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Building old computer for 1990s games

Texashiker

Texashiker

Lifer
Not sure if this should go here or in one of the hardware sections, but here goes.

I recently came across an unopened windows 98 second edition package. It is still in the cellophane wrapper, complete with manual, floppy startup disk and cd.

For some time I have been playing around with the idea of building a computer from late 1990s hardware just for games such as Diablo, Sin, Quake, Warcraft II,,, and a few others.

For some reason the original diablo does not run god on my windows 7 system. The colors are all messed up.

I would imagine ebay would be the place to start.

Anyone here have a windows 98 computer setup for 1990s games?
 
I doubt Win98 even has the drivers to run on a lot of modern hardware, but if you're referring to the "rainbow" color corruption on Windows that looks something like this the most common workaround is to temporarily kill all instances of explorer.exe.

Create a batch file like this (call it Diablostart.bat or something):-

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
Diablo.exe
Start explorer.exe

then create a link to the batch file. Works for Diablo 2 & Age of Empires 2 for a lot of people.
 
i do

i don't remember whats in it but it is epic.

i am pretty sure its a via or sis chipset

when i get home i'll post the specs
 
BSim500 said:
I doubt Win98 even has the drivers to run on a lot of modern hardware, but if you're referring to the "rainbow" color corruption on Windows that looks something like this the most common workaround is to temporarily kill all instances of explorer.exe.

Create a batch file like this (call it Diablostart.bat or something):-

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
Diablo.exe
Start explorer.exe

then create a link to the batch file. Works for Diablo 2 & Age of Empires 2 for a lot of people.
Click to expand...


also works for startcraft brood war.

well it used to but the title screen is odd.
 
there should be a way to do this through VMware and not bother wasting money and energy with ancient hardware
 
Texashiker said:
I mean with vintage hardware.

I have some old dos based games with 16 bit installers that will not even install under windows 7 64bit.
Click to expand...
I can't help you with a Windows 98 "retro rig" as I haven't used that in over 14 years. I have dozens of old games / abandonware myself though, from early 90's Sierra / Lucasarts MS-DOS 5 stuff to Direct X5-8, and I've managed to get them all to work in Win7 (only one needed a CPU speed patch, the rest either worked in DOSBox or ScummVM, had entirely new source ports that work better than the original (Doomsday Engine, etc), have been patched to support modern hardware / widescreen / DX9 render engines (Thief 1&2, Deus Ex, etc) or have been re-released on GOG and patched to run "out of the box" (Baldur's Gate, etc).

- If they are DOS games with DOS installers, try DOSBox.
- If they are 16-bit games or have 16-bit Windows installers, then 32-bit Windows 7 runs a surprising amount of old software with a little tweaking (and contrary to popular belief, you can use up to 32GB RAM on 32-bit Windows 7/8 with a PAE patch (as long as you don't have integrated Intel GFX), with normal 32-bit limits (2GB) per process). Not that you'd need any more than 4GB for a retro rig.
- For Diablo1, try this thread.
- For Quake 1, try The DarkPlaces Quake engine.
- For Quake 2, try Beserker@Quake2
- For SiN, try this thread. A patch linked in thread can cure a lot of "rainbow color" problems. If all else fails, SiN Gold is on GOG.
- If it's only the installer that doesn't work (but not the game), try installing it via a Virtual Machine then "zipping" the folder as a backup for future installs. A lot of old games didn't store anything in the registry but in local .ini files which will be included in the zip.
- The pseudo-gray area of "no-CD cracks" will often help older games with CD checks to run.
- Some DirectX 5+ game installers check for Win 9x vs NT 4.0 (because NT4 didn't include any DX version greater than DX3 at the time) but can be "forced" to install with command switches (eg, -lgntforce will force System Shock 2 / Thief original CD installers to install on modern W7/8 rigs). Alternatively create a link to installer and set compatibility mode "Windows 98" to install. May need to do again for the actual game exe.

There are lots of little tricks like those that vary from game to game.
 
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Just install it on Virtual Box. There's no need to waste electricity by building an old machine.
 
cronos said:
Just install it on Virtual Box. There's no need to waste electricity by building an old machine.
Click to expand...

