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old gaming box

8

84TAVeRT

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
107
Location
Claremore, OK
my old gaming box from around 1998

dual ppro 180mhz overclocked to 200mhz
dual boot win95 and winnt 4.0
Diamond Stealth 3D 4mb pci video card
12mb Voodoo2 (STB BlackMagic)
IDE 850mb harddrive (win95)
SCSI 3gb harddrive (winnt4)
2 SCSI 4x CD-Roms
Soundblaster 16
Full Tower ATX case with 350watt PSU

I realized today that I still have most of this machine... it is mostly in the for sale section right now...

just reminiscing...

what was your gaming rig from the 90s...

later,
Chris
 
I had plenty of gaming rigs in the 90's

286/12 Got it for school and still played some old DOS games like AD&D gold box SSI games.

386/40 This was my 1st built from parts machine and was a great DOS gamer, also put a 40mhz FPU and 16mb of expensive ram to run Win3.1 and excel.

486/40 then 80 then 133 oc to 160 VLB system. Speedy system for the last generation DOS games, network play. Think I had a caching controller with 16MB on this one and a 2mb Tseng et4000w32 video card. If you recall the Treasure Chest company out of computer shopper, I got some parts from there.

Pentium 166 eventually upgraded to 233mmx. I recall spending a ton of money on a matrox Millenium for this machine, and later mail ordered an orchid righteous 3d Voodoo1 for this system and waited months for decent 3d games to play. I think this is the rig I later stuffed a $1100 2x HP CDR into (bleeding edge back then)

P2-333 overclocked to 400 100 FSB, this is when I got into voodoo 2's and Aureal sound cards. Also had a Nvidia TnT1 AGP (1st AGP card I got) in there and talk about issue with drivers when it was new.

P3-733 I thing I purchased a Voodoo 5 5500 and it would not fit in the case of the p4-400 so I ordered parts for a complete new system.

Thats about it for the 90's, my last gaming rig was put together in 2001 and I still use it since I went into retro gaming.

Most of these systems have been recreated with better hardware in the last 5 years to replay all the games I never finished or never had.

BTW why would you use a dual Ppro for gaming back in the 90's when only a couple games (Falcon comes to mind) used dual processors, and 16 bit code ran slow on the Ppro plus the premium for that MB and chip was huge?
 
Yeah but ppro's are pretty awesome chips still, combined with a little rarity now they make a nice semi-vintage system..well..ok semi-obsolete system.

I wasn't going to reply since I think most 90's systems are off topic but I guess my gaming system would have still been my Zenith Z-151. Was our first home computer and I'm not really sure why we didn't upgrade much past that.. I guess my folks were using their computers at work and we didn't have that much money to game so 8088 was fine. The next upgrade was a homebrew 386 system which made the Zenith more officially mine (also led me to be the first to connect it to the phone and start checking out BBSes and tying up the phone line at all hours of the day/night).

The 386 was eventually replaced for a Packard B(H)ell 486 and then finally games started to really appeal to us graphically and sound-wise. It was the first time we could almost get a game similar to an Amiga 2000 running with our first Adlib soundcard and some midi software as a gift to me on my birthday from my parents.
 
i guess this is better served as a history of gaming rigs :)

my dad and i used to upgrade computers for people out of our house...

so i go the leftovers i had 8088s and an IBM AT and various drives of different sizes... i had an mfm 10mb half height drive that wouldnt start turning on its own... so i had to kick start it when i turned on the computer :)

my first serious game pc was a 286-12 point of sale system that we upgraded for a flower shop... i had a monochrome vga monitor... and an original sound blaster...

after that i had several 386 sx computers and some 386dx models...

first one i built new was a 486slc33 with 16mb of ram and a 40mb hard drive... the memory was like $150

i had a 486dx40 with 4mb ram when i went to college...

eventually i got a dx2-66 and then a dx4-133 and then a pentium overdrive

i had a p60 i built to play doom on a lan... arcnet :D

i built several cyrix p120+ - p233+ computers... i liked the cyrix processors...

i always kept my 8bit soundblaster for games until i got an sb16... and the ppro :)

a brief history...

later,
Chris
 
Unknown_K said:
BTW why would you use a dual Ppro for gaming back in the 90's when only a couple games (Falcon comes to mind) used dual processors, and 16 bit code ran slow on the Ppro plus the premium for that MB and chip was huge?
Click to expand...

i was always getting used hardware... and i got a great deal on the dual processor board... i only ran 1 processor for a long time... till i came across a matched pair for cheap...

