noiseredux wrote:Ziggy587 wrote:Earlier in the year I was thinking about starting a new thread for old PC talk, keeping this one for current PC stuff.
that's actually a really good idea. I remember you building an old rig for Doom/etc a while back, but it's not easy to dig up some of those old posts as this thread has really grown. A dedicated Retro PC Build thread might be cool.
Yeah, I know I brought up retro PCs earlier in the year. I lost a little steam with the project I had in mind, but I got a little of it back recently.
I have a PII Compaq Deskpro, which was my first computer that was my very own, and I've been using it for retro PC gaming for a while now. I have many other computers of that era, and I was thinking about setting them all up in my basement and networking them together. Just real nerd stuff.
One thing that's been bugging me is a 486 that I got rid of. I have a bunch of PII, PIII and P4 computers, which are great for Win98 and XP, but I have nothing appropriate for a MS-DOS / Win3 set up. I ditched the 486 because I figured any old Win3 or DOS games I could run on my Win98 machines, but I kinda regret it now. Looking at 486 hardware on eBay, it looks just like SNES games, the prices are way higher than what I'd be willing to spend. So recently, I've been thinking about maybe building a Pentium (1) machine for a DOS/Win3 setup since it should be cheaper. I recently picked up a NOS OEM DOS 5 (full version) and DOS 6.22 upgrade, so I'm all set!
noise wrote:I actually just use a USB 3.5" drive. I have a couple of them, and they work great on Win10.
Really? I've never used one, but I've read terrible things about them. If I really wanted to, I can just use one of my old PCs to make images of floppies so that I can use them in DOSbox on my modern PC. But I'm actually just looking to back them up since, well, they're floppies that are 20+ years old.
noise wrote:I've looked into [the KryoFlux] (and CatWeasel) in the past, and would genuinely love to have something like this - problem is that they can be somewhat difficult to find and rather pricey. It looks like once shipping is factored in, the Kryo is in the $200 neighborhood. It gets hard to justify that price when I know I can find some old cheap hardware to effectively do the same job.
Yeah, the price tag is why I wont get one. They're great for someone like LGR that has hundreds of games, some of which are likely never dumped by anyone. I'm glad that it exists for the sake of preservation, but for people like us that just need simple backups of common games, the price tag is a little too high.
noise wrote:ziggy wrote:So what kind of computer is it?
I'm not sure - I've got at least two Win 98 era machines in the basement. I'll have to dig em out and open up and see what I've got to work with soon. If I recall one is a P2 and another is a Celeron.
Definitely post the specs when you find out! I wanna talk about old PCs!
noise wrote:I will also have to find a 5.25" floppy drive!
The going eBay prices for those have been pissing me off too. I guess they're lumped in with 486 stuff, and it's in demand right now. Luckily, I have one that works great, but I've been wanting to pickup at least one more for one of my other computers. Mostly just in case one drive dies, I'll still have another.