RandomStranger wrote on 2024-06-17, 19:12:

It's not simply about being able to run the games. It's about the whole package. Running the game on period correrct/adjecent hardware and OS as God intended is a huge part of the experience.

Frankly, if I could just run a game from 1993 failsafe on any later machine, with the same options as back then, I would not own any old hardware. But this never happened.

No, I don't. I just happen to have one that's still working.

gerry wrote on 2024-06-17, 16:19:

that's a good point - if you have already done the work for a vintage set up then its easier than adapting to changes in emulation and vm software

if you havent done that though, i suspect its easier to not go and get vintage hardware - often cheaper too, a mid range system from 5 years ago is a powerhouse really for these things

I think this depends on where one lives and what is available.

As of this writing, I could buy a number of pre-configured retro systems ranging from 386 computers to Pentium 4's. Now granted these machines are not cheap. You're partially paying for the work that has gone into restoring them, but you're getting something that is practically guaranteed to work.

I've also found that local thrift stores or local ads are a decent source of early 2000's computers, which can make for usable XP machines. Although those can be more hit or miss whether they require additional work to get going.

Totally, i need a old computer for every day use, there is not good emulation yet, for example, PCem, falis too much to deliver real resolutions and refresh rates, ruin all the experience

gerry wrote on 2024-06-17, 10:50:

over time i realise that almost everything that i actually run could be run on some middle of the road 'new' PC […]
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over time i realise that almost everything that i actually run could be run on some middle of the road 'new' PC

Just about all DOS applications can be run on an emulator like PCEM, that would cover windows 3.x too
Any games not catered for by the above are fine on DOSBOX

Just about all the windows 9x software i use was updated to run on 2000+ anyway so i can use those versions, those that aren't could be run on a 98 virtual machine
almost all the games either run on XP+ anyway, or will with some tinkering or have a gog/steam or other repackaging alternative and the few remaining were hardly leading edge 3d games so often run on a VM anyway

Just about everything that ran on 2000/XP runs on newer windows anyway, and again there are virtual machines and gog etc

and anything post 32 bit seems fine on anything up to win 11 anyway, ime so far.

of course there are exceptions, but are they rare enough (and relatively minor types of incompatibility) such that we can conclude it isn't actually necessary to own old PCs to run 99% of old software?

(accepting of course that not everyone is going to buy gog versions of games they have on cd)

(and of course, we know that the hardware is the game for us 😀 so i'm not thinking in terms of losing old hardware, just accepting its not actually essential to running vintage software)

Hi,

No you don't. Vintage computers are not practical, but that isn't the point.

Most (but not all) of the experience can be replicated with an emulator...

But the part that cant, often TRULY CANT.

Hearing the grunt of the disk drives, the whirs and clunks of an mfm disk drive, or having the 'we did very unique stuff to the video signal expecting an ntsc television there!' Are things emulators dont provide.

Doing 'stupid shit' to the computer, like you did as a child, is not possible with an emulator.

(The early powermac beige units at my middle school in the 90s, had a VERY FUN bug! If you pressed the volume down button until it reached 0, then HELD vol down, while pressing vol up repeatedly, it would queue up the feedback alert beeps without starting them, until you released vol down. The same was true for holding vol up, and repeatedly pressing vol down. If you entered and held buttons right, you could queue up hundreds of 'not stoppable' beeps, which only became audible after you left the lab! So much fun! Wild Eep was my favorite to do that with!)

Do you NEED real HW? Usually no.

Do you get the full experience without it?

DEFINITELY NO.

Emulation doesn't offer a good simulation of the inconvenience and expense. That's what we're all after really.

Period correct hardware = period correct problems 😉

I grew up with vintage computers (late 90s/ early 00s), they were all heap of junk. Failing motherboards, failing hard drives, unexplainable oddities. Didn't take long for some hardware failure to occur.

This will probably be the strangest thing you've ever heard, but back then I was a sucker for Interstate '76, got one old computer (wasn't too old then) and for some reason there was another one available at the house that wasn't in use, I took a stick of RAM from the unused one and ever since then, Interstate '76 didn't play smoothly anymore, it's like it was running at 5 FPS. Back then, I didn't know the term, I didn't know much then, was just a dumb kid who was fascinated with computers and knew what component was what, but I'm not sure I knew much other tech details. I knew the first computer had a stick of 32 MB of RAM and the other had 16 MB and the stick from the other fit in the first, main one. And removing RAM didn't help, neither resetting BIOS and reinstalling Windows (98).

