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90's PC Gaming Appreciation Thread: From Boot Disks to 3dfx Voodoo cards
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Bloodporne
Member
What the fuck!? Can't believe I missed out on this. A sim I'm actually interested in.
Bloodporne
Member
I always thought Space Cadet pinball was kind of a bullshit pinball game. It was only fun when I was playing it at school when I was supposed to be working on something.
My favorite pinball game will probably always be Balls of Steel:
The physics feel right, the tables are well-designed, and there's a lot of cool stuff that you couldn't do with a real pinball table. Still a lot of fun, and it's like $6 on GOG.
I'm sure it was, but when we first had a PC in our home ANY game on it was exciting to me honestly. I would suspect that to be the case with many kids of that era.
BurtSampson
Neo Member
Should I pick up Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon? I've been on a 90s adventure game tear thanks to GOG and I love FMV games, but I never played this one back in the day, so nostalgia wouldn't really be a driving factor.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Anyone here ever check out the GCW Museum? It's the every issue of computer gaming world digitized in PDF format. It's a great way to pass time if you are bored. There's some great stuff in there.
Tizoc
Member
Trogdor1123
Gold Member
Please do, then run the earlier 3dmarks lol. I'd love to know the scores
GAF, I'm conflicted.
I'm trying to play Tomb Raider 2, but I can't decide on how it should look. I have two options:
- Go with the best settings possible, 1600*1200, filtered textures. Everything is still low-poly, but it's smooth low-poly. It's the kind of view I would love to be able to attain back in 1997. But everything is so clean, so smooth it's almost unreal.
- Get the more rugged display of 640*480, unfiltered. I've never been a fan of texture filtering, but non-filtered textures clash with hires polygons. So I thought why not make everything lowres? It does look cool too, the rugged look retro people look for. But my '97 mindset keeps pestering me, on how I'm not making the most of my powerful hardware, a super high-end (not) nettop. It's worth mentioning that I had the game in 1997 and my computer could barely run it at 1024*768. Even back in the day I liked unfiltered textures more.
(On a CRT, so no ugly non-native processing to worry about)
Writing this post it should be clear which I want, but my PC Master Race subconscious is still acting up. So annoying.
I'm trying to play Tomb Raider 2, but I can't decide on how it should look. I have two options:
- Go with the best settings possible, 1600*1200, filtered textures. Everything is still low-poly, but it's smooth low-poly. It's the kind of view I would love to be able to attain back in 1997. But everything is so clean, so smooth it's almost unreal.
- Get the more rugged display of 640*480, unfiltered. I've never been a fan of texture filtering, but non-filtered textures clash with hires polygons. So I thought why not make everything lowres? It does look cool too, the rugged look retro people look for. But my '97 mindset keeps pestering me, on how I'm not making the most of my powerful hardware, a super high-end (not) nettop. It's worth mentioning that I had the game in 1997 and my computer could barely run it at 1024*768. Even back in the day I liked unfiltered textures more.
(On a CRT, so no ugly non-native processing to worry about)
Writing this post it should be clear which I want, but my PC Master Race subconscious is still acting up. So annoying.
blast processed
Member
If it was me I would run low res. That's the way I remember it looking. Same reason why I don't like GL Quake now, but back in the day,I was all about it. Also, I would have that nagging feeling that I'm running through an emulator with that high of a res, on a low poly game. Gives me flashbacks of Bleem.
I agree. While playing the first level I completely forgot about it. I guess I just needed to get adjusted to it, and switching between the two made them both look weird.
And damn, I completely forgot about that passage in the first level. My heart is still racing lol.
And damn, I completely forgot about that passage in the first level. My heart is still racing lol.
And I set myself on fire in the camp right before the exit :derp
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
Personally, I'd go hi-rez. But that's largely because back in the day, anything above 320x240 in TR2 was super aspirational for me. I'd turn on 1600x1200 for a minute, watch the game run at 2fps, and think about how cool it'd be to have a computer that could actually run that.
