Vintage gaming on Old Ass Computers

[David J.]

I have W7 Pro x64 on my HTPC... how do you get XP Mode?!

[Rusty Venture]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

[David J.]

Thank you. Downloading now!

[Dant]

It does, I checked it for the XP mode in Win 7 Pro.

The wacky thing is, I had Vista running in a VM that was running Solidworks (a 3D intensive program) and it ran alright.

Maybe 7 just didn't like VirtualPC 2007.

*shrugs* Maybe the game just doesn't agree with win 98 or even the hardware after all these things were written for Pentium 1s, I've only run the shareware version in dosbox.

[Rusty Venture]

I know it runs on Win98 because I ran it on Win98...*in 1998* and currently with my Win98 machine.

I think Win98 in VM is just an iffy endeavor. I know Virtualbox doesn't even have Additions for it.

[TmEE]

@ TmEE:
Nice CPU stockpile You've got there! To be perfectly honest, I had never even heard of a Tualeron before, I had to Google that one!

Tualeron = Celeron in Tualatin flavor aka less ooomph than Tualatin P3

[David J.]

I just got a free P3 933 mhz with a Geforce 2 GTS and ike 128mb of ram today. dusty as hell

[m68k]

I specialize in old Apple Macintosh Computers. I will list my prize items.
Macintosh Quadra 800, 128MB RAM, 2GB SCSI HD, Radius VideoVision AV in and Video Card with DSP, CD ROM, System 7.6, 33mhz 68040
Macintosh IIcx, 20MB RAM, 80MB SCSI Drive, Apple 24 Bit video, System 7.1, 25MHZ 68030
Powerbook 540c, 35MB RAM, 500MB HD, dual batteries, System 7.6, 68040 at 25mhz
Macintosh SE, 4MB RAM, 80MB SCSI HD, System 6.0.8
Macintosh Color Classic, 12MB RAM, 80MB SCSI HD, System 7.1

I have an old Pentium 233mhz PC that's generic. Cant say much about it really. Its a PC that has no soul like my old macs unfortunately.

[Yfrid]

my oldiest pc is a compaq presario 5060 bought in '98.
AMD k6-2 333mhz
48MB Ram
4 GB BigFoot HDD
4 MB Ati Rage Integrated

older than it, some commodores and atari.

[Rusty Venture]

I just got a free P3 933 mhz with a Geforce 2 GTS and ike 128mb of ram today. dusty as hell

Dust it out and make Carmen Electra proud, use Linux!

[MarbleMagic]

P3 933 mhz with a Geforce 2 GTS and ike 128mb of ram

That's a "VINTAGE old ass computer"?!? I think I'm getting old

The computer I use for old PC games is a IBM Thinkpad laptop with 200mhz running Win95.

Other old computers I own are a C-64 with datasette, C-128 and Amiga 500. I don't like the Amiga that much, because usually the games are "dead" because of old age. The disks just die and that's very frustrating. You can restore the disks using a PC, disk image and a parallel connection, I think. But for me that's too complicated and time consuming.

"Dead" disks don't seem that much of a problem for the C-64, though. I have lots of these old floppies and all that I've tried so far actually did work.
That's a thing I love about the C-64, just buy some huge amounts of disks on eBay and browse what's on them. Like some kind of digital treasure hunt

Sadly I currently don't have enough space to have the Commodores here with me, they're waiting on the attic at my parent's house

[snakesqzns]

I've got an Apple //c I haven't turned on in years. Would love to get a cheap C64 to play with the boxed copy of Wasteland on my shelf.

[Mr. Ksoft]

I have a fuckton of old computers. When I repair people's computers around the neighborhood, instead of paying me they "pay" me in the form of old computer hardware. Thus I have a bunch of towers, and boxes full of random parts that were either obtained like the computers, or were pulled out of non-working machines that my friend gets from his work. I've also got all the previous family computers, which I haul down to the basement when they buy replacements. Thus, I have machines as old as a 68030/32 Macintosh Performa 600 and a Packard Bell 486DX2/66, and as new as a 2.2ghz Athlon 64 (my old desktop I just replaced) The old computers get the most attention though, for their gaming excellence.
I've set up a nice little corner of my basement for everything. There's a small ethernet switch that connects all the network-ready machines. I run an FTP server from my desktop upstairs, and any computer down here can access it. It makes transferring files to them a LOT easier, as long as the computer has a network card. For the rest, I'm trying to get my hands on a bunch of ZIP drives, since they're almost as useful as USB drives.