One might think my memories are distorted beyond recognition, but I swear I remember ever since poking under that computer's hood, it never worked the same again.

Years later I figured out I quite like older games on newer gear. Add in community patches with bug fixes and widescreen support and I was sold. Granted, games from that era were already considerably more advanced than the old games of the time.

If I got my hands on the really old computer these days, I imagine I'd be enthusiastic about it for a short while, then it'd be likely just collecting dust in the basement.

UCyborg wrote on 2024-06-17, 22:38:

I grew up with vintage computers (late 90s/ early 00s), they were all heap of junk. Failing motherboards, failing hard drives, unexplainable oddities. Didn't take long for some hardware failure to occur.

That's around the time of the capacitor plague. Probably not coincidental.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-06-17, 22:41:

UCyborg wrote on 2024-06-17, 22:38:

I grew up with vintage computers (late 90s/ early 00s), they were all heap of junk. Failing motherboards, failing hard drives, unexplainable oddities. Didn't take long for some hardware failure to occur.

That's around the time of the capacitor plague. Probably not coincidental.

That also was within the Pentium era, when affordable multimedia/internet PCs got in fashion.

Some of those, um, "experimental" 486 motherboards with VLB and or PCI slots aside,
everything released before Windows 95 was rather stable I think (standard AT compatible hardware; no Plug&Play or 586 APIC and buggy ACPI).

286/386 and early 486 motherboards and hard disks were all familiar (Baby AT format was common, multi-i/o cards, 40 line IDE cable).
This was before overdrive sockets, FSB jumpers and CPUs with different voltages were around.

At this time, everything used standard computer power (+12v, -12v, +5v, -5v) with +5v line still being important (strong).
And no +3.3v line yet, thank god. ATX was also far away, still. Normal CD-ROM drives used Panasonic, Sony, Mitsumi interface or SCSI, but no IDE/ATAPI.

The Pentium III platform also was quite mature by ~2000, I think.
Pentium II and Pentium IV had some issues, by comparison. Especially the latter.

That's at least how I remembered it. Maybe I was just lucky with the Pentium 3, not sure. 😅

Edit: What I meant to say is, that the PCs of the late 90s/early 2000s really had been mass produced in large scale.
(The only other occurrence I can think of was the mass production of "cheap" PC/XT motherboards in the 1980s, which came from the far east. )

The internet had been hyped and a lot of PC components had been of questionable quality back then.
PCs were sold to private people in super markets, just like C64 had been in the 1980s.
There was a huge competition going on. The Windows PC was being "in" like smart phones and tablets are now.

By contrast, a 386/486 PC in the early 1990s still was a piece of business equipment, primarily.
That's why the "boring" beige computer style was still the dominant appearance at the time.
(Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp also had followed the gray design language of that time, still.)
There had been home users, sure, but the components weren't being made with home users in mind.

By turn of the millennium, however, more and more PCs were being sold in stylish chassis.
The iMac G3 even went even further and adopted the same transparent look of, say, the GBC or N64 (transparent versions).
(Again, home users -ordinary people- had discovered this mythical "internet" at the time.
It became part of the public mind, I mean. In the 90s, the internet/web was still a nerdy thing.)

Its not technically required , but having a vintage machine can be fun, I was recently playing descent on my dos pc and enjoying it on a nice big 21 inch Trinitron G500 monitor and listening to the midi soundtrack on my roland SC55 connected to a bug free genuine MPU 401 and outputted through some roland MA20 speakers.

It felt really decadent.

But that said my hardware has been flaky from time to time , when it works its great but it does feel like I'm trying to hold onto sand and the longer time passes the further the hardware slips into the abyss of history past.

So I reckon the only real future proof solution is to preserve the software , as the hardware ain't much without software anyhow.

Not long ago I was pondering about what the best method would be as a little thought experiment, and it makes me wonder would it be possible to make some kind of universal decompiler that breaks each game down to some kind of pseudo code that can be converted to other languages and recompiled to any platform.