Please live that dream for me.
Edit: Also, is TR2 still good? I assume it has aged poorly, but if it's still worth grabbing on GOG... I wouldn't mind giving it another look.
Please live that dream for me.
Edit: Also, is TR2 still good? I assume it has aged poorly, but if it's still worth grabbing on GOG... I wouldn't mind giving it another look.
Shadow Hog
Member
As somebody who regularly plays Doom and Quake at 2560x1440 with no texture filtering (other than mipmapping for distant textures to eliminate Moiré), I find the assertion that high resolutions but no filtering somehow clashes a rather silly one.
Definitely better on GOG than Steam, if only because Steam sells one game for almost the price GOG charges for three.
I don't think it's aged as well as the first Tomb Raider, where the focus was more on solving (admittedly rather rote) puzzles and making tricky jumps over constant firefights (which is easily the worst part of classic Tomb Raider tbh, the camera and slow turning pace just aren't conducive to it, even with Lara doing all the aiming for you), but it's still pretty good, if you have decent patience and aren't averse to using the in-game save-scumming for the trickier jumps.
Definitely better on GOG than Steam, if only because Steam sells one game for almost the price GOG charges for three.
I can't believe how spoiled we are with the tech of today. That said, when I got my Orchid Righteous 3D, it was amazing. In those days I was very much the 'early adopter'. I used to play Doom over Kali with a friend between California and Alaska over ISDN. I was a low ping bastard back then 
I meant how polygons have smooth borders, curves have no pixellated edge, everything is almost vector-like, in contrast with the big pixels on the lowres textures. The clash is mainly between the Lara model (whose skin is flat colours, and sports hires textured pants) and the blocky environment. It's almost like she floats in a dreamy, pixelly world.
I can see how it could work on Doom, as it uses sprites for everything but the map, which is completely textured with sharp angles. Using high resolution would simply clean up the image and the pixels.
I mean it's a very subjective opinion on what does or doesn't look good together, I myself still struggle with it a bit obviously.
socksfelloff
Member
My god this thread is so full of nastalgia for me. I grew up a PC gamer. I had an nes/Genesis/n64 growing up but the high prices of games and ease of piracy for PC games meant I played most games on PC.
I was that kid at school bringing friends home to play doom. When everyone went crazy for goldeneye I showed them quake. When people talked about how the Dreamcast was going to allow for "online play" I showed them how I'd been doing it for years.
Fast forward to today and I'm still that guy. 2 friends were talking about how great Witcher 3 on ps4 looked so I showed them the Witcher 3 on ultra @1440p/60.
One of my greatest memories is asking for wcw/nwo revenge for n64 for Xmas. Dad fucked up somehow and got me WCW nitro for PC. My computer couldn't run it and I cried the entire Xmas day. The day after Xmas dad rushed out and bought me a voodoo2 so I could run the game and holy shit did that voodoo2 open the floodgates for me. I was drowning in PC goodness from then on.
PC gaming holds a very special place in my heart.I even met my wife playing Diablo 2.
-PCMR4LIFE
I was that kid at school bringing friends home to play doom. When everyone went crazy for goldeneye I showed them quake. When people talked about how the Dreamcast was going to allow for "online play" I showed them how I'd been doing it for years.
Fast forward to today and I'm still that guy. 2 friends were talking about how great Witcher 3 on ps4 looked so I showed them the Witcher 3 on ultra @1440p/60.
One of my greatest memories is asking for wcw/nwo revenge for n64 for Xmas. Dad fucked up somehow and got me WCW nitro for PC. My computer couldn't run it and I cried the entire Xmas day. The day after Xmas dad rushed out and bought me a voodoo2 so I could run the game and holy shit did that voodoo2 open the floodgates for me. I was drowning in PC goodness from then on.
PC gaming holds a very special place in my heart.I even met my wife playing Diablo 2.
