Retro Games

I have been finding a lot of parts in the basement recently. I think a dos/3.11 build is imminent (if i dont just use the socket 5 pentium 1 gateway 2000 baby at that is down there)

Plus I found these:
http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/pc/dos-games/
https://archive.org/details/vintagesoftware
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos

What do you guys think the best games of the era were? (I also still have that thinkpad 385ed loaded with windows 95)

So far on the list are:
Grim Fandango (win 95 and up I think)
Full Throttle (win 95 and up i think)
Myst (something funner about running this win 3.1 then 95)
Riven (win 95 and up i think)
Lego Island 1 & 2 (I remember playing these when I was young)
Microsoft Combat flight simulator 1,2,3

I have been coming across a lot of parts from the top of the line pentium 2 ibm i owned in 1998, Still have the rest of it in the closet but some of the parts were pulled and lived on in builds after that so they are a bit scattered about) I think a rebuild of that is in the near future as well. I even have the original recovery media (hdd will be compact flash card based though, I stole the idea from the amiga guys) Got it fitted in my ultra ata 100 card from back in the day. It is a bit obtuse but it should work.



Don't mind the 1gb cf card. That is all I had laying around. They are incompatible with my cisco routers so I figure I will give one a shot to test out the adapter. Actual card will probably be between 8-32gb. Original hdd was 8gb and by the time the machine died I was running a 30gb western digital in it. (Trying to keep it as true to its original 1998 configuration as possible) I will need to track down a nic card though, This machine predates my ownership of that technology LOL. I do have those 3com etherlink 3 isa cards that are well supported in windows 3.11. I suspose if they are supported in 3.11 95 support should exist.

For the eventual 3.11 build I have a period correct case from a pentium 1 micron to build in, A working, Recently tested atx socket 7 motherboard out of a gateway, 200mhz pentium w/mmx tech cpu and 64mb of ram. Finding a power supply that supports atx 20 instead of atx 24 might be a bit challenging however.

I also have a freebe mini itx atom board I may play with for shits and giggles. 3.11 driver support is going to be weird at best though. (I wonder if it will blow up when it tries to install the sata controller)

I loved Grim Fandago. I have even considered downloading the remastered mobile version for my phone. Myst and Riven didn't do it for me, even though the graphics were gorgeous for the time. In adventure gaming, Quest for Glory and its sequels were good. Command & Conquer and Warcraft come to mind for RTS. And I had some fun with Duke Nukem -- that was my first foray into online shooter play (over 56K, nonetheless!).

In November 1993 I was over a friend's house. He had a new PC and was playing Myst. I was mesmerized. I went out the following week and bought a PC just to be able to play that game. A Packard-Bell 425MHz baby! LOL

Loved Myst and Riven. Played Myst all the way through with no cheats. Was proud of myself. Gaming skills all went downhill from there LOL.

Just got to working more on my old ibm pentium 2 today. At first it acted like it wasn't going to come back from the dead. When i pushed the power button all that would happen is the hdd led would flicker for a brief milisecond with no other signs of life. I persisted with it and eventually got it to power on and post (and now it does every time) (Something was either not seated or the caps needed a second to energize after 10 years of inactivity) I got the good ol IBM bios splash screen followed by my ata 100 cards bios followed by "insert system disk and press enter to continue" It is weird to say but it just doesn't feel like the same pc i use to use in 1998 without the crappy large NEC crt monitor. Maybe that will change once I get windows 95 installed. The 3 random 128mb sticks of ram I found in the basement seem to be working at least. (2 matching hyundai pc133 and 1 crucial pc100) The faster sticks should down clock to pc100 but if I have issues this will be on my list of things I suspect.

I lubricated the original psu fan when I had it disassembled. It is quiet and all but if I put my ear near it the bearing sounds janky. Probably going to have to replace it in the near future.
I can hear that the cpu cooler fan bearing is shot. That is a standard fan but has a proprietary plug that will need to be soldered to the new fan. (Noctua 40mm should do it)
I need to make an extension cable to power the compact flash ide hdd adapter.

