I'm curious how many of you - if any at all - play your old games on dedicated retro PC's. I built a W98/DOS rig a few months ago and this has inspired continued "tabletop tinkering" - I'm putting together a W95/DOS box now and playing around with some very early 3D video cards. It's kinda refreshing just to play some of these right out of the box without recourse to exotic tweaks, fan patches, compatability tools, cpu slow down utilities, lost weekends scouring the web for help and hints on how to get game X to run on system Y... Anyone else try the simple route as well?

Yes i have four...Win95 DOS box, Win 98 SE, two Win XP, and two Apples for early games for that.

That's what I'm talkin' about!

Yup, I have a WinXP/98 dual system for older games.

The W95 rig I'm assembling is built around a P200 cpu and can be under-clocked as low as a P90 by resetting jumpers on the motherboard. CPU cycle dependent DOS games will now go in this box freeing the W98 box to move up to a P800 or even 1.1ghz if I choose, and a full-on Voodoo 5500/Voodoo 2 duet of video cards, all without emperilling cpu sensitive 

nice to see a lot of us have the oldies.

I have Win 98 SE, Win XP and Win XP Pro. 

I still have my w98 box but I haven't cleared a space for it on the desk so I can finish the games that are still in there.  Must do that soon....

I'd love to have W95 box cos some of my old OLD games won't play on W98 and I'm too dim to tweak anything and have it still working...

I regret ditching my W95 machine now and would like to know what specs I'd need to build one.  I know Colpet still has all her old machines too.

Re specs for a W95 box, mine consists of: Win95 OSR2, "Unofficial W98 Service Pack v1" [enthusiasts put these packs together, I use one for W98 as well, very handy], Intel AN430TX motherboard [1996 vintage I think], Pentium 200, simple heat sink, 128mb PC-100 SD ram, 13gb hard drive, floppy, CDR, Sound Blaster Vibra 16 ISA audio card [and a few others to play around with], Diamond Stealth II Rendition/4mb PCI primary video card, Diamond Voodoo 2/12mb 3dfx secondary video card, Cooler Master 360 Elite mini tower [very compact], Diablotek PHD 350w PS, floppy/IDE/CDR cables etc. Drivers and manuals for all these can still be found on the web. Most people would substitute another primary video card with something like a Diamond 3D2000/4mb for more robust VESA support - but I need the Rendition Verite chip to run a few games that need it.

You can also share one monitor/keyboard/mouse/audio between multiple boxes by using what they call a KVM switch, basically a little hub from which you select which box you want to control.

I had a Windows 98 machine until a few years ago, but the hard disk died, and with the ever-increasing feature-set and compatibility of DOSBox, I figured it wasn't worth resurrecting.  I don't really miss it, frankly.

I have a Win95 and a Win98 connected via a KVM switch. My current computer is a window's 7 32 bit with an XP emulator. I'm also sticking to my 22"CRT monitor. I play my older games on my older computers. I'm not techy enough to do the twiddling needed to get them to run on the new machines.

I keep my old win 98-machine in the laundry room. It's the only space where I can put it and I think works pretty good although it gets quite noisy when the tumble drier is running.

I just trashed my win/95 a few months ago, couldnt take it a anymore. My house just isnt big enough for all the old pc's and game stuff we have. Hoping to move next year and might possibly be sorry but there are still a few older ones around here and I still have the software so MAYBE I might get crazy and try to rig it up again. But truthfully I messed with the win/95 for a short period a few years back and always found myself wandering away from it or just never having the time. The truth is I never replay old adventures, though there are a few I never got to play and would like to. Dont know if I ever will.

