Building a 95 game machine

Hiya there! First post. A friend of mine told me to come to Tom's for advice on building a computer for old games. I didn't see a message board for building computers, specifically. Hoping you people could either help me out... or send me to someone who can.

I've got several old games I want to play. 7th Guest, 11th Hour, and the Tex Murphy Series. Now, I upgraded to 98 a loooong time ago like everyone else. But 98 doesn't have the right stuff in it for these DOS games to run. (No drivers, et al.)

SO I want to build a box that would be top of the line 95 machine for my old-school gaming habits I miss. Can anyone help me?

"Mean Streets" 1989
Minimum Hardware Requirements:
IBM PS1/PS2/AT/286/386 or Compatibles
CD Drive
640K RAM
256 Color VGA or MCGA Display
Hard Drive

Supports:
10 Mhz or faster
Mouse
Joystick & Keyboard
Roland MT-32, LAPC-1, Ad Lib, SoundBlaster and other sound devices

"Martian Memorandum" 1991
Minimum Hardware Requirements:
IBM PS1/PS2/AT/286/386 or Compatibles
CD Drive
640K RAM
256 Color VGA or MCGA Display
Hard Drive

Supports:
10 Mhz or faster
Mouse
Joystick & Keyboard
Roland MT-32, LAPC-1, Ad Lib, SoundBlaster and other sound devices

"Under A Killing Moon" 1994
Minimum Hardware Required:
CD ROM drive (150KB/sec)
386/25 Mhz CPU
SVGA display (VESA compliant)
Hard Drive with 2 MB available
4 MB RAM
Mouse
Sound Board (supports all major brands)

Hardware Recommended:
Double spin CD ROM (300KB/sec)
486 with SVGA VESA Local Bus display
Hard Drive with 10 MB available
16 MB RAM
16 bit sound board

"Pandora Directive" 1996
Minimum Hardware Required:
2X CD ROM Drive
486/66 Mhz CPU
SVGA display (VESA compliant)
Hard Drive with 20 MB available
8 MB RAM (12 MB for Windows)
Mouse
Sound Board (supports all major models)

Recommended Hardware:
4X CD ROM Drive
Pentium processor with SVGA Local Bus display
Hard Drive with 30 MB available
16 MB RAM
16 bit sound board

"Overseer" 1998
CD-ROM Requirements:
133 Mhz Pentium Processor or better
Windows 95
16 MB RAM
Video resolution (640x480 resolution, 2 MB Video RAM required)
16-bit Multimedia sound card
4X CD-ROM
35 MB available hard disk space
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers

DVD Requirements:
133 Mhz Pentium Processor or better with hardware MPEG-2 OR 233 Mhz Pentium Processor or better with software MPEG-2 (AGP recommended)
Windows 95
32 MB RAM
Video resolution (640x480 resolution, 2 MB Video RAM required)
16-bit Multimedia sound card
DVD drive
35 MB available hard disk space
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers

"7th Guest" 1995
Original verison: MINIMUM HARDWARE: MPC Level 1 compatible machine with: 386DX processor minimum. 2 MB of RAM. 16 bit SVGA video card with at least 512k of memory. CD-ROM drive with minimum of 150k per second transfer rate. Sound Card(s) with FM and PCM sound supports. Mouse. Hard drive with 10 MB of free space. MSCDEX version 2.2 or higher. DOS 5.0 or higher. RECOMMENDED HARDWARE: 486SX 20MHz or faster processor. 4 MB of RAM. Fast 16 bit SVGA video card with 1 MB of memory or local video bus. CD-ROM drive with 300k per second transfer rate and less than 300 millisecond access time. General MIDI device (such as the Sound Canvas) and 16 bit PCM sound card.

Windows 95 version: 386DX-25 MHz processor minimum, 2 megs of RAM, 16 bit SVGA video card with at least 512k of memory, CD-ROM drive with minimum of 150k/sec. transfer rate, Sound Card with FM and PCM sound, Microsoft compatible mouse, Hard drive with 10 megs of free space, MSCDEX version 2.2 or higher, DOS 5.0. Supports: Roland MIDI cards MT-32, LAPC-1 Sound Canvas, SCC-1, Sound Blaster (and 100% compatible sound cards), Sound Blaster Pro, ProAudio Spectrum (8 and 16 bit), ThunderBoard, Adlib Gold. Recommended: 486SX-33 MHz or faster processor, 4 megs of RAM, fast 16-bit SVGA video card with 1 meg of memory or local bus video, double speed CD-ROM drive, Roland LAPC-1, MT-32, or Sound Canvas.

