Imagine you could build a dream Windows 95/98 PC today, what would you go with?
In the nearly four decades of my life, we’ve collectively as a family gotten rid of a lot of excellent hardware of this era that while good, still wasn’t top-notch.
Right now I have a Compaq Presario 5242 that was gifted to me years and years ago and I swapped in an AMD K6-2 in favor of the existing Intel chip that was in there. I’m lacking a GPU at the moment, but I have one on the way that is AGP and more than overkill for the application.
I want more control and was curious what others would build if they were in that position back then to buy the best of the best hardware. Use-case is natively playing and experiencing everything as it was back then. I don’t want to emulate, I’m old enough that it doesn’t feel the same to me.
Side note If someone has an Amiga 1200 they’d like to pass on, let me know!
Hmm, thinking IF you were going to play any GLIDE based games then looking into one of the later gen Voodoo cards for AGP could be nice.
I think however you have to confirm the AGP voltage as I think many of these cards would only work with a proper voltage supplied on the port.
Can’t recall if it was due to the mobo not supplying both 3.3vdc and 5vdc but there were limitations on what kind of AGP cards you could get to work on some mobo models.
Side Note: I do not own any A1200/600 models.
My collection of Amiga’s however are nicely packed in boxes and stored in my attic, but I do bring them out from time to time and test them on an couple of old CRT’s
Yeah, for Diablo II a Voodoo card is what I need to go grab from a friend.
What’s in the Compaq is pretty limited, and while it gives me an experience close to the better Compaq Presario I had back then but foolishly donated, it’s not close enough.
Jealous of your Amiga collection! The Amiga 1200 is what I first learned on but my parents gave it away. Trying to get one back to give that experience to my own children before letting them play with modern PCs.
That’s so awesome! Things I wish I’d have had the ability to articulate back then, but I’m an only child and we moved a lot so things just got chucked or given away.
Yeah, I’m at that point now where I’m hanging on to everything that makes sense to hang on to.
Still trying to find a good CRT for this setup, but they’ve gone up in price so much that coupled with shipping it’s just not worth it. I’ve been keeping my eyes open locally.
Sometimes you can find something in a local Goodwill store too.
I still have a couple 1084 CRT’s along with a couple of really old CBM 1702 CRT’s
Other than getting an adapter of some sort to use with a basic Flat Panel, the only other possibility would be to use older video output like COMPOSITE video for instance.
Maybe it’s because I’m in such a large city, but our local Goodwills are always picked clean of the good stuff. We used to have a dedicated Electronics store as well, but Goodwill shuttered it.
I was gifted a ‘98 IBM Aptiva with a full tower in “stealth black” plastic cladding. It belonged to an older friends late brother and he clearly had it fully refurbished at some point. I hope the hard drive survived the move because I would love to bring it back “online” some day.
It’s at the extreme end of the 98 SE timeline, but my last Win98 machine had a Voodoo 5 5500 that I’d won in a Tachyon: The Fringe tournament. Absolutely bloody loved that card. Think I still had a Celeron 300A with an insane overclock in it at that point, but I later upgraded to a Tualatin PIII (arguably better than any P4 they ever made) just before XP came out.
Oh this is so cool! Call me crazy, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed Vista as well, especially after SP2 and a few additional tweaks. 7 was better overall, but Vista looked and felt so much more alive.
I’ll give this a watch! I actually had a SATA to IDE adapter delivered yesterday and threw the old 128 GB Crucial C300 into the K6 Compaq; what a difference it made!
I do have a GTX 1070 (which has some issues) as well as a much older Quadro FX 1800 from a Precision 690 that I also regret getting rid of the case because it was so damn cool!
I don’t know I could say truthfully there was any true ‘dream machine’ I had for 95/98, as the first thing I had with enough hardware to qualify allowed Windows 2000 and it ran all the games I’d be nostalgic about (but to be honest so does the steam deck - I 100% get behind the ‘real if you want’ concept however - not everything directly translates, not least, EAX).
I’m aware of some boards even into Core 2, with PCI-Express support running. I don’t think I’d count them for period accurate but the joy of this is, to do that if you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abYeIixYrbk
Can recommend Phil’s Computer Lab & LGR in general for this kind of thing.
Otherwise I picked a Pentium 200 MMX which was about the peak of that era (notwithstanding K6 but again, this means win2k to me). I could never find a case (Baby AT) I liked to put it in unfortunately, which is probably constrained on them all being awful even at the time.
Still have my old dual 300A@ 550 BP6. If intel released a chip like that today they’d find some way to make it criminal to overclock.
Try not to regret giving your old HW away back in time, yes it’s painful now they’re also not using it anymore but it maybe made someone happy then.
Hmmm, I have 2000 as well as a few flavors of NT (including Workstation) that I’ve considered building for as well. The ideal XP build would be a Core 2 Extreme of some type paired with a now old school 8800. I have the 8800 somewhere.
I wasn’t looking for too close to being period accurate, but something that would be within striking range. I do have another K6-2+ (550 MHz) and the original Pentium MMX I yanked from the Compaq in favor of the K6-2 (400 MHz). I think the board wasn’t compatible with the faster K6-2+ which is why I put in the older one.
I watch LGR a lot, and Phil’s site has been where I’ve found several drivers I’ve needed.
As an aside, I am blown away by how much CRTs have skyrocketed in cost. I’ve yet to be able to find a 1084 for my C64 that isn’t an arm and a leg in shipping alone!
Being in one the larger cities here in the US I foolishly expected there to be a lot more reasonable options locally; I was wrong.
I think the time of cheap CRT’s was about 10 years ago. Now thrift stores often don’t even want them. I remember signs up in the local Goodwill that they wouldn’t accept CRT TVs for a bit.
I did manage to find a new in box Dell CRT at a local thrift store about a year ago though. Offered them $40 and they took it. It’s no Trinitron, but 0 burn in and no wear means it should be good for a long time hopefully.
Granted it’s also considerably more modern than a 1084 too.
