Fantastic video. Building 90's-era PCs is strangely therapeutic, actually. Made more than I can remember, and man, this one's quite impressive indeed. Love my own SLI'd V2 rig, and that's awesome that had the boxes!
Lazy Game Reviews Oh wow. Thanks for dropping by and commenting. This means a lot, I watch a lot of your videos - you're very good at what you do. I had a blast building this, I'm considering a 386 next but I'll see how I go with this one. Couldn't believe my luck with the boxed V2s!
I remember when a voodoo 2 was a BEAST. Then I got a Voodoo 3 and I was the coolest kid in town. Those were the days. I had been running Half Life in software rendering mode and I was blown away when I got the V3 up in there. I was only about 12 but I do remember distinctly saying ''Graphics can't possibly get better than this, ever'' I think I've said that twice more since haha.
China Hog You said that, but you were a kid ... but someone did worse ... Bill gates ! (if i remember HE said that) He said that nobody would need more than 640kb in a PC ... lol
Good build. I just built mine about 2 months ago. Picked up on 19" CRT monitor also. I missed out on a lot of good PC games in the late 90s bc the computer my family had couldn't support what those games required and not much money floating around to buy upgrades at the time. 20 some years later the top end parts (for the time) are cheap and now I can play whatever I missed out on. Great video!
Exactly why I built mine in the first place. Collector prices have exploded in recent years. There was a time when old PC parts and PC games were cheap because nobody could be bothered with the faff. You can't get Voodoo 2s for cheap in 2018 😦
Thanks a bunch David! I'm working on getting a benchmark video done. I'm having some snags getting a good video output from the machine, but the video will land soon. This was so much fun I want to do another one, but I have literally no reason for doing so.
The Game Show Does it run early DOS games well? I know a lot of people over on Vogons and Tech Forum have told me some hardcore users have built early 90s rigs and late 90s to compensate for the hardware differences. As some "speed sensitive" DOS games require very fine tuned hardware. But yeah I'm on a parts collection hunt right now. Trying to find anything in new condition is close to impossible though. For the sake of nostalgia I'm trying to locate a good Voodoo card but the Nvidia fan in me is pulling towards a TNT. Just curious though, were you mostly going from Ebay and personal connections or are there any surplus outlets you'd recommend?
Hi David, thanks for dropping in. VOGONS is an invaluable resource, I found the community over there to be straight-talking, no-nonsense types which helped the build no end. Early DOS games can be finicky on this rig - especially speed sensitive types. There are plenty of apps you can get to step your CPU speed down for games of this nature. My biggeest hurdle was sound. I ended up getting two sound cards - one for Windows, one for DOS. A bit cheaty, but it works. Regarding acquisitions - eBay is a good place to start but unless you're patient you'll be paying top whack. Check out any friends or family that are likely to have an old PC kicking about - it's likely they'll have a mobo / RAM - even a Voodoo just knocking about. One man's trash is another man's treasure!
+Đaniel Thanks so much. I love this machine. I've got a few "Five of the Best ... " videos coming out, celebrating all the awesome games I've been playing on this. I also have another hardware video about to drop. If you're into retro PC stuff, please consider tapping that subscribe button. x
I wanted to build my own 90s gaming PC too for a while now, those awesome nostalgic memories are always coming back. My build is going to have a Pentium MMX 233Mhz, 64mb or ram, a CD drive, floppy disk, already have a Creative Graphics Blaster Exxtreme GPU 4mb from my 90s computer and also a 3DFX Voodoo 2 12mb from Creative as well, need another Voodoo 2 for that SLI awesomeness, 30gb HDD already have and missing the tower which I will have to buy. Windows 98 SE is going to be my OS. Great vid.
BigNick Digger Yeah there was no way I wasn't going to load up Grim Fandango as the first game. I practically built this PC to play that game. It's every bit as good as I remember. PS4 pre-order for sure.
Ah, Windows 98 SE, what a wonderful system. And a lovely computer as well, overall, matches most of my old rig, besides me only having one Voodoo 2 card of course.
evilmiera Thanks. You know what, 98SE is really good! Everything about this build was a ton of fun - subscribe if you want to see my follow up video, with benchmarks!
PCfuntimez You're a babe! TBF assembling this PC for £60 was mega-tough, as the Voodoos are subject to Hipster-Tax these days. That said, every other component is cheap as (micro)chips. You can easily build this exact PC for under £100. I've got an even older DOS build coming up, which was an absolute steal!
The Game Show Me too ! I'd love to have a voodoo card ... (the only way to buy hardware for me is garage sales) I hope i will find one shortly for my pentium MMX ! I'd like to find a SS7 motherboard too, because I have a k6-2 450 that needs a motherboard ... (and it would be perfect for a voodoo² sli !). I'm also looking for sound blaster awe and 16 for all my computers (I also have a 486 that has a vibra from 1997... The computer is a bit too munch outdated for that card ...)
Deksor Bargains can be had almost anywhere, there's no need to pay silly prices. Garage sales are a solid resource . Here in the UK we have the excellent tradition of the car boot sale, which is essentially 200 people all holding a garage sale on the same day, all in a big field. I've written a three-part guide to building retro gaming PCs, I'll get that recorded and uploaded as I think you and others would like the content.
I live in france, so I know this kind of garage sale (we call it "vide grenier" ^^). Sometimes you get 50 peoples selling things at the same time, and sometimes, you have 1000 ! But sometimes you will find nothing with 1000 peoples and in a random one late in the day when peoples are leaving, you find the computer motherload for nothing ^^. I've found a lot of very old computers this year ! I don't know if that kind of garage sale exist in america, but if it doesn't, it's sad for them ... But old computer parts are harder to find, most of the time you find a complete system. To begin with it's excellent, but when you want the best computer for retro, it's annoying and after that you get 5 old computers unused because they do not have what you wanted ... But I think i will find something soon ^^ (I guess that you know that there is the biggest garage sale of the europe soon, in Lille. I hope I will find something there !)
Omg, I've been looking for that case everywhere. It was discontinued in the early 2000s. I got a frys electronics version of it on a craigslist and I love it. Wish I could get another for a friend
Alexander Keith Tough break. I bought this case a year before I made the video, on eBay. I've tried finding the seller since but no joy. I wish I could be more help dude.
Alexander Keith www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811180012 There's the listing, but it's out of stock. Search for "CF 2029" or similar product names and you're sure to find something.
Thank you very much! If you want to see how it actually performs (hint; well!), here it is running Half Life at max th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html And the Benchmarks (hint; very good!) th-cam.com/video/cLFad5qiB3o/w-d-xo.html
Looking at the complete build, I would make some changes. First up. The GFX card. If you want to get the best signal, to feed the V2-SLI, then get a Matrox. If the G400 is chosen, you need a bit more beefy CPU's. In this case, get a P3-500mhz. This is an absolute killer combo. G400 + P3-500 + V2-SLI. Then there is the issue of the Soundcard. Now... Change that to an AWE64-Gold. You will have a complete retro feeling, and the machine is good enough to run NFS-2K and UT99. Perhaps get a G400-Max instead of the G400. Just keep away from the G450, as it is slower than the G400. Yeah... The Matrox is THE killer cards from the year 1999. OpenGL is fixed in the latest drivers from Matrox, and it kick's ass on the V2. V2-SLI is allmost as fast as the V3-3000. Sometimes slightly faster, sometimes slightly slower. Only V3-3500, wich can be bought cheap as an Compaq OEM, is faster than V2-SLI.
+brostenen Thanks for the comments buddy. The Matrox Milennium is an oft-touted 2D card for this build, and I was looking out for a Matrox card, but I got the Riva card for free, and I'm a cheapskate :-) The machine does actually have an AWE64 Gold, alongside the SB Live!
The G400 has much, much, much better picture quality than say a TNT2-Ultra. And on my K6-III-400, the TNT2-Ultra scores 2800+ in 3Dmark99 and the G400 scores 3100+ points. And the G400 scales extremely well. It would be an absolutely great card in a P3-800 (last P3 from 1999)
*The* reason to build a windows 98 SE machine is for Aureal A3D and a proper CRT. If you're going to go with soundblaster live it just defeats the purpose. Save the money and pick up a junker pentium 4 with AGP-anything (probably an MX440 or FX5200) that you can barely give away; just check that the caps aren't shot to hell. Then get a nice aureal A3D 2.0 card and a CRT.
IMO you can build a PC for any reason you like. Funnily enough I did a video on building a super budget retro PC with a P4 and an FX5200 (I had a meme MX420 on standby too, horrible card!) th-cam.com/video/25ciVmac4SU/w-d-xo.html
***** AFAIK it's not possible to get SLI V3s. I think SLI went away for a few years until really recently. 3D Accelerators became a thing of the past in the 21st Century; all-in combined graphics cards became the norm and that was that.
You had to supply extra power to the 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 graphics card which was just a little later in 2000 when 3dfx went belly up in late 2000. However I prefer the Diamond Monster II MX300 with the Vortex chip and Audigy (A3D) API to the Sound Blaster Live! sound card for a very late 1998 ultimate build for superior 3D sounds in gaming although the MX300 didn't come out until the end of December 1998 in the United States (I don't know when it was released in the U.K.) and it would have been difficult to find.The Sound Blaster Live! on the other hand is awesome and has a huge amount of applications for musicians.The original Sound Blaster live! that you mentioned would have also been far more common although at the time later in the year 1998 it would have been expensive.The MX300 on the other hand didn't come bundled with many appplications although it came bundled with Zoran's SoftDVD which would have been very handy for an ultimate 1998 build with a DVD that could also read CD's or even CD-r disks (only a few DVD-ROM drives could do that at that time) .I vote Mx300 best for gaming,Sound Blaster Live! (CT4620) best for musicians that's my opinion for the very end of the year 1998. It's really a very close call.The Mx300 would have also been less expensive too. Creative Labs purchased Audigy which made the A3D API Another thing though is that I personally find it preferable to use hardware of a specific time frame rather than use parts from another time frame although I can see an exception for perhaps a hard drive.These are just my opinions so please don't take offense at them. Anyway I love your video.great job.
Thanks for the meaty reply! With a lot of these things, "best" is mostly subjective. I prefer the SBLive for compatibility and the (supposed) SB16 support. Plus it has that sweet MIDI breakout daughterboard. Thanks for stopping by, friend. x
The Game Show Thanks for your great video and your friendly reply.At Toms Hardware back in 1998 the particular Voodoo 2 board that was the most overclocking friendly and had the highest framerate scores was the 12 mb version of the Diamond Monster 3D II.You can still see some of his reviews there under a search. I think that the Midi daughterboard of the SB Live! was pretty sweet too.
You got two voodoo IIs for like the price one goes for now if you are lucky. I would have been glad to have been there to get them while they are that low I see some people selling them up to 300 dollar range not many most around 80-140. Gets pretty crazy anymore. I am glad I got my one Voodoo 3 agp and my one Voodoo 3 pci card. Those cost more than I am willing to pay for them now as well.
The Game Show This bloody BEAST will PWN a 24 monitor square mount setup each at 4k while rendering skyscrapers in the background of running BF4 and Titanfall at the same time. Of course, it'll get, like, 3 fps on Minesweeper. Nobody can play minesweeper at 60fps. You'd need a Titan supercomputer to get that to run.
ThereIsNoMatch with a little help from our friends at CERN, we had the the realism mod up and running on minesweeper (the one that changes the colours of the flags) for a solid 45 seconds.
Sandy Hess BEST (LucasArts) GAME EVAARR! I've played through this game at least ten times, it's just so satisfying. If you want to read a soppy, gushing review I wrote a few years ago there's one up on our site: thegameshow.co.uk/grim-fandango/
Well the CF case came inclusive with a whopping 300-watt PSU which has more than enough grunt to run everything in here. As you may have seen there are enough MOLEX wires coming out of the PSU to run about ten drives. The new case was a must, I just love looking at this machine now.
I built this PC only a few short years ago. At that time, "vintage" PC collecting wasn't as big as it is now, it was certainly a niche hobby. But even then, boxed Voodoos were still very expensive. I got a bargain by being patient. I probably spent 6 months waiting for the right listing on eBay.
the computer im working on is a old IBM Aptiva 2134-c21 with a 120mhz processor for some games this may be plenty of speed and it has classic EDO ram im gonna have to replace the harddrive likely which im gonna replace it with a CF card and maybe change the sound card it came with
oh yea, here are my specs: -AMD k6-2 500 MHz(cuz intel is a pain in my ass) -voodoo 3 pci ( :( cuz the original agp card wont fit the motherboard ) -voodoo2 SLI both rev a black magic (i have no clue how you found the box tho :D) -sound blaster live (its a small world) -ssd 8gb (actualy alot faster preformance) -120 mb of ram (just picked some from the box) I could put together an even better one with a k7 900 MHz, and a sound blaster awe 32 ISA but this is the one im using currently while those collect dust. i have made a conclusion to the possessors under or at 500 MHz... they have lots of weird bugs and there glitchy so i suggest getting a possessor at like 700 or 900 MHz at the most because you can really see the difference.
awesome classic PC u have here! i'm in tha process of gettin' a Pentium 3 Gateway rig since i have tha system discs and drivers 4 it! but i want a Voodoo5 5000 4 it tho
+blakedmc1989RaveHD Thanks man! Lotta love for the P3 builds. I know I'm going to build another machine soon, I'm thinking a V5 build might be just the ticket.
+The Game Show agreed! however, can it run 1gb of ram with it? i'm not really goin' higher than 1GB of ram 4 it! and my OS is gunna be Windows 98 and i have tha discs 4 it as well! i'm also in tha process of finishin' rebuildin' a AMD Athlon 64 Gateway GT5056 which uses XP Media Center Edition and i just recently purchased a AMD Athlon 64 6000+ Processor chip 2 replace tha 3800 dat came with it! i might do a vid of it on a different channel! but i want a Windows 98 rig so badly :D
grimmer2005 I remember when black cases started coming in (perhaps more Charcoal than black) and it was a genuinely exciting time. When my parents bought a black Dell Optiplex in about 1999, I was in lust. I'd just upgraded my P133 to an AMD K6 and was kicking Intel arse with it, but I still had a mangy beige case. I've come full circle now though!
Not sure if I'm just being blind but did you do a follow up video of you running a load of the games from the 90s? That'd be interesting to see what kind of performance you got out of you £60 machine! I remember my PC at the time falling to its knees on the Unreal fly by demo. I managed to get 60fps out of a game called Descent though on my Voodoo Banshee (I couldn't afford anything better at the time on what paper rounds paid out!
Descent was a sick game! Unfortunately I've developed a problem with capturing video from the machine. The video is definitely on the way though, I hope to get it done really soon. It will be here, promise! x
1:39 You're a man after my own heart, that's a tea cup that hasn't been washed in a while. I like to build up a serious layer of tea residue until my cup is brown. ''Adds to the flavour'' I said. ''You dirty slob'' my flatmates said :(
I do clean my teacup every day but once you've made 5-6 cups of tea in the morning you tend to get a bit of a buildup. Tea fuels everything we do here.
Hi there! Great video, but because I was only born in 99, I have no experience with computers like this.. we still have a basic win98 machine, but I have a question. On our computer everything is handled onboard - there are (literally) zero addon cards. Clearly it's not a gaming PC. But here, you installed 3 graphics cards.. which do you connect the monitor to? Would you use the 2D one for 2D games, and the voodoo2s for 3D games? Thanks for answering!
OK so I have learned that you actually use a VGA passthrough cable in the back of the PC. But now I have another question. On many motherboards, the IDE/PATA ports are labeled "floppy, primary, secondary" etc.. are they identical? Which did you connect each drive to?
Tommy59375 Hi, thanks for commenting! You're quite right, the VGA pass-through connects the "true" video card and the 3D accelerators. Primary and Secondary HDD / Optical Drives should be filled in that order AFAIK. I have the HDD and the CD-ROM drive plugged into PRIMARY, on the same ATA cable, as Master and Slave respectively. My floppy drive is connected to the only Floppy port on the Mobo, the Zip Drive would theoretically connect as a Slave on that ATA cable. Hope that makes sense!
The Game Show Thanks for answering! But now I have another question... since the passthrough cables are really hard to find, is one even necessary, if a 2-to-1 splitter is used to connect both directly to the monitor?
What Motherboard do you use? I am rebuilding my old DOS system from when I was a lad. I'm going with Slot 1 preferably. Have found a Motherboard with 1 AGP, 4 PCI and 2 ISA slots which should be ample.
SSD no estaba disponible para los consumidores en 1998 ! No está permitido. La interfaz SCSI es lo bastante rápido. Nunca he jugado NASCAR , pero me encantó TOCA Touring Cars.
+The Game Show Yeah its pretty good, but Toca Touring Cars vs Nascar, is a battle between Titans. The SSD for this times, i say cause this long life. thanks 4 answer.
A lot of patience. I must have bid on (and lost) twenty or so cards. One day these came up and I got lucky. I truly believe if you're patient, you can get anything for a bargain.
MrZiggyfun Muslim Channel Thanks very much, what a lovely compliment. Everybody hates the sound of their own voice, but it's so great to hear something nice like that. You'll never shut me up now!
do u plan on doin' another retro build but with a Voodoo 5500 or a Voodoo5 6000 with either a Pentium 3 or AMD Athlon XP 2500+ or even AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with Windows 98? cause those would be my dream of retro builds
I've been wanting to build an older PC since I still have my ATi rage and an AMD CPU (K5 I think) kicking about. But then I just install my old games on my current PC and they work fine and at a higher resolution. Bit I fo get the appeal and I get the itch sometimes to do it. If I were to do it ill get a proper CRT monitor.
+fossilfern For the most part, your old CD-ROM games will work on a newer PC. You can even pick up 90% of your old titles from Steam or GOG, optimised for newer machines. But for me it was partly the nostalgia and partly because I have a handful of older games that just would not work with modern systems (Grim Fandango, POD, X-Com Apocalypse).
The Game Show Oh I do get the appeal. In fact I want to do it myself but its mainly just a space issue. I wouldnt mind building an old PC with Windows 98 on it for nostalgia sake.
+fossilfern If you already have an existing PC, a retro rig won't take up that much extra space. You can run the VGA into your modern monitor (casual, I know) and you've just got to house the tower. I've been eyeing up a two-tower PC desk lately. The games though, that's another issue...
The Game Show To be honest if I was going to do it I will probably go full "retro". Saw some decent CRTs for a cheap price. I have found my old ATi Rage card, just hope it works!
+fossilfern The Rage was a beast. I am now toying with the idea of a circa 2000 build, maybe 2002. I doubt I've got the space for a third PC, but I just love to assemble these old machines!
