Windows for Retro Gaming PC

[fsparks]

Hi all!

I`ve bought some hardware to build a retro pc for play my old games, and my doubt is about the Windows version.

Windows 98SE or Windows Me? Me is compatible with all of 98 games (so long, i can`t remeber lol)

I`m running 98se on the machine, and i`m on a lot of trouble. Like crap usb support, system instability etc.

The hardware:

Pentium 4 1.4Ghz, 512MB of RAM, a ATI Rage 128 and a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks! (sorry for my poor english)

[Guntz]

Windows 98SE is the best for general stability and compatibility. I'm confused as to how you have stability issues.

This should help expand the limited USB support.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/4360...e-usb-drivers/

Your hardware is a little on the high end side, the wimpy P4 is okay though.

[fsparks]

I`m facing some random system freezes, i don`t know if its driver related (specially the SB Live driver, it was hard to find a working one). But it won`t occur everytime, meantime i`m looking for a Voodoo graphics, but in my country is a little bit hard to find a working 3dfx card at a reasonable price

Thanks for the USB tip

[Tanooki]

It's likely some driver issue I'd have to agree.

Windows 98se is the most stable, useful, and friendly version of Windows until XP came out. ME is awful and lasted like 10mo on the market.

The hardware choices you made seem pretty solid, though depending what you're hoping to run it may even be with the P4 a bit fast if you're looking into some high quality DOS games as not all of those things had speed regulation on them and they'll run super fast. There were programs made in the day like MOSLO that'll slow down old DOS games to work solid on better systems.

[fsparks]

The "overspeed" problem affects only MS-DOS games or some old Windows games too?

[Tanooki]

Certainly DOS, but I do remember it being an issue with some pre-Win95 windows stuff.

[Edmond Dantes]

There were programs made in the day like MOSLO that'll slow down old DOS games to work solid on better systems.

MoSlo itself kinda sucks. I remember it had a problem of hanging quite often. Although some specially-configured versions like the one that came on the Ultimate Might and Magic Archives worked pretty well.

Bret Johnson's Slowdown is the way to go if you intend to run pure DOS. On my rig (which is a lot like the OP's but with a 700mhz processor, a Voodoo 3 graphics card and a Soundblaster 16) I use Dosbox for games with extreme issues. Some games are honestly improved in Dosbox. Any that have enhancements for Tandy computers, for instance.

[Tanooki]

The only problem I ever hit with Mo-Slo was that it sometimes really didn't slow a few games all that well. Sometimes a game would partially slow. Wing Commander 1 and 2 was a hit and miss mix like the cut scenes with the mouth movements and the rest to the big pixel art would move along like it was on speed, but when you were just playing the actual combat the game ran fine. It was more annoying in 2 with the speech pack as it would be totally out of sync because the vocals ran at normal rate.