Retro Computing Thread - Speccy, C64, Atari ST, Amiga, DOS PC, Amstrad, BBC Micro, and other wonderful machines from 25+ years ago

[Neil McCauley]

I think it would be appropriate to revive this thread (although I think it would be more appropriate to move to the tech subforum) with a funny story about trying to make a 98 gaming rig.

This crawls into territory of 90s gaming but is a PC from 2004
I have assembled a unholy fuckjob of parts to make a Athlon 64 PC compatible with Windows 98 and XP to play old Tomb Raider, Duke, Quake, etc

MSI K8T Neo2, Athlon 64 3500+, ATI Radeon X800 XT on AGP and a whopping 1GB of DDR400 RAM, can't forget the Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS.
When I assemble this mess I will share pics of the case+98 and XP if anyone is interested. Any games you want me to try let me know.

I was originally going for a Pentium 3 and a 3dfx Voodoo 3 but the Voodoo 3 is overpriced and every Pentium 3 motherboard is in some eastern european shithole and had $50 shipping.

I usually admit when I'm wrong and I was wrong here lol, 98 did not like the K8T800 chipset and the chipset did not like 98. 98 is such a mishmash of 16-bit and 32-bit era appropriate hardware is neccesary. I will try once more with the same soundcard once I can find a good deal on a Geforce4/GeForce2 MX440 or maybe even a lowend Radeon 8000/9000 card, paired with a good Socket A/462 mobo. Socket 370 is far too expensive especially considering I was looking for a Tualatin compatible board and CPU. Any fellow Kiwis have or are looking to have other kinds of retro builds?

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

once I can find a good deal on a Geforce4/GeForce2 MX440

Is there a reason for skipping the GF256/GF3? Or are you looking for cards that supports multiple displays?

Personally I would bite the bullet and go with Intel/P3 just to avoid the chipset/drivers madness.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Retro PC gaming is essentially a corner I'm entirely unfamiliar with, but I find it interesting. There's a cool YouTube channel which focuses specifically on Japanese retro PC games that is really good, and even more niche.

 

[Neil McCauley]

Is there a reason for skipping the GF256/GF3? Or are you looking for cards that supports multiple displays?

Personally I would bite the bullet and go with Intel/P3 just to avoid the chipset/drivers madness.

The GF2 MX isn't as rare as the 2 you mentioned, it's easily obtainable at around $15 as well as the GF4 MX, and since I might need a PC like this to do MIDI work multimonitor would be highly convenient.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

Might as well bring this up while I'm here. A retro computing channel is trying to buy the Commodore brand.