Ultimate hardware setup up for retro pc gaming eras?

[Rancibot]

For those who are into pc games:

What is the most essential and optimal hardware to put together that will allow you to properly play the majority of
games in each retro pc era:

(All items should be from each era ex. not a 2005 monitor or 1998 keyboard with a 1987 console running a dos from 19)

In terms of

monitor/console
soundcard/graphics card/drivers
operating system
speakers/accessories/
joysticks/
disk drive/cd drive

So this essentially means buying 5 separate computers each which have full support to run most of the games from each era they belong to.

Classic era: 1981-1986 (to run most games and run them properly)

Adventure games era: 1987-1992 (to avoid not having the right supported joystick for most games, optimal graphics and best sounding sound effects/music working together)

FPS/FMV era: 1992-1997 (to be able to run without problems all/most fmv games, early 3d, P&C adventure and FPS with the right sound and graphics smoothly without anything missing. To able to switch from dos to win 3.1)

Early 3d era: 1997-2001 (to run all graphics etc smoothly and optimally)

Early modern era: 2001-2004 (to run all graphics etc smoothly and in optimally)

 

[Sardine]

I have all the PC's from all era's and most sit in the loft due to lack of space...
Pentium 1 with awe and 3dfx, PII , PIII , amd athlons, core2duo's, core2quad, amd phenom etc.. way too many.

so what did I do......

I bought 2 thin client PC's very small footprint low or no noise at all and very low Power Consumption.

1:- IGEL 4210 thin client, Dos / Windows 98 based PC with custom boot menu

Main reason for this one..
1ghz VIA cpu so not to fast for older games, Silent no fans, compact flash and 44pin IDE headers + PCI slot and a standard PC Bios to boot from external cdrom / flashdrive etc.
S3 graphics so good dos support and some directx in Windows 98.
I installed an Aureal Vortex 2 sound card VERY good dos support
A dreamblaster S2 GM midi card fitted to the Wavetable header on the sound card for GM sounds in games like doom / duke 3d etc.
and if needed USB slots for sticks or USB CD-Rom


https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Igel/4210/index.shtml



2:- HP T610 plus with PCI-E x4 slot, Later windows based opengl/Directx games (standard PC Bios with latest update and supports again external booting)

(Fatter with PCI-E slot) thin client 4Gb Ram ( I upgraded to 6gb )1.6GHz AMD G-T56N Dual core.
Has MLC Sata slot for 32gb ssd and normal SATA slot where I fitted a 750gb/8gb Hybrid drive.
Windows 7, Nvidia gtx 740 fitted to the x4 slot (really wanted a 1030) does all older games maxed out. some modern games medium to low details.
I use a USB cdrom if i need to run a genuine cd/DVD
this is almost silent, small fan on the internal heatsink and one on the GPU so as loud as an Idling Laptop.
as a bonus mine came with a wifi/bluetooth MiniPCE slot installed.

https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t610/plus.shtml

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3g8VtJUdb4


had loads a fun messing with these.

 

[SaviorX]

I actually was figuring this out (in some respects) a month or 2 ago, at least in terms of what type of hardware you would have had at different stages of DOS/Win versions, so it was somewhat similar..

eg. in April 1987 your best PC would have had DOS3.3 and Windows 1.04, and would have been an i386dx20 or Am286-12.5, with a straight ISA VGA Card (256/512), and PC speaker or Adlib sound.

whereas in March 89 it would have been DOS4.0 / Windows 2.11, an i386dx25 or Am286-16/20, an SVGA capable ISA/EISA video card (512/1M) and an SB1.0

April 92 was DOS5.0 / Windows 3.1 (not WFW), i486dx2/50 or Am386-40, ISA/VLB SVGA (likely up to 2M in the case of VLB)/ATi Mach8, SBPro or SB2.0, 72pin RAM was available at this stage.

November 93 = DOS6.2/ WFW3.11, iP66 / Am486dx40, PCI/VLB/ISA SVGA/ATi Mach32, SB16/GUS, 72pin/early SDRAM (33)

August 95 = DOS7.0/Windows95v1, iP133/Am486dx4-100, PCI/VLB/ISA SVGA/STG2000/ATi Mach64, AWE32/GUSPnP

November 97* = DOS7.1/Windows95sr2.x, iPII300/K6-233, AGP/PCI/ISA VoodooRush/Riva128/ATi Rage Pro, AWE64

June 98 = DOS7.1/Windows98v1, iPII400/K6II-350, AGP/PCI/ISA Voodoo2/RivaTNT/ATi Rage Pro, SBPCI64

May 99 = DOS7.1/Windows98SE/FE, iPIII550/K6III-475, AGP/PCI/ISA Voodoo3/RivaTNT2/ATi Rage128GL, SBLive!

February 2000 = Windows 2000, iPIII800/Athlon-850, AGP/PCI/ISA GeForce256/ATi Rage Fury, SBLive!Platinum

October 2001 = Windows XP, iP4-2000/iPIII-1266/AthlonXP-1533, Voodoo4/GeForce 2/GeForce3/Radeon8500, SB Audigy

obviously quite a few things left out (such as alternate Processor manufacturers like Cyrix/TI, as well as other Vid and sound card makers) but this was just a sampling of what your top/high end home PC might have been at the time.

dunno if any of this is of any use to you, but there it is...

*this was a bit of an over-simplification/omission on my part as Win95SR2.0 came out in Aug. 96, but 2.1 also added support for AGP and USB, and I recommend using 2.1/2.5 (~which only really adds support for P6 CPUs anyways) in any case, so I didn't bother to include 2.0 in my list.