Want to build a classic 90's PC

dougal

dougal

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AmiBayer
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I'd like to build a classic 1990's PC and wondering what parts I should look for.

I have in my storage a Pentium II, no idea what CPU as I need to bring it up and check but its probably a good basis for my Classic PC for playing old games on.

It has I think 3 ISA slots, what looks like a VLB slot (brown) and 3 PCI slots. Ok it has USB (that was probably standard by then) and a built-in sound card.

I've got loads of PCI sound cards but I was thinking of a full sized AWE32 card and it needs a graphics card too.

What graphics card should I go for ? Must be classic, retro and good.

Also, what Sound Blaster card (full sized) should I look for as there seems to be lots of AWE32 cards ?
 
I never had one back in the day but Gravis Ultrasound used to get a lot of praise back then.
 
protek said:
I never had one back in the day but Gravis Ultrasound used to get a lot of praise back then.
Click to expand...

I had one. Great sound but not a lot of games supported it and would end up having to select SB Pro.
 
a SoundBlaster16 will probably be most 'compatible'.

you can probably get something decent on a pci card...i had a Creative Labs RivaTNT2 16mb card that was good for just about anything, but you should be able to find a 32/64mb card if you really want... (Voodoo, GeForce MX200/400, something like that)

if you wind up having trouble with some graphics modes in DOS programs (with whatever graphics card you wind up using) you can also try FreeBE/AF or UniVBE VESA drivers from here:

http://www.dosdriver.de/graph.php
 
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Classic pc ?

Erm ok ...

Voodoo 1 pci or banshee (2d & 3d)
Fast 2d card - matrox g400 or nvidia or ET6000
Sound blaster pro
Ethernet
Pentium 333mhz
Usb card
Max ram
Dos 6.1 then windows 95 se



Drivers may be a pain to get :) and hours of patience...

I did similar a couple of years ago and I wish I'd bought a dell or something from that era as the driver packs from dell are still available or they were ....


Doom
Quake
Shogo
Warcraft
Quarantine
Carmageddon
z
 
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If you want to play DOS games, then the SoundBlaster Pro or 16 are the best options and like Mike said, Voodoo 1 or 2 and GeForce Ti or something.
AWE32 and 64 will work also, but not with the older games.
 
i have what you need, but postage to Malta :(

got voodoo banshee (AGP the Brown slot) Vese is 486 stuff not Pentium 2
also got Geforce 2 card (A LOT better than voodoo banshee but not as Retro :) )
AWE 64 (ISA, doesnt like XP and dos games, you need windows 98se or DOS )

got some hdd etc but postage will be a killer to Malta.

let me know if you want anything.
 
oh yeah...a brown slot on its own (usually towards the middle of the board) that looks not unlike a pci slot (but further away from the edge of the board) is AGP, a VESA/VLB slot (also 'normally' brown) is an extension to a 16-bit ISA slot and would be in-line with an ISA slot...
 
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Fate... A Gravis Ultrasound was mentioned and that is exactly what I just found and bought for next to nothing at the carboot sale today :O

---------- Post added at 10:48 ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 ----------

I found this video card in my cards box:

Matrox G4+MDH4A32G

It has two VGA connectors.

Is that any good for what I want ?
 
 
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You may wish to be more specific about the year you're looking for as by 1990 the 486 was only a year old and 386's were still in much use.
Whereas by 1999 the Pentium III was king and the P4 only a year away, so you're covering a lot of ground there.

For instance, if you take 1994/5 as the middle of the decade, there were systems on sale that used: 486 or Pentium or Pentium Pro...

Skellionz said:
agp, those were the days
Click to expand...

Really? What about Vesa Local Bus?! :blink: :LOL:
 
really depends on which 'era' you want to go back to...

i had great fun playing SimCity on my 8mhz 1MB Wang XT in Herc mono running off 2 60MB RLL Hard Drives (and this was still 1993/94 :p )

(i had only just gotten into PCs, from my C64...tho i quickly progressed over probably the next 2 years to a 12mhz 286...a 386dx40 and then a 486dx33)
 
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Ok, i brought the tower upstairs to check it out. Firstly, don't know how retro it actually could be.... retroISH i guess. Its a 600Mhz Pentium III with 196MB of Ram. 128+128+64 but one of the 128's is probably faulty.

The graphics slot looks like an AGP 2X for which I have no graphics card but I found an S3 Trio64+ with 1MB PCI card. Seems rubbish as in Win'98 it allows 1024x768 at max 256 colours or 800x600 @ 16bit. Don't know if it will be any good for Doom / Quake etc...

The HD is 8GB which should be ok for now and its got a 48X CDROM.

Good news, Win'98 detected the Gravis Ultrasound but did not have the drivers for it... No problem there as I can always download them thanks SaviorX for the links.

Questions... Is a Pentium III 600Mhz a nice system for DOS 6.22 / Win'95 PC Retro gaming system ?

Should I replace the S3 Trio64 ?

Should I install Dos6.2/Win'95 or just go for Windows 98 ?

IF I go for Win'95 is there any way I can get it to work with USB thumb drives to transfer games etc onto the system ?
 
if i remember correctly Win95osr2.1+ has basic support for usb, 98 has full support (and theres a driver to support reading NTFS partitions which i have found handy)

for file transfers you can use thumb drives...but i often just throw a bunch of stuff onto a DVDR/RW

or use file sharing over the network... (my 98 system has file/printer sharing turned on and my Win7 system has no problem seeing it or dumping files to it)


this shows what the various editions of 95 supported:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions
 
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Want to build a classic 90's PC

Cool I'll check that out.

I'll put the Matrox in as it's AGP 2X.

I've got two if them and I'm sure it's 10000x better than that rubbish S3 Trio64.
 
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