 I have been going thru stuff in preparation to put our house up for sale next year and I cant believe all the video and pc games we have. My oldest son married this past year as most of you know and moved into an apt. so dosent have the room to take all the stuff he wants to keep. I finally forced him to go thru some of the Nintendo power magazines dating back more than 15 years ago and he finally got rid of some. I still have at least 40 but I just dont have the heart to get rid of them if he still wants them. We still have the 1st. nintendo and some of the games along with ALL the nintendos since then. Also PS1, 2 and 3. My 7 year old nepehw does play the  64 quite often when he comes over so at least it gets used but all the plastic bins I have filled with games from all the systems ( controllers, etc. )is unbelieveable, I didnt realize till I actually started going thru stuff. My only saving grace was that the sega system broke a few years back so I was able to trash that one and get rid of the games.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant because organizing and goping thru 25 years of stuff around here has consumed my life a little bit lately, and this reminded me that I might regret getting rid of that old 95, and Im really tryng not to.

I have desktops and/or laptops for virtually all Windows versions.

For those who would like to have a dedicated Win95 or Win98 computer for old games, don't forget the option of the workhorse laptops of the late 1990s period which are still available on eBay though not as plentiful as they were a few years ago. An example is the IBM Thinkpad 380 series laptops which include a floppy disk and cdrom and can be found (if you keep your eBay eyes open) running Win95 or Win98. Here's a current example (this is only an example- others have options that this one doesn't have such as larger harddisks and being able to boot from a floppy):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-IBM-Thinkpad-380D-Laptop-150Mhz-Running-W98-2GB-HD-32MB-RAM-CDROM-FD-/180766873998?

My old Win98 SE system finally died, but I still have a solid WinXP box that plays older games very well. 

Otherwise, I have a good Windows Vista PC and this new Windows 7 x64 / DX11 system for newer games. 

Cheers, Terry 

@Sir Dave - yes, old laptops are an great compact solution for retro boxes, except when specific video or audio cards are a requirements. And you are also right that the supply of this kind of stuff has decreased on eBay, but still pretty cheap when they do come up. And yes, for people running XP/W7 

Admittedly the list of games that can't be tollerably played under emulation is fairly small these days, but remember that *every time* you upgrade graphics drivers, install a service pack or modify your hardware, you run the risk of breaking an old game. And when you move to a new OS you basically have to start from scratch. Retro box? just ready to go..

I still have all my legacy PCs sitting in my closet waiting to be booted back up (although I haven't done so the past 2 years).  I have a handy Dell Optiplex with a dual boot win 3.x with pure Dos 6.2 to go along with Win95.  Second PC has Win98 on it.  Third PC has XP on it, and my current box has Win Vista.

I seem to recall that I've considered it a few times, but with processor speeds increasing the breadth of games that will run in an emulated environment, and Good Old Games providing games that run (either emulated or otherwise) on modern systems, I haven't really wanted for actual legacy hardware.

To be honest, DosBox looks to me to be the easy way at the moment. ^^;

I've got a lot of vintage computers, mostly older ones from 486/66 to Pentium 200 MHz, with DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 98. And I have more recent ones with Windows 2000 and XP. I even have a couple of old Macs with OS9 and the monitors to go with them, so I can play those few games that came out for older Macs but not for PC. I even bought a Roland MT-32 from eBay for midi a while back, though I never had time to try to set it up.

I even bought some older Toshiba and IBM laptops on eBay -- similar to the ones Sir Dave has talked about. Unfortunately the screens aren't that good. They all have yellowish screens and one looks like it has a pink fog smeared on it in certain areas. So they're best plugged into an external monitor. They also don't have good batteries, so they're not exactly portable. So for best results I have to plug them into a monitor and attach the power adapter when I play. This negates any advantage of a laptop. It's too bad I can't get the screens and batteries replaced with modern versions with clean colors and long battery life.

@TM "To be honest, DosBox looks to me to be the easy way at the moment. ^^;"

Fair enough as far as DOS goes but there is a lot more to retro gaming. Some of the hardest stuff to breath life into on new systems are old W95/98 games, especially when they were handcuffed to a narrow list of video cards or particular versions of apps like Quicktime, Indeo and so forth. A clean retro box neatly sidesteps these issues.

Not that everything is peachy. Emulators are generally much more forgiving with audio and setting up controllers in emulation can be less problemetic, though it can take a lot of trial and error. Having to keep a set of old serial joysticks/wheel/pedal/rudder is not a spacer saver and re-introduce all those wonderfull oldskool headaches of the pre USB era.

My feeling is that as long as you are going to store old parts you may as well have them confiured into working systems. A laptop or compact mini-tower takes up about the same amount of closet space as the boxes you'd need to store old parts. The approach also has the virtue of forcing you to decide what you want/need to keep from a more utilitarian perspective. 

Originally Posted By Jenny100

I've got a lot of vintage computers, mostly older ones from 486/66 to Pentium 200 MHz, with DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 98. And I have more recent ones with Windows 2000 and XP. I even have a couple of old Macs with OS9 and the monitors to go with them, so I can play those few games that came out for older Macs but not for PC. I even bought a Roland MT-32 from eBay for midi a while back, though I never had time to try to set it up.

 

I even bought some older Toshiba and IBM laptops on eBay -- similar to the ones Sir Dave has talked about. Unfortunately the screens aren't that good. They all have yellowish screens and one looks like it has a pink fog smeared on it in certain areas. So they're best plugged into an external monitor. They also don't have good batteries, so they're not exactly portable. So for best results I have to plug them into a monitor and attach the power adapter when I play. This negates any advantage of a laptop. It's too bad I can't get the screens and batteries replaced with modern versions with clean colors and long battery life.

Hmm, My two Toshiba 320ct units (one W95 and the other W98SE) still have very nice screens, though the result is certainly better when attached to a 12-15in flatscreen. My IBM Thinkpad 380z still has a beautiful 13in screen and is running games such as Under A Killing Moon and Pandora Directive. I believe batteries can still be found for these laptops, but I've never been too interested in getting any because first, even new batteries don't last that long for these older units (I've been spoiled by the 3-6 hours I get on newer laptops) and second, I tend to play games near an AC outlet anyway.

Fwiw: I'm not trying to talk anyone out of the DosBox solution, but for many of the reasons Tincup has already mentioned, I like the dedicated legacy units for my old games. So far, I  haven't run into virtually any problems running them this way.

Originally Posted By SirDave
Hmm, My two Toshiba 320ct units (one W95 and the other W98SE) still have very nice screens, though the result is certainly better when attached to a 12-15in flatscreen. My IBM Thinkpad 380z still has a beautiful 13in screen and is running games such as Under A Killing Moon and Pandora Directive.

I'm jealous. I've got 5 of those old PC laptops plus an old iBook and they all have poor screens. I think the people who have old laptops with good screens must hang onto them. Mine are all from eBay.

Seeing as we're all talking old computers for old games: does anyone know what I must do to make Amber, Journeys Beyond run?  Would it work if I had a W95 machine?  Can I put W95 onto my second h/d in my old W98 machine and will that work?

Amber works fine on either Windows 95 or 98. It should work inside a virtual machine as well. If it's not working on your Windows 98 computer, the problem is probably due to your QuickTime version. Amber uses a very old version of QuickTime.

If you install Windows 95 on a Windows 98 computer, it will probably overwrite part of your Windows 98 install even if you install on a different hard drive. If you do install Windows 95 on the 2nd drive, be sure to disconnect the first drive first. It would be safer to use Virtual PC on your newer computer and install Windows 95 on that.

Amber was near imposible to run on XP though someone did create a custom XP installer that ran it okay - stuttering and a fatal bug that could only be by-passed with a specific savegame.

See: http://www.squirtthecat.com/games/amber/index.html

As Jenny100 says it runs as it should in W9x and it's a ideal game to go on a retro box. I have QTW 203 [old] and QTW 3 [somewhat newer] installed on top of each other and this has handled all games I've tested so far. I've also heard that Amber is Win7 friendly.