Looking for tips on older OLD pc gaming

[Terriikk]

I am looking for advice when it comes to playing older, 20 year old RTS/City builder games. Titles like

Age of Empires II

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga

Zeus/Pharoah/Ceaser

 

I got my hands on a Dell Dimension of some kind, it's got a Celeron D CPU, runs on DDR1 memory, and has NO VGP or PCI E ports. I'd like to use it to play older titles that do not like my much more modern machine. Here are my questions. Do I need to consider getting it some kind of graphics chip, and would it hurt to connect it to my 2k monitors (I am aware that my older games won't display in 2k and that's fine) Are there any anti virus programs I should consider? I also will be getting a Compaq Presario SR5605F which runs Vista, and has some more modern features. Could I run a 32 bit Windows 7 and get good compatability, or am I better off sticking to the older PC. Thanks for the comments

[svmlegacy]

Dell Dimension

10 minutes ago, Terriikk said:

Do I need to consider getting it some kind of graphics chip, and would it hurt to connect it to my 2k monitors

No damage will occur, but the iGPU in those motherboards will be noticably slow to draw even simple things. You'll want dedicated graphics.

10 minutes ago, Terriikk said:

Are there any anti virus programs I should consider?

You should not consider connecting this PC to Internet.

 

Compaq Presario SR5605F

10 minutes ago, Terriikk said:

Could I run a 32 bit Windows 7 and get good compatability

This guy is going to chug hard on Windows 7 as-is. Memory and CPU upgrades are cheap, and will bring it to run Windows 7 reasonably. 64 bit should also run natively on this platform.

[Terriikk]

6 minutes ago, svmlegacy said:

Dell Dimension

No damage will occur, but the iGPU in those motherboards will be noticably slow to draw even simple things. You'll want dedicated graphics.

You should not consider connecting this PC to Internet.

 

Compaq Presario SR5605F

This guy is going to chug hard on Windows 7 as-is. Memory and CPU upgrades are cheap, and will bring it to run Windows 7 reasonably. 64 bit should also run natively on this platform.

Depending on which PC I kept, I'd upgrade the hardware. The Dell Dimension is VERY limited on what it can accept. I wouldn't mind using the Compaq machine and upgrading it. I'd probably keep it as a 32 bit system, to my knowledge older programs don't work well on a 64 bit program. But to that, if I kept it at a 32 bit say Windows 7 PC I imagine it'd be a more useable experience

 

[LogicalDrm]

WinXP and no internet connection is way to go. Though Age of Empires 2 has been remade to run on modern hardware, so you don't need to go retro with that. Unless you really want to.

[Terriikk]

You're right, I don't it was just some of the ones that came to mind. I guess what I'd really like to know is if these games might work okay in a 32 bit OS, or if I really should consider an OS as old as XP

 

[LogicalDrm]

On 10/7/2020 at 11:24 AM, Terriikk said:

You're right, I don't it was just some of the ones that came to mind. I guess what I'd really like to know is if these games might work okay in a 32 bit OS, or if I really should consider an OS as old as XP

Best thing to know what kind of OS/System game is made for is to check it from Wikipedia. I only know AoE2 as thats something I played a ton when I was younger. And it was before WinXP (released 2001).

• Age of Empires 2. Released 1999 (So Win98/ME/2000), has re-release for modern OS'.
• Zeus/Pharoah/Ceaser aka City Building. First release 1992 = MS DOS, releases 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2006 (from Win95 to WinXP/Vista).
• Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Released 2001, pretty much made for XP, with probably backwards compatibility for Win98/2000.

So none of these would work well with 64bit as that became mainstream with Win7 in 2009. I would recommend using XP since it has compatibility for DOS-based games. Meaning that anything released for Win95 and newer should still work. If you can get Win98 or Win2k, those would be even better for these games.

 

I would recommend also checking out GOG.com if you don't mind paying bit more for modern compatibility. https://www.gog.com/games?devpub=impressions_games&page=1&sort=popularity

https://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_galactic_battlegrounds_saga

And the Age of Empires 2 from Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/813780/Age_of_Empires_II_Definitive_Edition/

[Praesi]

Dune 2, a true Classic.

DOSBox is your Friend.

[centurion_08]

Dunegon Keeper 2, what an absolute gem.