.
Oh, a video in my mailbox and guess what? My favorite uploader! On topic now, as true hardcore Amigan I bought my first pc in late 2003. Over the years I've discovered that you need 4 machines to play games. An 8086, 486, early Pentium/AMD and a top notch :-D
Vincent GR If you have the 486, what would you need the 8086 for? Didn't they do the exact same native thing via DOS? Actually, didn't the Pentium/AMD run DOS like a boss as well? DOS ruled, I wish modern games still had native support for it.
Many older games were tied to the clock speed of the CPU, which meant if you ran them on even a 386, they would run at blistering speeds and be unplayable. You could use a slowdown utility, but that took some tweaking and testing.
i am definitely looking forward to more original xbox videos i grew up in that era and its my favorite game console of all time and love all the videos you have been doing on the console keep up the amazing work man
A few years ago I unintentionally got into DOS gaming. The original intent was to play around with music trackers like Adlib Tracker II (which I really love using). However, one day I wanted to play some Lucas Art point and click games and revisit some games that I vaguely remember playing in elementary school. I picked up a Compaq Armada 7700 series and I felt these laptops were quite versatile. You were able to quickly swap out batteries, throw in an extra hard drive or even change from a 3.5 floppy drive to a CD-ROM drive. Sound Blaster also worked without any issues and sounded great when playing. The one gripe I had was, it was lacking USB, so I found the docking station then made a folder where my modern desktop send files over to the Armada. I eventually picked up an IBM 300GL which has a PII and a few USB slots which was nice. Instead of using a hard drive, I used Compact Flash. I was able to make an image file of the whole drive in case were to happen, and quickly transfer files in and out if needed. I was also glad to throw in my SB CT1740; the Compaq docking station gave me a bunch of problems even though it had ISA slots.
Holy chips, this was my first real pc! My first pc was an IBM Aptiva 120hz but it had an onboard videocard that couldn't be replaced. Memories! Thank you!!
Speaking of retro DOS games, although Hexen II wasn't originally available for DOS, there's a multiplatform port called Hammer of Thyrion (aka uhexen2) that can run under DOS as well. The same goes for Quake 2, which has Q2DOS.
The Pentium 2 was actually less expensive for Intel to produce than the Pentium Pro, as the CPU and L2 cache could be tested before assembly, greatly increasing yields. Once they could move the level 2 cache onto the CPU die with the Celeron and P3 Coppermine, they switched back to a socket quickly.
I remember playing that crusader game I was about 15. Geez I’ve been playing games for along time. My favourite was x-wing and x-wing vs tie fighter. Thanks for the trip back in time
Awesome! We've gone for very similar specs there! I also use mine for the FDD too - writting ST disks lol. I originally purchased mine to use as a server for a MMORPG engine I was developing at the time, but it ended up a great DOS and win 95/98 gaming machine. I loved Screamer! Strangely enough, Screamer 2 I've had trouble running. It works, but the CD audio isn't quite right, yet CD audio with every other game is fine - very odd. I will investigate further when I get time. Every other game for DOS works fine, and I've got hundreds of games on there now. I think what I loved about the 90s on PC was the hardware was pushing the limits and with each new graphics card, sound card, or CPU, the difference was noticeable. I guess there came a point where we weren't wowed in the same ways, or certainly less. It was a very creative time I think. You could argue that modern games are even more creative, but it just doesn't feel that way I guess. We've been spoiled by the 80s and 90s!
I love the look of 2D pixelated Retro in software mode. However, when it comes to 3D gaming, a 3DFX accelerator is the way to go. I was so ashamed of my PS1, never touched it because I had a Voodoo card. I remember playing Terminal Velocity and Descent on a 2D card I purchased from Circuit City. I took that card back about an hour after seeing how horrible everything looked. Ugghhh. The only downside to playing on a Voodoo was having to adjust the gamma! The colors were always washed out unless you could figure out how to adjust it, which wasn't always easy to do (smack!)
That's great, what a coincidence.. Yesterday I bought myself Retro PC - Pentium I 200MHz with 32MB on board. Oh yes sir, I will play that Duke like the old times :P
Oh the memories. So much goodness coming back to mind here. Just one thing to note though, retail slot 1 CPUs didn't have that giant heatsink on them. That giant heatsink you're seeing was an OEM thing.When I was working at a computer shop back then we put a lot of them together. They had a small 40mm fan on them if I remember right. Don't remember them being all that loud though. Maybe I'm just old.
I still remember getting my P2 400mhz. I remember setting up Quake 2 and hopping on my Heat.net IPX connection and gaming my day away. Such great times!
I use an old 1.0 Ghz PIII Dell Latitude Laptop with AMD Radeon Graphics on board. I've installed a cheap-o Wireless N dongle and a USB2.0 PCMCIA card. It plays games of the era with no issues (even SimCopter!) It also can play DOS games without issue. Drivers are also easily attainable STILL since it is a Dell. Above all, it's portable and has an excellent screen - Love it!
