PhilCs blog / the latest things hes broken(fixed)

[PhilC]

@JezC yes, each of our interpretation of what is a retro PC may be different. For me, core2duo is too new, I remember the whole quake 1 & 2, Unreal, Kingpin etc sort of era but then as far back as wing commander and space quest.

[JezC]

@JezC yes, each of our interpretation of what is a retro PC may be different. For me, core2duo is too new, I remember the whole quake 1 & 2, Unreal, Kingpin etc sort of era but then as far back as wing commander and space quest.

I'd agree - most of my time playing on PCs BITD was on 486 & Pentium class boxes...and I remember a friend having to upgrade several system components when Duke Nukem 3D (probably the Atomic Pack vesion) came out

I also really liked UT GOTY edition plus quite a few of the driving games (epecially with the Microsoft force feedback steering wheel )

I am going to have to dig out one of the old Win98 boxes to try and play some of those again over the next few months...

[dml]

some games I actually remember playing in the 486 era included:

Doom (of course), Heretic / Hexen
Duke Nukem
Rise of the Triad
Ascendency
Dark Forces / Tie Fighter
Descent

I remember Ascendency being pretty good. At least, I wasted a lot of time playing it

Rise of the Triad had an amusing bouncy-castle FPS thing going on before Quake3 had bounce pads. But in 2.5D with sprites.

(probably some other games but I don't remember)

[JezC]

I think Forsaken was another one for eye candy (might have been a Voodoo 3 card that allowed the DirectX & OpenGL effects to shine).

I'm now wondering if CL4 should have a poll for a retro PC/console gaming area....

[Steve]

If you can find an all-in-one type of 3dfx Voodoo card (like the Banshee, or V3) it's one of the best for anything prior to year 2000, because the 2D engine was actually extremely good for DOS, very fast VESA support (not all cards are equal for DOS) Then you got early 3D API support like Glide, then very good D3D and OpenGL for games nearer 2000. So it covers quite a wide-range of time with good support.

[PhilC]

@JezC I was thinking of hosting quake servers and the like but yes, you could bring some old PCs and network them. If you played Doom then even my Raven could participate.

Let me know and we can always sort out a few old network switches etc. (I have some 16 & 24 port managed switches here that just sit on the shelf doing nothing.)

[stephen_usher]

3DFx Voodoo 3 cards are PCI (or AGP in PCI mode) only.

[PhilC]

Just been messing around with one of these the last couple of days.

PXL_20250904_143248088.LONG_EXPOSURE-01.COVER.jpg (234.73 KiB) Viewed 1369 times

It's a Sony KV-600BE 5" colour Trinitron TV. It comes with it's original battery and mains adapter, although I'm pretty sure the battery will be long dead.

It was in a sorry state internally, with broken tracks, rust and flux all over the place. So a careful cleanup and replaced a couple of blown fuses and we are back in action.

The picture needs a bit of a tweak but for now it's looking pretty good for an old small CRT from the 80s

[mrbombermillzy]

Nice one Phil.

Not enough CRT love around here in my opinion.

Actually, all the previous talk about retro PCs and Voodoo cards has jogged my memory, so I dug this out ready for you in the 'CL4 Phil' pile:

P1050165.JPG (272.91 KiB) Viewed 1361 times

[PhilC]

Thanks @mrbombermillzy