Yes retro games vastly underestimated their requirements. Some demanding games needed more CPU power than even existed at the time haha.

A period correct machine is great but for beginners or people who just want to play the game, building a time machine is a lot more convenient and more accessible.

I like period mostly correct options, but also like building time machines, so I have multiple of both options 😊 For me the hardware is more fun than the actual games, endless combinations

I love all flavors of machines! At the end of the day, I think tinkering with hardware (and configuring software!) can be just as rewarding as playing our favorite games. Part of my computing experience is linked to troubleshooting and getting things to work back in the day. I expect some of it nowadays too as I go back in time and fiddle with old hardware. Still, I totally get it when people have limited time (and budget!) and want things to "just work". As long as we keep playing and sharing our experience the retrogaming community as a whole wins. As usual, thank you Phil and everybody writing comments for helping to keep this hobby alive! I really enjoyed reading the comments and stories! In the spirit of sharing, here is my personal setup related to this matter: Personally, my period-correct setup is a Pentium 2 with 16 megs of RAM, a SoundBlaster 16, and an old hard disk that I'm surprised is still working. I think it may soon need to be replaced with a small SSD or a CF card. This machine is hooked to a Compaq 14" CRT monitor with a "bubble" type of screen. I got lucky because the motherboard features AT and ATX options. So I got a recent PSU powering it and retired the original AT unit. Overall, I love playing on this machine because of all the little mechanical sounds it makes (monitor turning on, noise from the hard drive reading stuff, and a slight static sound from the speakers which becomes obvious at high volumes). My Pentium 4 seems to have bitten the dust due to a PSU that went bad. I'm still checking which parts are (not) working so that I know what to save and what to send to an electronics recycling center. It was my WinXP machine and I was looking forward to upgrading it with something better than the GeForce MX 4000 it currently has, alongside more RAM (only 1GB!). It is now disassembled, each part in its own anti-static bag. The new star of the show is a time machine type system. I feel it is way too recent and quite overpowered for the stuff I usually play, but since it was just laying around the house with no use, it is a low-cost substitute for the P4 system. This PC is a WinXP build with a Core i3 4160, 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM, GTX 650 and an SSD. The catch is that I play it using the peripherals that belong to the P4 system: a Samsung 15" CRT monitor, an old MS keyboard, and even the case that belonged to the P4. This PC runs basically all of my GOG library and a bunch of MS-DOS games (I love D-Fend Reloaded!) and SCUMM VM with no issues. I still have some CDs and floppies from back in the day and I enjoy using those. As it sits on the table, the only difference is that you won't hear the hard drive read/write noises. This made me think about something: as time passes, I am under the impression that backing up those disks and using them as image files in the time machine is much more realiable (obviously) than subjecting the old discs and drives to some more wear/tear after some 2 decades. There is also the convenience of buying games digitally instead of scouring through marketplace listings. I guess this is why my GOG library (and wishlist!) keeps growing.

Personally, a period-correct build with a CRT monitor gives me the right feeling to immerse myself in the game. In the end, to avoid subjecting my old hardware to too dangerous stress, I often use emulators for convenience. I invented some middle ground with Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 with XP and thanks to the DOS Box and glide configurator, with the Sound Blaster Live and the CRT monitor I can cover from 1993 to 2005 with retrogaming with an ancient flavour😉. Thanks for the content, greetings from Italy

I really wish someone out there would manufacture a modern CRT.

I lucked out and found a Windows 98 machine in a basement of a house I was renovating. P2 400MHz in a P2B rev 1.12, Rage Pro Turbo AGP, and a DOS compatible soundblaster. It must have been abandoned to upgrades at the end of the 90's/ early 2000's. I am currently doing a 98SE/DOS build to pair with my modern custom loop gaming rig. My office is filling in nicely with a mix of old and new:)

Half half is good in my opinion. I use Windows 7 era hardware to play Windows XP stuff. It’s easier to get max performance and graphics so your Pc doesn’t struggle. Sometimes the older gear isn’t very reliable because of its age and it’s harder to find good condition stuff.

Both! But the time machine is a bit more fun. Over-spec'd Win98 or XP builds are super fun and ultimately the main point for me. I want to build something better than I had growing up! Like a P4 w/ 1GB ram on Win98se.