Here are the main contenders:

"The 486" - Used this for DOS gaming as far back as 1996. Very recently, the internal battery wore out, and it will not boot until I replace it. I was not using it much anyway, since I finally got the right parts to assemble a better DOS machine.
Packard Bell Legend 204CD
486DX2 66mhz
8 MB RAM, 72-pin SIMMs
Onboard S3 Trio graphics
Voyetra Sound144AM Sound Blaster clone (Aztech Sound Galaxy Washington 16 chipset) + 14.4k modem combined ISA card
518MB HDD, 3.5" disk drive, CD-ROM drive
MS-DOS 7.1

"Old Apple" - First family computer. I use it for Mac OS games that don't play well with the PPC's 68k emulation.
Macintosh Performa 600
68030 / 32mhz (severely crippled, runs on 16mhz bus and thus is really slow)
20MB RAM
160MB HDD, 3.5" disk drive, caddy-loading CD-ROM drive
System 7.1P5

"PowerApples" - Two identical computers, rescued from the school music department's storage. One of them has a dead hard drive, so I don't use it (way too expensive to buy a new SCSI drive), but the other is good. Most of my Mac gaming takes place on it.
Power Macintosh 6100/66av
PowerPC 601 / 66mhz
68MB RAM (4MB onboard + 64MB in DIMMs)
Apple AV Card w/ 2MB memory (PDS slot)
250MB HDD, 3.5" disk drive, CD-ROM drive
Mac OS 7.6.1

"Big Pentium" - Named this way due to its very large size. The only full-sized tower I have. It is used as a sort of powerhouse Windows 3.1 machine.
Gateway P5-133
Pentium 133mhz
16MB RAM
STB PowerGraph 64V (S3 Trio 64V chipset), 2MB (PCI)
Ensoniq Soundscape VIVO (ISA)
Netgear FA-311v2 Ethernet card (PCI) (Can't get it to work with this)
8GB HDD (in four 2GB FAT16 partitions), 3.5" disk drive, ZIP-100 drive, CD-ROM drive
Windows for Workgroups 3.11

"Large Plastic Computer" - Literally a PC with a Lego case, a project I did last fall. It's so awesome I made a website for it. This is my main DOS gaming machine, and a lot of Windows 9x games too.
AMD K6-2/450 @ 350 mhz (Strangely, when I recieved it, the motherboard was set to run it at 250mhz. I found the jumper settings and reconfigured it to run at 450mhz, and it ran at 233mhz. 350mhz was the highest I could get it to go, using the jumper settings for 133mhz. Really weird.)
384MB PC133 SDRAM
ATI Rage 128 GL / 16MB (AGP)
Sound Blaster ViBRA 16C (ISA) (SB16 variant)
Network Everywhere NC100v2 Ethernet card (PCI)
40GB HDD, 3.5" disk drive, CD-ROM drive
Windows 95 OSR2

"Workcow" - This machine was the first PC I owned by myself. Due to its heavily updated state, I keep it around now for a few of the more intensive Win9x games that LPC couldn't handle. It's called the Workcow due to the fact it's a Gateway, and also because I do more computer work on it than gaming-- it can handle many types of storage mediums (USB drives, ZIP disks, floppy disks, CD-RWs, network storage, etc) and thus makes a good machine for preparing data to move to a non-network-ready machine. I have a lot of disk utilities and the like on it. It's a nice middle-of-the-ground between the old and new.
Gateway G6-450
Pentium II Deschutes @ 450mhz
320MB RAM
ATI Radeon 7500 / 64MB (AGP)
Sound Blaster 16 Value Plug-and-Play (ISA)
Ensoniq AudioPCI-based integrated audio (only used for MIDI, links to SB16's line-in)
Netgear FA-311 Ethernet card (PCI)
12GB HDD, 3.5" disk drive, ZIP-100 drive, 2x USB 1.1 ports, DVD-ROM drive, CD-RW burner (currently out of service-- the tray mechanism has seized up... hope I can fix it)
Windows 98SE

I also have a few newer machines: A Pentium 3/866 which worked great until, apparently, the BIOS chip corrupted last week, a Pentium 4/3.06ghz Hackintosh, and an Athlon 64 that is used for Linux. But they're not really old, so they don't count, and they're barely used for gaming.

I'm trying to get my hands on some non-PC gaming-oriented computers, but without luck since I have no money. But eventually I hope to get a C64, Amiga, Apple II GS, a much better Power Macintosh (probably a G4 that can run OS 9), etc.

Lastly, a few pictures:
Old pic of the Macintoshes
The corner of computers
Many pictures of the Lego PC

[snakesqzns]

I'd love to get one of these Asus EEE Keyboard PCs. Great retro appeal.

[Rusty Venture]

I have a fuckton of old computers. When I repair people's computers around the neighborhood, instead of paying me they "pay" me in the form of old computer hardware. Thus I have a bunch of towers, and boxes full of random parts that were either obtained like the computers, or were pulled out of non-working machines that my friend gets from his work.

Question time:

Do you have any 512 MB 184-pin DDR SDRAM sticks?
A HDD that is around 20-40 GB in size?
An AGP 4x video card that has 64-18mb ram?

I'm wanting to upgrade the computer I built my mom. I'd like to chuck a 512 stick in there and up the ram to 768 and get her a HDD dive that isn't noisy (the one in there is from the 500mhz HP I found).

And Carmen Electra would be proud, its running Linux.