That was a fantastic trip down memory lane, thank you. I spent many a late night when I should have been doing my homework playing the likes of Doom, Duke 3d, Heretic, Descent, Screamer rally... etc etc. I look back on those days with very fond memories, for me back then it felt like gaming had no limits. Gaming was just getting better and better! Sadly here we are in modern times plagued by "safe" money making sequels, free to play and micro transactions business models :-(
Wow, that PC you used was the same specs I got 20 years ago which was a custom built P-II w/ Win98. DOS games ran like they were made for Windows 95 and the DirectX games were the best. I had no 3Dfx card sadly but eventually got a GeForce 2 for playing Unreal Tournament. Nowadays I use DOSbox via LaunchBox which is fine and can even get CRT-like scanlines if I want. For old Windows games I use either GOG versions or fixes from PC Gaming Wiki to get them to ruin on Windows 10. Plus I play open port versions (like Quake) from Steam. So in a way my current gaming PC is a contunation of my very first PC from the 90's.
well, i tried to build a retro DOS machine, but even though it's also a dell and it even has both PCI and ISA slots, it turned out to be a right bother, becuase the BIOS doesn't like larger hard drives, and the power supply is a nonstandard one that i would really need to replace. not to mention that it uses weird EDO ram that i just can't find anywhere on ebay.. so, to be honest, i only use dosbox now, and i have a dedicated '90s gaming.. mac. yes, a power mac G4 (original model) with a gig of ram, an SD2IDE adaptor and OS 8.6. most dos games had mac ports back then, some even superior to the original version - not to mention i grew up on macs mostly.
@@ModernVintageGamer Remember using both spatial and color data, predication SMAA is a godsend. If inference gets adopted in a open source works on everything way at any point, thats also computationally speaking, especially with intelligent sharpeners, an image quality efficiency ratio that some would have killed for during the dark times of basic multisampling, supersampling, and quincunx which was yes, worse than FXAA which is also trash. The texture mapping units if a bottleneck at any point, have a computes way out. The difference in practice is very small. My only regret is 16 bit precision is AMD driver level only, the open source nvidia compatible version is slower, but at the right intensity (default is overkill) the noise to sharpen effect is the best on offer. Dumb sharpeners were just trash. If you keep the effect passes down and sample rate, im pretty sure without actually knowing that the first iteration of unified shader hardware provided windows 10 compatibility would be able to use my mods. And dropping resolution, you get modern AA and intelligent sharpeners that, along with a gaming only specific image with generalized drivers would be also very CPU cycle efficient. I would just tell people they shouldnt use the machine with it installed for anything important other than gaming since they dont know me. Remember software raytracing, I guess isnt a total lie. It ramps draw calls so the system requirements do go up period. The more effects, the more CPU overhead.
@@ModernVintageGamer Windows 10 might not even be necessary. Its entirely possible it works down the stack. I just havent propagandized anyone successfully to trying it with my old 9800 GTX for example. Wish I didnt get rid of all that years ago.. all thats left is a 939 pin 4200+. Love the fact the new 5950X matches the dimensions. Its certainly an evolution despite the memory controller moving off die. The cache makes me not care, because for years even with binned intel chips, 8mbs is not enough for some really janky bs code. Specifically bioshock infinite. Problem software like this taught me the ways to the force. Though I may not be as learn'ed a Jedi, we have overlapping energies and trajectory. In a lot of ways im like the younger stupider version of yourself. Ill get there in time. Im still just a noob.
@@ModernVintageGamer Between you and me, I think our Special K modder programmer friend is a Sith Lord. His cofounder of the great steam performance FF XV fix, admitted as much, and its an imperfect teasing work at best, and a engineered nightmare at worst. I mean seriously made to increase the cortisol levels of mankind. Some people actually really enjoy stuff like this. Its a part of darwin we havent crushed yet with technological defeat of random mutation hence evolution as we look to expand beyond earth, and conquer interspecies warfare as a checksum. I guess admitting to hating reshade in forum, I can see why its bundled with the software. but that component doesnt actually work without very in depth knowledge of how windows 10 perhaps even on a build by build basis handled .dll injection with stored background variables associated. And even then maybe its not fixable without some kind of image, or deepfreeze, or some hacker level understanding of the windows kernal. This is simply not user friendly, and its basically guaranteed to frustrate anyone looking to enhance the game with real techniques like raytracing and who dont suck at it.
I used to have a Compaq 286 luggable or "portable". It came in it's own suitcase. I used to play Ancient Art of War on it. Great machine, wish I still had it.
3Dfx Voodoo card was my first 3D card (the one with VGA pass-through), I actually still have original box! Would love to see it revisited... Those were golden times, everything was moving so fast that we couldn't keep up with upgrades. So many things wanted but never gotten, then obsolete. My journey started with IBM AT 12MHz + S3 Virge. Also still have that 12MHz motherboard manual :)
Matrox made graphics cards with very good picture quality. Damn, I wish I would still have the Matrox G400Max-card, that my manager at work gifted me back at the days... It would be perfect for retro gaming! Gimme back my 21" Nokia CRT and my old machines! Damn It! ;) I think retro gaming demands a proper CRT-monitor... Though the space it takes...
I think my vintage Toshiba Satellite 330CDS laptop may be about the sweet spot for retro dos gaming. has a 266 mhz Pentium (I guess the fastest P1 before the P2s), 96 mb of ram, and its original 4.1 gb hard drive which said it was manufactured in October of 1998, still runs Windows 98 second edition. One old Dos game I ran on it was called Shamus from 1988.
Should make a guide about setting up and running games in dos. I can’t find a video on it anywhere and I remember playing these games on my grandma and aunts computers as a really young kid and want to revisit my childhood 😂
Crusader series! They had maybe the most amazing soundtrack. I personally love to play games with original hardware, but it just takes so much space and time to fiddle with installations and older hardware. My Pentium 2 with voodoo 2, which I actually got new and still have it has been dusting for few years now. Though I've been thinking about fetching my Toshiba P166 laptop with quite good SB pro compatibility to occasionally play something. Also I had a soft spot for Amigas too in my youth even though I didn't actually use my A500+ for that extensive time, now I would pay fair amount for a4000 or very good a 1200 set with good quality crt. By the way, lack of crt these days is the biggest down for me. There simply aren't any lcd type substitutes for even modest crt displays. Why oh why did I throw them all away. I think I'm not alone with that thought.
