New 486 pc

[SNKNostalgia]

Seems that my Pentium 2 400mhz turned Pentium 3 1ghz should work then. The Turtle Beach card does have full Soundblaster 16/Adlib emulation support that works well, which is good enough. It is just sitting in my parents basement doing nothing for the past 8 years once they got a Pentium 4 with WinXP in 2004.

My dad of course wiped the HDD and reinstalled Win 98SE. So, finding those damn newer drivers for my ATI Radeon 64MB 7200 is going to be a pain (I also still have my ATI Rage Pro 8MB and Xpert 2000 32MB. All of them running AGP 2x on my Mobo). The soundcard drivers luckily are the most up to date with the Drivers disc it came with. Also, going to have to update to the highest version of Win 98SE as well from a torrent site I bet. I just have never fooled with it since then.

So I assume this setup will work then. Worse case is that I can put the Pentium 2 back in there if it runs a lot of games too fast. To think of it, I never did try Herectic or Wing Commander 3 and 4 on it. Now that there is abandonware and cheap copies out there... it should be easy to test out.

[spenoza]

Oh, turns out I have an Athlon Tbird 2800+ sitting in my basement. Frankly, it's a complete system with ATI Radeon 8500. It lacks an HD but that's about it. I replaced it 3 years ago. I feel bad with it sitting there, but none of the shlubs on Craigslist want it.

[BigusSchmuck]

I'd be happy getting my hands on a working dot matrix.

When I go in on Monday I'll get you a list. We also have a continuous feed dot matrix printer too if you really want to annoy people when they come over due to how noisy it is.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

Seems that my Pentium 2 400mhz turned Pentium 3 1ghz should work then. The Turtle Beach card does have full Soundblaster 16/Adlib emulation support that works well, which is good enough. It is just sitting in my parents basement doing nothing for the past 8 years once they got a Pentium 4 with WinXP in 2004.

My dad of course wiped the HDD and reinstalled Win 98SE. So, finding those damn newer drivers for my ATI Radeon 64MB 7200 is going to be a pain (I also still have my ATI Rage Pro 8MB and Xpert 2000 32MB. All of them running AGP 2x on my Mobo). The soundcard drivers luckily are the most up to date with the Drivers disc it came with. Also, going to have to update to the highest version of Win 98SE as well from a torrent site I bet. I just have never fooled with it since then.

So I assume this setup will work then. Worse case is that I can put the Pentium 2 back in there if it runs a lot of games too fast. To think of it, I never did try Herectic or Wing Commander 3 and 4 on it. Now that there is abandonware and cheap copies out there... it should be easy to test out.

The Turtle Beach Montego if I remember right was using the Aureal Vortex A3D chipset. Yeah, it was a good pci card, but its Dos support did have issues for some older Dos titles prior to 1994-1995. AMD has all the old ATI drivers up still, so you can still get Drivers for the older Radeon and Rage cards for Windows 98 fine.

[HercTNT]

I would appreciate that Big. I dont know about the continous feed though. thats just begging to get me divorced. You know, i never knew thier were dot matrix color as well. looked it up last night, seems some of them printed fairly decently.

[spenoza]

The Apple ImageWriter II had color ribbon capacity and could, with a proper adapter cable, be connected to a Windows PC serial port and driven by an Itoh dot matrix driver. Those things are tanks, too. They run for decades. Noisy like mad, but they are hard to kill.

[BigusSchmuck]

I would appreciate that Big. I dont know about the continous feed though. thats just begging to get me divorced. You know, i never knew thier were dot matrix color as well. looked it up last night, seems some of them printed fairly decently.

We might just have a color one left over come to think of it. I know we still have the color ribbons for it and I believe its a xerox. We might even have a usb okidata that hasn't even been used! I'll have to ask my boss, but I don't think we are going to sell these for any more than 20-50 dollars.

[HercTNT]

please let me know, if you have a color one, i would like it. the price sounds very reasonable

[Digi.k]

wow apart from commodore 64 and Atari 800XL and Amiga A500

god 486.. I think my first pc was a 486.. Cyrix cpu

if I ever was to have a fond memory of a pc component I would probably pick the gravis ultrasound card (hell to sort out in compatibility) but the sound was probably better than the Amiga A500's 

[SNKNostalgia]

The Turtle Beach Montego if I remember right was using the Aureal Vortex A3D chipset. Yeah, it was a good pci card, but its Dos support did have issues for some older Dos titles prior to 1994-1995. AMD has all the old ATI drivers up still, so you can still get Drivers for the older Radeon and Rage cards for Windows 98 fine.