All this and I didn't even have to break into the stash of 7x 300mhz pentium 2 processors I had amassed over the years for the day I one day resurrected this thing just to find out the processor was bad. (oddly enough I never threw any ram aside, Had to go hunting my basement for it)

Then I can go about finding the aptiva "red and blue" recovery cdroms along with the rest of my software and games for it that I have in the closet somewhere. I will get some pictures of it soon. Phone was dead earlier.

I also found this gem in the most unlikely of places:




That is after i straightened the pins. They were pretty bent. I think a couple of them are still a bit bent. My friend is suppose to be giving me his 486 dx4 120mhz as well (also with bent pins) I found some compaq simm memory with it that I think is out of the same system. I also believe I own an AT psu somewhere. Now if I could come by a dx2/dx4 compatible socket 3 board I could start tinkering a bit. I don't have all the addon cards / drive controllers / things that were on daughter boards back then though so it might be more complicated then I am anticipating.

I also found these resources for the list:

https://archive.org/details/vintagesoftware
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos

There is also an independently made remake of riven in the works, With the full blessing of Cyan worlds. The blog pages are updated frequently so I hope it will actually release one day. You can find it here:
http://www.starryexpanse.com/

They put out a tech demo a while back that actually looked pretty good.

While we are on the subject of independently made games and tech demos that are frequently updated I am also watching the upcoming titanic game http://www.titanichg.com/ The amount of dedication their team has to authenticity is remarkable. I also like the fact that it is not yet another cookie cutter rip off of cod, or even worse yet... cod.

I am also still watching the skywind project but I don't have much hopes for that. Seems like vaporware at this point. The skyrim engine will be so dated by the time skywind releases I don't think I will have much interest in playing it if it takes much longer. They made a huge mistake by not offering it as a public alpha imo. It would attract the attention of a lot of skilled modelers and game modders and would probably be further along then it currently is. This post by one of the dev team members sums it up nicely: https://tesrenewal.com/forums/skywind-mod-releases/skywind-has-been-taken-down-from-download

Yeah, Skywind will never be finished. Just too ambitious. Shame, too; I would love to replay Morrowind after all these years, and an engine upgrade would have been welcome.

I have been following that Titanic project, and while I welcome the 3D modelling of the boat, and the chance to explore it and interact with the real-life historical figures, I have a hard time imagining how they can make an effective "game" out of the sinking.

Just started playing free to play Skyforge beta the other day. Kind of digging this Sci Fi MMO. https://sf.my.com/us

The way I look at the Titanic game is, If the ship still existed today it might have been restored and be used as a floating museum / heritage center type deal that you could take a tour of, See some period correct clothing and aritifacts. Maybe have a period meal in the dinning room etc. (Maybe even a hotel like the original Queen Mary currently serves as to this day)

That is the same context I am looking at this "game" in. I just want to be able to explore what the ship would have looked like in 1912 with a full sense of just how massive the behemoth is. The feeling of standing on the deck with the superstructure towering over you. Hopefully this feeling is something that can be translated into the game fairly well if everything is done to scale. They were also talking about oculus rift compatibility if you have a lot of money to spend.

You are correct though. Things are sure to start to get awkward around the time when it sinks in the game and people start dying.

I don't know how the journey will advance, If there will be a time scale or you will advance to the next stage in the game by sleeping in the bed in your room. Hopefully there is ample time to explore the ship. (Maybe even a separate mode that unlocks after story mode where you can just aimlessly wander and explore without the scripted events of the game taking place)

While we are on the subject i wonder if the oculus rift will have a heat lamp accessory to accurately simulate going outside lol (im being sarcastic, I think the entire thing is a bit asinine but I will reserve judgement until a day comes that I can try it out)

Back on topic I found lego island! Now to solder that molex to berg power adapter for the compact flash card hdd adapter.

Oculus Rift DK1, my son got one about a week ago. I have only minecrafted on it so far. Been wanting to try out Skyrim on it.


