[SOLVED] Building a retro Windows 98 gaming PC

[szogyenyi]

Hello. For a few years i've been thinking about to build a retro PC specifically for playing old PC games on it. While i have a kinda incomplete spec in my head, i'm having issues to figure out what kind of motherborard and CPU i should buy to fully maximize the power of it. Can you suggest me a few old, "high end" boards and CPUs from this era which you think would be a perfect fit for my desire?

 

[TerryLaze]

Just get any core2 mobo and CPU with at least one IDE port, if it has a floppy port it's twice as good.
The main problem with 98 is to find a sound and a video card with drivers for 98.

 

[MJS WARLORD]

Hi , personally i would not do this , and these are my reasons why.

Hardware ...... A lot of hardware is best described as too good for old games . Without getting too technical let me explain what i mean.
Example ..... myst uru has an area where you have to jump off a moving platform onto a cliff , dozens of players have reported that unless you use the compatibility mode in the game launcher you will jump off the platform and go through the mountain into a green screen loop. A few weeks ago i got myst uru and the only way i could land on the mountain was to run the launcher in vista compatibility mode. The are lots of other similar postings agout running old games on new technology.

Software .... regardless of what hardware you end up with you will have problems re activating the games.
The majority of "old " games will have been bought on disc because at that time clients such as steam and epic to name a few did not exist.
SO , you get out your old software disc and stick it in your pc , to cut down on piracy at some point you be asked for a key code and thats were your problems begin.
You will eventually get a message saying either the supplied email address is already in use or , you will be told the keycode has already been used ....... of course it has .... BY YOU !
Even if you are wiling to " surrender " your key code for another one their are very few software companies out their that are willing to help uses with old games.
This is one reason why i cant use any crisis games or alpha protocol.

If you get a reply the companies usually suggest you go look on steam to repurchase them cheap.

 

[TerryLaze]

You will eventually get a message saying either the supplied email address is already in use or , you will be told the keycode has already been used ....... of course it has .... BY YOU !
Even if you are wiling to " surrender " your key code for another one their are very few software companies out their that are willing to help uses with old games.
This is one reason why i cant use any crisis games or alpha protocol.

He is talking about windows 98 era, if you have the CD and the serial you are all set, there was no internet back then, at least it was so rare that internet activation was not even a thought yet.
Online activation started sometime with steam after 2003.

 

[Math Geek]

have you tried a vm?

i have win xp as a vm to play a couple old games. prob not as old as your win 98 era ones but same idea overall. a single core and 1 gb ram is more than enough to run what i do and the rest of the system does not even miss the resources

i'd give that a shot first before i spent the money on old hardware. i don't think i have a win 98 disk anymore or i'd give it a shot myself just to see.

 

[TerryLaze]

have you tried a vm?

i have win xp as a vm to play a couple old games. prob not as old as your win 98 era ones but same idea overall. a single core and 1 gb ram is more than enough to run what i do and the rest of the system does not even miss the resources

i'd give that a shot first before i spent the money on old hardware. i don't think i have a win 98 disk anymore or i'd give it a shot myself just to see.

Yeah that's ok for 2D and general low spec games but higher specked games won't run well on a VM, especially anything that needs a driver since the VM will only show up as a generic basic VGA.

 

[szogyenyi]

Virtual Machine is not an option. I am abide by a fully operational machine. As the matter of fact i found a few Asus P4S533-MX board which looks appropriate. The question is, does Intel CPUs worth more than AMD from that era? As i found out the AMD chips were better back then than the Pentium 3-4 processors.

 

[Math Geek]

Yeah that's ok for 2D and general low spec games but higher specked games won't run well on a VM, especially anything that needs a driver since the VM will only show up as a generic basic VGA.

we're talking win 98 days. everything was low spec at that time!!

but if the op does not want a vm, then it's a moot point anyway.

 

[TerryLaze]

we're talking win 98 days. everything was low spec at that time!!

Not basic VGA with no 3D capabilities low spec...

 

[artk2219]

You have lots of options, from pentium ii \ AMD K6 (2,3,+) up to a Core 2 duo (as mentioned by TerryLaze) \ phenom, try to limit RAM to 512MB though as things get a little weird after that. As for video cards, thats a little trickier, but Geforce MX's or radeon 7000's are good options, you could also use anything up to a Geforce 5000 series or Radeon X800. Just make sure drivers are available and you mostly should be set, Vogons has tons of information related to this though if you want to take a look.

https://www.vogons.org/index.php

 

[SamirD]

The main thing you need to look for is driver support and buy hardware where you can obtain the drivers--that's going to be your biggest hurdle. Otherwise, you can pretty much get any hardware as almost anything that survived will be fast enough to run what you want as the slower stuff was discarded long ago (unfortunately).

 

[szogyenyi]

Yes, that was my thought as well. Maybe the Core 2 duo CPU is a bit overkill? I think a P4 processor should be more than enough for the job. I don't really plan to play games on it which came out after the millenium so my expectations are not that high. I only struggle to decide what VGA should i choose.

 

[TerryLaze]

Yes, that was my thought as well. Maybe the Core 2 duo CPU is a bit overkill?

Yeah but they are easier to find and they use PCI video instead of AGP so it's easier to find a graphics and sound card as well.
If you can find a P4 system that already has everything you need to play games then sure otherwise I would go with core2.