Discussions on vintage and retrocomputing
I've gotten really interested in old Computers since I got my Commodore PET 2 months ago, so to play some good ol MS Train Simulator and Stronghold 2, I got this massive beauty. Here is a little size comparison between it and my main PC
Got a new windows 98 gaming PC
You weren't kidding. It actually looks brand new!
Seems to also work pretty well if I discount Train Simulator having installation issues... but thats probably just the old CD not holding up from when child me handled it...
You think that's huge? That's a mid tower... You should see full towers!
I hope a full tower is this big
That's not a midi tower.
Mid tower, not Midi Tower. And yeah it totally is. Looks big because it only has one fan in the front and most mid towers nowadays have more fans and less bays.
Here they were called midi towers. And you're right, I didn't see the second picture. It's obvious there.
Can it run DOOM tho ?
Brings back memories of playing Doom II all choppy on our old 486 and months later realizing that pressing the turbo button made it run smoothly. D'oh!
I'll try it once I manage to get Train Sim to run on it!
I was just meming but okay have fun with train sim
3 optical drives? Why?
If I had to guess:
1 is a dvd drive.
1 is a high speed cd-rom read only drive
1 is a cd-rw drive
Oooo lightscribe!
I still have a spindle of Lightscribe cd's around the house somewhere...
I had a drive with that feature. I think i used it once. It was way slower than a sharpie
Ha! I used it TWICE!
Also, to OP, that definitely wouldn't have come OEM on a PC that shipped with Win 98.
Seems to me that you are right with that. The top one reads data in lightning speed. The middle drive doesn't seem to work saddly and the last one got a fat DVD logo on it so im guessing thats right
1 3.5" inch Floppy disk drive (720 KB and 1.44 MB)
Yes
...and loud? Some old machines have noisy ~~jet engines~~ fans inside
You could probably upgrade the fans.
A lot of cases from back then only took 80mm fans. To move more air, they had to spin faster and produce more noise. The loud fans were the upgrade 🙈
True, but I think you can get some pretty decent high airflow 80mm fans these days.
Good point 🙂
Only when you hit the turbo boost!
Which apparently just sped up your games and why my SF2 record was like 1-99999 against the computer.
The turbo button slows your computer down!
It spends it up, but old games would then run faster.
So like, a 50% gain in performance just made the AI move 50% faster.
I always hit "turbo" when playing a game because I thought it would just increase framerate or something.
I dunno, I just found out a while ago on Lemmy what it really did, so maybe I still don't understand it right.
Turbo being activated makes your computer slower. Many games relied on clock speed for timing and were unplayable on newer computers because they ran way too fast. The turbo button slowed them down so you could actually play them.
https://www.howtogeek.com/678617/why-did-the-turbo-button-slow-down-your-pc-in-the-90s/
So, you're right, that's how it was supposed to work.
But it wasn't hardwired. You could switch so "turbo" actually made "turbo" instead of slowing it down.
Even the clock display wasn't accurate, you used jumpers to set what speed you wanted displayed regardless of what was going on.
So I guess there was no way to tell what the turbo button did without some kind of testing or being the one who built the computer.
My uncle built my old desktop with a turbo back in the day, and he was 100% the type of guy to do it the "right" way instead of a standard that meant the opposite.
But I definitely can't remember, maybe I was just shit at SF2 and Star Craft lol
The "turbo" button switches the cpu speed from its native speed to half of it but it wont boost speeds beyond what it was originally intended.
Holy shit a DVDRW!!
You should add a DVD bay so you can rip on the fly!! Trust me it's way faster than saving to your 5400 rpm disk and writing back.
I'll admit I like having images tho.
I own a very similar tower from my first build back in the 90's.
I use it next to my computer desk and have my mouse pad on it. Been there for 20 years now. I like my mouse down there and to the side much more than having it up at keyboard level and I'll never change my ways on it.
Whhhhhat?
Lol that sounds awful, you wild!
Oh no. It's the best. Just on the other side of the arm rest and a little lower. Zero fatigue. No leaning forward. Just comfort and chill. Best way to game.
Yeah sure, a gaming computer without watercooling on the graphics card or rgb leds on the case and ram. Nice try but I'm not a noob !
Dont tease us! Give us some specs!
These tests where done by the seller, hope this uploads in good enough quality to read!
That's a beefy boy for win9x standards! 1600mhz, 512mb ram and a Radeon 7500! This is great for that pre xp era gaming! Cool find!
And there's always !win9x@retrolemmy.com if you have questions or want to show off some more!
I showed this to my girlfriend and now she's been distant and daydreaming all day.
Pfft, not even a turbo button. How are you supposed to play Settlers 2 on that?!
Interestingly, the turbo button didn't speed up your system. Turning it off deliberately slowed it down.
This was needed since some games etc assumed a fixed clock speed. When the clock ran faster, the game ran too fast. Pressing the turbo button to off was one of the first attempts at an emulation of older systems.