He is knee deep into his new build. He sold his old ram, graphic card and cpu. Gave me the motherboard (socket 1150, have no clue what I am using it in as I have no cpu for it) his new cpu is in ( I think it's a 6600k) high speed ddr 4, 8 gb (it wouldn't work in his motherboard even though it's rated for it so he got some cheap ddr4 just to test with and it worked) new ddr4 motherboard. With M.2 slot with 16 gb ssd for cache. He has a water cooled 970 a water cooling block for his cpu (not hooked up yet) He is waiting on the rest of his water cooling stuff to come in and his raid controler. He already has 5 or 6 M.2 sata SSD's to raid together in it for his main boot drive. When he gets it together I will post up pictures.

Did some work on my old pentium 3 build from 2001 today.



That is the first time all of the components have been installed together in over a decade.

1ghz pentium 3
1gb pc133
shuttle av18e 1.3
geforce 4 ti4400
3dfx voodoo 5500 (never ran this card in this build before, its something i got after this build died and was parted)
sb audigy 1
linksys 802.11b pci card (should be old enough to have win9x drivers)
novel netware certified 100mbps pci nic

Installed on the motherboard tray of my codegen atx-7000 full tower which was a feat in itself because most of the standoffs were missing.

Shes getting there. Some of the parts need some tlc. voodoo 5500 needs new fans and the brace for the aux molex connector resoldered. Rest of the fans need to be oiled and the dust thats still hiding in the corners of the boards cleaned. I should also see if i can find my Tt Volcano 7.

I think Titanic will work, but only if you're okay with disaster-type storylines. It's also a game that you have be comfortable knowing that you're not going to win. Even if you survive, you haven't really won in a situation like that.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12752/?

Ah, Just as I stopped giving a fuck.

Feels to me that their closed beta stance failed to generate significant interested from talented modders and now they are spilling their massive fail onto the nexus to try to gain volunteers to finish it for them for free.

Speaking of the nexus.



I am so sick of websites complaining about users choice to block ads.

For the same reason they have a right to serve an advertisement in the first place I have a right to block it on my side of the demarcation point. (my private network)

It also seems to me that page advertisements are no longer a relevant means of advertising, Everybody does block them. Maybe these companies should just accept that instead of crying over a dead advertising format. (It is like crying that nobody reads the news paper to get their news anymore, Or the RIAA crying that nobody buys physical cds anymore) Once a format is dead its dead and no amount of crying by those that profited from it at one time is going to make me continue willing using something that sucks. (By that logic maybe HD-DVD should have whined more, Maybe it would have won the format war against bluray)

Also for what its worth flash is a huge security blackhole. Do to many unpatched exploits by adobe and malicious implementations of it I have stopped even installing it. Next they are going to cry that I have to install flash on my computer to see their crappy adverts? Adobe flash is an obsolete api. HTML5 and silverlight (to a lesser extent as much as it pains me to credit microsoft for anything positive) Have pretty much completely replaced flash and are better more secure apis. (don't get me wrong there are still ways to exploit them). One thing I have learned through my studies of computer science is that nothing is ever truely secure.

Yes that is all true. I have used adblock for years just for that reason. I can whitelist a site if I want too but don't have too.

Overlays have become a problem as well as some sites have put up blocker to block you from viewing if you have a adblocker. But there are ways around that as well.

behindtheoverlay comes to mind.

In some instances I just block the overlay element the same way id block an advert frame on a page layout that slipped through, That only works for really poorly coded websites though (luckily those are plentiful)

There are a few sites out there that block you if you block their ads. Their choice, I suppose. They have a right to have ads, I have a right to block them, and they have a right to block me in return. So I just go elsewhere, also in return. I am not whitelisting a site because that site gives me no choice. There is plenty of other content out there.

And now there are blockers to block them blocking you for having a blocker, there is a way to use your current blocker to block there blocker before it pops up as well. lol. Around and around we go.

I would love to say that I am honest and whitelist my favorite sites to help support their content, but I have to admit that I prefer my browsing as speedy as possible, so I even block my favorites. The internet and ethics are mutually exclusive.

What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet . . .