The Savage 4 PCI was my first.
Playing Unreal Tournament with the S3 API was an experience.
Got a new case for my retro PC. I had it stuck in an old Thermaltake Armor case that I used back in college, but that thing was WAY too massive for what I needed (not to mention I kind of grew out of that aesthetic).
Great cable management, I know. >_>
It's just a cheap little Rosewill Blackbone case, but it does the job pretty well.
The PC itself is a 700 MHz P3, 256 MB RAM, Voodoo3 3000, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (for Winidows98), and a Yamaha Audician 32 plus with a Dreamblaster S1.
I love the slot 1 motherboard, cause it's really easy to swap CPUs. I bought a few ebay lots of them, so it's pretty painless to go from a 300MHz P2 up to a 1GHz P3 with anything in between.
Thanks! So I see the X-52 is ranging from 50 to 200 dollars. Any reason why I need the expensive one, or should the cheap be enough?
This is really cool . I'm inspired to build my own retro PC now..
Been listening to PC soundtracks all morning.
Been listening to PC soundtracks all morning.
Funny, I've been like this for the past couple of days, but about the SC-55 instead.Been listening to PC soundtracks all morning.
I just purchased an HP Pavilion 8290 on eBay. $65 shipped. The main reason I bought this PC is because I had an HP 8240 (pentium MMX 233) in my childhood, and was really nostalgic for the case. I think it is one of the best looking 90s PC cases. It is a nice grey, rounded design rather than the usual 90s beige box. The back panel of the case looks really fancy, which is something most PC cases overlook. I managed to find a brand new matching keyboard/palm rest too! Now to track down the matching CRT/polk audio speakers...
Anyways, here are the important specs:
400MHZ Pentium II MMX
Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card
ASUS P2898-XV motherboard with 4 PCI slots+2 ISA
Integrated ATI 3DRAGE Pro
12GB Quantum Bigfoot HDD (dat sound!!!!)
64 MB RAM (it had an additional 128MB stick in there, but it makes the PC not boot)
original DVD drive
upgraded (?) from Win95 to Win Me
It was absolutely filthy when it came in, and reeked of cigarette smoke. I took everything apart and cleaned it out. The smell is about 90% gone now. I think it just needs a new power supply to get rid of the little smell left (I was too scared to clean the insides well). It still had the specs sticker on the front of the case, but the cleaner I was using got on it and melted the ink off it . Oh well, I can always make another one.
This is probably a long shot but I figure I'd ask anyway:
I've been looking for an old PC Games (I think) magazine from probably the early-mid 90s. The cover had a pilot guy, helmet and aviators facing towards the camera. Really close up shot.
I've been trying to find this for years since it was the thing that really got me into PCs back then and would love to read through it again.
Would be willing to pay for a copy!
EDIT: It might have been simply called "Computer Games"
Maybe they used the cover art for Thunderhawk? Found a cover of Computer Games Strategy Plus with Thunderhawk on the main page. Apparently there was a Computer Games magazine but I couldn't find a cover that resembles the description.
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Got the monitor in today! Did a quick setup on the dining room table.
So far I'm really happy with it. I feel like I've finally got a retro PC set up that I'll be happy with for a while. I had forgotten how nice CRT monitors looked in motion. Unfortunately I'd also forgotten how hard on your eyes they can be at 60Hz.
Got the monitor in today! Did a quick setup on the dining room table.
So far I'm really happy with it. I feel like I've finally got a retro PC set up that I'll be happy with for a while. I had forgotten how nice CRT monitors looked in motion. Unfortunately I'd also forgotten how hard on your eyes they can be at 60Hz.
Felix obtained this old IBM still sealed in the box! Feels like an episode of @lazygamereviews
@benheck Sold that to Felix this afternoon. Hope it gets put to good use after collecting dust in a warehouse for 27 years.
Did you know Tyrian fell into freeware license and was ported for the modern PC? You can find a free copy online. You also get the classic version for free from GOG just for making an account. Great game, played too much of that and Kilo Blaster.I still remember the first shareware I ever registered - Tyrian. Surprisingly the idea of a shmup with persistent upgrades never seemed to catch on, rather the genre gravitated more towards the highly technical bullet hell side.
I remember the devs planned to make a GBA port and I was super hype. But it fell through, and while the game was complete it never got a physical release. The devs put the ROM out at some point because they're cool like that.
Is that a Rosewill Bare Bones case? I used one on a PC build back in 2011, still have that machine. Set-up looks awesome.Got the monitor in today! Did a quick setup on the dining room table.
So far I'm really happy with it. I feel like I've finally got a retro PC set up that I'll be happy with for a while. I had forgotten how nice CRT monitors looked in motion. Unfortunately I'd also forgotten how hard on your eyes they can be at 60Hz.
Is that a Rosewill Bare Bones case? I used one on a PC build back in 2011, still have that machine. Set-up looks awesome.
Hey blast processed, have another youtube channel you might want to add to the OP, Nostalgia Nerd, he does some really good nostalgia trecks down old PC memories, and does an amazing breakdown of the history of Rise of the Triads.
Man, I'd give just about anything to track down my childhood Packard Bell from 1993 in like-new condition, though I realize that's impossible for many reasons.
PC Gaming in the 90s was the shit.
I found a different issue of the magazine I'm talking about:
Editing the files
Himem.sys
autoexec.bat
config.sys
was a big part of 90s gaming. Gonna make every Bit in the RAM getting used.
Professionals built a boot menu for different games. Although that really was a thing rather in the early 90s.
If you can find an ATI Radeon 9600 or 9800 Pro, you should be set for just about anything you can throw at it from that era.So I bought an old win98 PC for salvage at a thrift store. I was mostly intending to harvest it's PCI cards but I didn't expect it to have a fairly nice motherboard and some other goodies. Honestly I expected like b-tier OEM junk with messed up caps and a low end celeron.
Any recommendations on a graphics card to pair with an Athlon XP 1800+? Ideally one that supports the famous shadows in Splinter Cell and isn't an overpriced collector's card. I'm not opposed to upgrading the CPU to the (max supported) 2600+ if that's a good idea.
So I bought an old win98 PC for salvage at a thrift store. I was mostly intending to harvest it's PCI cards but I didn't expect it to have a fairly nice motherboard and some other goodies. Honestly I expected like b-tier OEM junk with messed up caps and a low end celeron.
It's got an Asus Socket A A7V266-C motherboard with some nice rubycon caps all in good condition. It came paired with an Athlon XP 1800+ and 512mb DDR RAM.
I'm thinking to maybe pair it with a period appropriate graphics card falling a bit out of the scope of this thread. Right now my old PC build covers like mid-80s to 2000 fairly well, but the Vooodo 3 starts to fall apart around 2000 with Deus Ex running very poorly. So I was thinking I could put together something else to cover the next few years, something like the DX7 to early DX9 era so 2000-2004 probably. Might necessitate a dual boot or something.
Any recommendations on a graphics card to pair with an Athlon XP 1800+? Ideally one that supports the famous shadows in Splinter Cell and isn't an overpriced collector's card. I'm not opposed to upgrading the CPU to the (max supported) 2600+ if that's a good idea.
Thanks for the input. I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro, mostly since I actually had one back in 2004 so it felt appropriate.
I had a second though about Splinter Cell and since I already have all of them on Xbox I think I'm just going to forget about that. Unless there's some other really interesting game that uses shadow buffers.
I also decided to grab a Athlon XP 2600+ since it was only $10.
so i decided to finally go ahead and accelerate the production of my dos/98se machine and bought a p2 333mhz (stock heatsink only, no fan) and a SE440BX-2 board. how viable is it to run this cpu with passive cooling? if worst comes to worst i could blow a 120mm fan across the board, but i'd like it to be as quiet as possible.
also is there any place i can find an mpu401 compatible DA-15 breakout cable to hook up my card (audician 32 plus) to my gm device?
This thread needs more attention.
Metal Jesus with one of the greatest single hauls of all time.
INSANE FIND: 600 Big Box PC Games for $75!! Games from 80s, 90s & 2000s
edit - damn it, I just saw there's a separate thread