Screamer 2 was better than ridge racer or Sega Rally. Such a great racer. Question for you MVG what was the first 3DFX game? The best I can find is that it was a patch for EF2000 but nothing conclusive
Screamer 2 was brilliant. My Voodoo 3 sits in my Amiga 4000 but im tempted to drop it into my PC just for that game. As for the first game thats a great question. i believe it may have been EF2000 too, but i remember playing Descent with a patch. Then there was GLQuake - technically not 3dfx native but used the glide2x wrapper And Everquest came out in 1999 that ONLY worked with glide/3dfx. That may have been the first "exclusive" title. Im sure someone knows more than I do about this however :)
USB was standard in the PII era. I have a socket 7 from 96 with USB. You have to set a jumper to enable it. There are USB drivers for Windows 95, and even DOS if you want to get freaky.
I use gog.com, since I don't have a Windows 98 PC. I used to have a Compaq Presario 5130, that actually came with the game Moto Racer, which was awesome. Unfortunately, within the last 10 years, it was taken to an electronics recycling center. But that was before I got interested in these older PC games, and in building my own modern gaming PC. That Dell is awesome! Was it difficult to find the 5.25 inch disk drive to put in it?
Personally I would not bother with a specific machine for DOS gaming simply because DOSBOX has become so good at getting those games running. What I would build (and have bought parts for even though I haven't got around to plugging it all together yet) is a machine for Windows 9x gaming which this pretty much covers. To me that means having a well compatible but capable for the era graphics card and as powerful a CPU as I can get. Personally I went for a Pentium 4 and Geforce 4 combo. Some day I'll see how that works out, if I ever get the time to actually build and test it!
Wow I hadn't thought about terminal velocity in years. My first pc back in 99 came with a demo for it and mechwarrior 3, good times just replaying the first levels over and over xD
I have a 486 but my main retrogaming pc is my Amd athlon 1333 mhz running win98 se. it has a geforce 4 and soundblaster awe32 added. It is faster compared to a p2 but for me it run good a lot of games. I plan on doing a dedicated p2 or p3 pc eventually and this gave me ideas as well as new games to play. Great video. :)
Nice1 dude, retro dos pc's are excellent projects for people wanting play some of the best games from 1990- 1997 that were only available to the system, a few were ported to consoles but they were never the same experience, and you have to love that midi music unheard of till many years later on consoles?
I have an old AMD K6-2 500MHz that I am slowly getting together. A note a bout Flash Drives, USB and Windows 98: There are generic USB 2.0 drivers for Windows 98 (it will require a USB 2.0 expansion card for this machine), as well as generic USB Mass Storage drivers for flash drive support. It's been years since I have downloaded them, though.
There's definitely USB mass storage drivers that work on Windows 98, at-least for SE. Right now I'm using a 98-era machine from around 2000 or 2001 with an Intel Celeron clocked at 625mhz, 512mb of RAM, and an Nvidia Geforce 2MX with 32mb of VRAM, my grandmother had XP running on it but I installed 98 as I felt it was a more viable choice for older games. It runs Windows games of that era great, but I have been having problems getting sound to work in most DOS games besides Doom and the display turning off and not coming back when exiting DOS programs.
I also have this machine, with a Celeron 500 CPU, AWE 64 Gold (12MB), and Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, it's great. A couple of additions to your video: 1. it's true ATX, so with an appropriate OS the power button does work as a soft power button. 2. You can install up to 512 MB SDRAM as 2x 256 MB (2R, 16 or 18 chips) DIMMs (not SIMMs), anything more isn't supported by the 440LX chipset and won't work (I tried). In theory it might be possible to install 1 GB RAM with EDO DIMMs, but that will slow it down and they're very difficult to find (in 512 MB per module size). Klamath Pentium IIs also only cache up to 512 MB. A couple of other useful additions for this machine: the ones with onboard sound have a true Yamaha OPL3-SA3. The board used is the Intel AL440LX, installing the last BIOS update for that board instead of the Dell BIOS allows using Celeron PPGA (but not FCPGA) CPUs. Edit: I remembered something else really important. This machine appears to have a standard ATX connector, but this is one of those infamous Dell machines with a non-standard ATX connector. If you connect an ATX PSU it will blow up.
I dodged a bullet when I tried this on my Dimension 4100, my power supply whined noisily but it survived the experience intact! Unfortunately the board died when mounting a new heatsink, broke off one of the small resistor packages near the socket.
Do more things about BBSes please, perhaps something like visiting the most used telnetbbses? I would also appreciate anything about demo- and artscene.
When I'm working with Windows 98 or Windows 98SE machines in order to get USB flash drives to work I install the Unofficial Windows 98 Service Pack 3 essentially this does it all and also fixes numerous issues that still existed with Windows 98 prior to Microsoft no longer supporting it. If you do want to make flash drives work on Windows 98 or Windows 98SE you need to make sure they are formatted FAT32.
I have / had one of these XPS cases in my shed for a while. It's a bloody heavy case, I'll give it that. I forget what CPU it had but it was a socketed CPU not a Slot. It had a blue anodised ally HSF. I'll have to see if it's still in there. I fear I may have binned it though.
G'day - Awesome vids, as always! How about a guide to getting a modern Windows 10 PC with DOSBox (or similar) to give as similar an experience as that Dell XPS PII-266? i.e. how to get the right speed, display options to best emulate CRT look (as almost everyone is on an LCD of some sort) and maybe if there are images you would recommend to the DOS-using novice to get them up and running with minimum of fiddling. Just a suggestion, keep up the great work!