Personally I think it is time and cost. I only this year built my gaming rig after years on consoles. I can see the benefit of both, as you get the performance and variety from a PC, but at the expense of x amount of money for components and having another large box taking up space in the house. A console is fairly cheap and you just plop in under the tele, you can play it straight off for a couple of minutes, and then turn it off and get on with standard life stuff. Can't answer for Matt from the vid, but I'm hazarding a guess on the expense part as the reason he stopped.
Good question. raffboneno2 makes good points. I built two or three PCs for myself when I was a teenager, my last PC was the year I started Uni, in about 2004..? I used to be a staunch PC gamer; I had a SNES and a PS1 but contemporary PCs were far and away the superior machine. I was a student artist so was learning Photoshop, 3D Studio etc. Once I got out into the big, wide world and started using a PC every day for my job I didn't really feel like coming home and sitting in front of another PC - getting home and sitting on a sofa in front of a TV with the PlayStation 2 was much more appealing. That habit has repeated itself from then really, I've just not felt the need for a modern gaming PC until very recently.
James Grimwood That was on my list of things to do. When I was 14 and Quake II was new I was running it in software mode (which I thought was ace). I played it on my mate Frank's rig - he had a 4mb ATI Rage and I couldn't believe my eyes! For nostalgia purposes, I'll put Q2 in the benchmark follow up. Subscribe so you know when the vid hits :-)
Very good shooter at the time, hundreds of thousands of people used to play it online (there was no internet in my area at the time). As for me I used to like the original Quake a lot, between a two-hours game with Total Annihilation and a FIFA 98 match.
Wow that did look easy i tried doing my own from scratch but failed badly think the motherboard was bad ......it was probably the last board to be compatible with win 98 Gforce 2 I think with a120gb HDD and a 2.2ghz cpu real quick played games perfectly but once Motorhead was installed bam it crashed and that was the end of tht couldn't get it back loop after loop etc ....but I will try again
those chips have gone up mate. lol this stuff is almost impossible to find now. too many you tubers blowing it up. and E-bay price gouging has made it all just a little ridiculous. too bad though, I may never be able to experience true 3d-fx. I did start a build recently. found a motherboard in Ukraine that was pretty cheap. and a new CPU. we'll see.
i have for retro 2x Intel Pentium III 866EB Voodoo4 4500 32MB AGP 4x 4x256MB SDR 133 ASUS CUV4X-DLS SAMSUNG SP0842N ASUS AD-5200A DVD-RW Creative SoundBlaster Live! CT4670 Integrated Ethernet The best part of it, it was 100% Free
Intel 80486DX2 66 MHz (Pentium processor recommended) 16 MB of RAM (24 MB recommended) >500 MB of disk space. VGA or higher resolution monitor (640x480) CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive DOS requires that you have a keyboard and a floppy drive.
could you please show us what games this PC can run!? could you do a gaming test video! on this PC I would like you to run Dyna Blaster / Midtown Madness / and a bunch of other games please! I might build this PC as a gift for me lol! ^^
+1D9ntC4re 44 I did a benchmark video for this machine, you can check that out here - th-cam.com/video/cLFad5qiB3o/w-d-xo.html As for games, I've been playing a lot of Half Life - th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html More PC game footage is coming up, so please subscribe to make sure you get it straight away :-)
Without the box they hover around $80 to $90 sometimes you can snag one at $60. Getting the box was a great deal! I hope you kept the box. Any plans on making new videos?
Wow, I'm tempted to sell them and put a GeForce 256 in instead :-) Regarding new videos - yes! I've just finished filming a 2002 PC build, which will run WinME. That video will be up as soon as it's edited, which won't be long. I will be creating a lot more retro PC content in future; this is something I really enjoy so want to do more of. Unfortunately I do not have the source files for this video - I know the music is too loud; just look at the amount of comments telling me :-( A rookie mistake, one which I've not made since. Thanks for popping by - if you want to get notified when my new (old) PC content it out, please subscribe to the channel.
The Game Show Only the intro music is too loud. You can actually analyze and isolate the music channel and lower the volume in an editor. Download the video in the highest quality, then mix the audio.
Looks like the CPU isn't setup properly via jumpers or the BIOS. Running it at 466 MHz on a 66 MHz bus as shown in the video will be slower than the default 450/100 MHz.
Not jumpers, but BIOS as you say. At the time of making the video I had set the CPU up right at installation, but it was showing wrong in BIOS. Turns out the CMOS battery had died, and every time I rebooted the machine it was resetting to the 466/66 setting shown on screen. I did later fix it by replacing that battery, about a week after uploading this video.
+AHD ONE Hey man. Well I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio to edit. The text boxes are created with block colour media generator, cookie-cuttered to size and animated with both transitions and crop. It's a fight getting anything to look good with Movie Studio, but that's part of the challenge I find.
+EvoPortal Thanks. I quite aware that the Riva entirely removes the need for the V2s, but it was very important to me that the build include 2x 12mb Voodoo 2s. You can substitute in a more relevant card for your own build.
+EvoPortal But 2x 12MB Voodoo2 back in the day was the TITS! So was the TNT, so why not eh? It's also pretty cool to have the first SLI cards. (To my knowledge)
+Blur Lahonez Im just saying, if you want to make a Retro build you need to use ALL parts from the era you are aiming for. TNT card is too new for this build.
The video lists nearly everything. The RAM is hard to identify, other than it's 4x128mb sticks of one type or another. You can easily find compatible RAM by googling the product manual for the Soyo 6YBA+, it lists all compatible types for you, which is nice. Perhaps I'll follow this up with a guide to building retro PCs?
Very restrictive rules, but an amazing beast for a 1998... I always wanted a SLI of voodoos, but in that times, a voodoo card cost a kidney...nobody lives without kidneys hahaha, in that times, I did have a shitty Trident with 256Kb and a Pentium 200MMX..ahh the good old times! Can you run Extreme Assault, this game has MMX and Glide support.. I did try to run in my shitty PC, in software mode!, the MMX thing did a lot different experience Regards!
You gotta have rules man, otherwise you've got chaos! Yeah this is a killer machine, the kind of thing 15-year old me dreamt of. MMX support is real funny - Raff and I were talking about it the other night. I played the heck out of POD in the day. I'll definitely try Extreme Assault - MMX and Slide support? It was made for this machine! I've unfortunately developed a short somewhere so I've not used this machine for a while.
I did have the Extreme Assault's demo, only with the first mission, if you finish that, an automatic demo run and show the difference between using of MMX tech or without...I really miss my 200MMX. In 1998 a few games support MMX, and did a noticeable difference!
manuelink64 256kb gpu ? Wow that was really a piece of crap even in 1998. In 1990 it was awesome, but 8 years later ... "yay I have 16 colors in 640*480" Are you sure it wasn't more like 512 kb ? (at least you could have 256 colors in 800*600) If not, your computer was very unbalanced ...
Deksor nope, my VGA card was a CirrusLogic CL-GD5320 ISA...then I get a ATi Rage 128Pro PCI with 16MB (2000) and then a Radeon 7200 PCI with 32MB SDRAM (2004)
how would you compare your Voodoo card to annnnn ARI Rage Pro? I have it tucked in an antistatic but had to throw out my old motherboard. it was completely dead. but luckily still have DDR RAM
+Nestor Sierra If it's a 128 Pro then that's a beastly card. If it's a regular 3D Pro though, then it's OK but it's not up to the standard of the Voodoo. It all depends what you want to get out of your system though.
+Dan Mac No, this PC is actually never going to networked. In order to squeeze every cycles out of the CPU there is no additional software running. No antivirus, no bloatware. So to keep it safe, I need to keep her offline.
Baki Blaze Windows 98SE caps out at 1gb of RAM. The motherboard can certainly take a full gig too, but finding 4x256mb sticks or 2x512mb sticks from this era was HELL. I'm keeping my eye out all the time for affordable RAM from this era (which still works), but for now the machine will stay at 512. TL,DR; Yes, but I am a cheapskate.
you have to be into real retro PC gaming though, but most peoples either doesn't want to spend cash on old PCs, or they don't have room for this. So this is partially why they use emulators.
+ThePresident Scan Line Interleave. One card renders even-numbered scanlines, the other renders the odd numbered ones. It's different technology to today's SLI, but the ethos is the same.
I really want to build myself a Retro Gaming PC - mostly games from 80's up to the early 2000's. Does anybody have a spec list I can use that would be easily findable within the UK or should I just follow what's shown in this video? Thanks!
My list was based on basically the best components which were available in 1998, graphics card aside. I chose Win98 as it's still DOS compatible but will also support older Windows games too. What you want to play will decide what needs to be in your machine. Unfortunately, retro PC parts are becoming collectable and so the prices are shooting up. If you want to run the gamut from DOS to ~2000, this machine is your best bet. It won't fully support very old DOS games though, and it will be shaky on the 2000s side of things.
Frankly, you need to make a decision. You can't expect a machine to run nearly thirty years' worth of software perfectly, especially at either end of that scale. Choose a date with two or three years either side of it to maximise your window of compatibility. I chose '98 as I wanted to play games from ~95-2000.
The I'd go with a year 2000 PC. Which I was thinking about doing myself on the drive in this morning. 1.5GHz Pentium 4, GeForce 2 Pro, SBLive! 5.1 - You could have a beast there. Pop it in a grey case and you're away.
