The Retro PC Thread

[Anapan]

Check out the latest 8-bit-guy's video on buyable/affordable recreations of old school sound cards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUCNDNJHItw
AdLib, Innovation SSI-2001, and SwinSID - SID chip recreation to install in the SSI - SID on PC.

My friend's dad still has an original Adlib card - I made a dosbox about 5 years ago for Commander Keen & Tyrian at his place because he pointed it out, and it still works great.
Hearing what they're going for I'm gonna suggest he sell it on ebay.

[fastbilly1]

I have stopped suggesting XP due to driver issues (which is a phrase I NEVER thought I would say). I have gotten XP down to a very small install in the past and all my machines that run XP have a custom CD or DVD of that machines base OS with all drivers tapped inside the case of it (old habits die hard). But you are right, it would be very quick on a c2d. That said, if you plan on taking it online, I would stay far away from XP. I dropped an XP box into my DMZ for a test earlier this year and within an hour it had enough hits by different crawlers for Fancy Bear that I stopped recommending the OS to anyone who will take it online.

I know Fancy Bear has been "declawed" but like all internet things, strike one down, two come up of equal power. Coupling that with most people will not run XP outside of the DMZ, it is just that XP has a very large list of known vulnerabilities that the botnet crawlers are actively looking for.

[Ack]

There is also the perpetual Windows Update issue that can affect it and Windows 7. Basically, Windows Update never shuts off and eats up your processing power. The one laptop I'm still running 7 on, I kill the Update service as soon as I boot it up.

[isiolia]

Need a suggestion. I obtained a 2.2 GHz Core 2 duo. Anyone have suggestions on what video card to pair with it.

If you're looking for a "period correct" sort of thing, then I'd look at either a G92 based card (8800/9800 GT) for nVidia, or an ATI 4850/70 or 5k series card. Both were major bang for the buck at the time, so there are a ton of them out there, and they'll run games from the era well.

Between Vista and 7 there's really no reason to go with Vista. To me, XP does make a little more sense for a retro machine for that era, depending on the intended use (though I agree, keep it offline). The big reason Vista got so maligned at the time was that it brought a lot of under the hood changes that took time for third party software/drivers to adapt to. Kinda. Sorta. Main thing that comes to mind is the positional audio stuff that was big in the early 2000s or so. Similar to the old DOS MIDI setup stuff, if you were wanting to toss in an Audigy or something for EAX (or an Aureal card, etc), then XP is the way to go for full support of that.

In my mind, going with Windows 7 mostly just puts it on the path of being a low end modern gaming PC, as some folks do still run that. There are things that'll run on 7 that 10'll balk at - mostly due to DRM AFAIK - but they're fewer and farther between.

[fastbilly1]

7 pro does have a sandboxed xp pro install so the run in XP mode is "legit."

[isiolia]

Eh, yes and no. It has the compatibility mode stuff per usual, and then it literally has Virtual PC and a basic XP image as optional installs. Covers some use cases pretty well, but it's not really built for gaming (not hardware 3D gaming at least).

[wclem]

My goal is to have a pc for 95, 98, XP, (Vista or 7), and 10 obviously. Also Dos, but working on a 486 for that. So period accurate does count some where it is reasonable. Decided on the 9800 since well, it was mentioned twice LOL.

You guys gave a lot of great feedback and info though, thanks. Always fun talking old pc stuff with you guys. Actually worked on my 95 install today, wow what a pain windows used to be. Thinking of using a 1 mb trident card or a 2 mb S3. I have a 8 mb Rage card but need to check when that was made. Going to put my quad speed drive in too LOL.

Thankfully my 200 mhz pentium board uses SDRAM, 95 with 256 megs of ram LOL. I had 8 megs on my first 95 rig with AMD's sort of "fake" 586 chip. Was just a 133 with four 33 cycles. They called it Pentium equivalent though. I have a I7 8700 downstairs with a 1070 card in it and these old pc's are more fun, go figure.

[samsonlonghair]

Yeah, I feel ya on Windows installation. Modern versions of Windows are relatively painless to install. Going back to Win95, Win98, and WinXP installation feels like such a headache by comparison.

[Razgriz_410]

Not the oldest thing ever, but Total Annihilation is on Steam. Total Annihilation!! That's the game which hooked me for good to the RTS genre... along with Command&Conquer of course. Interestingly enough, it's the one and only sci fi game I really enjoyed (apart from Star Wars games there and there) since I never liked anything anymore from that style later on, preferring only 20th century themes.

[Ziggy]

LGR has a new video building an IBM clone out of a newly manufactured 8088 motherboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwzHurzTNTY