1998 - 1999 Retro PC Build - When Nostalgia Gets The Better of Me.

I've always enjoyed building my own machines, it's not something I get to do much these days as I don't buy anywhere near as much new equipment as I used to. For anyone that knows me, gaming is a bit of a hobby that got out of hand when I was a young singleton with too much time on my hands. A collection habit started slowly, I started buying a lot of older games and consoles that I either owned as a kid, wanted as a kid or just wanted to try. Before I knew it I was sitting with a room full of old games and consoles, most of which in all honesty I'll probably never play. Collecting consoles is easy, you buy a console and some games and as long as you look after them they'll always play in the same way as you remember them.

PC gaming has always been a bit different for me though, with the PC there was always a "next big game" coming along that would require new hardware to run at maximum settings. This resulted in far too many upgrades over the years, sometimes it would be a simple upgrade of a graphics card, other times it would be full motherboard, CPU, memory, power supply etc, sometimes issues were software created in that a newer operating system had lost certain features that the older game required. The problem with this is that when you upgrade specifically for the purpose of playing a newer generation of games, you immediately lose compatibility with the previous generations. It's only now looking back that I can see so many games I used to love playing sitting in boxes in my attic that I will never play again, simply because I no longer have the hardware required to play them. Something must be done about this situation!

I still have a lot of older spare PC parts kicking around doing nothing in my garage, but no complete systems. My idea is to build a new "old" PC capable of playing these older titles using these bits and what I can find on eBay or in the wild. I'll aim to keep the internals of the systems to a specific time-frame, but won't limit myself to newer cases, fans, heatsinks or any part that may reduce negative factors of using parts of this era (such as heat, noise and energy efficiency) that have no performance or compatibility impact. The aim is not to build the "ultimate" machine from a specific time-frame, just a spec that would be broadly compatible with the games I played back in that time-frame. The idea ready, now all I need to decide is where to begin.

Specing and Part Selection

The earliest "good" PC I owned and actually played games on was back in 1994, a laptop computer with a 486DX2 66mhz CPU and monochrome screen. This was pretty much used to play old DOS games back in the day such Monkey Island and Civilization. I don't think I want to start there. Fast forward to 1998 is when I ordered parts for my first (then considered mid-range) "Custom PC". Here's the original spec.

AMD K62 350 Mhz
First International Computers VA503+  Super Socket 7 Motherboard (AT)

128MB PC 100
Jetway Wonder 4000 (S3 Savage 3D 8MB)

Skywell Magic 3D II (3DFX Voodoo 2 12MB)

Creative Soundblaster AWE64
Iomega Zipdrive

Floppy

Creative 36X CD-ROM
6.5GB Seagate HDD

Generic Whitebox AT Minitower
15" Generic Monitor
Generic 3 button comm port mouse
Generic AT keyboard

A build covering the 1998-1999 "era" would be a great place to start. At the time this great little PC opened up a whole new world of PC games for me and introduced me to hardware 3D acceleration. I remember great titles I instantly fell in love with such as Unreal, Unreal Tournament, HalfLife, Kingpin, Ultima Online, Civilization 2, Blade Runner, Red Alert 2 and many, many more that I've probably forgotten about that I'm soon to re-discover. This system also introduced me to the world of online-gaming for the first time. Utilizing the speed of a Diamond V.90 56K modem the first online game I ever played was Unreal - it was literally Unreal at the time; unlike anything I had experienced from anything I ever played previously. I also got heavily into Ultima online and at the time it was responsible for me receiving a £400 phone bill!

I don't have much left of this PC, so I decided to scout around for parts. I was lucky enough to find a Pentium 2 (SLOT A) 400Mhz and 256MB PC 100 in the electronic waste disposal bin at work, so I salvaged those. 

I'm trying to be sensible here, while money isn't an issue I don't want to spend a fortune on this build! I went to eBay and looked at AT boards, but I couldn't bring myself to limit myself to AT cases, comm port mouses and 5-pin din keyboards (I know converters exist but it's just something else I would have to buy). I then settled on an ATX board. I picked up a Gigabyte GA-6BXE motherboard for £6 - It also came with an additional 256MB RAM and a Pentium 3 650Mhz. I'm going to initially go with the Pentium 2 as it's closer to my original 1998 spec and I seem to remember that the fastest CPU at that time was the Pentium 2 450Mhz. Being SLOT 1 makes it incredibly easy to swap out the CPU in the event a later games requires a little bit more ooomph! 

