Looking for good vintage system

[microlost]

I want to get into vintage computing. I want a machine that would be a good entry level computer to get into some good old games and perhaps a little coding in the language, BASIC. I need it to be fairly cheap. As I said earlier, having a ROM of BASIC would be ideal.

 

[True Buie]

Heyo microlost

So you're looking for an old pc to buy, for some retro gaming and coding in BASIC. Personally I have one at home, and enjoy that I can occasionally "go back in time", and enjoy all the games from the 80-90's.
I'm not looking to sell mine, but I can tell you that pretty much the whole build, except parts I had lying around myself (SSD, RAM and CPU cooler). I paid around 600 DKK, which translates to +- $90.
There's an Gigabyte x58a-ud3r, Q6600, 4GB Kingston 1600 Mhz RAM, GTX 650, Evga supernova g1 650w (The real steal in this build lol).
I'm happely going from DOS to XP on this machine, and it gets the job done.
I've gathered the parts from friends and online action houses / local auction houses.
Don't know how much of an help this was, but good luck with finding an retro pc!

Cheers

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Google for second-hand machines for re-sale, the world's awash with them & many companies specialise in reselling them. I've had three of them in the past 20 years.

 

[ARICH5]

lol...cool topic. i still use a old 486 with a monochrome monitor and a 300MB harddrive. i use it to mess around with doom WAD's and mapping shadow warrior stuff. 3 1/2 floppy drive for loading config.sys and autoexec.bat stuff for old music tracking.

 

[bambiboom]

I want to get into vintage computing. I want a machine that would be a good entry level computer to get into some good old games and perhaps a little coding in the language, BASIC. I need it to be fairly cheap. As I said earlier, having a ROM of BASIC would be ideal.

microlost,

It would help to know what country and what OS you intend to run.

In general, I'd say, that old workstations are a good purchase- high performance and robust build. How about:

Dell Precision 390 PC 5R5X1D1 Intel Core 2 Duo E6300@1.86GHz 2GB & 2x 160GB HDD > Buy It Now $29.00 of offer

I was given one of those and with a few upgrades became a very good system:

Original:

Dell Precision 390 (2007) (Original): Intel Core2 Duo E6300 2-core @ 1.86Ghz > 2GB DDR2-667 ECC > Quadro FX550 / 2X WD 320GB ( RAID 1)
[Passmark Rating = 397.1, CPU = 586, 2D= 339, 3D=75,Mem = 585, Disk = 552

Revised:

Dell Precision 390 (2007) (Revised): Xeon X3230 quad-core @ 2.67GHz > 8 GB DDR2 ECC 667 > Quadro K600 > 2X WD 320GB > Linksys WMP600N WiFi > Dell 24" > 1920 X 1200 > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
[ Passmark system rating = 1296, CPU = 3631 / 2D= 382 / 3D=862 / Mem= 853 / Disk=569]

The Quadro K600 arrived in a new workstation and the other upgrades totaled about $50.

These are beautifully made, very quiet, support recent GPU's, and in general have healthy sized power supplies.

Other very reasonable workstations include Precision T3400:

Dell Precision T3400 Workstation | 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6750 | 2gb DDR2 | 80gb > $39.99 or offer

Yes, $10 more but worth it!

Better yet- it uses DDR3-1333 instead of DDR2-667:

DELL PRECISION T3500, INTEL XEON W3505@2.53GHZ, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, WIN 7 Pro > $64.99

We bought one of those for a backup system for $53:

Precision T3500 (2011) (Original) Xeon W3530 4-core @ 2.8 /3.06GHz > 4GB (2X 2GB) DDR3-1333 ECC > GeForce 9800 GT (1GB)> WD Black 500GB
[Passmark system rating = 1963, CPU = 4482 / 2D= 609 / 3D=805 / Mem= 1409 / Disk=1048]

And, actually, the performance out of the box was close to being usable for our purposes.

But, after about $150- which again doesn't include the value of the hand-me-down Quadro:

Dell Precision T3500 (2011) (Rev 2) Xeon X5677 4-core @ 3.46 / 3.73GHz > 12GB (6X 2GB) DDR3-1333 ECC > Quadro 4000 (2GB) > PERC 6/i + Seagate 300GB 15K SAS ST3300657SS + WD Black 500GB > 525W PSU> Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > 2X Dell 19" LCD
[Passmark system rating = 2751> CPU = 7236 / 2D= 658 / 3D=2020 / Mem= 1875 / Disk=1221]

And that system can run all of of programs to some level reasonably well.

I'm not familiar with BASIC but I think the way to run it may be to run it in a VM or:.

"No variety of Microsoft BASIC (BASICA, GW-BASIC, QuickBasic, QBasic) is currently distributed with Microsoft Windows or DOS. However, versions which will still run on modern machines can be downloaded from various internet sites or be found on old DOS disks"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC

If that's the case, my recommendation would be a Dell Precision T3500.