Hi All, very close to what i use, i have a system with P5 board with Pentium 100 and isa / pci cards SB16 and CD kits that i paid plenty when it was brand new. The newer retro machine is a Dell Dimension 2400, the good thing is i partitioned the hard drive into dos 6.22 and XP and it dual boots fine. - the most impressive feature going into the bios and you can slow down the cpu into "compatible" mode, i am not sure what it does ( maybe turn of L1 cache ) , but it really shows the PC down to say 486sx levels
20 yrs already? Time flies eh
21 yrs
I remember my first PC was a 486, I spent countless hours playing Chaos Overlords. Fun Times
i thought that was pigs?
Doesn’t feel any younger
Solid choice with that Pentium II setup, very similar specs to my HP Vectra VL5 that I love to use for all sorts of mid to late 90s games for DOS and Win9x. Would be prime for a Voodoo2 or 3, but there’s something lovely about good 2D software rendering.
LGR omg LGR I wondered if you would find this video, I'm currently putting together a XPS b800 P3 1gb RDRAM just need the expansion cards and GPU. Inspired by your channel 👍
LGR is this guy your Australian cousin?
@@user-pu2xi6ej7pSalty Boy
Nice. Reminds me so much of lugging my full-tower PC's and 21" Trinitron to LAN parties.
The reason why I love your videos is that they are extremely well produced. Even though you said half the time you didn't even knew what you were doing, you actually do know. You're not making videos just for the sake of it. You're reviewing pieces of retro hardware that actually give some of us nostalgia and make some of us go back and play games we thought were awesome that we had mostly forgotten existed. Heck, I even bought an original Xbox once again because I saw a video of yours. Keep up the great work.
thanks! when i said that i meant that i dont have a set backlog or idea about my next video. i assume other creators have a good idea of their content throughout the year. i kinda just shoot from the hip :) appreciate the feedback and glad you are enjoying the channel !
@@ModernVintageGamer
Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Ton ted a tall a fed his....
With the cost of modern video game development, I can see why project red did it the way they did. I was hoping for a more sober appreciation for their history, despite being leaned on as a beacon of proof and good will, but selling oneself means keeping with the popular trends. Even if millions of dollars overhead for investment return risk were kind of background noise to the perception of the general audiences sensibility.
Remember my point about 15fps PS3 games that also launched on PS4, and not no name titles? I mean you can be offended I told you to shut your mouth, but lets be honest, its not a project red problem. Its a 2020+ industry problem.
Something about selling oneself is such a turn off. If the game is mass likeability by carefully tailoring my presentation to maximize this at the side effect of cheapening the overall substance then my approach is very different. The special interest fest of youtube in itself is destructive to sound communication.
I might be an asshole but im also right. We are technically on the same team. In my experience with humanity, even people with your caliber of skill arent particularly friendly even when im being polite. Even when we should have the same obvious goal. Its not my personality, look at my contributions even as is; its the people around me. I just know the lottery tier improbability of recognition is a bar so high, its not going to matter if I say shut your mouth. If im going to be a ghost, I might as well actually get your attention and by what I do, not with what I say.
If I see major famous people like those associated with Digital Foundry making mistakes thats are objectively mistakes you can rewind and explain logically, since no one else is doing it, Im obligated. Its like a duty.
In 24 months from now, my library is going to be an inarguable technological gift. Even if you dont like me, you should respect what it represents. My goal isnt to be popular, its to be intellectually respected on the basis of what I have to in the real world offer people that can actually be used. Im not targeting the most popular way to make a difference either. I understand life isnt fair, but there comes a point its a sort of contribution thats basically a mathematical equation for the title retro enhancement God. If I had ONE programmer involved, it would change the game completely.
Step 1 is depth buffer intelligence and the elimination drudgery for other people. Yes other peoples time matters. My channel proves it like 1+1=2. Like im not even a programmer dog. Why am I the one to mass figure out intels compiler and microsofts thread scheduler? Its unique. No one, in the history of mankind cared enough to make it a public resource because thats why im not impressed with my species. I legit shouldnt be the first. This should all, already be done. And it shouldnt be like pulling teeth to find people willing to jump onboard and contribute SOMETHING. Anything. No one wants to, but there are plenty of competitors for views. Thats the wrong mentality to have to get something done because your goals will be shiftier by the second. Mines simple. No one cares about retro enhancement unless its entrance level, plug in that to tv.
Raytracing retro is the future whether you are on board or not. It might be niche now, but when its easy to use, works on modern igpus, works on older gaming spec machines, and is all in one place, its going to be contagious. Especially if anyone ever makes it an actual application that automatically enables it on a game detection library basis. I might as well patch every game it detects and windows thread scheduler while im at it, or begin talks with the process lasso developer since ill have a fairly complete enough starting point for it to make sense.
You always create great content, when I watch them I always move my thoughts to good old times
Sweet, I miss the old days a lot, the world was much more sane.
@@dave-sempai Late Stage Capitalism.
For your flash drives, install the unofficial service pack, it’s got the drivers for it.
Or Windows Millenium
@@mmaxeator no
Nice pfp
I built my own Retro PC over Christmas and man was it worth it. I love your channel man. I think the only thing your retro PC is missing is the Sony Trinitron CRT Monitor. It's fantastic, a real dream to look at. Anyway, have a wonderful day.
Great video as always, really takes me back to that feeling of the golden age of gaming
Amazing job first of all, it is always nice to see some slice of retro pc gaming/collecting on youtube!
Congratulations on your sub count success as of late. I surmise you'll hit 100K by year's end. You put out well thought out, quality videos that people appreciate. Thank you for your videos & content. Your sub count success is very well deserved.