The link to newegg for the case says it's an AMS case which is weird because I have the same case (yes, I still have it. NO it's not for sale) and mine is an Impression IM-21 www.ochardware.com/reviews/im21/im21.html
Back then we don't know how to build then we just buying a best prebuilt PC at that time. Back in 90s, prebuilt PC were way more thrusted, a real thing and worth to buy. So, we choose Alienware cause it was the best PC at that time and impressive gaming rigs line up since we got the news of them. And now I would modified our Alienware 98 PC that outdated to be a sleeper PC today
It was *much* harder in the 90s. IRQs, compatibility issues etc, not to mention manual switches and jumpers which are now all done in software. Still, it was a heady time and building your own PC was an immensely rewarding experience 😊
+1D9ntC4re 44 Absolutely it can run Dyna Blaster and MM! I got NFS Hot Pursuit recently too, stay tuned for gameplay footage. I'm just trying to think of a way to get a whole bunch of different games into one video.
Seems like it's tough finding it. I remember having a tough time finding a beige case. I wanted a desktop case, but you really can't get those any more!
+PhelypeXZ It can run basically anything from 1990-2000, give or take. I'm yet to try *very* early DOS games. It can run mid-90s games at max settings without breaking a sweat, and intensive circa-2000 games like Evolva and Deus Ex. I might be able to squeeze in a couple of games from the very early 2000s at low settings. I'm thinking of running a small series of very short videos, showing off PC games from the 90s.
+The Game Show You will have a problem running XMS based Dos-Games with that soundcard. And Adlib sounds really off on a Live. I would have used a YMF-724 based card, as it has Adlib core in the chip, and it has one of the best Midi implementation in it's pricerange. Or perhaps a Vortex2 based PCI card.
+brostenen I've not had any issues with the SB Live! in DOS games, except for Sam & Max. But that game didn't work back in 1998 so what hope would I have? Great reply though - whilst I've not encountered anything untoward with the SB, I am considering a "pure" DOS machine, so I'll remember that advice :-)
Fantastic video. Building 90's-era PCs is strangely therapeutic, actually. Made more than I can remember, and man, this one's quite impressive indeed. Love my own SLI'd V2 rig, and that's awesome that had the boxes!
Lazy Game Reviews Oh wow. Thanks for dropping by and commenting. This means a lot, I watch a lot of your videos - you're very good at what you do. I had a blast building this, I'm considering a 386 next but I'll see how I go with this one. Couldn't believe my luck with the boxed V2s!
Colllll ✌️
quite right, you cant build a rig without tea
+1 for that!
The Game Show You can play Humongous Games, Kutoka Games and Other CD-ROM Games on this computer.
I remember when a voodoo 2 was a BEAST. Then I got a Voodoo 3 and I was the coolest kid in town. Those were the days. I had been running Half Life in software rendering mode and I was blown away when I got the V3 up in there. I was only about 12 but I do remember distinctly saying ''Graphics can't possibly get better than this, ever'' I think I've said that twice more since haha.
China Hog You said that, but you were a kid ... but someone did worse ... Bill gates ! (if i remember HE said that) He said that nobody would need more than 640kb in a PC ... lol
imagine gta 6
that quote is fake. he never said that
Overkill 1998 spec is FANTASTIC!!!
Thanks man!
I cant wait to see in 10 years, there'll be videos showing "retro" builds featuring Nvidia Titan X's and intel 5980x CPUS...
Yeah lol, a titan x cost about 900 dollars orso here, maybe even more
+Supa Hot Fire my friend game me his for 400
+Warrior Scott seriously?! you can easily sell that for a grand, and buy SLI 980's or even 980 ti if u can
+CirnoBaka HD One day a Titan will cost a pound. You'll be picking them up in the bargain bin. GPU-lar morghulis.
+The Game Show go to future and get it for 5$ and come back and sell it for a grand.
Good build. I just built mine about 2 months ago. Picked up on 19" CRT monitor also. I missed out on a lot of good PC games in the late 90s bc the computer my family had couldn't support what those games required and not much money floating around to buy upgrades at the time. 20 some years later the top end parts (for the time) are cheap and now I can play whatever I missed out on. Great video!
Exactly why I built mine in the first place. Collector prices have exploded in recent years. There was a time when old PC parts and PC games were cheap because nobody could be bothered with the faff. You can't get Voodoo 2s for cheap in 2018 😦
This is wonderful. I'm just now setting out to build a similar rig and this just takes the cake on good info.
You sir are my hero.
Thanks a bunch David! I'm working on getting a benchmark video done. I'm having some snags getting a good video output from the machine, but the video will land soon. This was so much fun I want to do another one, but I have literally no reason for doing so.
The Game Show Does it run early DOS games well? I know a lot of people over on Vogons and Tech Forum have told me some hardcore users have built early 90s rigs and late 90s to compensate for the hardware differences. As some "speed sensitive" DOS games require very fine tuned hardware.
But yeah I'm on a parts collection hunt right now. Trying to find anything in new condition is close to impossible though. For the sake of nostalgia I'm trying to locate a good Voodoo card but the Nvidia fan in me is pulling towards a TNT.
Just curious though, were you mostly going from Ebay and personal connections or are there any surplus outlets you'd recommend?
Hi David, thanks for dropping in. VOGONS is an invaluable resource, I found the community over there to be straight-talking, no-nonsense types which helped the build no end. Early DOS games can be finicky on this rig - especially speed sensitive types. There are plenty of apps you can get to step your CPU speed down for games of this nature. My biggeest hurdle was sound. I ended up getting two sound cards - one for Windows, one for DOS. A bit cheaty, but it works. Regarding acquisitions - eBay is a good place to start but unless you're patient you'll be paying top whack. Check out any friends or family that are likely to have an old PC kicking about - it's likely they'll have a mobo / RAM - even a Voodoo just knocking about. One man's trash is another man's treasure!
turn down the music
Great build, man. Best of the 90's. It's really a time machine :)
+Đaniel Thanks so much. I love this machine. I've got a few "Five of the Best ... " videos coming out, celebrating all the awesome games I've been playing on this. I also have another hardware video about to drop. If you're into retro PC stuff, please consider tapping that subscribe button. x
The Game Show
Okay, I check your channel. As a retro gamer myself, I loved the Voodoo 2 back in the days. (and still)
Good to hear! Hopefully my next video will be dropping at some point today. If not in the next couple of days. x
I wanted to build my own 90s gaming PC too for a while now, those awesome nostalgic memories are always coming back. My build is going to have a Pentium MMX 233Mhz, 64mb or ram, a CD drive, floppy disk, already have a Creative Graphics Blaster Exxtreme GPU 4mb from my 90s computer and also a 3DFX Voodoo 2 12mb from Creative as well, need another Voodoo 2 for that SLI awesomeness, 30gb HDD already have and missing the tower which I will have to buy. Windows 98 SE is going to be my OS. Great vid.
+nico5179 when you get everything together and are ready to build please record a video!
+nico5179 Sounds fantastic! Please drop me a message once you're done. Always happy to meet more retro-heads :-)
+charlieboy31 Definitely will buddy.
+The Game Show I will indeed good sir!
1 Month has passed. How did the build go?
Nice to see the old stuff still being used :)
It's still the best! Fallout 2 still rules!
Big like, man. Thank you for the memories ..
Thanks for popping in mate. I might be putting together some more retro PC hardware videos in the future if you're interested.
GRIM FANDANGO BABY!!! Love it. Great build m@
Grim Fandango is reason enough to build a PC like this. It doesn't run under modern windows so this was a great idea :-D
BigNick Digger Yeah there was no way I wasn't going to load up Grim Fandango as the first game. I practically built this PC to play that game. It's every bit as good as I remember. PS4 pre-order for sure.
This is amazing, it's within my budget and I'll finally be able to play Atari with my new floppy disks.
Ah, Windows 98 SE, what a wonderful system. And a lovely computer as well, overall, matches most of my old rig, besides me only having one Voodoo 2 card of course.
evilmiera Thanks. You know what, 98SE is really good! Everything about this build was a ton of fun - subscribe if you want to see my follow up video, with benchmarks!
The Game Show
Already done!
This is actually amazing :). Sorry if I make you feel old but I was born in 98 and if I can do this for £60 then this is awesome thing to have
PCfuntimez You're a babe! TBF assembling this PC for £60 was mega-tough, as the Voodoos are subject to Hipster-Tax these days. That said, every other component is cheap as (micro)chips. You can easily build this exact PC for under £100. I've got an even older DOS build coming up, which was an absolute steal!
PCfuntimez You were born the year Half Life came out! Here's a video of me playing it th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html :-D
The Game Show Me too !
I'd love to have a voodoo card ... (the only way to buy hardware for me is garage sales) I hope i will find one shortly for my pentium MMX !
I'd like to find a SS7 motherboard too, because I have a k6-2 450 that needs a motherboard ... (and it would be perfect for a voodoo² sli !). I'm also looking for sound blaster awe and 16 for all my computers (I also have a 486 that has a vibra from 1997... The computer is a bit too munch outdated for that card ...)
Deksor Bargains can be had almost anywhere, there's no need to pay silly prices. Garage sales are a solid resource . Here in the UK we have the excellent tradition of the car boot sale, which is essentially 200 people all holding a garage sale on the same day, all in a big field. I've written a three-part guide to building retro gaming PCs, I'll get that recorded and uploaded as I think you and others would like the content.
