Building a retro-gaming PC

[Fubar512 1,350]

With the interest that the 1990-flight sim thread stirred up, I'd thought that I'd share this.  It's just one of the retro-build videos on the "Phil's PC Lab" channel on Youtube.

 

 

[+Muesli 2,161]

I just use DOS-Box on my current PC and am pretty chuffed with it. No need for al the extra vintage/retro hardware
for which I have no money and no room! ;-)

[+JonathanRL 974]

yeah, I agree. Between virtual drives and dosbox, there is little need for me to have an extra computer that I cannot even record on.

[+Gunrunner 314]

Especially considering that most legacy had - by modern standards - crappy components (capacitors notably), making it difficult to find legacy components being cheap, stable and reliable at least for a few years.

 

Nowadays, with the exception of a few titles from the late Windows 98 to early Windows Vista, everything works acceptably through emulators and virtual machines.

[Fubar512 1,350]

On that same channel, you'll find a build where he uses a K6-III to accomplish the same thing.  Many of those older games will not run on modern CPUs.

 

Also, capacitors can be replaced. I have done it myself on a few occasions, it just takes a little bit of skill with a soldering iron to accomplish.

[+Gunrunner 314]

Nope, no problem at all with old games (most emulators allow you to adjust clock speed and CPU identifiers to suit your needs), emulation and virtual machines have come a long way lately. It's really only a handful of titles from between 1999 and 2006 which are problematic because they expect direct access to GPU functions no longer present in modern hardware, but even that is becoming less of a problem, some have already been updated for Steam or GOG re-releases, others have wrappers in the work.

 

I'm no stranger to replacing components but it's just not worth the time and effort, especially considering capacitors might be only the most obvious problems. If anything else fails, you are up for hours to days of figuring out the problem, sourcing the replacement, nah, it's not worth the hassle anymore unless that part is what you find enjoyable, which is perfectly fine but no longer my cup of tea, and I have enough hardware around already.

[Fubar512 1,350]

The issue often isn't clock speed, it's physical architecture.  Some of the early titles run a bit too fast on processors that sport L1 or L2 cache.

 

Of course, as you've already mentioned, an outfit such GOG makes all this a moot point, with their updated (re) releases, and the various work-arounds that they've applied to them to make those old titles Windows 7 & 8 compliant.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Fubar512

[+Gunrunner 314]

For early DOS games (from the 8088 to the early 486 era), the issue is very much clock speed as many just assume a clock speed and don't compensate, making them stupidly fast on modern hardware (they were already too fast at the time).

 

When it comes to cache architecture I'm not aware of any game having problems with that but I'd be interested if you have the time to give me a few examples.

[Fubar512 1,350]

For early DOS games (from the 8088 to the early 486 era), the issue is very much clock speed as many just assume a clock speed and don't compensate, making them stupidly fast on modern hardware (they were already too fast at the time).

 

When it comes to cache architecture I'm not aware of any game having problems with that but I'd be interested if you have the time to give me a few examples.

 

Watch the video, and you'll see.

[+Gunrunner 314]

Proving me right once more, I quote, starting from 4:44 :

"Games such as Wing Commander or Test Drive III however run way too fast. To turn the machine into a 386 we access the BIOS and disable both the processor cache as well as the motherboard cache; Now Wing Commander and Test Drive III will run just fine.[...]To turn the machine into a 486 we disable only the processor cache but leave the motherboard cache enabled; This is a great settings for games that run too slow on a 386 but too fast on a Pentium; Theme Park is such a game."

 

At no point is it suggested it's a problem with cache, but with execution speed. It's not a cache architecture incompatibility, it's an instructions-per-second problem.

I'll admit it makes it not truly a clock speed problem either though, but since some games are actually clock-speed sensitive, it's a better bet to use underclocking than cache starvation to tailor performance for old games, it's also a much more fine-grained solution, provided your hardware supports it of course.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Gunrunner