Retro PC Gaming Build

Why not?

I build all my own computers anyway, so let’s try a REAL challenge and build a machine from the late 1990’s, get nostalgic and play some cool old games! I had owned an Atari 800, a MacSE, Mac Quadra, and a PC. I remember Lode Runner, Ancient Art of War, Diablo, Doom, etc.

Read on to learn about the choices you need to make in selecting old computer components and to gain knowledge on how to make a good choice for yourself. I have explained my rationale for the Win98SE build this article covers and also included a link to a video showing my progress up to BIOS so far but only because I am waiting on some parts :(

Contents

Where to buy?? Ebay and Facebook have plenty of vintage gaming lots. There are also specialty stores around. Just be sure you are not buying a bunch of free CD’s pulled from old magazines. You can try estate sales and yard sales, but harder to find at them. Craigslist, is another option- “Video Gaming — by owner”. You can also play DOS games on Windows3.1/Windows 95/98/98SE/ME.

I have decided to go with a Windows 98 system. It is easy to find 20 year old XP systems and I have one already.

History lesson: Windows versions, up to an including Windows ME, are all built around Microsoft DOS. You can to DOS from a floppy disk you can make using tools in the OS, and even boot directly to the command line from a Windows98 system (MS-DOS version 7.1) by changing msdos.sys file to read “BootGUI=1” to “BootGUI=0”. From the DOS command line you can just type “win” to start windows.

Serial numbers below.

1GHZ is my limit. That will do well and allow some 21st century games! The CPU and chipset matter because that drives the motherboard choice. The trick is to have enough CPU to be in balance with the GPU.

Turns out you can run old games TOO FAST. No throttling of the CPU or fixed reference timing in the game to control ‘ticks’ of the game cycle (like in Minecraft). Slower is better, for some games before 1995. If my CPU is too fast, a socket 370 can be handle some REALLY slow chips (as low as a 300MHz Celeron).

Universal AGP sockets looks the safest to me since all cards fit. Intel chipsets like 815 and 865 look good. Some AGP cards don’t fit so pay attention to physical form factor. Need to watch voltage requirements, too, and driver availability. The AGP slot provides the power for older cards. AGP 2.0 will provide 25Watts and 3.0 up to 48Watts.

I want a single card that supports 2D and 3D graphics (yes, in the 90’s you needed a card for each until 1999!).

I have read not to trust ATI from this era because of the drivers. Makes me want a RIVA TNT2 AGP card, at least. Voodoo cards are 10x the price even today.

Just don’t get a TNT2 M64 by mistake- these have half the memory interface bandwidth. The 64 is the bandwidth, not the memory size, which is only 16MB. I also have to consider game support, especially the Directx version. There were other gaming API’s at the time, such as Glide, but these died out. I have two good, cheap card choices:

An OEM card (Dell) that I have identified as a a TNT2 PRO. The RAM chips (4 of them) tell the tale and match the TNT2 PRO. Looks for cards that say “ BRD-05-E15 “ in the ad to find these. If seller knows it is a PRO they will charge more.

The other is a Geforce2 MX. This is the second generation GPU from Nvidia. The Geforce 256 was the very first GPU in the world. By the way, the Geforce2 MX should easily output perform the Voodoo 3FX 3000 and 4500, based on this comparison video and numerous forums post from the year 2000. Looks better and runs at a higher frame rate. I do notice that the amount of RAM I have may be a limiting factor, since in this comparison more is being used. The CPU on test system is also much faster (3.8GHz) and at half utilization. My CPU will max out easily on games, as a guess, but I can adjust settings, lower quality, resolution, etc. to help. I have read two things about the power needed for this card: 4Watts and 8Watts. Either are well-below the power the AGP slot can provide.

To me, the key difference is support for DirectX 7. This list tells the tale- over half the games on it are DirectX 7.

There are some “newer” AGP cards and I am really tempted to cheat with in the build. Might be fruitless since running a Pentium III and it is probably the system performance bottleneck when paired with a really fast graphics cards. The newer cards are also really inexpensive because of the retro pc gaming craze. If you do want a 2002–2005 card, Nvidia has done a great job at keeping old drivers online for these cards and they have many cards on ebay.