I live in france, so I know this kind of garage sale (we call it "vide grenier" ^^). Sometimes you get 50 peoples selling things at the same time, and sometimes, you have 1000 ! But sometimes you will find nothing with 1000 peoples and in a random one late in the day when peoples are leaving, you find the computer motherload for nothing ^^. I've found a lot of very old computers this year !
I don't know if that kind of garage sale exist in america, but if it doesn't, it's sad for them ...
But old computer parts are harder to find, most of the time you find a complete system.
To begin with it's excellent, but when you want the best computer for retro, it's annoying and after that you get 5 old computers unused because they do not have what you wanted ...
But I think i will find something soon ^^
(I guess that you know that there is the biggest garage sale of the europe soon, in Lille. I hope I will find something there !)
Omg, I've been looking for that case everywhere. It was discontinued in the early 2000s. I got a frys electronics version of it on a craigslist and I love it. Wish I could get another for a friend
Alexander Keith Tough break. I bought this case a year before I made the video, on eBay. I've tried finding the seller since but no joy. I wish I could be more help dude.
The Game Show im in the US
May be out of stock, but newegg.com used to have it. It is still isted.
The Game Show would you mind putting up a link?
Alexander Keith www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811180012 There's the listing, but it's out of stock. Search for "CF 2029" or similar product names and you're sure to find something.
Loved this video. 90s gamer here too!
Thank you very much!
If you want to see how it actually performs (hint; well!),
here it is running Half Life at max th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html
And the Benchmarks (hint; very good!) th-cam.com/video/cLFad5qiB3o/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for dropping by, man. I've been having a blast with this machine. SWAT 2, Fallout, Jagged Alliance! So many great games.
ahhhhh.... gotta love the background music from the outside xbox show
+GhVxBL4DE Haha, I love that everyone gets their music from the same place. x
The Game Show :D well I suppose they have a fair amount of subs
Yeah, I wouldn't sniff at a cool mil.
Looking at the complete build, I would make some changes.
First up. The GFX card. If you want to get the best signal, to feed the V2-SLI, then get a Matrox.
If the G400 is chosen, you need a bit more beefy CPU's.
In this case, get a P3-500mhz. This is an absolute killer combo. G400 + P3-500 + V2-SLI.
Then there is the issue of the Soundcard. Now... Change that to an AWE64-Gold.
You will have a complete retro feeling, and the machine is good enough to run NFS-2K and UT99.
Perhaps get a G400-Max instead of the G400.
Just keep away from the G450, as it is slower than the G400.
Yeah... The Matrox is THE killer cards from the year 1999.
OpenGL is fixed in the latest drivers from Matrox, and it kick's ass on the V2.
V2-SLI is allmost as fast as the V3-3000. Sometimes slightly faster, sometimes slightly slower.
Only V3-3500, wich can be bought cheap as an Compaq OEM, is faster than V2-SLI.
+brostenen Thanks for the comments buddy. The Matrox Milennium is an oft-touted 2D card for this build, and I was looking out for a Matrox card, but I got the Riva card for free, and I'm a cheapskate :-) The machine does actually have an AWE64 Gold, alongside the SB Live!
The G400 has much, much, much better picture quality than say a TNT2-Ultra. And on my K6-III-400, the TNT2-Ultra scores 2800+ in 3Dmark99 and the G400 scores 3100+ points. And the G400 scales extremely well. It would be an absolutely great card in a P3-800 (last P3 from 1999)
*The* reason to build a windows 98 SE machine is for Aureal A3D and a proper CRT. If you're going to go with soundblaster live it just defeats the purpose. Save the money and pick up a junker pentium 4 with AGP-anything (probably an MX440 or FX5200) that you can barely give away; just check that the caps aren't shot to hell. Then get a nice aureal A3D 2.0 card and a CRT.
IMO you can build a PC for any reason you like. Funnily enough I did a video on building a super budget retro PC with a P4 and an FX5200 (I had a meme MX420 on standby too, horrible card!) th-cam.com/video/25ciVmac4SU/w-d-xo.html
Grimlock! Sweet coasters, bro :D
SLI Voodoos?!! what a beast.
DuetchJunger They are absolutely BEAST MODE. Rocking very close to full HD in over 60FPS, can't believe it.
***** AFAIK it's not possible to get SLI V3s. I think SLI went away for a few years until really recently. 3D Accelerators became a thing of the past in the 21st Century; all-in combined graphics cards became the norm and that was that.
I would have laughed my ass off if he would have put a icon to boot bf4 and had footage over the screen!!! Omg windows 98 bf4 seems legit!
BF would fly on this machine. 100fps or nothin'
You had to supply extra power to the 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 graphics card which was just a little later in 2000 when 3dfx went belly up in late 2000.
However I prefer the Diamond Monster II MX300 with the Vortex chip and Audigy (A3D) API to the Sound Blaster Live! sound card for a very late 1998 ultimate build for superior 3D sounds in gaming although the MX300 didn't come out until the end of December 1998 in the United States (I don't know when it was released in the U.K.) and it would have been difficult to find.The Sound Blaster Live! on the other hand is awesome and has a huge amount of applications for musicians.The original Sound Blaster live! that you mentioned would have also been far more common although at the time later in the year 1998 it would have been expensive.The MX300 on the other hand didn't come bundled with many appplications although it came bundled with Zoran's SoftDVD which would have been very handy for an ultimate 1998 build with a DVD that could also read CD's or even CD-r disks (only a few DVD-ROM drives could do that at that time)
.I vote Mx300 best for gaming,Sound Blaster Live! (CT4620) best for musicians that's my opinion for the very end of the year 1998.
It's really a very close call.The Mx300 would have also been less expensive too.
Creative Labs purchased Audigy which made the A3D API
Another thing though is that I personally find it preferable to use hardware of a specific time frame rather than use parts from another time frame although I can see an exception for perhaps a hard drive.These are just my opinions so please don't take offense at them.
Anyway I love your video.great job.
Sorry but I mean Aureal rather than Audigy.
Sorry for the confusion in my last post.
It was Aureal Semiconductor that had A3D and the Vortex
Thanks for the meaty reply! With a lot of these things, "best" is mostly subjective. I prefer the SBLive for compatibility and the (supposed) SB16 support. Plus it has that sweet MIDI breakout daughterboard. Thanks for stopping by, friend. x
The Game Show
Thanks for your great video and your friendly reply.At Toms Hardware back in 1998 the particular Voodoo 2 board that was the most overclocking friendly and had the highest framerate scores was the 12 mb version of the Diamond Monster 3D II.You can still see some of his reviews there under a search. I think that the Midi daughterboard of the SB Live! was pretty sweet too.
I still go on Tom's Hardware, it's a killer site! :-) For building this kind of PC, it's an indispensable resource.
I love that case
It's gorgeous. I should have got two and put my i7 build in one.
You got two voodoo IIs for like the price one goes for now if you are lucky. I would have been glad to have been there to get them while they are that low I see some people selling them up to 300 dollar range not many most around 80-140. Gets pretty crazy anymore. I am glad I got my one Voodoo 3 agp and my one Voodoo 3 pci card. Those cost more than I am willing to pay for them now as well.
I was incredibly patient. Possibly lucky too. I've been thinking about selling them recently and putting the money toward a new build.
Well running 4k on Battlefield 4 looks pretty easy with this thing. Might build this :)
TheMindOfTyler No problem. Eyefinity on 16 monitors too, probably.
The Game Show This bloody BEAST will PWN a 24 monitor square mount setup each at 4k while rendering skyscrapers in the background of running BF4 and Titanfall at the same time.
Of course, it'll get, like, 3 fps on Minesweeper. Nobody can play minesweeper at 60fps. You'd need a Titan supercomputer to get that to run.
ThereIsNoMatch with a little help from our friends at CERN, we had the the realism mod up and running on minesweeper (the one that changes the colours of the flags) for a solid 45 seconds.
The Game Show :O
I'm so jelly...
4 real tho?
that enough clean build Desktop for me ^_^
Frik yeah, Grim Fandango!
Sandy Hess BEST (LucasArts) GAME EVAARR! I've played through this game at least ten times, it's just so satisfying. If you want to read a soppy, gushing review I wrote a few years ago there's one up on our site: thegameshow.co.uk/grim-fandango/
Absolutely class video. Loved dat. Red Alert 2?
I used to have a Red Alert 2 baseball cap
Michael Jamieson Comedy You want to see Red Alert 2? That can be done. Obviously X-Com Apocalypse and Age of Empires 2 are better.
You forget something very important for 90's PC, it's a DIAL UP modem (56 Kbps) :D
MUM GET OFF THE PHONE!!
The Game Show omg mum u just you picked up the phone and now i have to spend another 5 hours to download that mp3 again
KaZaa, Morpheus or Napster?
The Game Show limewire
made me cry 😭😭😭 thumbs up👍
Chup chutiye
mai TH-cam pe kiya
uspe hota h
karthik arumugam Hey, I'm glad we elicited such a response from you. Hope you're ready for what comes next :-)
How many watts does it pull at the wall?
Good idea using a new case as it finishes off the project cleanly and smartly; it doesn't look old!
Well the CF case came inclusive with a whopping 300-watt PSU which has more than enough grunt to run everything in here. As you may have seen there are enough MOLEX wires coming out of the PSU to run about ten drives. The new case was a must, I just love looking at this machine now.
from the looks of it your CPU is a P3 700E slot 1 processor underclocked to 466MHz on 66MHz FSB.
Interesting how cheap this stuff was. Today one Voodoo II card is as expensive as your whole build was back then.