-PCMR4LIFE
It works for games like Doom and Quake since they mainly rely on heavily tiled/repeated textures which acheives a kind of texture resolution parity across the board. It was later games that started to more liberally stretch textures across UV maps. Personally I don't think those games end up looking great regardless whether the textures are filtered or not, though stretched giant pixel blocks are definitely worse than super-smudged out filtered textures. The main problem is that the gap in visual fidelity between the super sharp polygons and low res textures becomes too apparent in modern high resolutions.
I had a bout of nostalgia couple days ago. I was determined to get Quake Team Fortress up and running. Hopes of having me and my son do some serious sniper wars on 2fort5 was the plan. I got it running under GLquake, but, could not get the config files to work at all. Of course all the support sites are dead (planet quake was my home for many years). Dreams shattered. I did get it up on winquake and it was accepting my config changes however there is a bug that does not align the sniper laser sight up with the crosshair.
If anyone knows of a site all about quake modding, point me in that direction please.
If anyone knows of a site all about quake modding, point me in that direction please.
http://quakeone.com is probably the biggest general Quake 1 forum all around now. There's also http://quakeworld.nu for MP side.
Also, you might want to look into more modern clients. I think ezQuake is the one for MP now? Not sure how it works with TF since I'm more into the SP, but I think it was the one which is part of the noob-friendly QuakeWorld package known as nQuake.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Is it worth building out real hardware for retro PC or is dosbox and VM options generally good enough?
I started parting out a new-old PC build with an SD->IDE adapter, floppy emulator, new case, and some other nice goodies with a K6/Voodoo3 for good coverage of mid-age DOS -> Win98 era games. I don't even know what i want to play, but I just remember the last time I tried to play Tiberian Sun on modern hardware it just ran way too fast and didn't look right in low or high res.
But... this just seems like a bad rabbit hole. Do DOS games even sync on modern monitors? Would they work on my Framemeister at least, somehow?
I started parting out a new-old PC build with an SD->IDE adapter, floppy emulator, new case, and some other nice goodies with a K6/Voodoo3 for good coverage of mid-age DOS -> Win98 era games. I don't even know what i want to play, but I just remember the last time I tried to play Tiberian Sun on modern hardware it just ran way too fast and didn't look right in low or high res.
But... this just seems like a bad rabbit hole. Do DOS games even sync on modern monitors? Would they work on my Framemeister at least, somehow?
You might consider trying Linux if you want to play early Windows games. Wine does a fantastic job of running Interstate 76; it doesn't have the high res glide hacks, but it's much easier to set up than in a modern Windows. Of course you'd still have Dosbox too.
I do remember Aces of the Pacific causing newer CRT monitors (or at least my monitor) to go into sleep mode when you got hit, no idea what they'd do on an LCD.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
I was messing around with my linux env on my chromebook this weekend, but I couldn't manage to get (ahem) Titanic: Adventure out of Time launching properly in DOSBox despite knowing it works ok (with sound glitches) on my PC DOSbox.
Has Wine actually gotten good? Last time I used it was maybe 2008, so its been a while, but it always seemed kinda doomed to just be forever an unstable, incompatible mess.
Have you been using exactly the same configuration files? DOSBox is supposed to be portable and system agnostic, you just change the path of the system executable and it should be good.
One thing did give me problem though when switching between Linux and Windows and that's in dosbox.conf:
Code:
[sdl]
fullresolution=desktop
output=openglnboutput= can be set to different values, but some are specific to Windows, like directx. Try messing with it.
You can change these values (temporarily?) in the software interface if you don't have an autoexec setup.