Simple answer for me : I love both. Very nice feeling to play with slot one boards with Dos and w98se. It accept a plethora of processors from p2 233 to Pentium 3 1Ghz, very versatile. Same for graphics cards from old school 2d ones up to overkill Geforce Fx i love also playing with a more modern like p4 , athlon 64, Core 2 or athlon Fx for W98se or Win Xp. Here in France, you can easily find localy old computers like this for 50 / 100€ Thank you for your video.

I do mostly period-correct systems, but I almost always replace the mechanical SCSI/IDE drive with a solid-state replacement. I also go with the highest spec components of the period with max RAM etc.

I like both! I enjoy refurbishing old PCs and all that involves. Just finished stripping down, washing, greasing, and painting an AT system with a 233MHz Pentium MMX system.

Really like your videos. Your content are unique in a way that you concentrate on an era of vintage computing which not many other content creators pay attention to, keep up the good work

My Time Machine is designed for Windows XP, and uses some of the last supported devices. Gigabyte Q67 ITX motherboard, Intel i7-2600, 480GB SSD, and an nVidia GT 740.

I like both. But mostly period correct hardware. Because, with a period correct machine I know it's from the past. The actual hardware. To have the real machine from the past makes me feel the past is so much more real instead of a distant memory.

sandy bridge system will run everything at 1000fps but the 5volt vrm Barton bomb with quirky via chipset will bring you sweet memories

0:35 BEAUTIFUL wow, love that system!

I'm a fan of the time machine with a CRT monitor. Good performance, but it still activates the nostalgia trip I'm looking for.

I go hybrid: period correct for the core components (CPU, motherboard, RAM, extension cards), and modern for the rest. Having a classic beige case is nice, but the ones in good condition are increasingly harder to find. I have seen many many old cases in the last two years. They usually have bent side panels or a bent motherboard tray (I don't know what people do with their PCs). Things that I definitely don't miss: 1) low quality noisy power supplies that always exploded at the end of their lifetime, 2) small noisy fans everywhere, 3) bulky blinking CRT monitors that gave me headaches, 4) slow noisy hard drives that gave me even more headaches, 5) floppy disks: every second one did not work. Today I have a modern power supply and emulate the drives with compact flash cards and Goteks. For the CD-ROM drive I mostly use images and Daemon Tools, as those were also slow and noisy.

I have had a lot of fun watching your videos for years they're always helpful and actually spurred me on to flesh out my collection of retro computers! Have started dabling in old Apple PPC and intel based systems too! It's nice to branch out with the systems and I know this has nothing to do with gaming but they look lovely lol :D

I usually build systems that look period correct, but then I tend to maximize performance. Getting the fastest possible processor for a motherboard, maxing out the ram, putting in a GPU that is a few years younger than the build, Pata SSD or SD card, those kind of mods really improve performance and playability and just let you get the most out of your build. They usually aren't really visible and benchmarking them and comparing to period reviews is really fun imo. My last build is something like that: PCIII Orchid Systems Portable Case (with WXGA display), AT Shuttle HOT569A, AMD K6-2+ 400, 128MB SDRAM, 128GB PATA SSD, Geforce FX5500, ISA Avance Sound ALS100, PCMCIA PCI Slot, Network card, Multiboot : Win98, DOS7.1 and WinXP. I want all the things :)

I had an IBM P200 Trinitron monitor way back when - I almost cried when it quit working. I still have a Gateway 20" CRT in the basement, but I haven't used it in years...

In the middle of the year 2000 that was a nice middle of the road middle of the range PC.

I've never built a full-on time machine, but I never hesitate to use modern PSU and storage. Bought a big box of sata to molex adapters so I can use modern power supplies with any hardware. I sometimes install an HDD for the sound, but generally prefer CF and sata adapters for convenience and reliability. I will die before I give up my CRT.😅 Great topic!

My strategy for time machines have been working quite well. Basically I aim for super budget builds for a certain Windows era to use on the previous one. For example my Windows XP build is a Athlon X4 with a Radeon HD 7750 which is 2012/2013 super budget gaming components. A computer my friend bought at the time and used for almost 10 years with Windows 7. I got it for free, cleaned it out, applied new thermal paste, put in a SSD, a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS and installed Windows XP. The components are crazy powerfull compared to the current high end hardware of XPs later years. It runs everything amazing, has a low power draw and has great driver support to boot.