That way the source software can keep being reimplemented on newer and newer computers.

Something like that would be cool if it was even possible because even emulators aren't forever , people in the thread mentioned later windows versions breaking compatibility with even those so making agnostic master tape versions of games seems to be the only way I could think of keeping the software alive for decades to come , plus running the games natively has its perks.

I enjoy old hardware almost as much as the software that runs on it. 86Box is an amazing piece of software but for me it doesn't scratch the itch of installing and testing real parts.

There's just something so satisfying about getting real hardware up and running and physically experiencing its qualities (good and bad). It's also a blast seeing what it's still capable of. My P3 rig can do almost everything my modern machine can do, just with older and less featureful versions of the software. My 486 build can go online, read news, and host FTP and HTTP services. Plus it's just plain fun to toggle a big honkin' AT switch and listen to the mechanical beast come to life at 66MHz.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-06-18, 01:18:

everything released before Windows 95 was rather stable I think (standard AT compatible hardware; no Plug&Play or 586 APIC and buggy ACPI).

My 486 from 1994 is still working in its original condition. I replaced the PSU fan (too loud) and dumped the HDD (too slow and too loud). It even still runs the original install of Dos 6.2 and Windows, which I cloned along. Never was reinstalled. I added a later CD drive and CF. I also switched the working ISA IO for a working VLB IO, but still have the original working parts.

The Pentium III platform also was quite mature by ~2000, I think.

I later experimented with old Athlons, Geodes... In the end, I settled for retro BX440 with a P3 on it. Works like a charm.
My own memories of my Athlon age aren't too happy. Happiness came back with the OCed E4300. That thing was incredibly potent at the time and for the money. And it was amazingly stable too.

That's at least how I remembered it. Maybe I was just lucky with the Pentium 3, not sure. 😅

Me too.

My old machines have been gathering considerable dust since PCem v11 and my 486 and P2's been getting unstable since then.

Maybe it's the keyboards I keep hanging on to....

leileilol wrote on 2024-06-18, 06:29:

My old machines have been gathering considerable dust since PCem v11 and my 486 and P2's been getting unstable since then.

Making note: I need to look into this too!

Old hardware is a love and hate game for many people. It's lovely when it's working fine but it's dreadful when it's just kinda working. The passing of time makes everything look better and old hardware are no exception. Things that were crap 25 years ago didn't magically get good after spending 10 years in a damp basement just to be thrown around in recycling centers and manhandled by resellers. Building a good system that wasn't a budget excuse for a computer is a chore that could turn expensive real quick so I don't blame people who don't even want to bother with it. There is nothing wrong with budget stuff but it's magical when you can finally build your dream rig you couldn't afford as a kid.

Problem I have is all my hardware is old but what I want to play is older and the emulators for my windows era games are quite demanding for my hardware.
I’ve committed to some desktops to tinker with but I’ve nowhere to put them to come and go at them but both hardware and emulators require a considerable amount of tweaking with my novice knowledge back then is even worse now.
Tho atm having a real computer in comparison to emulation is better for me there is so many options and configurations in emulation I haven’t got a clue if I’ve cobbled together anything compatible that fully functions on my laptop.

I grew up when this old hardware was new and exciting, so emulation just doesn't hold my interest. Building machines with exotic hardware you didn't have back in the day is as fun and gaming on that machine.

When I got into old Amigas and macs that I didn't use at all when they were new, that was an eye-opening experience that emulation wouldn't have had either.

I think people who just like old simpler single user games should probably just emulate.

wierd_w wrote on 2024-06-17, 20:19:

Most (but not all) of the experience can be replicated with an emulator...

But the part that cant, often TRULY CANT.

Hearing the grunt of the disk drives, the whirs and clunks of an mfm disk drive, or having the 'we did very unique stuff to the video signal expecting an ntsc television there!' Are things emulators dont provide.

i think that's the part, though small, that matters for some people. although as mentioned certain things, like swapping CDs, are not missed

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-06-17, 20:55:

Emulation doesn't offer a good simulation of the inconvenience and expense. That's what we're all after really.

that made me laugh, its sort of true - the overcoming of old hardware challenges form the side quests that proves more memorable than the main quest