Damn, no go on the AMD website. The drivers are listed but not there when you click the download links. Guess I will look around. At least I know exactly which Catalyst, WDM and the ATI Multimedia player drivers I need.

[BlueBMW]

Speaking of fondness of a legacy pc component....



Not sure why I love this pad so much (because it truly is CRAP)  but its was I grew up playing PC games with.  Star Control 2 was played many a times with one of these!

As far as sound cards, my Gateway 2k P5-90 still has the SB16/AWE32 my dad put in way bitd (replaced an ensoniq soundscape IIRC) and my G2k P5-133 has a AWE64 card I put in maybe 10 years ago.

[cabbage]

Speaking of fondness of a legacy pc component....



Not sure why I love this pad so much (because it truly is CRAP)  but its was I grew up playing PC games with.  Star Control 2 was played many a times with one of these!

Hah, I just picked one of these up at a thrift store for $1... even has the screw-in joystick! I couldn't resist, even though I'll probably never use it. These things really do suck but they were the best (only?) PC gamepad I could find back in the day.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

The Turtle Beach Montego if I remember right was using the Aureal Vortex A3D chipset. Yeah, it was a good pci card, but its Dos support did have issues for some older Dos titles prior to 1994-1995. AMD has all the old ATI drivers up still, so you can still get Drivers for the older Radeon and Rage cards for Windows 98 fine.

Damn, no go on the AMD website. The drivers are listed but not there when you click the download links. Guess I will look around. At least I know exactly which Catalyst, WDM and the ATI Multimedia player drivers I need.

Yeah I see their site is having issues, redirecting you on the download links. Well, hit me up if you want, I have a decent archive of drivers amassed, so I might have what you need.

Speaking of fondness of a legacy pc component....



Not sure why I love this pad so much (because it truly is CRAP)  but its was I grew up playing PC games with.  Star Control 2 was played many a times with one of these!

Hah, I just picked one of these up at a thrift store for $1... even has the screw-in joystick! I couldn't resist, even though I'll probably never use it. These things really do suck but they were the best (only?) PC gamepad I could find back in the day.

I have a large variety of controllers for PC. I did have that normal Gravis Gamepad, but I sacrificed it to make a arcade stick for the Dos version of Primal Rage, since that port is basically arcade perfect. I have stuff like the Gravis Gamepad Pro with Grip support, the PowerRamp programmable arcade stick, Gravis Destroyer gamepad, some programmable Interact gamepad, classic flight wheel, etc, along with lots of USB type game pads, flight sticks, etc. One thing I can definitely recommend without a doubt is getting a classic white Gravis Gamepad Pro for its Dos grip function. That or obtain a PowerRamp stick or pad from Act Labs.

Not sure how far anyone here takes the classic gaming thing as far as Pc gaming goes, but I do have other rigs, one for Windows ME, and one for Windows XP also. I finished my XP rig a short while back. It took a long time to get it to be exactly the way I wanted it. Now I can enjoy alot of stuff I have that needs XP specifically, like Bet On Soldier.


Specs are as follows:
Athlon 64 3800+ 939
MSI MS-7184 micro atx motherboard
2gb DDR ram in dual channel
DVD drive
Cd drive
two 80GB sata harddrives
one 120GB ide harddrive
Sapphire X1950XT
SoundBlaster Audegy Se
Thermaltake TR2 RX 450 watt
five 80mm case fans (one in bottom harddrive cage)

[kamiboy]

Does anyone have a good idea as to a space saving solution for a DOS system?

I cringe whenever I look at the ugly beige behemoth in my game room taking up so much space just so I can play a few games from over 20 years ago.

What is the most minimalist, elegant setup possible for running games up to about early to mid 90's, which is where my interest in PC gaming tapers off.

[spenoza]

Well, I don't know if the oldest games would work well with an Athlon or P3, but I think there are some shuttle case/mobo combos still floating around that will accommodate those chips. A VIA C3 system might actually be best for compatibility and size.

On another note, does anyone here have any experience deliberately under-clocking older chips to reduce heat and power draw? I'm wondering if I clock my old Athlon way the crap down if I could throw it in a case with a fanless CPU cooler and a low wattage power supply to use as a kitchen PC or something.