I built this PC only a few short years ago. At that time, "vintage" PC collecting wasn't as big as it is now, it was certainly a niche hobby. But even then, boxed Voodoos were still very expensive. I got a bargain by being patient. I probably spent 6 months waiting for the right listing on eBay.
the computer im working on is a old IBM Aptiva 2134-c21 with a 120mhz processor for some games this may be plenty of speed and it has classic EDO ram im gonna have to replace the harddrive likely which im gonna replace it with a CF card and maybe change the sound card it came with
Good man! I'm working on a retro laptop at the moment. I'll be doing the CF hard drive on that.
i can play some of the old classics like tyrian and quake which cant be played in win10 unfortunately
oh yea, here are my specs:
-AMD k6-2 500 MHz(cuz intel is a pain in my ass)
-voodoo 3 pci ( :( cuz the original agp card wont fit the motherboard )
-voodoo2 SLI both rev a black magic (i have no clue how you found the box tho :D)
-sound blaster live (its a small world)
-ssd 8gb (actualy alot faster preformance)
-120 mb of ram (just picked some from the box)
I could put together an even better one with a k7 900 MHz, and a sound blaster awe 32 ISA but this is the one im using currently while those collect dust. i have made a conclusion to the possessors under or at 500 MHz... they have lots of weird bugs and there glitchy so i suggest getting a possessor at like 700 or 900 MHz at the most because you can really see the difference.
lol yea amd k 6- 2 500 mhz im trying to install 95 on it, it might work better with this prossessor and the voodoo 2's
no i do not i just started looking
that sounded formal, lol :D... but like what do you mean u have a lot of windows 95 install cds
like u have the offical 95 install floppys
noice those were the fast ones... i have the amd k7 900 mhz.
Hey, where did you get that screw driver set? It's so cool!
+Compel Arctic Either eBay or Amazon. It's very cool! :-D
awesome classic PC u have here! i'm in tha process of gettin' a Pentium 3 Gateway rig since i have tha system discs and drivers 4 it! but i want a Voodoo5 5000 4 it tho
+blakedmc1989RaveHD Thanks man! Lotta love for the P3 builds. I know I'm going to build another machine soon, I'm thinking a V5 build might be just the ticket.
+The Game Show agreed! however, can it run 1gb of ram with it? i'm not really goin' higher than 1GB of ram 4 it! and my OS is gunna be Windows 98 and i have tha discs 4 it as well! i'm also in tha process of finishin' rebuildin' a AMD Athlon 64 Gateway GT5056 which uses XP Media Center Edition and i just recently purchased a AMD Athlon 64 6000+ Processor chip 2 replace tha 3800 dat came with it! i might do a vid of it on a different channel! but i want a Windows 98 rig so badly :D
Win98 caps out at 1gb of RAM. If you motherboard can accept it, Windows can page it, but no more than that.
The Game Show yea 1 GB of ram is what i'm goin' 4 with Windows 98
This shit is crazy dude...
+Juan Gonzalez Thanks buddy :-)
Awesome video,also what is the song when your building it?
How about couple of benchmarks? Would love to see fps on FIFA 99. Or 98.
rhyfelwyr Subscribe so you know when the vid hits, I'll be making a benchmarks video to follow this up. FIFA you say?
rhyfelwyr Did you check out the benchmarks vid?
Loud ass music. Great idea
I had t he exactly same chassie, but black, in around year 2005 :D
grimmer2005 They made this case for so long! If you're building a 90s PC though, a beige case is a must.
Yeah :)
OR an IBM that is black, i lusted after a black IBM in 1998.
grimmer2005 I remember when black cases started coming in (perhaps more Charcoal than black) and it was a genuinely exciting time. When my parents bought a black Dell Optiplex in about 1999, I was in lust. I'd just upgraded my P133 to an AMD K6 and was kicking Intel arse with it, but I still had a mangy beige case. I've come full circle now though!
Yeah.. and finally the beige chassies slowly dissappeared.
grimmer2005 ....and the cats and the cradle and the silver spoon
2x VooDoo2 can do 1920x1080 at the desktop!! You go Windows 98
+bassblaster505 Gaming These cards are truly a wonder.
Not sure if I'm just being blind but did you do a follow up video of you running a load of the games from the 90s? That'd be interesting to see what kind of performance you got out of you £60 machine! I remember my PC at the time falling to its knees on the Unreal fly by demo. I managed to get 60fps out of a game called Descent though on my Voodoo Banshee (I couldn't afford anything better at the time on what paper rounds paid out!
Descent was a sick game! Unfortunately I've developed a problem with capturing video from the machine. The video is definitely on the way though, I hope to get it done really soon. It will be here, promise! x
Just for the fact that it had such solid joystick support, Descent was one of my favourite PC games.
1:39 You're a man after my own heart, that's a tea cup that hasn't been washed in a while. I like to build up a serious layer of tea residue until my cup is brown. ''Adds to the flavour'' I said. ''You dirty slob'' my flatmates said :(
I do clean my teacup every day but once you've made 5-6 cups of tea in the morning you tend to get a bit of a buildup. Tea fuels everything we do here.
The Game Show
Daily washes for the tea goblet? For shame.
How in the world did you get 2 voodoo's in box for 20? Those things are gettig so expensive now.
Prices right now are like 50 per card
Patience, simple as that. Don't go all in on the first thing you see. Wouldn't happen now though TBF.
The Game Show exactly i got a single one for 12 and another for 50 so yes nowadays 62 for a sli setup isnt too bad and actually a pretty good deal
Hi there! Great video, but because I was only born in 99, I have no experience with computers like this.. we still have a basic win98 machine, but I have a question. On our computer everything is handled onboard - there are (literally) zero addon cards. Clearly it's not a gaming PC.
But here, you installed 3 graphics cards.. which do you connect the monitor to? Would you use the 2D one for 2D games, and the voodoo2s for 3D games?
Thanks for answering!
OK so I have learned that you actually use a VGA passthrough cable in the back of the PC.
But now I have another question.
On many motherboards, the IDE/PATA ports are labeled "floppy, primary, secondary" etc.. are they identical?
Which did you connect each drive to?
Tommy59375 Hi, thanks for commenting! You're quite right, the VGA pass-through connects the "true" video card and the 3D accelerators. Primary and Secondary HDD / Optical Drives should be filled in that order AFAIK. I have the HDD and the CD-ROM drive plugged into PRIMARY, on the same ATA cable, as Master and Slave respectively. My floppy drive is connected to the only Floppy port on the Mobo, the Zip Drive would theoretically connect as a Slave on that ATA cable. Hope that makes sense!
The Game Show
Thanks for answering!
But now I have another question... since the passthrough cables are really hard to find, is one even necessary, if a 2-to-1 splitter is used to connect both directly to the monitor?
I couldn't comment. I thought the passthrough cable was a normal VGA cable? They're easy enough to find...
The Game Show
Well you need a male-to-female passthrough cable, but most VGA cables are male-to-male
Build this if you are worried about your neighbors stealing it. 🤣
Haha, nobody's getting far lugging this thing with them
What Motherboard do you use? I am rebuilding my old DOS system from when I was a lad. I'm going with Slot 1 preferably. Have found a Motherboard with 1 AGP, 4 PCI and 2 ISA slots which should be ample.
The one you've found sounds perfect mate. I used a Soyo SY-6BA. It's slot 1, 440BX chipset. Perfect for my 1998 build.
The Game Show
OK cheers, I have a Pentium 3 600mhz and 3 256MB RAM sticks coming, all for £8 off ebay, couldn't say no!
Now THAT is a bargain. I'd be over the moon with that. Might be worth hunting down another stick of RAM, they run better in pairs.
Just the 48 likes, 0 dislikes.
un cambio, una SSD Pequeña, con un adaptador SATA-PATA. Nascar Racing 2 fue y es una gozada.
SSD no estaba disponible para los consumidores en 1998 ! No está permitido. La interfaz SCSI es lo bastante rápido. Nunca he jugado NASCAR , pero me encantó TOCA Touring Cars.
+CarlosAvila85 PS - Gracias a Dios por Google Translate.
+The Game Show Yeah its pretty good, but Toca Touring Cars vs Nascar, is a battle between Titans. The SSD for this times, i say cause this long life. thanks 4 answer.
This'd be great for Blade Runner
This is the machine I used to play Blade Runner when I reviewed it. Check out my video here: th-cam.com/video/MC6Z_epvlm0/w-d-xo.html
boss, so I can run skyrim on ultra right? Ordered the parts yesterday
+Will Jerauld Skyrim? Why not something taxing?
+Cape Tech Tv Skyrim? Tested it yesterday, runs just cause 3 on ultra high settings
How did you find two 3dfx voodoo 2 cards for 20 quid? That is legendary
A lot of patience. I must have bid on (and lost) twenty or so cards. One day these came up and I got lucky. I truly believe if you're patient, you can get anything for a bargain.
I dug out my old 3dfx and ran it but realised I didn't have a ps2 mouse keyboard lol but I'm halfway through my build and the moment.
This guy has a nice voice.
MrZiggyfun Muslim Channel Thanks very much, what a lovely compliment. Everybody hates the sound of their own voice, but it's so great to hear something nice like that. You'll never shut me up now!
For the record, I am not homosexual.
do u plan on doin' another retro build but with a Voodoo 5500 or a Voodoo5 6000 with either a Pentium 3 or AMD Athlon XP 2500+ or even AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with Windows 98? cause those would be my dream of retro builds
+blakedmc1989RaveHD I have been toying with the idea of a newer retro build. Similar specs to above, but mabye Win2k for the fun of it.