Nice to see Screamer featured. It was probably the first italian game that had some international recognition.
You can find windows 9x flash drive drivers here:
www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php
I use them all the time for file transfer.
Guy Crew Beat me to it. Also be sure your flash drive is formatted to FAT32. I remember a bit of frustration once when a larger drive I had refused to work...
Yeah, FAT16 and FAT32 are pretty much the only formats Windows 9x can natively understand without throwing its hands up in frustration and/or confusion.
Keep up the good work. Really enjoy watching these flashback videos.
There's not a single channel that does what you do. Very interesting stuff.
Duke 3D with that creative AWE 64 brings back so many memories . Great video.
Gratz on 40k I really enjoy your content.
Oh, a video in my mailbox and guess what?
My favorite uploader!
On topic now, as true hardcore Amigan I bought my first pc in late 2003.
Over the years I've discovered that you need 4 machines to play games.
An 8086, 486, early Pentium/AMD and a top notch :-D
Vincent GR If you have the 486, what would you need the 8086 for? Didn't they do the exact same native thing via DOS? Actually, didn't the Pentium/AMD run DOS like a boss as well? DOS ruled, I wish modern games still had native support for it.
Some really old games are running like a Benny Hill movie even on a 386 :-/
Many older games were tied to the clock speed of the CPU, which meant if you ran them on even a 386, they would run at blistering speeds and be unplayable. You could use a slowdown utility, but that took some tweaking and testing.
True, I can run everything on an i7 but the goal here is to run on original machines :-/
DRG oh yes! That makes sense, and I do recall certain games running like that.
This is cool video on a retro PC. Keep the content coming!! MVG
i am definitely looking forward to more original xbox videos i grew up in that era and its my favorite game console of all time and love all the videos you have been doing on the console keep up the amazing work man
Screamer! Oh man, lots of great memories from PC gaming of that era.
Hope this channel continues to grow.
Well done! You deserve the 40k subs. Keep up the good work and the numbers will grow :)
A few years ago I unintentionally got into DOS gaming. The original intent was to play around with music trackers like Adlib Tracker II (which I really love using). However, one day I wanted to play some Lucas Art point and click games and revisit some games that I vaguely remember playing in elementary school.
I picked up a Compaq Armada 7700 series and I felt these laptops were quite versatile. You were able to quickly swap out batteries, throw in an extra hard drive or even change from a 3.5 floppy drive to a CD-ROM drive. Sound Blaster also worked without any issues and sounded great when playing. The one gripe I had was, it was lacking USB, so I found the docking station then made a folder where my modern desktop send files over to the Armada.
I eventually picked up an IBM 300GL which has a PII and a few USB slots which was nice. Instead of using a hard drive, I used Compact Flash. I was able to make an image file of the whole drive in case were to happen, and quickly transfer files in and out if needed. I was also glad to throw in my SB CT1740; the Compaq docking station gave me a bunch of problems even though it had ISA slots.
I Fucking love your channel MVG! Awesome content, Perfect quality, one of the best channels on RUclips for sure.!
Your videos are so high quality. Just keep it up!
Holy chips, this was my first real pc! My first pc was an IBM Aptiva 120hz but it had an onboard videocard that couldn't be replaced. Memories! Thank you!!
Speaking of retro DOS games, although Hexen II wasn't originally available for DOS, there's a multiplatform port called Hammer of Thyrion (aka uhexen2) that can run under DOS as well. The same goes for Quake 2, which has Q2DOS.
The Pentium 2 was actually less expensive for Intel to produce than the Pentium Pro, as the CPU and L2 cache could be tested before assembly, greatly increasing yields. Once they could move the level 2 cache onto the CPU die with the Celeron and P3 Coppermine, they switched back to a socket quickly.
I love these kind of videos. Retro gaming is the best. Subscribed.
I remember playing that crusader game I was about 15. Geez I’ve been playing games for along time. My favourite was x-wing and x-wing vs tie fighter. Thanks for the trip back in time
Awesome! We've gone for very similar specs there! I also use mine for the FDD too - writting ST disks lol. I originally purchased mine to use as a server for a MMORPG engine I was developing at the time, but it ended up a great DOS and win 95/98 gaming machine.
I loved Screamer! Strangely enough, Screamer 2 I've had trouble running. It works, but the CD audio isn't quite right, yet CD audio with every other game is fine - very odd. I will investigate further when I get time. Every other game for DOS works fine, and I've got hundreds of games on there now. I think what I loved about the 90s on PC was the hardware was pushing the limits and with each new graphics card, sound card, or CPU, the difference was noticeable. I guess there came a point where we weren't wowed in the same ways, or certainly less. It was a very creative time I think. You could argue that modern games are even more creative, but it just doesn't feel that way I guess. We've been spoiled by the 80s and 90s!
I love the look of 2D pixelated Retro in software mode. However, when it comes to 3D gaming, a 3DFX accelerator is the way to go. I was so ashamed of my PS1, never touched it because I had a Voodoo card. I remember playing Terminal Velocity and Descent on a 2D card I purchased from Circuit City. I took that card back about an hour after seeing how horrible everything looked. Ugghhh. The only downside to playing on a Voodoo was having to adjust the gamma! The colors were always washed out unless you could figure out how to adjust it, which wasn't always easy to do (smack!)
I'm in the process of cleaning up my old Pentium II desktop right now. It really does fit a sweet spot for running old games!
nice retro flashback, I used to have access to this dell back in the day. a nice system indeed.
Thank you for another great trip down memory lane :)
So much classic on one video.
