Period Authentic PC - build or buy?

Inviere

Hi all,

So I want to have a PC here that is quite retro, a late 90's/early 00's PC to be precise. I want it to be able to run Win 95/98/2000/XP from either DOM's or Compact Flash cards (through to IDE.) I'll want to pair it with an appropriate CRT monitor also, and for it to be able to natively support maybe a Soundblaster card and a period authentic graphics accelerator like a Voodoo or early GeForce card (either AGP or PCI.)

If I'm looking at predominantly gaming (I know I can virtualise a lot of this on modern hardware, but I really want an authentic experience), what do folks think is the best hardware direction to go? Pentium 2/3, AMD K6-2, AMD Athlon? Ram wise I'm thinking 64MB should be enough? Am I best off buying this piecemeal (all separate components), or should I look for an old machine on the likes of eBay and go with that. The second option seems the easiest, but I'm wary of buying machines that don't allow for great expansion options...

o1s1n

One thing to keep in mind if you want to do a ground up parts build is drivers, I'd say a lot of them are an absolute nightmare to find these days!

I had a lot of trouble with a couple of Windows 98 laptops I was trying to turn into gaming machines in that regard.

Might be easier looking for a nice late 90s pre built PC somewhere and just make sure it had a motherboard compatible with the graphics card and ram you want to run.

Spear

I went a restored my 20+ year old K6-2 500 a few months back, so I've a few thoughts.

Are you targeting a very specific time frame? If not, and you're looking for a decent DOS/Win98 machine, I'd suggest aiming for a decent Pentium 3 or Athlon machine. K6 and K6-2's had poor FPUs, making them weak in anything 3d compared to the later P3s and Athlons.

In terms of RAM, I'd suggest packing in as much as you can. You want the best experience possible, so there's no need to cripple the machine with low RAM levels, even if it's more historically accurate.

Confused11811

It's worth taking a trip to a recycling center or the likes of power city. I've seen a few P3 grey towers left for recycling. Regarding replacing hard drives you can use one of these adapters to let you use a sata drive - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multibao-Interface-Adapter-Converter-Parallel/dp/B08VR9YQ3C

As above max out the ram too

K.O.Kiki

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119035254#Comment_119035254

Don't forget that 32-bit machines were limited to 4Gb total! 😅

L1011

Unless you need decent 3D performance, try find a PII/PIII laptop with a decent Soundblaster compatible soundcard and VGA output. The space for a full era appropriate PC is quite a bit, and if you decide you also want another era, it starts to get eaten up quite fast!

My W98 laptop, that can actually do some 3D games, is a Dell Latitude C600 that I've significantly upgraded:

PIII 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, 8MB Rage Mobility III, Maestro III soundcard with DOS TSR for Soundblaster compat, Orinoco PCMCIA wifi (have a second router with no access to my own network and only 11mbits to the web for this alone - turned off when notu using it), DVD+RW if I need to get data back off and a 64GB SSD. It also has onboard Intel 2200 wifi but that's too new for Windows 98.

Can do 1600x1200 on the VGA port no bother, 1400x1050 native resolution screen which annoyingly has a bright spot in the backlight. 1x USB port and 1x PS/2 port so can connect a decent range of peripherals, albeit there's no game port for old joysticks or pads.

L1011

Oh, and another advantage of going for a prebuilt system from one of the big boys is they probably still offer all the drivers. Dell do for that 20 year old machine - and seeing as I did need the BIOS update to fix an issue, just as well!

I'm also working on a late-XP era build, albeit not for Windows - the Matrox G550 I've ordered would not be sensible for gaming. Using a HP chassis for that as its for something with really shoddy laptop support. Again, needed the BIOS update to let newer SATA SSDs work and HP still had it.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119035254#Comment_119035254

Very interesting, that's exactly the type of info I was looking for. At least I know now to avoid the K6/2's, and lean towards a Pentium machine. I wouldn't say I'm looking to target a specific era per se, I just want to natively play games ranging from DOS era games (Sim 2000 etc), right up to Win 98 and possibly XP (say Half Life, Max Payne, and so forth.) Again I know this can all be virtualised (I've actually got a lot of Dos games available here through eXoDos and they play perfectly....but subjectively, it's just not quite the same.) I want a desktop PC, a crt, speakers, keyboard and mouse dedicated to games that were designed for and ran on crt monitors. Ram wise, very true, no point artificially limiting it, I'll just max out whatever the board I get can accommodate. Many thanks for the info, and I don't mind saying I'm a bit jealous of that 20 year old K62-500 machine!

