Help Shocker build a retro gaming PC!

I have an itch for taking it back to the early to mid 90's. Every PC that I used outside of the Apple Macintosh LC's whatever back in jr high was shit. I would mainly use a local library to play DOS games but it was a 386SX with a crappy pc speaker for sound and Windows for Workgroups. Anyways I bought a Compaq Presario 5225 off of CL. It wasn't my first choice but ebay is to much. And even driving around I couldn't find any place that sold what I was looking for except for storage space and it ended up being to old.


1. This model has a yamaha xg 128 software syth. I'm not sure how good this is though I know Yamaha makes outstanding sound products, It seems to be software base which could be a CPU issues. I want to replace it with a Sound Blaster Awe64 Gold. But if the XG is better I will se that

2. The maximum ram it takes is 384 since I will be using Win98 is there a way for the MB to accept 512MB or is this not possible?

3. The video card is a 3D Rage LT Pro and it is built in and it's an AGP. Would it be possible to use a PCI card or is that off the table? I do want to run some early 3D games and maybe Quake II and Unreal is about as far as I would go.

I would like to be able to run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04Cl4sxy0o

all the way up to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0OILijFfo

if you have a pci card it shoudl be able to just work
but AGP is always better

Take a few good clear pics of the motherboard for me. If you can do that I can help you from there on out.

I just booted it up and apparently i'm getting no video at all so I guess the onboard card is shot. sigh

That could be because the onboard chip is disabled in the bios. You can clear the CMOS by removing the battery and finding the jumper that has something to the effect of "CLR" on it, moving it to 2-3 for ten seconds, and then back to 1-2. Sometimes removing the battery is enough. If that doesn't work it's time to put an AGP or PCI card in there to see if you get video. Are you getting any beeps?

The guy said that it didn't work due to the battery so I replaced it and still nothing. But yeah I am getting beeps and all those other good things that older PC's use to do back in the day. But I will try what you said.

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

The guy said that it didn't work due to the battery so I replaced it and still nothing. But yeah I am getting beeps and all those other good things that older PC's use to do back in the day. But I will try what you said.

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Have you found the beep codes for that model computer? They should be telling you if everything is okay or if something isn't connected/working.

It's really difficult to get a IBM compatible to run MS-DOS games with sound and late 90s 3D games, but it absolutely can be done. You won't have perfect MS-DOS support and seemingly easy 3D stuff like Sonic R and Lego Racers will be slow, but it's easier than having two separate PCs.

Here is my FossilPC:

- Generic Socket 7 Micro-ATX board, has x3 PCI slots, one shared PCI/ISA slot, USB, floppy IDE misc etc
- AMD K6-2 400MHz CPU
- 3Dfx Voodoo 1 (requires 2D card)
- ATi Rage II+DVD Graphics
- Sound Blaster 16 CT1740
- Roland MT-32
- generic CD drive, generic floppy drive, 40GB HDD, USB hub etc

All it's missing is a good wireless LAN card, gotta get one eventually.

The above hardware is a pretty good balance of the new while keeping support for the old. As you can see, there's absolutely no need for AGP. It's pretty hard trying to find a good motherboard with AGP and a fully working ISA slot. You absolutely require a ISA slot, or you won't have any real sound compatibility for MS-DOS. The SB16 is great for Windows level games too.

In particular I heartily recommend the Voodoo 1, it's an amazing graphics card for the time. It can run lots of games in far better quality than the Rage II can muster. The only downside is you need a 2D card for Windows and anything that's not 3D, but it's worth it for the performance.

As for your non-functioning motherboard, figure out its make and model, enter them into google and find the manual for it. It's good to have the manual if only for its map of the motherboard's connectors and functions. As said before, try clearing CMOS so you can reset the BIOS to normal and use the onboard graphics, or just get a PCI/AGP graphics card already.

Is the yamaha XG128 any good? I am not to keen on software based stuff I have heard the Roland Mt-32 on yt and I must say that the sound is nice for something 1987 based but the prices on ebay are a bit to high.

I haven't used the XG128 specifically but in general software wavetable sound cards are typically hit and miss. There's some tradeoffs, some issues, but it might be usable at least. If it's a PCI type of sound "card" you won't get any MS-DOS out of it. Your best option (if your motherboard has an ISA slot) is to get a good old Soundblaster-16 card, it will serve you well.

Ace is an encyclopedia of MS-DOS era sound cards though, he'd know for sure what would be best.

I pretty much figured that I have an Audigy 2 collecting dust in one of my older machines. I'm really thinking about getting an AWE64 Gold. BTW are there any interesting Japanese only games? And for that matter are any of these Genesis pc ports better than there Genesis counterparts? I played Comix Zone back in 96 at Service Merchandise for a few times but that was before I played the Genesis version. I do want to try out some Model 2 ports though.

Some of the 3D Saturn ports to PC are better if you have significantly more powerful hardware than should have been necessary. Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter 2, and Virtual On are included in these. The issue is finding the hardware that will run it well without some absurd incompatibility issue, like Virtual On not even opening due to not detecting MMX. Sonic R is best on Saturn in some areas, like transparency, and better on PC for weather effects and draw distance. Genesis games are almost definitely in their best form on original hardware, but the Sonic & Knuckles collection(s) has some nice arranged midi stuff for folks who don't vomit at the first sign of midi (like me).

Also, Plane Crazy is awesome and keeps my attention way better than anything similar including Diddy Kong Racing on N64.

The PC version of Sonic R is almost completely better than the Saturn port. The draw distance is far better, on Saturn you'd think you're playing the original Daytona USA. The PC version also offers neat weather effects, 4 player support, netplay, updated 3D rendering capabilities and less to no slowdown. Of course some of this depends on how fast your machine is. The machine I quoted above can run Sonic R at full speed with 512x384 resolution and medium draw distance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

I pretty much figured that I have an Audigy 2 collecting dust in one of my older machines. I'm really thinking about getting an AWE64 Gold. BTW are there any interesting Japanese only games? And for that matter are any of these Genesis pc ports better than there Genesis counterparts? I played Comix Zone back in 96 at Service Merchandise for a few times but that was before I played the Genesis version. I do want to try out some Model 2 ports though.

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DUNE and Flashback are A M A Z I N G on the PC.

Sheath, don't you have a K6-II processor in your machine? Also does anybody know if there are any Japanese exclusive pc games that are worth trying out?