"11th Hour" 1998
COMPUTER: IBM and 100% compatibles. OPERATING SYSTEMS: Windows 95 or Microsoft DOS 5.0 or greater. CPU: 486DX2/66 required minimum. CD-ROM Drive: 2x speed performing at a sustained rate of 300k/sec. MEMORY: 8MB RAM required. HARD DISK DRIVE: 4MB available space. SOUND CARDS SUPPORTED: Sound Blaster family, Roland family, Media Vision family, Gravis Ultrasound and 100% compatibles. VIDEO CARD: Local Bus Video capable of displaying thousands of colors. INPUT DEVICE: Microsoft 100% compatible mouse. OTHER: Good, powered speakers.


Hope I haven't overwhelmed you. All this info overwhelmed me and I'm not QUITE sure where to start building. Thanks a LOT, guys!!!

Um, Why?

Me and Seven of Nine, Ohhh Yeah

Usually it's not that hard to find older systems. I collected about 5 older p233 this summer, and one pII300. I'm going to see how high they get before burnin. A p233@600mhz? Hahahah... Maybe make a hot plate. But seriously I do have a DOS comp. that I built from the best components I scrounged, for when I get drunk and/or nostalgic. It helps if you have access to large wastefull organisations.

<font color=blue>
No last words to say
Only memories remain
A farewell then, my path goes forever on

</font color=blue>

Yep. BTW, <A HREF="http://www.the-underdogs.org" target="_new"> this is an awesome site </A> for completley legal and free downloads of all the goodies of yesteryear.

p.s. I have a pentium pro at 266 mhz, an ATI mach64 with 4mb mem, sounblaster32, and a SCSI Seagate 3 gig hawk drive for my DOS comp.
<font color=blue>
No last words to say
Only memories remain
A farewell then, my path goes forever on

</font color=blue><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by snorkius on 09/30/03 05:01 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

It would be criminal to install win95 on a machine like that. Besides, it would probably blow up or something.

<font color=blue>
No last words to say
Only memories remain
A farewell then, my path goes forever on

</font color=blue>

then stick his hard disk up his arse.

<font color=blue>
Non-alcoholic beer is the first step towards a rubber woman.
</font color=blue>

You could run those games on a mobile phone dude.
I run XP Pro, cos Microsoft gave me a free copy, Id be using 98 otherwise

Me and Seven of Nine, Ohhh Yeah

Incidentally, quite why anyone would want to build a new pc to play that 7th guest shite is beyond me. The nearest I come to 'retro gaming' these days is re-playing half-life (which I'm doing now...) which is still so unbeaten in so many ways..

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<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

First of all you are looking at very different systems to run those games... You would be best off to build for the highest end requirements and then get a slo-mo program to slow the thing down for the low end games (I had some blockout style games I used to play that I had to do this for.) I built a system similar to this a few years ago for a friend to play some old games he really liked (Privateer1, Spellcraft: Aspects of Valor, Might and Magic (Not sure which), Ultima (a couple), etc.) The system we worked out came out flawless and performed great and had no real compatability problems... hardest thing was finding the drivers for some of the cards since they hadn't been used in a few years at all. Got everything off ebay on the cheap... whole system including software (not games) cost ~$180.00 USD a few years ago.

We set it up as a multiple boot system: Linux, Windows98SE, and of course DOS. (The linux system had a mud several of us used to play on occasionally and also, of course, had some of the classic unix games... ala hack... also could telnet in and play games with him when the linux was up). We also had a renegade bbs running on the dos partition and locally you could login and play the best of the door games... LORD, LOD, BRE, SRE, Cripple Smash, etc... and sometimes he'd bounce the modems on his phone line and one of us would login and fiddle with the doors from home too...

We used a P2 266 (Came w/case,ps, and mobo)
64mb Ram
2g IBM Harddrive
1.5g Seagate HD
Soundblaster 16
Matrox Millenium 2 8mb 2d Card
2 x Voodoo2 SLI+SLI Cable
3COM509 Ethernet card
External Hayes Accura 14.4 Modem (AT&FE1V1X4&C1&D2S0=0 so you know)
TEAC 3.5" Floppy
???? 5.25" Floppy
8xCDRom
DOS 6.22 [FULL DOS 5 + DOS 6 UpG + DOS 6.22 UpG]
Win f/WG 3.11
W98SE CD
Linux [Slackware (Small, Simple)]
Various Cables and what not that were required

It ran fly for almost 3 years before the maindrive bailed... we never bothered to fix it, just canned it.

Was alot of fun I think the mobo, case, processor, and PS were all dell... it was a large mid or a small full tower.

Shadus