This was my goal with setting up the systems I’ve been talking about. I reckon a standard late-90s VGA monitor will work for most DOS gaming up through the early 2000s if you had a 386/486 DOS, Pentium 3Win98, and C2D or high-GHz P4 XP machine all hooked up to it.
I think part of the appeal of this stuff for those that go so far as to set up multiple systems (and this applies especially to those sharing online) is having things be as complete and accurate as possible. You may be able to use an old Packard Bell monitor with your IBM PC, but it just doesn’t look as good as having a 100% IBM system on the desk.
There’s also compatibility. With 80s computers especially, you have several standards and connection types between rigs, but I’m fairly sure you could solve this with adapters.
I currently have two PCs hooked up to the same keyboard/mouse/CRT-monitor using a KVM switch for using DOS/early-Win9x games and later-Win9x/XP games. I could have gone more than that but my K6-III+ system has the flexibility to reconfigure to much slower speeds and run back to 386-class games accurately.
I could do this. I have at least four eras of PCs in my house at the moment because I never sold/recycled the old boxes. I also haven’t turned them on in so long I have no idea if they’d work on not today although I suspect they might.
I could do this with at least two different monitors I own as well although I’d probably just use the one.
Everything VGA is fully compatible with any VGA display. If you have a previous gen nvidia card (GeForce 9xx) you can still hook it up to a VGA monitor natively. If your modern 4K LCD monitor has a VGA input, it will display your 80s computer game.
It depends on how the computer is set up. You can stick a VGA video card in any IBM-PC compatible and it will work fine. A VGA card can display older CGA/EGA modes on a VGA screen near flawlessly (a few games may have trouble with the setup, and you want an older VGA card as they are more respectful of the standard).
The easiest setup is to do just that and use any VGA monitor you have. Sure you’ll have CGA and EGA modes line-doubled, but VGA low-res gaming was line-doubled by design and it never bothered anyone then.
If you really want to use the period-accurate video card, but don’t have the corresponding monitor, things can be a little more difficult, but still manageable. Early IBM-PC and clones had CGA, EGA and Composite (black and white, or dirty colours) output, each needing their appropriate monitor. But you can use Composite on a TV, and there are simple adapters to use CGA (MCGA and TandyCGA included) on a regular TV with Scart as well. EGA output is the odd one that’s annoying to use and needs its dedicated monitor for its high-res modes.
Sounds freaking awesome. That’s all I can say. I love the dedication to authenticity and it sounds like the best way to play these games. Post photos when you can.
Whilst searching for an old version of Daemon Tools (adware free) for Win9X (to mount an ISO) I stumbled across this site which lists “thin client” PCs that are great for retro gaming. Colour me intrigued.
I have a few thin clients all of which were extremely cheap that I picked up last year. Most aren’t great for this, you really need to be careful with the chipset on it or you may not have drivers for Windows 98.
The more interesting ones I got were a HP t5720 as recommended by Phil, and are hard to get now, and a Termtek TK-3370 that I got new-old-stock. The HP has an AMD Geode (a low voltage Athlon XP) and the Termtek has a VIA Eden chip. Both have decent graphics built in so I stuck a PCI sound card in both, but I tried an nvidia fx 5500 with the HP thin client and it worked well. Ultimately I’m not using them much because I have better + more flexible machines but they were pretty great for win9x and DOS inside Windows and the small size was really great.
Anything recommended by Phil gets hard to find but check out ParkyTowers if you’re really interested to find something that might be more available.
BTW I use Daemon Tools 3.47 on my retro computers so look for that.
These 480p displays are also great for retro PC gaming. Early 3dfx voodoo titles for both dos and windows were locked to run at 640x480. Here’s my trusty dos/windows 98 rig running the 3dfx version of screamer 2.
For those interested, the PC specs:
Gigabyte ga-5ax rev 4.1
Coolermaster centurion case
And k6-III+ @ 600mhz
2x128mb pc133 sdram
Antec silent socket 370 cooler modded with socket 7 clamp.
GeForce 2 ultra 64mb
Diamond voodoo2 12mb
Creative soundblaster 16 + db50xg daughterboard
Diamond monstersound mx300
3com etherlink III 10/100mb
80gb western digital ide drive
2x CD-ROM drive. 1 wired for dos to the soundblaster 16, the other wired to the mx300 for windows.
Dell AT101W keyboard
Some Microsoft mouse, now replaced with first gen intellimouse.
Sidewinder precision joystick
So over the years since I got into retro PC I’ve amassed a decent collection of retro pc parts. Most stuff I try to keep installed into one of my systems (2 main pcs, as well as secondary systems and now a bunch of macs) but I still have a bunch of spare graphics+sound cards, adapters, cables, cd/dvd drives, hard drives, keyboards+mice, and even extra cpus.
My solution to this has been to throw them in a cardboard in a storage room and forget about them until I need something. Increasingly thats a problem because its hard to find anything in that box and I dread looking.
Has anyone else run into this before? Looking for some good storage+organization ideas for this sort of stuff.
I spent some time at least tidying up my box. And I made a list of what I have if anyone’s interested, some of which is installed in systems:
Video Cards:
geforce gtx 1060 (installed in ryzen)
radeon hd6950 (installed in fridge)
radeon hd3650
radeon x550
geforce 8400 gs pcie
quadro fx 1100 agp (installed in athlon xp, use fx5700 Ultra driver)
geforce fx5500 x3 pci (two installed in hp thin client + ibm, one loose)
radeon 7000 pci (mac firmware modded, installed in power mac g3)
ati rage 128 agp
ati rage 128 pci (mac edition)
voodoo 3 3000 (installed in oldpc)
Sound Cards:
aureal vortex 1 AU8820B2 pci
yamaha xg YMF754-R pci (has spdif and real OPL chip)
soundblaster live pci
Terratec Solo 1 pci (ess solo card, installed in terratek thinclient w/ dreamblaster s1)
AOpen AW744-L II pci (yamaha ymf744, installed in athlon xp)
yamaha audician 32 plus isa (installed in oldpc)
CPUs:
amd ryzen 3900x (installed in ryzen)
core i7 3770k (installed in fridge)
core i5 2500k
pentium 4 3.0 GHz (need to install in ibm, replace celeron)
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (installed in athlon xp)
AMD Athlon XP slower than above (not sure exact speed)
AMD Geode NX1500 (installed in hp thin client)
Sonnet Encore w/ 500mhz IBM 750 CPU PPC750L (did not work when tested in power mac g3)
400mhz IBM 750 (installed in power mac g3)
AMD k6-III+ (installed in oldpc)
AMD k6-II (not sure on mhz)
Want to take some photos of my various retro systems with configurations at some point.