If you're interested in a genuine last Century machine, I kept my Dell Dimension XPS T700R of 1998 as no one would buy it and it's too beautifully made to toss out. I have all the original manuals and Windows 98 on 1.44MB floppy disks. That cost new $2,600 and with a Pentium III 750MHZ and the maximum 768MB of RAM will run beautifully on XP-32-bit. The GPU is ISA. I think that system still has the first and only computer I've ever owned- "Sail 95". I should think these would be as close to free as possible, though there is one for sale on Ebay for $74.99 or offer.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[microlost]

@True Biue, I never thought of building my own, good idea. I appreciate you giving that price point.

 

[microlost]

@babiboom, I plan to run dos, though perhaps an older version of windows (as in 9x) would be good

 

[bambiboom]

@babiboom, I plan to run dos, though perhaps an older version of windows (as in 9x) would be good

Microlost,

You can run DOS either using compatibility mode in Windows 7 32-bit or use "DOSBox" as a DOS VM within Windows 7 -64Bit:

___________________________________________________________________

"How to Run DOS programs in Windows 7" :

"Actually, there are several solutions, all of which involve using software to create a virtual machine (VM) inside Windows. If you want to run a lot of different operating systems inside Windows, VMware Player is probably your best bet.

But if all you're only looking for is a way to run DOS programs, try DOSBox, a free program that launches a DOS VM. I can't promise it will work with every program you throw at it, but it worked for every one I tried.

Once you download and install DOSBox, here's how to set it up so that it can find and work with your DOS programs and files:

Create a folder (just as an example, let's call it C:\DOSFiles) and place in it every program and file you want DOSBox to access. You can use subfolders within that folder.

Click Start, type notepad and press ENTER to bring up Notepad.

Click Start, and select All Programs, DOSBox-0.74 (the version number may change), Extras, Screenshots & Recordings.

This will open Windows Explorer to a probably empty folder inside the DOSBox configuration folder. In the path bar at the top of the window, click DOSBox to go to that folder.

Drag the file dosbox-0.74.conf into Notepad. (The .conf part will probably not be visible.)

In Notepad, go to the bottom of the file, where you'll find the [autoexec] section.

On a blank line at the end of the file, type mount driveletter path, where driveletter is the drive letter you wish to assign the folder to, and path is the path to that folder. For instance, mount a c:\dosfiles will make the C:\DOSFiles folder appear as DOSBox's drive A:.

Save the file and launch DOSBox."

______________________________________________________________________

I really like the idea of getting the old systems going, and recommend obsolete systems here all the time under conditions of severe criticism by the latest thing crowd, but a modern system running DOS in emulation or as VM's will be much easier to find parts for/ Imagine how much better a 2GB GTX will run than a 64MB ISA GPU, and the way that 16GB of DDR3-1333 eill imporve on PC100., have far better performance, and be generally useful.

Imagine how much better a 2GB GTX will run than a 64MB ISA GPU, and the way that 16GB of DDR3-1333 eill improve on PC100, and you can add a PERC H310 to a T3500 for $60 that will run SATAIII drive speeds. The local particle accelerator where I did a small project partly designs the supercooled linear accelerator modules accurate to .001 mm, using Siemens NX on Dell Precision T3500's with Quadro K6000 GPU's = a $2,500 GPU on a $250 system.

Cheers,

BamibBoom

CAD / 3D Modeling / Graphic Design:

HP z420 (2015) (Rev 3) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz) / 32GB DDR3 -1866 ECC RAM / Quadro K4200 (4GB) / Samsung SM951 M.2 256GB AHCI + Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) + Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card + Logitech z2300 2.1 speakers > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit >> 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)
[ Passmark Rating = 5581 > CPU= 14226 / 2D= 838 / 3D= 4694 / Mem= 2777 / Disk= 11559] [6.12.16] Single-Thread Mark = 2098 [3.24.17]
[Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1031cb / Single Core = 142 cb / OpenGL= 127.39 fps / MP Ratio = 7.24x] 3.2.17
[FryBench: 3:24 /Efficiency 2177.13] 3.11.17

Analysis / Simulation / Rendering:

HP z620 (2012) (Rev 3) 2X Xeon E5-2690 (8-core @ 2.9 / 3.8GHz) / 64GB DDR3-1600 ECC reg) / Quadro K2200 (4GB) + Tesla M2090 (6GB) / HP Z Turbo Drive (256GB) + Samsung 850 Evo 250GB + Seagate Constellation ES.3 (1TB) / Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe sound card + Logitech z313 2.1 speakers / 800W / Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > > HP 2711x (27" 1980 X 1080)
[ Passmark System Rating= 5675 / CPU= 22625 / 2D= 815 / 3D = 3580 / Mem = 2522 / Disk = 12640 ] 9.25.16 Single Thread Mark = 1903
[ Cinebench R15: CPU = 2209 cb / Single core 130 cb / OpenGL= 119.23 fps / MP Ratio 16.84x] 10.31.16