+The Game Show i would keep it 98 tho :P however i'm curious how it would go
What kind of VooDoo magic were they using in making those voodoo cards? :)
the good kind
Edwin Gonzalez I guess that's why everyone wanted to have these cards back in the day :)
+MegaBojan1993 They absolutely were the must-have GFX card for the 90s gamer
The Game Show Too bad 3dfX went under. They were making some amazing GPU back in the day.
MegaBojan1993 yes they were
I've been wanting to build an older PC since I still have my ATi rage and an AMD CPU (K5 I think) kicking about. But then I just install my old games on my current PC and they work fine and at a higher resolution.
Bit I fo get the appeal and I get the itch sometimes to do it. If I were to do it ill get a proper CRT monitor.
+fossilfern For the most part, your old CD-ROM games will work on a newer PC. You can even pick up 90% of your old titles from Steam or GOG, optimised for newer machines. But for me it was partly the nostalgia and partly because I have a handful of older games that just would not work with modern systems (Grim Fandango, POD, X-Com Apocalypse).
The Game Show Oh I do get the appeal. In fact I want to do it myself but its mainly just a space issue. I wouldnt mind building an old PC with Windows 98 on it for nostalgia sake.
+fossilfern If you already have an existing PC, a retro rig won't take up that much extra space. You can run the VGA into your modern monitor (casual, I know) and you've just got to house the tower. I've been eyeing up a two-tower PC desk lately. The games though, that's another issue...
The Game Show To be honest if I was going to do it I will probably go full "retro".
Saw some decent CRTs for a cheap price. I have found my old ATi Rage card, just hope it works!
+fossilfern The Rage was a beast. I am now toying with the idea of a circa 2000 build, maybe 2002. I doubt I've got the space for a third PC, but I just love to assemble these old machines!
Why are you not building PC's anymore? It's still fun to do with all the recent components.
Personally I think it is time and cost. I only this year built my gaming rig after years on consoles. I can see the benefit of both, as you get the performance and variety from a PC, but at the expense of x amount of money for components and having another large box taking up space in the house. A console is fairly cheap and you just plop in under the tele, you can play it straight off for a couple of minutes, and then turn it off and get on with standard life stuff.
Can't answer for Matt from the vid, but I'm hazarding a guess on the expense part as the reason he stopped.
Good question. raffboneno2 makes good points. I built two or three PCs for myself when I was a teenager, my last PC was the year I started Uni, in about 2004..? I used to be a staunch PC gamer; I had a SNES and a PS1 but contemporary PCs were far and away the superior machine. I was a student artist so was learning Photoshop, 3D Studio etc. Once I got out into the big, wide world and started using a PC every day for my job I didn't really feel like coming home and sitting in front of another PC - getting home and sitting on a sofa in front of a TV with the PlayStation 2 was much more appealing. That habit has repeated itself from then really, I've just not felt the need for a modern gaming PC until very recently.
Install Quake 2 and marvel at the coloured lightning :-)
James Grimwood That was on my list of things to do. When I was 14 and Quake II was new I was running it in software mode (which I thought was ace). I played it on my mate Frank's rig - he had a 4mb ATI Rage and I couldn't believe my eyes! For nostalgia purposes, I'll put Q2 in the benchmark follow up. Subscribe so you know when the vid hits :-)
Very good shooter at the time, hundreds of thousands of people used to play it online (there was no internet in my area at the time). As for me I used to like the original Quake a lot, between a two-hours game with Total Annihilation and a FIFA 98 match.
Wow that did look easy i tried doing my own from scratch but failed badly think the motherboard was bad ......it was probably the last board to be compatible with win 98 Gforce 2 I think with a120gb HDD and a 2.2ghz cpu real quick played games perfectly but once Motorhead was installed bam it crashed and that was the end of tht couldn't get it back loop after loop etc ....but I will try again
+Stephen Stewart Oh man, what mobo was that?
+The Game Show ASRock 938S5-M hard to find but well worth it
+Stephen Stewart 939 not 938 lol
Aah, 939. Going for an Athlon build?
+The Game Show yea it was a good machine lol
those chips have gone up mate. lol this stuff is almost impossible to find now. too many you tubers blowing it up. and E-bay price gouging has made it all just a little ridiculous. too bad though, I may never be able to experience true 3d-fx. I did start a build recently. found a motherboard in Ukraine that was pretty cheap. and a new CPU. we'll see.
Where are you based? In fairness this video is a bit old now, and these prices were a bit low even for the time.
@@MattyStoked midwest united states.
awesomeeee
#Like
Thanks man.
i have for retro
2x Intel Pentium III 866EB
Voodoo4 4500 32MB AGP 4x
4x256MB SDR 133
ASUS CUV4X-DLS
SAMSUNG SP0842N
ASUS AD-5200A DVD-RW
Creative SoundBlaster Live! CT4670
Integrated Ethernet
The best part of it, it was 100% Free
Holy smokes that's one heck of a machine. And for free! Fantastic. I wish I could get a Voodoo card for nothing!
i have a Voodoo3 3000 16MB PCI too :D
What are the basic hardware requirements to run windows 98?
Intel 80486DX2 66 MHz (Pentium processor recommended)
16 MB of RAM (24 MB recommended)
>500 MB of disk space.
VGA or higher resolution monitor (640x480)
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
DOS requires that you have a keyboard and a floppy drive.
ty
np
Intel pentium II
132 mb RAM
I think
could you please show us what games this PC can run!? could you do a gaming test video! on this PC I would like you to run Dyna Blaster / Midtown Madness / and a bunch of other games please! I might build this PC as a gift for me lol! ^^
+1D9ntC4re 44 I did a benchmark video for this machine, you can check that out here - th-cam.com/video/cLFad5qiB3o/w-d-xo.html As for games, I've been playing a lot of Half Life - th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html More PC game footage is coming up, so please subscribe to make sure you get it straight away :-)
hello! i saw bad fsb cfg, change this to 4.5 x 100 Mhz
Since making the video I have fixed this. The battery in the mobo was flat so it kept resetting to the wrong thing.
holy shit have times changed. Boxed Voodoo 2 cards are fucking $500 each now..
Really?! They were expensive when I made this, but not _that_ expensive. Goodness.
Without the box they hover around $80 to $90 sometimes you can snag one at $60. Getting the box was a great deal! I hope you kept the box. Any plans on making new videos?
Also, if you still have the source files, can you please, please re-cut the video without the music?
Wow, I'm tempted to sell them and put a GeForce 256 in instead :-) Regarding new videos - yes! I've just finished filming a 2002 PC build, which will run WinME. That video will be up as soon as it's edited, which won't be long. I will be creating a lot more retro PC content in future; this is something I really enjoy so want to do more of. Unfortunately I do not have the source files for this video - I know the music is too loud; just look at the amount of comments telling me :-( A rookie mistake, one which I've not made since. Thanks for popping by - if you want to get notified when my new (old) PC content it out, please subscribe to the channel.
The Game Show Only the intro music is too loud. You can actually analyze and isolate the music channel and lower the volume in an editor. Download the video in the highest quality, then mix the audio.
Looks like the CPU isn't setup properly via jumpers or the BIOS. Running it at 466 MHz on a 66 MHz bus as shown in the video will be slower than the default 450/100 MHz.
Not jumpers, but BIOS as you say. At the time of making the video I had set the CPU up right at installation, but it was showing wrong in BIOS. Turns out the CMOS battery had died, and every time I rebooted the machine it was resetting to the 466/66 setting shown on screen. I did later fix it by replacing that battery, about a week after uploading this video.
Where did you get the Intel P2 sticker from??
+MargroveMan 87 Eeeeebayyyy!
Hey how do you edit your videos and make the text come along in and out of the box for the specs
+AHD ONE Hey man. Well I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio to edit. The text boxes are created with block colour media generator, cookie-cuttered to size and animated with both transitions and crop. It's a fight getting anything to look good with Movie Studio, but that's part of the challenge I find.
That single TNT videocard is a 2d/3d card and is better/faster than those 2 voodoos in SLI. Just saying....
+EvoPortal Thanks. I quite aware that the Riva entirely removes the need for the V2s, but it was very important to me that the build include 2x 12mb Voodoo 2s. You can substitute in a more relevant card for your own build.
+EvoPortal But 2x 12MB Voodoo2 back in the day was the TITS! So was the TNT, so why not eh? It's also pretty cool to have the first SLI cards. (To my knowledge)
+Blur Lahonez Im just saying, if you want to make a Retro build you need to use ALL parts from the era you are aiming for. TNT card is too new for this build.
+EvoPortal No? TNT was released back in March 1998.
True, the Voodoo 2 SLi is more powerful than a single TNT. www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia,87-8.html
can you do a complete list of compnents, as I am looking to build this and don't know what to
look for
The video lists nearly everything. The RAM is hard to identify, other than it's 4x128mb sticks of one type or another. You can easily find compatible RAM by googling the product manual for the Soyo 6YBA+, it lists all compatible types for you, which is nice. Perhaps I'll follow this up with a guide to building retro PCs?
ok thanks, I am looking forward to building my first computer (this). Yeah you should do more guides as I would like to build more computers for cheap
Right, thanks for the impetus! That's jumped to the top of the queue! :-D
how would my sli msi gtx 980ti gaming 6gb cards compare to the voodoo 2s sli? lol just wandering
+harmless zombie You'd slightly edge this build in terms of fps in expert Minesweeper.