I've found a 40GB  5400 RPM Western Digital IDE hard disk, a IDE DVD RW,  a floppy disk drive ,a Soundblaster Live 5.1 and an old Enermax 350watt PSU in my garage. As I will be installing most games from their original CD-ROM based media a good CD/DVD drive is a very important component. My Creative drive from back in the day sounded like a vacuum cleaner, so the opportunity to swap that out for a newer-gen (quieter) drive is crucial. Perhaps the most import piece of this build I still owned - my 3DFX Voodoo 2, never been able to let it go it seems. The oldest AGP card I could find in my garage was a Geforce 4 440MX 64MB - far too late for this build so again I took to eBay. 

Now, I remember back in the day being really frustrated with my S3 Savage 3D card - reading about it now confirms what I originally figured, it was a good card, crippled by poor drivers. I searched for a Savage 3D but couldn't find one on eBay at all - that says a lot about this card, I think everyone who had one probably binned it! I did find a S3 Savage 4 8MB and bought that. I remember when Unreal Tournament was released back in 1999 that the game came with S3 compressed textures specifically for that card. I tried this back in the day and it looked great, it was just a shame the card wasn't powerful enough to retain a playable framerate with these compressed textures turned on! As I planned to experiment with this and the hardware was dirt cheap (talking £4-7 per card) I also bought a (brand new) S3 Savage 4 16MB, a 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 and an Elsa Erazor 3 (Nvidia TNT 2 32MB).  It would later be interesting to find out which of these I'd settle on for this build.

Now I've got most of the bits, I needed something to put it all inside. I settled on the CoolerMaster K380  at £23.99 from eBuyer.com - design wise it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I always liked CoolerMaster cases, this was the right pricepoint, it looks good, has 2x 3.5 external drive bays and has good cooling features. The case has support for 2X 120MM fans, which will be a great improvement over any older case I could find (my original machine back in the day had a 60MM delta "screamer" as an exhaust fan). 

The Build Process

The actual build itself was a straight forward process, the only things that slowed me down were the lack of manual for my motherboard (which I later found) and figuring out the CPU jumper settings was a bit of a throwback, I made sure to flash the system board BIOS with the latest binary available to try and avoid any compatibility issues. The CoolerMaster K380 case was a pleasure to work inside, no sharp edges and good layout, it provided ample space for all components. I was expecting there to be issues when using a bottom-mounted PSU - but none were experienced. Eventually I'll swap out the power supply with a newer more efficient model when time/money allows.

I fitted rounded IDE ribbon cables and used a few cable ties to hold the power supply cables away from the case window area, this immediately improved the look inside the case, but initially I wasn't so worried about cable management. 

The Final Spec is:

Pentium 2 MMX 400Mhz CPU (SLOT1)

Gigabyte GA-6BXE Motherboard

512MB PC100 (4X 128MB)

S3 Savage 4 16MB

3D FX Voodoo 2 12MB 

Creative Soundblaster 5.1
40GB Western Digital IDE HDD

Intel GT 1000 Network Card
4 Port USB 2.0 Card with 1x Internal Header (to connect to front panel)

Liteon DVD RW Drive

Floppy Disk

Enermax 350 Watt Power Supply

Coolermaster K380

The Case all sealed up and ready to go.

Inside the belly of the beast - still a bit of work to do with those cables!

Power on and lights on

Operating System Choice

Originally I had planned to install Windows 95 OSR2.1 on this machine, the sole reason for this was that I had the original media. It was a strange thing that when I ordered the parts for my original machine back in 1998 the store assistant advised me strongly not to use Windows 98 with a K6/2 Processor. He informed me of the Windows 95 and 98 both had problems with AMD processor faster than 350Mhz - this would turn out to be true for Windows95 where a patch was available to address this issue, but he also advised me at the time that Windows98 also had the same issue, but a patch was not at the time available for it. As I didn't have any Internet access at the time I couldn't confirm either way, I purchased the Windows 95 OSR 2.1 CD. Looking back now, he probably just had a load of old Windows 95 copies he was trying to get rid of!

I installed Windows 95 on the machine without any issues, having already created a bootdisc the lack of bootable CD media wasn't an issue to me, but once everything was installed I soon found it very painful when adding/removing new hardware. Every time having to "Insert the Windows 95 CD" for every action proved to be a real pain. Windows 98 is similar in this way, but it at least loads some of the most general, generic drivers onto the hard disk during the installation process. After a frustrating afternoon of this I was bored and I realized there was no advantage of compatibility between the two operating systems, the only factor drawing me to Windows 95 in the first place was out of nostalgia. I decided to switch to Windows 98 SE.