Sound Blaster cards ruled the 90’s. Most were ISA. I need a PCI sound card since there is no ISA slot on my motherboard, but I also need something that will work with many games. The Sound Blaster Live PCI is said to be good, has great prices, and I found the latest Windows 98/98SE drivers. I will be using an old pair of desktop speakers.

Games did NOT have the music audio files in them since that took too much storage, faster computers to play audio files. The game would ‘play’ your sound card. This meant that

Some games use MIDI since it is not the audio (which takes a lot of data space), but just instructions about what note to play on what instrument and send the data to an on-board synthesizer chip. Some 80’s games played external MIDI synthesizers, like the Roland MT-32 for music. However, the data that indicated what sound to play (piano, guitar, etc.) was not standardized until General MIDI came along in 1991, but that still took some years to get going right. Early SoundBlaster cards used a Yamaha OPL3 chip. The synthesizer controls the quality of the output sound, so you want it to be good. Some could even add an MIDI synthesizer daughterboard to get better sounds. This became a complicated affair and not all worked well. Other sound cards had the ability to playback digital samples of sounds (erroneously called wavetable synthesis). Eventually, the sample storage location moved to your hard drive and the sound card could use system memory to play sounds from. This was a game changer.

Some early computers (Commodore-64) had custom sound synthesizer chips built in and they produced really good sound. Some geniuses from Commodore left and went on to create the company Ensoniq and some very famous synthesizers. They were bought by Creative and their know-how helped with SoundBlaster development, especially for the ISA to PCI leap which allowed use of system memory enabling better samples to be used.

A SoundBlaster Live card has Ensoniq technology in it that works with PCI for access to system memory where higher-quality digitally sampled instruments could be stored. That same tech also provided good backwards compatibility with games (DOS games, too) that were designed for use with an ISA sound card. I made the video below to give you a feel for how the game sound has changed from the early 90’s to today. The MIDI file used for each track is the same, but the synth it ran through was different. From top to bottom they are the Microsoft built-in wavetable player (sample-based), the modern VirtualMidi soundfont player with the FatBoy soundfonts loaded, and the venerable OPL3 FM synthesis chip . Name your favorite in the comments!

There were different types of memory in the 90’s and the motherboard chipset determines what you need. Things I have read say SDRAM was better than RAMBus (also called RDRAM), so that is what you want. Make sure your chipset supports SDRAM. Here is a great reference:

I went really simple on this and bought a motherboard combo (Intel 815 chipset) with RAM (whopping 512MB!) and a CPU (Pentium III, 1GHz).

You need an ATX PSU with 200–250W rating AND some extra consideration for amps on the 5v rail. This is because old CPUs and Graphics Cards get their power from the 5v rail. The motherboard voltage regulator lowers the voltage to the range needed. You will find that older chipsets also get their power from the same rail, and other peripherals use it. USB, for example, provides 5v. The drives (hard drive, dvd-rom, cd-rom, and even the floppy) all use a 4 pin power connection (in this era), and that is because it provides two voltages- +5v/+12v.

My 15-year old (very little runtime) 250W power supply can provide 25 amps at 5v, while my brand new 650W unit only provides 20 amps at 5v. Most of the power comes from the 12v and in modern systems is used for the CPU and GPU; hence, some will have fewer amps on the 5v rail. You can find new PSU’s that provide 25 amps on the 5v rail, but I also see some at 8, 16, 17 or 21 amps.

My motherboard did not include a heatsink or fan. I took at a look at some ebay listings, and found that a Pentium III/Socket heatsink and a AMD Socket 462 heatsink are the same. I confirmed this by removing a heatsink and fan from a broken motherboard with a Socket 462, and it fits perfectly. Recycling!

Some of these things could be tricky.

Some gear I may just pull from a cheap desktop from a thrift shop. People put too high a price on vintage optical and floppy drives, for example. I bought a whole working system with those for $20, where on ebay they are $20 each or more.

This video covers much of the assembly, important tips on BIOS, front panel header use, moving a cpu fan plus my initial testing of the system. I don’t have all the parts yet, so I can get as far as the BIOS screen, but everything is looking great.

Interesting list, with several titles still around today in modern versions:

Some famous games to try: Wolfenstein 3D and all its clones, Doom I, II, Quake, Carmageddon, Duke Nukem 3D, Descent 1, 2, Warcraft, Age of Empires, etc.

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