I always found wine way too invasive for my taste, you just end up with a hybrid system that can use both Linux and Windows software, without any distinction for native software. And it goes everywhere, in your default applications, in your right clicks... I wish it would be a little bit more sandboxy. But that's just my opinion, and maybe it has changed since I last tried it.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
K, I bought a bunch of stuff. Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Super System 7 Mobo w/ 64MB RAM, AMD K6-2 350MHz (with option to upgrade at some point)
Yamaha Audician 32 plus (+ option to install a DreamBlaster at some point)
3DFX Voodoo3 w/ VGA+S-video for good compatibility with DOS, Win3.1, Win95, Win98 games
Gotek floppy emulator + floppy drive cable
SD->IDE adapter + 64GB SD Card
New SATA DVD drive so I can steal the ancient IDE one from my main PC
CD Audio cable (lol)
Cheap ass case with cheap ass PSU (can replace later if needed)
Came out around $350CAD altogether, which is more than I originally meant to spend but you know, compared to like PC Engine stuff, this isn't so bad.
I think the mobo I got will work with USB keyboard+mouse, if not I need to figure something out. I also hope I can get DOS video output to work with either my monitor or FM, or else I might be in the market for an old monitor.
Super System 7 Mobo w/ 64MB RAM, AMD K6-2 350MHz (with option to upgrade at some point)
Yamaha Audician 32 plus (+ option to install a DreamBlaster at some point)
3DFX Voodoo3 w/ VGA+S-video for good compatibility with DOS, Win3.1, Win95, Win98 games
Gotek floppy emulator + floppy drive cable
SD->IDE adapter + 64GB SD Card
New SATA DVD drive so I can steal the ancient IDE one from my main PC
CD Audio cable (lol)
Cheap ass case with cheap ass PSU (can replace later if needed)
Came out around $350CAD altogether, which is more than I originally meant to spend but you know, compared to like PC Engine stuff, this isn't so bad.
I think the mobo I got will work with USB keyboard+mouse, if not I need to figure something out. I also hope I can get DOS video output to work with either my monitor or FM, or else I might be in the market for an old monitor.
That reminds me, I built PCs back when Windows 95 was hype, and I never connected that cable. Later I read on the internet not to forget to plug the cable, but I don't remember having any problem with sound. Was this cable really necessary for CD music or was it just to have like better quality audio by bypassing the motherboard?
PumpkinSpice
Banned
I think on really old PCs it was necessary but on "newer" stuff (like mid-90s on) it would get sent through the PCI bus anyway. I had a 486 whose CD player didn't work at all without that cable. I'm sure my newold PC doesn't need it but why not, it's was $1.50, and maybe it would give better CD-direct audio.
MrCunningham
Member
I still can't figure out if the audio cable does anything on windows 9x era machines. I posted pictures of my old gaming PC here months ago: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=203203141&postcount=403
and you can see the audio cable (has a bright pink end on it) run from the CD ROM drive to the Sound Blaster card in the first picture.
It has been a while since I booted up that machine. But I am looking for a replacement video card, the Geforce 2 ti that I have in the machine has some odd issues with DirectX 6 and, which many old games use. OpenGL works great in this card. I am looking at a Voodoo 3, or maybe an ATi replacement.
alf717
Member
I'm use to low res Tomb Raider from the PS and Saturn version so on PC it was all about running them as high res as I could. Luckily some mods out there can help getting 1080P and a correct aspect ratio.
TR: https://youtu.be/RImTXqKl72g?t=3m43s
TR II:
3D space cadet brings back some memories. I can't find it but I remember playing a game where you play a snowball battle.
TR: https://youtu.be/RImTXqKl72g?t=3m43s
TR II:
3D space cadet brings back some memories. I can't find it but I remember playing a game where you play a snowball battle.
MrCunningham
Member
I think TR1 looks great at a higher resolution with perspective correction and nearest neighbor.
I was thinking about picking up an old S3 ViRGE DX just for Tomb Raider and a few other games...
Here is a great video showing what the game looks like on the S3 DX with 640x480 and perspective correction on: https://youtu.be/NrKWWi7iX-8?t=475
Anyone think it would be worth picking up one still?
for dos games, latest svn version of dosbox are flawless (like dosbos-x)
for win 98, vmware player is great and free, xp too
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Anyone know if modern CPU coolers compatible with Super System 7 motherboards?
