The Retro PC Thread

[Ziggy]

Ah, definitely do a clean install. I remember using my Compaq Deskpro back in the day (when I didn't know a whole lot about PCs) and wondering why it ran so slow. Now, with 98 on a clean install, the desktop is as snappy as my current PC.

What video card is it? Unless it's something super wacky or uncommon, I wouldn't be worried.

[noiseredux]

Rage II AGP

[Ziggy]

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/a ... egacy-98me

I think that's the same card that I use to have in my Compaq. I never had a problem using the driver on the Win98SE disc for it.

[noiseredux]

I really need to find an optical drive that'll work in this thing. I got a copy of House Of The Dead (did y'all know the original HOTD was on PC?) and because of the 16-bit installer it really doesn't want to work on 64-bit Windows 10.

I'm actually wondering if I'm able to install it on the 98 machine and then copying the entire installed folder to the Win10 machine and seeing if it'll work. I know a lot of times those old games themselves ran fine on a 64-bit OS; it was just the installer that was a problem.

[isiolia]

Installshield is one of the things that's got workarounds built into Windows though. I think I have run into a handful of things where it still did have issues, but you could literally just copy the files yourself anyway (Quake I think was like that).

Don't you have multiple old machines you could pull an IDE optical drive out of?

I mean, otherwise, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product ?

(also keep in mind that IDE can be fussy about jumpers or which part of the cable you plug it into)


I guess having House of the Dead on PC made the Typing of the Dead port easier? I have the latter for PC.

[noiseredux]

Installshield is one of the things that's got workarounds built into Windows though. I think I have run into a handful of things where it still did have issues, but you could literally just copy the files yourself anyway (Quake I think was like that).

Yeah I was looking into this and couldn't get anything to work. I copied the entire disc contents to my HDD; I tried skipping the setup.exe and just running the target file (THOTD.exe) in 95/98/XP modes; I tried to forego all that and unzip the actual files that were in the Install folder.

I also did some Googling and found something about this game in particular (on Win7) and it was mentioned that DL'ing some alternate setup32.exe would help - but it didn't. So my patience was running low.

Don't you have multiple old machines you could pull an IDE optical drive out of?

I do. I tried 3 of them all 3 had the same issue - the Eject button did nothing. I'd have to use a paperclip to get the trays to open. SO I mean technically I could use the drives... but it was annoying to actually get them open.

I mean, otherwise, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product ?

Ha! I didn't even think New Egg would still stock these. $7? Nice. I might just grab that then.

I guess having House of the Dead on PC made the Typing of the Dead port easier? I have the latter for PC.

Maybe? Though wasn't TOTD built on top of HOTD2? (Which I think was also on PC, maybe?)

[isiolia]

Maybe? Though wasn't TOTD built on top of HOTD2? (Which I think was also on PC, maybe?)

Possibly, I think I've only played the Typing versions

[noiseredux]

haha. Yeah TOTD is literally just HOTD2 with typing instead of guns. I'm a big fan of both.

[noiseredux]

so amazingly I found an IDE DVD drive over the weekend at a yard sale for $2. I haven't had a chance to install it yet to confirm it's working, though.

[noiseredux]

Trivia (that I don't know the answer to): What was the first Gaming Laptop? I'm just kind of interested in this for a historic angle. Meaning, what was the first laptop that had an actual dedicated GPU and was marketed as being for playing games on it? Bonus points if you can find some kind of radical advertisement.