Yep, free.

VMWare Player "Pro" is also free for home use, but I don't know if they ever added a way to create new VMs with it -- I have Workstation through work.
 
I used to keep a retro rig like this at one point, but have long since ditched it after Dosbox matured. I dual-boot 8.1 and XP, and together with Dosbox and Basilisk I can run all of my games (going back to 1990 or so) on a single PC with modern hardware.

The 16-bit Windows games are usually meant for Windows 3.1, which you can set up and run in Dosbox. The trickiest ones are the early Windows 95 DX5/6 games. I've used 98 on Virtual PC in the past for one or two. VMWare is good and you can make new VMs with the free version but it's not a replacement for XP, as its D3D support is quite limited. There are some games that don't work on 8.1 and need XP, but a lot fewer that won't do even XP and need 98 or something earlier.
 
I still have an overclocked Pentium Pro machine running Windows 98. It is in the garage and hadn't been turned on in years until recently, and I was shocked to see it actually booted.
 
I have one of the original Mac clones in my basement that I was using for old games at one point.

I'd say most games will work on Windows 7 and 8 with minor tweaks. If it was popular, there's usually a fan made comparability patch out there. Issues tend to crop up with stuff designed for Windows 95. A lot of those older programs use 16-bit installers. I had this issue recently with X-Wing Alliance. However, fans have made a 32-bit installer for that game.

Another issue is lack of support for older versions of DirectX. I recall reading that both AMD and NVidia had recent stripped out support for anything pre-DX8 in their drivers. Once again, you can find patches available.

For older titles that use DOS, just fire up DOSBox. That's what GOG uses. A lot of Windows 95/98 games are DOS compatible as well. For the old LucasArts adventure titles, can't beat SCUMVM.

If all else fails, you could always run Windows 98 as a VM. Never done that before so I'm not sure if there'd be driver issues.
 
hey th

i never knew it was a socket A lol

its an athlon xp 2400+
s3 prosavage graphics
256 mb of memory
40 gb ide drive
on an asrock k7vm2 motherboard.
with a GENUINE windows 98 cd key i still have from ought 99

she's oooooooold

remember when motherboards were green

2njikv5.jpg
 
Don't listen to the naysayers Texashiker, building an oldschool PC sounds totally awesome and should be a whole lot of fun to build. If you do, I want to see it's final form.
 
Texashiker said:
I have some old dos based games with 16 bit installers that will not even install under windows 7 64bit.
Click to expand...

One possible workaround for this, if you have Windows 7 Professional, is to install the game in the XP virtual machine, where the 16-bit installer will probably run, then copy the game's folder(s) to the host drive and keys over to Wow6432Node in the host registry.
 
stahlhart said:
An Asus P3B-F board, 750MHz PIII, GF3 Ti200, Diamond MX300 build running 98SE here.
Click to expand...

That's almost exactly my setup back in 99 :thumbsup:

In fact, the P3B-F is still here somewhere. I know where the 6 GB drive is. It's in the same corner with the rest of the pile, the 10 GB, 16 GB, 60 GB, and the rest of them.
 
I have an old 1st-gen P4 with a Voodoo3 I've been keeping around for that reason... Talk about a perfect Diablo II box!
 
I have a "Legacy" box for running the classics on W98SE.
I would suggest posting in the FS/FT Forum what you're doing and what you're looking for, I might have something laying around that you need.
I built mine years ago from parts leftover from upgrades through the years.


"Legacy" box specs:
ASUS CuBX Mobo
Pentium 3 1.4GHz Tualatin w/ Power Leap Adapter
2 X 10 GB Maxtor HDD in RAID 0 on modded Promise controller
512 MB PC 133
Sound Blaster Live
Voodoo 5 5500
ASUS CD-Rom
Floppy
 
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Sometimes it is better to run old games on newer rigs due to enhancement patches. Eg, "vanilla" Diablo 2 ran at 640x480-800x600. On Windows 7 with the D2MultiRes patch, it looks great in 1080p, and you can now see more than 8ft in front of you.
 
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