i actually had to modify a case to put my ppro in because atx cases were so expensive... i originally used a mini AT desktop case with the back cutout for the atx io panel and ran it without the cover so that i could mount the psu upside down with just 2 screws...

necessity is the mother of invention :)

later,
Chris
 
84TAVeRT said:
i was always getting used hardware... and i got a great deal on the dual processor board... i only ran 1 processor for a long time... till i came across a matched pair for cheap...

i actually had to modify a case to put my ppro in because atx cases were so expensive... i originally used a mini AT desktop case with the back cutout for the atx io panel and ran it without the cover so that i could mount the psu upside down with just 2 screws...

necessity is the mother of invention :)

later,
Chris
Click to expand...

I still have a Dual PPro system and goodness is it a mess.
It's a proprietary AST server board but I carved up a case and a PSU to get it to work as my first dual processor pc. It's a mess inside.
Unfortunately over the years I seem to have lost track of the expensive 256Mb of 5V DIMMS I had for it as well as other things like the side of the case, the scsi drives the opticals etc.
 
Well it was a cool toy and I had the cash at the time. I did make Playstation and SEGA backups for people to offset the cost a little, but mostly I burned music compilation CDs for my self and backed up files among other things. You know what it is like when you are in your 20's and have cash to blow.

I still have a PPro in use as my server in the basement, but I took out the 200's and put in 333 overdrives (Intel PR440FX board). I think I have been using it since the late 90's before Win2k was even out. One of the most reliable machines I have had considering it was running 24/7 for just about all its life. Oh and it has 1GB (4x256MB) of EDO ECC Buffered DIMMs in it (have to love ebay and obsolete stuff nobody wants). Come to think of it my first purchase on ebay (and paypal) was in 2000 or 2001 when I purchased 2 x 128MB DIMMs for that server

I think I have a gaming box for just about every era from the XT to whatever was out in the late 1990's.
 
I have a few nice systems from the 1990's

1.
Dell Precision 400
Dual Pentium II 333 Mhz 256 MB of ECC ram
RagePro Turbo 8 MB PCI tuner card
4 GB IDE harddrive
CD-rom drive

2.
IBM 365
Dual PentiumPro 200 Mhz 128 MB of EDO ram
4 MB Matrox Millenium II video card
some small IDE harddrive
CD-rom drive

3.
HP Server
Dual Pentium II Xeon 550 Mhz 512 MB of SDram
Geforce II AGP 32 MB video card
two 10k rpm SCSI dardrives
1x CD burner
1x DVD reader
 
I got another system all setup and ready to go as well.
I like the case too.
P2082515.jpg

I maxed it with 128mb ram dropped in a 233Mhx mmx Pentium and also added a 10gb hard drive running 98se (I already got a box running 95). After installing a 56k modem, network card and Sound Blaster card I only have two PCI slots left and now I just have to locate two more STB Voodoo2 cards so I can add 3D acceleration.
 
NeXT said:
I got another system all setup and ready to go as well.
I like the case too.
P2082515.jpg

I maxed it with 128mb ram dropped in a 233Mhx mmx Pentium and also added a 10gb hard drive running 98se (I already got a box running 95). After installing a 56k modem, network card and Sound Blaster card I only have two PCI slots left and now I just have to locate two more STB Voodoo2 cards so I can add 3D acceleration.
Click to expand...

What exact model Aptiva is that where the drives are seperate from the main unit?
 
The handle on top says it's a 2159-S78 Aptiva. It use some sort of funky 8-bit ISA card but that's a regular cd and floppy drive in the box.
 
that's a great setup for older games. there's always DOSBOX but in some situations it's not as good as the real thing.

p.s. you might consider replacing NT4 with win2k for the dual boot, it should be fine. i ran it on a p233 mmx for a while and it was very quick.
 
NeXT said:
I got another system all setup and ready to go as well.
I like the case too.
P2082515.jpg

I maxed it with 128mb ram dropped in a 233Mhx mmx Pentium and also added a 10gb hard drive running 98se (I already got a box running 95). After installing a 56k modem, network card and Sound Blaster card I only have two PCI slots left and now I just have to locate two more STB Voodoo2 cards so I can add 3D acceleration.
Click to expand...

AHAH! So you're the one who stole my Aptiva! (I'm kidding :p)

Any old computer from the 90s makes a good computer to play DOS games; i like doing DOS gaming on my thinkpad or Aptiva.
 
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