Following installation I had a bit of a job to track down all the various drivers required. It's amazing how many manufacturer's won't supply legacy drivers for their own products! It was a somewhat painful experience to locate them, but I think I'm running the latest drivers for everything.

Windows 98SE Install and ready to run

Installing Games

So far I've installed and played the following games without any issues. In most cases I've patched the games to the latest released version. 

Full Throttle (DOS)
The Dig (DOS)
Monkey Island (DOS)
Quake + GL Quake

Malice Quake addon
Quake 2 

Star Wars Jedi Knight

Westwood's Blade Runner

Star Trek Klingon Honour Guard
Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D
Star Trek Armada

Resident Evil 

Kingpin

MechWarrior 2

Blood 2

MDK + 3DFX Patch

Turok the Dinosaur Hunter 2

Unreal

Unreal Tournament

System Shock 2

Syndicate Wars (DOS)

Theme Hospital (DOS)

Hexen 2
Warcraft 2

Starcraft 

Soldier of Fortune

Panzer Dragoon

G-Police

Severence

Populous - The Beginning

BattleZone 2 : Combat Commander

Dungeon Keeper 2

Hitman Codename 47

Command and Conquer : Red Alert

Quake 3 Arena
Dune 2000
Freespace
Rune

Star Wars: Xwing Alliance

Star Trek New Worlds

Star Wars : Shadows of the Empire

Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Civilization 2

Alpha Centari + Expansion
Sega Rally
Crimson Skies
Virtua Fighter PC
Sonic R
Sudden Strike

That's a fair amount of games installed

Performance for the most part is very good on the games tested. It's true most people would question why I've opted for the Savage 4 in favour of the TNT2, although the TNT 2 provides superior D3D performance, I actually found the Direct 3D Savage performance to be quite good, as with the TNT2 the card supports 32-bit colour and image quality is also very good,  it's actually far superior to the quality of Voodoo 2.  S3's Metal API also can be used in various Unreal engine games like Rune, Undying, Unreal and Unreal Tournament, the latter uses S3 compressed textures in. I'd argue that including the Savage increases the systems compatibility. One future possible improvement wold be to install a PCI Savage and keep this only for Metal games.

Peripherals

Now I had to consider how the PC would be used. Back in the day I would have had a CRT monitor, basic keyboard and mouse. I'm not going back to a CRT as these things used to give me awful headaches. I do have a 17" non-widescreen TFT. This would serve as a monitor. A basic Microsoft keyboard and mouse with PS/2 connectors. I'll also need a joystick or controller for some games and it's lucky I've still got my Microsoft Sidewinder Game-pad. This little controller is a practically indestructible clone of the Sega Saturn controller - as it was very popular back in the day it provides great compatibility with games of this era.

Ye old faithful Sidewinder Pad, back in action after at least 13 years.

The Play-Test

With all that out the way It's time to see what this thing can do. I'll be using this PC to play everything from DOS games right up to early 2000's titles.  Here's a a few observations made on gaming performance:

Full Throttle and The Dig

Two Lucasart's favourites of mine, I never did complete "the Dig" so I may be tempted to give this a proper go now. Both games worked flawlessly, even the auto configuration in the DOS-based installer detected my sound-card as Soundblaster 16 and it just worked, no messing around! Full throttle is one title that will benefit greatly from having a reliable CD-ROM drive as most of the game is streamed direct from disc during play.

Lucasart's Full Throttle - It just works!

GL Quake & GL Malice

Quake runs very well using both the Voodoo 2 and the Savage 4. The increased resolution and better quality image offered by the Savage 4 give it the edge here, but for sheer nostalgia, the "Voodoo look" will ensure it get's used.

Red Alert and Dune 2000, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft

All these games, while not requiring 3D acceleration, they do require good 2D graphics paired with a  good processor to avoid slowdown. Although truthfully I haven't played much yet, but the graphics seemed to run at a very consistent frame-rate with a large number of units on the screen. I did have to reduce the mouse speed in all the above titles as the scroll rate was too fast. This is usually an indication that processor runs too fast for the game. Starcraft is the most demanding title here, but this system takes it on with ease.