One of my friends back in the day had Crusader No Regret & No Remorse.
My hours were consumed by Oddworld & C&C.
The Basenji is a breed of dog that doesn't Bark. Hey congrats on 40k. Hope to catch up with you one day 😀
That's great, what a coincidence.. Yesterday I bought myself Retro PC - Pentium I 200MHz with 32MB on board. Oh yes sir, I will play that Duke like the old times :P
Oh the memories. So much goodness coming back to mind here. Just one thing to note though, retail slot 1 CPUs didn't have that giant heatsink on them. That giant heatsink you're seeing was an OEM thing.When I was working at a computer shop back then we put a lot of them together. They had a small 40mm fan on them if I remember right. Don't remember them being all that loud though. Maybe I'm just old.
My Pentium 3 has a small 50mm fan on it, the bearings are going on it though so it's really annoying!
Great video as always from the MVG.
Would love to see you document machines from the 1998-200 era.
Man, the memories of playing Unreal 1 on my pentium 3 500mhz and 8mb ati rage.
I still remember getting my P2 400mhz. I remember setting up Quake 2 and hopping on my Heat.net IPX connection and gaming my day away. Such great times!
I use an old 1.0 Ghz PIII Dell Latitude Laptop with AMD Radeon Graphics on board. I've installed a cheap-o Wireless N dongle and a USB2.0 PCMCIA card. It plays games of the era with no issues (even SimCopter!) It also can play DOS games without issue. Drivers are also easily attainable STILL since it is a Dell.
Above all, it's portable and has an excellent screen - Love it!
I've been seeing a lot of these retro PC videos. LOVE IT!
I had that exact same dell model once, would love to have one again
damn man.. your video is always great!!! Thanks for bring my memories with DOS games. Now.. where is this Dell computer hmm..
Slot 1 Pentium II - that takes me back :) Loved that form factor for CPUs so easy to work with.
That was a fantastic trip down memory lane, thank you. I spent many a late night when I should have been doing my homework playing the likes of Doom, Duke 3d, Heretic, Descent, Screamer rally... etc etc. I look back on those days with very fond memories, for me back then it felt like gaming had no limits. Gaming was just getting better and better! Sadly here we are in modern times plagued by "safe" money making sequels, free to play and micro transactions business models :-(
Awesome games. I still play the original Hexen now, using the DOOMsday engine. Congrats on 40K :)
Wow, that PC you used was the same specs I got 20 years ago which was a custom built P-II w/ Win98. DOS games ran like they were made for Windows 95 and the DirectX games were the best. I had no 3Dfx card sadly but eventually got a GeForce 2 for playing Unreal Tournament.
Nowadays I use DOSbox via LaunchBox which is fine and can even get CRT-like scanlines if I want. For old Windows games I use either GOG versions or fixes from PC Gaming Wiki to get them to ruin on Windows 10. Plus I play open port versions (like Quake) from Steam. So in a way my current gaming PC is a contunation of my very first PC from the 90's.
Keep up the good work, I loved this video!! I have to go play Hexen 2 now...
OMG. I love this channel. I founded just by luck. I was looking for videos for practicing my English due to my IELTS exam is the next week.
The nostalgia... amazing!!
That Hexen 2 looks like a fun game, i never heard of it until now.
well, i tried to build a retro DOS machine, but even though it's also a dell and it even has both PCI and ISA slots, it turned out to be a right bother, becuase the BIOS doesn't like larger hard drives, and the power supply is a nonstandard one that i would really need to replace. not to mention that it uses weird EDO ram that i just can't find anywhere on ebay..
so, to be honest, i only use dosbox now, and i have a dedicated '90s gaming.. mac. yes, a power mac G4 (original model) with a gig of ram, an SD2IDE adaptor and OS 8.6. most dos games had mac ports back then, some even superior to the original version - not to mention i grew up on macs mostly.
yeah i would imagine trying to piece an old DOS retro machine would be frustrating as heck !
@@ModernVintageGamer
Remember using both spatial and color data, predication SMAA is a godsend. If inference gets adopted in a open source works on everything way at any point, thats also computationally speaking, especially with intelligent sharpeners, an image quality efficiency ratio that some would have killed for during the dark times of basic multisampling, supersampling, and quincunx which was yes, worse than FXAA which is also trash.
The texture mapping units if a bottleneck at any point, have a computes way out. The difference in practice is very small. My only regret is 16 bit precision is AMD driver level only, the open source nvidia compatible version is slower, but at the right intensity (default is overkill) the noise to sharpen effect is the best on offer. Dumb sharpeners were just trash. If you keep the effect passes down and sample rate, im pretty sure without actually knowing that the first iteration of unified shader hardware provided windows 10 compatibility would be able to use my mods. And dropping resolution, you get modern AA and intelligent sharpeners that, along with a gaming only specific image with generalized drivers would be also very CPU cycle efficient. I would just tell people they shouldnt use the machine with it installed for anything important other than gaming since they dont know me. Remember software raytracing, I guess isnt a total lie. It ramps draw calls so the system requirements do go up period. The more effects, the more CPU overhead.
@@ModernVintageGamer
Windows 10 might not even be necessary. Its entirely possible it works down the stack. I just havent propagandized anyone successfully to trying it with my old 9800 GTX for example. Wish I didnt get rid of all that years ago.. all thats left is a 939 pin 4200+. Love the fact the new 5950X matches the dimensions. Its certainly an evolution despite the memory controller moving off die. The cache makes me not care, because for years even with binned intel chips, 8mbs is not enough for some really janky bs code. Specifically bioshock infinite. Problem software like this taught me the ways to the force.