Spider Solitaire, it's too close to call.
Very restrictive rules, but an amazing beast for a 1998...
I always wanted a SLI of voodoos, but in that times, a voodoo card cost a kidney...nobody lives without kidneys hahaha, in that times, I did have a shitty Trident with 256Kb and a Pentium 200MMX..ahh the good old times!
Can you run Extreme Assault, this game has MMX and Glide support.. I did try to run in my shitty PC, in software mode!, the MMX thing did a lot different experience
Regards!
You gotta have rules man, otherwise you've got chaos! Yeah this is a killer machine, the kind of thing 15-year old me dreamt of. MMX support is real funny - Raff and I were talking about it the other night. I played the heck out of POD in the day. I'll definitely try Extreme Assault - MMX and Slide support? It was made for this machine! I've unfortunately developed a short somewhere so I've not used this machine for a while.
I did have the Extreme Assault's demo, only with the first mission, if you finish that, an automatic demo run and show the difference between using of MMX tech or without...I really miss my 200MMX. In 1998 a few games support MMX, and did a noticeable difference!
manuelink64 256kb gpu ? Wow that was really a piece of crap even in 1998. In 1990 it was awesome, but 8 years later ... "yay I have 16 colors in 640*480"
Are you sure it wasn't more like 512 kb ? (at least you could have 256 colors in 800*600)
If not, your computer was very unbalanced ...
Deksor nope, my VGA card was a CirrusLogic CL-GD5320 ISA...then I get a ATi Rage 128Pro PCI with 16MB (2000) and then a Radeon 7200 PCI with 32MB SDRAM (2004)
manuelink64 Deksor ISA video cards. Now we're talking. :-)
No 3dfx SLI action ?
Vulturius RetroGamer what do you want to see, buddy? I'm getting the benchmarks done FINALLY this weekend. Want to see Half Life running in full HD?
Yeah ... that would be great! And also some unreal, quake, quake2, ... Can't wait ;-)
Vulturius RetroGamer Did you check out the benchmark vid?
Vulturius RetroGamer Check out Half Life ruinning at max! th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html
Build next Aros os amiga computer from old computer parts.
May i ask you wher you bought the voodoos from?
Byside beastmood rig.
Think he said ebay,
Unfortunately there are no voodoos on sale in Austria. :(
DDR memory on a 440BX chipset?
how would you compare your Voodoo card to annnnn ARI Rage Pro? I have it tucked in an antistatic but had to throw out my old motherboard. it was completely dead. but luckily still have DDR RAM
+Nestor Sierra If it's a 128 Pro then that's a beastly card. If it's a regular 3D Pro though, then it's OK but it's not up to the standard of the Voodoo. It all depends what you want to get out of your system though.
0:41 - Pentium II CPU instead of Pentium III CPU
Does this computer require an Ethernet cable to run
+Dan Mac No, this PC is actually never going to networked. In order to squeeze every cycles out of the CPU there is no additional software running. No antivirus, no bloatware. So to keep it safe, I need to keep her offline.
@@MattyStoked aight cheers mate
That was a hell of a deferred reply! 😂
cant you put 1gb ddr ram?
Baki Blaze Windows 98SE caps out at 1gb of RAM. The motherboard can certainly take a full gig too, but finding 4x256mb sticks or 2x512mb sticks from this era was HELL. I'm keeping my eye out all the time for affordable RAM from this era (which still works), but for now the machine will stay at 512. TL,DR; Yes, but I am a cheapskate.
Good luck finding a pair of boxed voodoo 2s for 20 quid on ebay. More like 20-25 quid each.
Bojan Kotur At least! Patience is a virtue my friend.
WHAT IF YOU HAD 3 VOODOO 2
£60? that's nearly double that amount in $CAN (around 115$). But sadly most peoples wouldn't pay that much for an old PC like that around here.
Hey man, they're missing out!
you have to be into real retro PC gaming though, but most peoples either doesn't want to spend cash on old PCs, or they don't have room for this. So this is partially why they use emulators.
Yeah true but they don't get that wicked BIOS BLEEEP when they turn it on, and they also don't get those dulcet tones from the FDD spinning up a disk.
Is the Voodoo's gpu scaling technology really called SLI?
+ThePresident Scan Line Interleave. One card renders even-numbered scanlines, the other renders the odd numbered ones. It's different technology to today's SLI, but the ethos is the same.
+ThePresident : Yup. Nvidia bought them so they were the original creators of the SLI concept.
I really want to build myself a Retro Gaming PC - mostly games from 80's up to the early 2000's. Does anybody have a spec list I can use that would be easily findable within the UK or should I just follow what's shown in this video? Thanks!
My list was based on basically the best components which were available in 1998, graphics card aside. I chose Win98 as it's still DOS compatible but will also support older Windows games too. What you want to play will decide what needs to be in your machine. Unfortunately, retro PC parts are becoming collectable and so the prices are shooting up. If you want to run the gamut from DOS to ~2000, this machine is your best bet. It won't fully support very old DOS games though, and it will be shaky on the 2000s side of things.
So what would I need to improve in order to make the 2000 stuff less shaky, yet still be able to play 90's stuff without issue?
Frankly, you need to make a decision. You can't expect a machine to run nearly thirty years' worth of software perfectly, especially at either end of that scale. Choose a date with two or three years either side of it to maximise your window of compatibility. I chose '98 as I wanted to play games from ~95-2000.
Yeah I'm thinking I'd prefer late 90's to early 2000's then, as that would be most nostalgic for me. So say 98 - 2003?
The I'd go with a year 2000 PC. Which I was thinking about doing myself on the drive in this morning. 1.5GHz Pentium 4, GeForce 2 Pro, SBLive! 5.1 - You could have a beast there. Pop it in a grey case and you're away.
The link to newegg for the case says it's an AMS case which is weird because I have the same case (yes, I still have it. NO it's not for sale)
and mine is an Impression IM-21
www.ochardware.com/reviews/im21/im21.html
+John Smith It's likely it's an OEM case made for several customers then. Good find though - plenty of people will be chuffed to hear that.
Don't forget Alienware Area 51 1998 PC
Alienware was completely out of reach for me back then. I wonder if you can pick them up cheap nowadays?
The Game Show maybe could. But anyway, I bought my first Alienware in 1998 and it was awesome back in the day.
Back then we don't know how to build then we just buying a best prebuilt PC at that time. Back in 90s, prebuilt PC were way more thrusted, a real thing and worth to buy. So, we choose Alienware cause it was the best PC at that time and impressive gaming rigs line up since we got the news of them. And now I would modified our Alienware 98 PC that outdated to be a sleeper PC today
It was *much* harder in the 90s. IRQs, compatibility issues etc, not to mention manual switches and jumpers which are now all done in software. Still, it was a heady time and building your own PC was an immensely rewarding experience 😊
Woow !
Melwiit Thanks, I think! Cheers for stopping by pal. x
I use a nvidia geforse 240 32mb is better than the two Voodo?
Almost certainly. Do you mean a GeForce 256 32mb? They are a step up from even the Riva in this build. It's a solid card from the day.
geforse 256 is the first generetion my is the second generetion of geforse but but I understand that it's okay. thanks
If you have this PC would you consider selling it? Cheers
LOL how much are you offering?
can it run dyna blaster! midtown madness!? ^^
+1D9ntC4re 44 Absolutely it can run Dyna Blaster and MM! I got NFS Hot Pursuit recently too, stay tuned for gameplay footage. I'm just trying to think of a way to get a whole bunch of different games into one video.
+The Game Show OK thxs dude! ^^ is Dyna b.. and Midtown... going to be in the video
But can it play Crysis?
Lulz, no.... you need at least a Pentium 4 for that!
zyrgle what about if you run 2 PII's in SLI?
lolly poppy so it cannot play cryisi?
+raffboneno2 Nope. The same as asking if a Geforce-9600 can run NFS-2K. ;-)
+raffboneno2 no it can't! u need at least a Pentium 4 and Window XP
I looked on that website and couldn't find that case :(
Alexander Keith Which country are you based in?
The US
Seems like it's tough finding it. I remember having a tough time finding a beige case. I wanted a desktop case, but you really can't get those any more!
lol yeah, im going to paint a cheap case beige
Solid idea chum.
What games can it run??
+PhelypeXZ Check this!
th-cam.com/video/dSKPf4F4Z7g/w-d-xo.html
+PhelypeXZ It can run basically anything from 1990-2000, give or take. I'm yet to try *very* early DOS games. It can run mid-90s games at max settings without breaking a sweat, and intensive circa-2000 games like Evolva and Deus Ex. I might be able to squeeze in a couple of games from the very early 2000s at low settings. I'm thinking of running a small series of very short videos, showing off PC games from the 90s.
+The Game Show You will have a problem running XMS based Dos-Games with that soundcard. And Adlib sounds really off on a Live. I would have used a YMF-724 based card, as it has Adlib core in the chip, and it has one of the best Midi implementation in it's pricerange. Or perhaps a Vortex2 based PCI card.
+brostenen I've not had any issues with the SB Live! in DOS games, except for Sam & Max. But that game didn't work back in 1998 so what hope would I have? Great reply though - whilst I've not encountered anything untoward with the SB, I am considering a "pure" DOS machine, so I'll remember that advice :-)
Adlib on the SB-Live just sounds like shit, compared to the real deal. ;-)