Unreal & Unreal Tournament

Unreal looks just like I remember, plays great with this Voodoo 2 at 800x600 with all the details way up, but I can't help but feel that image quality isn't that great. Trying the Savage with S3 Metal API yields a dramatic improvement in both quality and speed. In the past I couldn't get Unreal to work correctly with my old Savage 3D, but it looks like they had all the bugs worked out of it by the time the Savage 4 reached maturity. It now looks like Metal was the optimal way to play the original Unreal!

Unreal Tournament is a very similar story to Unreal. UT is a little bit more demanding than the original Unreal, so much so that it actually motivated me to upgrade my PC back in the day to an AMD Athlon system. Looking at it now, running on this P2 with 3DFX Voodoo fares a bit better than my old K62, but it can still be choppy at times with a lot of objects on the screen at once. Running on the Savage with the compressed textures also reveals this limitation, while the compressed textures look great, the associated performance penalty would get you massacred online back in the day. So while UT runs well enough to play now, if you wanted to play it "seriously" then I believe a CPU upgrade would still be required to appreciate it fully.

Quake 2, Kingpin and Soldier of Fortune

Quake 2 plays fantastically well on this system no matter what graphics card is used so there isn't any issues here. Image quality wise the Savage is ahead of the Voodoo 2, but a more consistent frame rate is achieved via the Voodoo 2.

Kingpin, based on the Quake 2 engine also plays well on both. I did notice a Gamma issue when using the 3DFX card, the gamma had to be adjusted near minimum in the 3DFX control panel prior to starting Kingpin or the colour would look pretty psychedelic.

Soldier of Fortune is one of those titles that appeared long after it should have. Again, using the Quake 2 engine at the time when Quake 3 was already released was seen as an issue by some people back in the day. Despite Raven claiming the engine was "heavily modified" it still runs very well on this PC, even being able to use the compressed textures and retain very good frame rates on the Savage4.

Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Quake 3 engine games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein don't generally play well with the 3DFX Voodoo card. I've found the Savage 4 proved better image quality and more consistent framerate in these titles. Although the performance is decent enough to play, I think a CPU upgrade would probably be very beneficial to these titles.

BladeRunner
Back in the day I really enjoyed this game, I always thought it was ahead of it's time. The only issue I had back in the day was that it in order to play the game with a graphics card with more than 4MB RAM you had to disable direct draw. Don't ask me why, it worked but it was a pain in the backside having to remember to do it all the time. I'm pleased to say that I haven't had this issue this time around. The game is actually even better than I remembered! An underrated masterpiece.

Westwood's BladeRunner doesn't get the credit it deserves! Great game!

Serious Sam

Although Serious Sam came out in 2001 and the "minimum" CPU spec is a Pentium 2 400MHZ the game runs very well under OpenGL when using the Savage, I can turn up all the details and even used the compressed textures and retain a very playable good frame-rate at 800x600.

With the Voodoo 2 using "voodoo 2 compatibility mode" to make the game playable, all features must be set to minimum and ran at 640x480! It's not clear if this is due to the superiority of the Savage hardware or simply a result the limited time spent on developing support for (then rapidly ageing) 3DFX hardware.

Improvements for the Future

• Add an additional 3DFX Voodoo 2 to be installed in SLI - this would allow games to be played at 1024x768. 
• Replace the Power supply with a newer (quieter and more energy efficient) model.
• A fan speed controller will be installed to reduce noise.
• A new Heatsink/Fan for the Pentium 2 would be nice as the one I found only had a passive cooler installed and there are no mounting holes for a fan.
• Upgrade the 17" monitor to at least a 19" one - my my modern 24" monitor has really spoiled me it would seem! 17" just seems way too small.

Conclusion

I've built a solid PC that can play games from 1995 - early 2000's without any issues.It can sit in my living room next to my modern PC without any negative comments from my wife(who generally tells me to throw away the rubbish old PC's cluttering up the nice modern looking house) The system boasts good compatibility with a mix of DOS titles thanks to S3's solid VESA support and Creative's Soundblaster Emulation. The machine can handle a mix of different API's under Windows. Direct3D, Direct Draw, OpenGL, Glide and S3 Metal give it high compatibility with the majority of Windows titles from the early 1995-2000's titles. After this time-frame most games started to look for hardware T&L. Testing later games, the constraint on the system is undoubtedly the P2 400Mhz. While I own a Slot 1 P3 650Mhz I found when trying this that it caused some older titles to run too fast, but being a Slot based processor has the advantage of being easily swapped out. I'll stick with the P2 for the moment, but this, coupled with the need for hardware T&L in newer titles gives me another exciting opportunity to build another system that will cover the 2000-2002 gaming period! :)

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