MrCunningham
Member
What is the model/ brand of your motherboard?
From what I remember, the AMD K62 CPU's are good at passive cooling and don't need a fan, just a heatsink. I don't think a modern cooler would work unless it has a 4 pin molex connector (I think these types of motherboards use Molex for the CPU fan?). Maybe you could get a three pin fan to molex adaptor? I am sure that they exist. Otherwise, I don't know the dimensions of the Super 7 socket in comparison to the cooler.
But for a heat sink/ fan... maybe something like this? Or this?
PumpkinSpice
Banned
I bought a baby-AT MSI MS5184. Conveniently the manual & bios updates are still online for this.
I think the stock heat sink / fan should be fine for the K6-2. I don't have it yet, but I'm considering getting a K6-III+ for more flexibility on the higher and lower end (with fancy dynamic multiplier setting). Depending on how that goes, I could overclock it for a bit more on the high end... not sure I want to go that route but if so I'd like to get a modern cooler if possible just to avoid any heat issues.
For the power thing, I could probably make an adapter from molex to whatever I need so I'm not too worried about that, assuming everything takes 5v.
MrCunningham
Member
Looking at the manual for the motherboard, it does have one 12v three pin connector for a CPU fan. I really had no idea if it would have one, because I have seen a few of these System 7 Socket motherboards without one that would require a large 4 pin molex connector from the PSU. That should give you some options for fans, and there are four pin to three pin adapters, so maybe a modern CPU heat sink and fan could work if you can find one that locks into this particular socket type.
The other option is to use something that could plug into a 5 or 12v large molex connector from your PSU.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Cool, I'll look more at sizes after I get everything built to see how things are with the CPU that's coming with my mobo which... will probably be a while given how slow shipping can be.
I'm just looking for as broad a range of compatibility out of this thing as possible, even if I end up spending a bit more for a CPU upgrade. That K6-III+ seems like a neat chip, runs on 10W so it's cooler than any other SS7 CPU, can overclock well, and can underclock on the fly with DOS/Win9x software to run software designed for slower CPUs really easily. I got the idea from Phil of PhilsComputerLab to set this up so that it can target as far back as 386-class games, but I'd like it to handle the higher end Win9X games as well.
I'm just looking for as broad a range of compatibility out of this thing as possible, even if I end up spending a bit more for a CPU upgrade. That K6-III+ seems like a neat chip, runs on 10W so it's cooler than any other SS7 CPU, can overclock well, and can underclock on the fly with DOS/Win9x software to run software designed for slower CPUs really easily. I got the idea from Phil of PhilsComputerLab to set this up so that it can target as far back as 386-class games, but I'd like it to handle the higher end Win9X games as well.
MrCunningham
Member
As far as building a classic gaming PC goes, it really depends on what you want out of the machine. I think Super Socket 7 is a little more flexible and can be clocked higher, as Super 7 has 66MHz and 100MHz bus speeds, while Socket 7 has a 66MHz bus speed. Super 7 also claims that it has better AGP compatibility, I'm guessing a faster FSB speed for AGP cards than Socket 7?
I dunno if you can get the voltages right to clock a socket 7 close to super socket 7 speeds. Honestly I never really got into AMD CPU's until the Athlon XP line.
That is pretty cool. The motherboard you have doesn't look too bad, it supports 100MHz FSB and seems to be overclockable to 133MHz , though unstable as stated in the manual. I think a K6-III+ should be able to work on this Mobo, possibly at 500MHz or even 550MHz. I also find it funny that the motherboard has two 72pin SIMM sockets as well as 2 DIMM sockets. I don't think I have seen a SIMM socket on a PC since my parents old 386.
Built this a couple of months back,
Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4ghz,
512mb Crucial PC133 (2x256)
Asus CUSL2M Motherboard (scored for 99p)
Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb
Yamaha YMF724 Sound Card
120gig Hitachi Deskstar Hard Disk
Lite-on 52x CD rom
Old beige case
Cost me approx £40 to build and its a great machine. Looking to switch out the YMF724 card for a Audigy 2/A3D 2.0 dual cards which i own, just need to find some time.
Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4ghz,
512mb Crucial PC133 (2x256)
Asus CUSL2M Motherboard (scored for 99p)
Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb
Yamaha YMF724 Sound Card
120gig Hitachi Deskstar Hard Disk
Lite-on 52x CD rom
Old beige case
Cost me approx £40 to build and its a great machine. Looking to switch out the YMF724 card for a Audigy 2/A3D 2.0 dual cards which i own, just need to find some time.
TheFNEffecT
Member
Oh man I love this thread, reminds me how much of a demo/shareware whore I used to be when I was younger haha.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
I did (a little too much) research before buying this stuff, and I actually found a motherboard compatibility list for the K6-2+ & K6-III+. I guess they must have been a popular choice for end-of-road upgraders on Socket 7. It's actually kind of amazing how long CPU sockets used to last... my LGA1155 motherboard supports a grand total of 2 CPUs better than the 2500k in it, released a whole 1 year later.
Edit: also this handy list of CPU speed sensitive games. Even without a K6-*plus SS7 CPU you can use setmul to turn off L1 cache on your CPU to make it 386-slow, and probably L2 in the bios, it's just the severe underclocking that requires a Socket 7 CPU to hit the Pentium target speeds... and then the K6plus CPU lets you do that without rebooting (or even in a bat script before the game loads).
I'm building mine instead of upgrading to an RX480
Thats the plan jerry, welcome aboard.
MrCunningham
Member
I did (a little too much) research before buying this stuff, and I actually found a motherboard compatibility list for the K6-2+ & K6-III+. I guess they must have been a popular choice for end-of-road upgraders on Socket 7. It's actually kind of amazing how long CPU sockets used to last... my LGA1155 motherboard supports a grand total of 2 CPUs better than the 2500k in it, released a whole 1 year later.
Edit: also this handy list of CPU speed sensitive games. Even without a K6-*plus SS7 CPU you can use setmul to turn off L1 cache on your CPU to make it 386-slow, and probably L2 in the bios, it's just the severe underclocking that requires a Socket 7 CPU to hit the Pentium target speeds... and then the K6plus CPU lets you do that without rebooting (or even in a bat script before the game loads).
I'm building mine instead of upgrading to an RX480
It has more to do with AMD motherboards if anything. AMD generally stretched out the life span of their socket types much longer than Intel did. They still do this. And looking at this chart, I take it that this motherboard just needs an update to beta BIOS. Sounds pretty good for under clocking as well.
Yeah I used to have an obsession with shareware and demo discs. Sadly I no longer have any of my old shareware discs, and only a few demo discs remain.
here's a photo of a small collection of demo discs that I do have stored away:
Almost all of these are from 2000- 2003 though. Except for the Ultra Game Players disc, which is not a demo disc at all, but a bunch of videos showing tips and tricks for Mario Kart 64 (the caption above Mario's head reads: "Ha-Ha! With these-a shortcuts, I can't lose!"... sorry about the bad photo... low light and tablet with no flash) and 5 preview videos for Final Fantasy VII. Also, a Max Payne demo disc from a December 2001 issue of PC Gamer. And the one demo disc on the top middle has a free copy of the original Civilization in it. The Sim Golf disc came with a full version of Day of Defeat 2.0. I loved when demo discs would just give away full copies of free games.
MrCunningham
Member
The only type that I can think of are drives that were designed for laptops. Maybe you could make your own manual switch by just rigging something that can work with the pin hole?
It seems so, and even then they aren't easily identifiable. Bummer.
But I found out about the LiteOn ETDU108-02. It's external and USB, but the latching is entirely mechanical so it should work.
But I found out about the LiteOn ETDU108-02. It's external and USB, but the latching is entirely mechanical so it should work.