Building an Old PC

[wdodge0912]

Hello!

 

So I'm wanting to recapture some of my youth and build a gaming PC that's old. I'm talking windows 98, and if possible XP on it as well.

 

I picked up an old XPS XP laptop a while ago and pretty cheap. But it seemed the dedicated graphics card in it was dead, so it doesnt even play some of the games I want decently without some skipping in the video. Not sure what's wrong with it, if it is the gpu, or perhaps upgrading the HDD on it caused the issue, but I've since moved on from it anyways (I still have it, just it's stuck away and really I dont want to mess with it)

 

Anyways, I'm wanting to build something old. I know I'm at the mercy of probably having to Ebay parts. But that's what Im prepared to do. Problem is, I was a really little kid so I really dont know the era of parts then.  But I remember playing Lemmings, Jazz Jackrabbit, Wolfenstein and Blake Stone, One Must Fall, and a few other games as well. Theres also me wanting to find some other games I always wanted as a kid, and never got. 

 

Anyways, I was hoping to get some help on what parts I should start searching for. I'm hoping to keep it cheap, but I know I'm at the mercy of ebay prices since I cant just go to the store and buy the parts, lol. Any help is much appreciated 

[Bombastinator]

Big problems with old windows and networking.  It will be very important to never let a machine like that ever touch the internet ever.  It lacks fundamental basic protections.  Air gap.  No ethernet no wifi no Bluetooth.  You’ll need to check and sneakernet everything.

 

You could run instances of the old OSes in VM, but then you will have to worry about those same things inside the VM.

 

On the bright side the new hardware will run the old software just fine.  
 

Not sure exactly what you are looking for.  Any cheap machine will do what you want so those $20 prebuilt machines that pop up occasionally may do for you.  Old stuff likes single thread so high ghz low core count machines will be fast for you.  Anything reasonably fast 4/4 or even 2/4 should kick all kinds of butt.  Those machines are starting to show problems with running modern software so their prices should be quite low.

[wdodge0912]

8 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Big problems with old windows and networking.  It will be very important to never let a machine like that ever touch the internet ever.  It lacks fundamental basic protections.  Air gap.  No ethernet no wifi no Bluetooth.  You’ll need to check and sneakernet everything.

 

You could run instances of the old OSes in VM, but then you will have to worry about those same things inside the VM.

 

On the bright side the new hardware will run the old software just fine.  
 

Not sure exactly what you are looking for.  Any cheap machine will do what you want so those $20 prebuilt machines that pop up occasionally may do for you.  Old stuff likes single thread so high ghz low core count machines will be fast for you.  Anything reasonably fast 4/4 or even 2/4 should kick all kinds of butt.  Those machines are starting to show problems with running modern software so their prices should be quite low.

That's the plan, no external connection. 

 

I could do a VM on my machine, just it just wouldnt be the same. I really want the old hardware and keyboards and a mouse with a ball in it. Big old CRT monitor  and such.

[Bombastinator]

15 minutes ago, wdodge0912 said:

That's the plan, no external connection. 

 

I could do a VM on my machine, just it just wouldnt be the same. I really want the old hardware and keyboards and a mouse with a ball in it. Big old CRT monitor  and such.

Ah.  CRT.  That can get important.  High end CRTs have actually retained their value, and can be quite expensive, so your choices are paying a bunch of money for one or finding a lesser model basically for free.  CRTs MUST have analog input which means VGA, a BNC octopus cable (rare), or dviI.  CRTs have the odd behavior that their latency is incredibly low and some pro esports gamers seek them out for this.  Also some old platforms games actually rely on that low latency and get difficult to play without it.  A CRT may be the hardest thing to find.  A ball mouse may also be a hard ask. Less hard than a CRT, but not easy. They just don’t work as well as laser mice and have largely gone the way of the dodo. There are a few trackballs still made.  They work differently though.  You don’t have a mouse with a ball in it you have a sphere you manipulate.  Keyboards basically haven’t changed at all.  Any old mechanical keyboard with USB on it it is going to fetch almost the same price as a new one.

 

Places to look for stuff would not be aBay so much as freegeek (if there’s one in your area) or charitable donation sites like goodwill or Salvation Army.

[wdodge0912]

On 1/25/2020 at 8:16 AM, Bombastinator said:

Ah.  CRT.  That can get important.  High end CRTs have actually retained their value, and can be quite expensive, so your choices are paying a bunch of money for one or finding a lesser model basically for free.  CRTs MUST have analog input which means VGA, a BNC octopus cable (rare), or dviI.  CRTs have the odd behavior that their latency is incredibly low and some pro esports gamers seek them out for this.  Also some old platforms games actually rely on that low latency and get difficult to play without it.  A CRT may be the hardest thing to find.  A ball mouse may also be a hard ask. Less hard than a CRT, but not easy. They just don’t work as well as laser mice and have largely gone the way of the dodo. There are a few trackballs still made.  They work differently though.  You don’t have a mouse with a ball in it you have a sphere you manipulate.  Keyboards basically haven’t changed at all.  Any old mechanical keyboard with USB on it it is going to fetch almost the same price as a new one.

 

Places to look for stuff would not be aBay so much as freegeek (if there’s one in your area) or charitable donation sites like goodwill or Salvation Army.

I get that a lot of the higher end old stuff would be hard to find. Luckily I'm not wanting that.

 

Right now im looking to find a cpu and board and GPU, but haven't the slightest clue of what would work the best for a build like this. I will probably also need a sound card, and maybe also something for connecting a hard drive, as I remember the old one I had had IDE drives.

 

I guess one thing I want to specify too, is I want to get a nice case from the era, so just finding like an HP or Dell isn't what I want, even though it would probably be much easier to do. I want to find parts and build it all myself. Now If I could take the board and remount it into a case, I suppose I wouldnt mind that, but I know there was a lot of brand proprietary stuff going on then