Though I may not be as learn'ed a Jedi, we have overlapping energies and trajectory. In a lot of ways im like the younger stupider version of yourself. Ill get there in time. Im still just a noob.
@@ModernVintageGamer
Between you and me, I think our Special K modder programmer friend is a Sith Lord. His cofounder of the great steam performance FF XV fix, admitted as much, and its an imperfect teasing work at best, and a engineered nightmare at worst. I mean seriously made to increase the cortisol levels of mankind. Some people actually really enjoy stuff like this. Its a part of darwin we havent crushed yet with technological defeat of random mutation hence evolution as we look to expand beyond earth, and conquer interspecies warfare as a checksum.
I guess admitting to hating reshade in forum, I can see why its bundled with the software. but that component doesnt actually work without very in depth knowledge of how windows 10 perhaps even on a build by build basis handled .dll injection with stored background variables associated. And even then maybe its not fixable without some kind of image, or deepfreeze, or some hacker level understanding of the windows kernal.
This is simply not user friendly, and its basically guaranteed to frustrate anyone looking to enhance the game with real techniques like raytracing and who dont suck at it.
I used to have a Compaq 286 luggable or "portable". It came in it's own suitcase. I used to play Ancient Art of War on it. Great machine, wish I still had it.
3Dfx Voodoo card was my first 3D card (the one with VGA pass-through), I actually still have original box! Would love to see it revisited... Those were golden times, everything was moving so fast that we couldn't keep up with upgrades. So many things wanted but never gotten, then obsolete. My journey started with IBM AT 12MHz + S3 Virge. Also still have that 12MHz motherboard manual :)
DOSBox, ScummVM, dgVoodoo 2, nGlide, WineD3D for Windows... some of the tools you need to know about if you want to go retro, but on new PCs.
PCem is pretty fun to use
Seth Tipping yeah' i think its best
That heat sink is *enormous* !
Love the video. Would love to hear more about the video card or possible upgrades.
No need to thanks us for subbing, for it is excellence that brings the subs. * takes a look at the top channels on youtube * Oh...
Love your vids dude!
Matrox made graphics cards with very good picture quality. Damn, I wish I would still have the Matrox G400Max-card, that my manager at work gifted me back at the days... It would be perfect for retro gaming! Gimme back my 21" Nokia CRT and my old machines! Damn It! ;) I think retro gaming demands a proper CRT-monitor... Though the space it takes...
Matrox was awesome back in the day. They even had Graphics cards that were physically upgradeable.
I think my vintage Toshiba Satellite 330CDS laptop may be about the sweet spot for retro dos gaming. has a 266 mhz Pentium (I guess the fastest P1 before the P2s), 96 mb of ram, and its original 4.1 gb hard drive which said it was manufactured in October of 1998, still runs Windows 98 second edition. One old Dos game I ran on it was called Shamus from 1988.
Hexen II was a Windows game, there was no DOS version (that I'm aware of).
The heatsink on your Pentium II was a Dell thing, regular retail Pentium IIs had a much much smaller heatsink fan unit on the cartridge assembly.
My first PC was a Slot 1 P3 500 with an S3 Savage GPU. Loved it.
I'm considerately early, nice. Also, this video is as interesting as usual, keep it up!
Love your videos! I am a Xbox and AMIGA fan! Greetings from Brazil.
Should make a guide about setting up and running games in dos. I can’t find a video on it anywhere and I remember playing these games on my grandma and aunts computers as a really young kid and want to revisit my childhood 😂
Crusader series! They had maybe the most amazing soundtrack. I personally love to play games with original hardware, but it just takes so much space and time to fiddle with installations and older hardware. My Pentium 2 with voodoo 2, which I actually got new and still have it has been dusting for few years now. Though I've been thinking about fetching my Toshiba P166 laptop with quite good SB pro compatibility to occasionally play something. Also I had a soft spot for Amigas too in my youth even though I didn't actually use my A500+ for that extensive time, now I would pay fair amount for a4000 or very good a 1200 set with good quality crt. By the way, lack of crt these days is the biggest down for me. There simply aren't any lcd type substitutes for even modest crt displays. Why oh why did I throw them all away. I think I'm not alone with that thought.
Thanks for reviewing my grandma’s d266😊
Screamer 2 was better than ridge racer or Sega Rally. Such a great racer. Question for you MVG what was the first 3DFX game? The best I can find is that it was a patch for EF2000 but nothing conclusive
Screamer 2 was brilliant. My Voodoo 3 sits in my Amiga 4000 but im tempted to drop it into my PC just for that game.
As for the first game thats a great question. i believe it may have been EF2000 too, but i remember playing Descent with a patch. Then there was GLQuake - technically not 3dfx native but used the glide2x wrapper
And Everquest came out in 1999 that ONLY worked with glide/3dfx. That may have been the first "exclusive" title. Im sure someone knows more than I do about this however :)
thats what im trying to remember too. I owned an original Voodoo card with pass through. For some reason i thought it was Descent
RetroManCave That's quite a claim.
Modern Vintage Gamer Voodoo 3 in an Amiga 4000? What CPU is it running, a 68060?
Voodoo 3 in an A4000? Have I been living in a cave?
Greatly informational video. Thanks.
I remember my dad having the XPS 350 when I was still young. It Looked exactly the same, but must have been slightly more powerful than this one!
brings back memories
Socket 7 platform is the most versatile for retro gaming, specially with k6-3+ and setmul and cache tricks.
All' your videos are quality content!
USB was standard in the PII era. I have a socket 7 from 96 with USB. You have to set a jumper to enable it. There are USB drivers for Windows 95, and even DOS if you want to get freaky.