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119036444#Comment_119036444

I do want decent (for the time) 3D performance, and the whole reason of going in this deep is to have a CRT monitor again. So desk space will be at a premium as always, but I'll figure something out. I've actually never been a fan of laptops for a few reasons, but in context here, I'll be needing a graphics accelerator and a crt. Cheers for the suggestion though

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119036341#Comment_119036341

Interesting yeah, I'll keep my eye out. I'm toying with the idea of having various OS's to hand, so will likely consider maybe several DOM's or CF cards. I'll see in time.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119037041#Comment_119037041

Close the laptop and use the VGA out for the CRT - doesn't fix the graphics performance though... mobile workstation grade laptops with desktop cards don't survive in to the second hand market as well as high spec executive ones like mine do unfortunately.

That M3 chip is exceptionally common (almost universal) in exec-grade laptops of that era and has some annoying limitations - 8MB when 16MB was more common, DX6 when DX7 was more common etc etc. Was picked for having MPEG2 hardware decoding for DVDs I think; Intel and Neomagic were the norm on cheaper laptops and were junk in comparison.

You'll probably want a TNT2 or first gen Radeon.

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119037021#Comment_119037021

That's what it looks like. It's a an odd mish mash of old and new tech. It has then current PCI slots and an AGP slot. But it also has x2 16 bit ISA slots, so it could take cards going back to 1981. The socket is a super socket 7, supporting everything from original Pentiums, up to the last K6-3s,a s well as long forgotten CPUs like Cyrix M2s, IDT Winchips, and IBM 6x86s. Yet it still takes the same ATX power and case from today.

Case from Peats, store now gone.

€10 cooler from Maplins, store now gone.

Motherboard from ITDirect, store now gone.

L1011

Do I need to send a care package of expansion slot covers? :P

Homelander

For the sort of games range you've mentioned you won't need a powerhouse but I'd say a Pentium 3 500-733mhz with 128mb RAM and a TNT2 or Geforce 256 has you covered rock solid to the very upper end of the late 90's into the early 2000s.

That would have been considered a very good gaming PC in 1999 for the likes of Half Life, Unreal Tournament, Quake III, era that would also see you through games from a few years later if needed, while still keeping that real retro feel.

They are hard enough to find now at reasonable price, though there's a few suitable candidates on Ebay for around 150 and a TNT2 would be about 20 more. You would probably find one easier/cheap on Adverts if you requested one or even asked around, or if you can look at recycling centres.

I also plan on getting one as well for the nostalgia at some point in the near future to play Quake, Unreal, Half Life, Mortyr, Kingpin, and the likes!

K.O.Kiki

Anandtech is good if you want to do some digging and figuring out recommendations from the time, e.g.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/237/3

https://www.anandtech.com/show/689

L1011

Something worth considering is replacing any fans you can with modern lower noise ones. You forget just how noisy a PC from that period was until you use one.

Just make sure they have the correct connections for the board, three or four pin.

Also, that was an era of very rapid change in hard drive speeds and you can find lots of IDE33 kit when 66 or 100 was about - this will limit the speed of any modern storage. You can sometimes find a PCI Promise 133 controller for about 70 quid but they can be a lot dearer; this is the fastest you'll really be able to go on W98. Remember to use an 80 conductor cable for the higher speeds! (not relevant to a DOM)

Inviere

@L1011 absolutely, I did think that myself. I want to aim for an authentic experience but certainly am not adverse to some modern comforts. A quiet pc is definitely preferable to big whooshing fans 🙂

Can still get am4 boards and chips. Would be a 2008 pc

Or a raspberry pi

Jon Doe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058244913/period-authentic-pc-build-or-buy

LOL! Out of curiosity why would you do that? I'm asking because I have a 2000XP (in a remote location, not currently accessible) that's *very* 2003 period authentic... xD

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119086389#Comment_119086389

I want an authentic experience is all, no emulation, no virtualisation, on a crt monitor that so many retro pc games were designed to be played on.

Quigs Snr

I'd be inclined to go a little more powerful.. give yourself some headroom... AMD Athlon XP, Geforce 2 Ti or even anything up to a Geforce 4 should still meet all of your requirements and give you an authentic experience. I was using a similar setup with Windows 98 until maybe 2004 ish.

Jon Doe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119086485#Comment_119086485

Wow... if I had it here I would send to you free of charge... :P pretty sure that *that* would send you packing back to emulation... xD The Via266 was always more trouble than it was worth. Especially after 20 years of fine rust accumulation... xD But who knows... you might actually enjoy the Radeon 9000 w/ 64MB! xDD

Flinty997

Radeon drivers were always more troublesome than Nvidia.

Skerries

try and get as suggested at least a TNT 2 GPU as the older Voodoo's don't support T&L which was needed by the early 2000's