I use gog.com, since I don't have a Windows 98 PC. I used to have a Compaq Presario 5130, that actually came with the game Moto Racer, which was awesome. Unfortunately, within the last 10 years, it was taken to an electronics recycling center. But that was before I got interested in these older PC games, and in building my own modern gaming PC. That Dell is awesome! Was it difficult to find the 5.25 inch disk drive to put in it?
Personally I would not bother with a specific machine for DOS gaming simply because DOSBOX has become so good at getting those games running. What I would build (and have bought parts for even though I haven't got around to plugging it all together yet) is a machine for Windows 9x gaming which this pretty much covers. To me that means having a well compatible but capable for the era graphics card and as powerful a CPU as I can get. Personally I went for a Pentium 4 and Geforce 4 combo. Some day I'll see how that works out, if I ever get the time to actually build and test it!
Wow I hadn't thought about terminal velocity in years. My first pc back in 99 came with a demo for it and mechwarrior 3, good times just replaying the first levels over and over xD
I have a 486 but my main retrogaming pc is my Amd athlon 1333 mhz running win98 se. it has a geforce 4 and soundblaster awe32 added. It is faster compared to a p2 but for me it run good a lot of games. I plan on doing a dedicated p2 or p3 pc eventually and this gave me ideas as well as new games to play. Great video. :)
Nice1 dude, retro dos pc's are excellent projects for people wanting play some of the best games from 1990- 1997 that were only available to the system, a few were ported to consoles but they were never the same experience, and you have to love that midi music unheard of till many years later on consoles?
DOS is before my time my first PC was an XP PC.
Old PC hardware is more fascinated than the boring modern stuff.
I have an old AMD K6-2 500MHz that I am slowly getting together.
A note a bout Flash Drives, USB and Windows 98: There are generic USB 2.0 drivers for Windows 98 (it will require a USB 2.0 expansion card for this machine), as well as generic USB Mass Storage drivers for flash drive support. It's been years since I have downloaded them, though.
There's definitely USB mass storage drivers that work on Windows 98, at-least for SE. Right now I'm using a 98-era machine from around 2000 or 2001 with an Intel Celeron clocked at 625mhz, 512mb of RAM, and an Nvidia Geforce 2MX with 32mb of VRAM, my grandmother had XP running on it but I installed 98 as I felt it was a more viable choice for older games. It runs Windows games of that era great, but I have been having problems getting sound to work in most DOS games besides Doom and the display turning off and not coming back when exiting DOS programs.
MrMario2011 that quick flash on the web browser. Sweet feature!!!
I also have this machine, with a Celeron 500 CPU, AWE 64 Gold (12MB), and Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, it's great. A couple of additions to your video: 1. it's true ATX, so with an appropriate OS the power button does work as a soft power button. 2. You can install up to 512 MB SDRAM as 2x 256 MB (2R, 16 or 18 chips) DIMMs (not SIMMs), anything more isn't supported by the 440LX chipset and won't work (I tried). In theory it might be possible to install 1 GB RAM with EDO DIMMs, but that will slow it down and they're very difficult to find (in 512 MB per module size). Klamath Pentium IIs also only cache up to 512 MB. A couple of other useful additions for this machine: the ones with onboard sound have a true Yamaha OPL3-SA3. The board used is the Intel AL440LX, installing the last BIOS update for that board instead of the Dell BIOS allows using Celeron PPGA (but not FCPGA) CPUs.
Edit: I remembered something else really important. This machine appears to have a standard ATX connector, but this is one of those infamous Dell machines with a non-standard ATX connector. If you connect an ATX PSU it will blow up.
I dodged a bullet when I tried this on my Dimension 4100, my power supply whined noisily but it survived the experience intact! Unfortunately the board died when mounting a new heatsink, broke off one of the small resistor packages near the socket.
I wish i could get my 97 IBM aptiva back. with the matching black CRT with built in Bose speakers.
Do more things about BBSes please, perhaps something like visiting the most used telnetbbses? I would also appreciate anything about demo- and artscene.
When I'm working with Windows 98 or Windows 98SE machines in order to get USB flash drives to work I install the Unofficial Windows 98 Service Pack 3 essentially this does it all and also fixes numerous issues that still existed with Windows 98 prior to Microsoft no longer supporting it. If you do want to make flash drives work on Windows 98 or Windows 98SE you need to make sure they are formatted FAT32.
I have / had one of these XPS cases in my shed for a while. It's a bloody heavy case, I'll give it that. I forget what CPU it had but it was a socketed CPU not a Slot. It had a blue anodised ally HSF. I'll have to see if it's still in there. I fear I may have binned it though.
I'd stick to a 4:3 monitor if you're not going to set the resolution correctly (or disable stretching on the monitor).
G'day - Awesome vids, as always! How about a guide to getting a modern Windows 10 PC with DOSBox (or similar) to give as similar an experience as that Dell XPS PII-266? i.e. how to get the right speed, display options to best emulate CRT look (as almost everyone is on an LCD of some sort) and maybe if there are images you would recommend to the DOS-using novice to get them up and running with minimum of fiddling. Just a suggestion, keep up the great work!
Hi All, very close to what i use, i have a system with P5 board with Pentium 100 and isa / pci cards SB16 and CD kits that i paid plenty when it was brand new.
The newer retro machine is a Dell Dimension 2400, the good thing is i partitioned the hard drive into dos 6.22 and XP and it dual boots fine. - the most impressive feature going into the bios and you can slow down the cpu into "compatible" mode, i am not sure what it does ( maybe turn of L1 cache ) , but it really shows the PC down to say 486sx levels
Classic! Pure classic!
Very nice video, thumbs up!