Something we can all agree on is that it is fun to build both but surely more convenient and costs less to build a time machine + you have a huge variety of options when it comes to what parts you want to use.

I've got both a period correct and time machine PC setup, with an AT to PS/2 adapter for the keyboard, USB to PS/2 for the Microsoft mouse and a VGA+PS/2 KVM switch so I don't need to swap any cables. -Celeron 500 (Celeron Slotket using the 500's stock cooler), Intel SE440BX-2 (has integrated YMF740C+SBLink), Awe64 Value, 12MB Diamond Monster 3DII, 16MB Savage4 GT (lacks the required VBE for Duke3D's Vesa modes), 3.2GB Seagate Medalist 5400+20GB Seagate UX (originally used a 6.4GB Quantum Fireball EX - not big enough however), 386MB RAM (SPD functional to prevent the memory count on each boot), 12x 1995 Matsushita CD-ROM, 50x 2001 Asus CD-ROM, Windows 98SE -Athlon XP 3000+ (400MHz FSB), NOS MSI KT6V-LSR, Audigy2 Value, 20th Anniversary Leadtek 128MB 6600GT, 20GB Maxtor D740X-6L, 250GB Samsung 2.5" SATA HDD (only SATAII drive I know of that works on the VT8237R), 2GB DDR400, Lightscribe capable DVD burner (late 2000's, think it's 20x), Windows XP Pro (due to having no idea what drivers work for the Audigy in 98SE - have multiple Live! Value however). The boot drives were chosen purely based on the sounds they make when in use (Medalist with seek, Maxtor with motor spin up, running and spin down). I have both going through my main 1440p screen as the image looks sharper compared to my OG 1024x768 screen and free 1366x768+1080p screens. It also helps that I can set the aspect ratio to 4.3 or 5:4. 32" 1440p IPS that has VGA, mini DP, 2x full DP and 2x HDMI - and it was the cheaper than my first modern LCD (1080p 24" LG that replaced my 1024x768 85Hz in early-mid 2014).

One of my projects currently is building a period correct windows 98 machine. For the case, I'm using an old atx mid tower that I saved from back then that has housed numerous parts for me over the years. It has 4x 5.25 bays, and I decided to use 1 for a cdrom and with the other 3 I found a 3D-printed bracket for a 120mm fan that fits perfectly in them. So I'm doing a little bit of case modding with that to improve the cooling capability of those older towers.

Wing Commander III was the first game to really make me upgrade. I ended up getting a VLB graphics card... I think with 1 MB. It also made SimCity 2k run out of the box which I bought at the same time. Those two games had me occupied for some time

Having recently gone through a build there is nostalga but also convience. I've gone for modern storage (exception CD ROM) for my build via Compact Flash and a GoTek Floppy. Everything else parts from the late 90's. I like the quiteness and relibility of modern storage compared to mechanical from 25 years ago still being in working order.

I like them all and have both. Thanks for sharing.

Regarding input devices/joysticks: Back in the late 90s and early 2000s I loved to play my 3D spaceship games with my Logitech Wingman Extreme, but when it finally broke, I switched to the newer version: The Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D. This joystick came with an adapter from gameport to USB and thus can still be used on modern PCs as well! In fact, I still use this stick on my Windows 10 machine, mostly when I fly jets and helicopters in games like the Battlefield series. :)

Great video and topic Phil! I think you can have fun with any computer and no matter what equipment you own, there will always be the feeling of needing something else. Use what you got and be happy. Don't go in the FOMO trap. I love both vintage and retro computers - and everything in between. However, when it comes to games from the pre-3D era, I prefer vintage and period correct hardware. Playing an old CGA game on an old IBM PC can't be beat IMHO. But for Windows 9x games and up, I want the fastest compatible hardware I can get my hands on. When I want to go retro I just use an Intel NUC. It works great for DOSBox and GOG games. The biggest issue for me is space, so compromises have to be made, but less is supposed to be more...

I built one of those "hybrid" machines you mentioned at the end. While I'm mostly in the "period correct" camp because there's just something so special to me about that older hardware from the time when all of this was still like magic, I have upgraded my build with certain modern conveniences too. I've got a 1GHz Slot-1 setup but I consider USB2 and SATA PCI cards to be must-have add-ons. I went solid-state for the storage but in hindsight I really miss the hard drive noises. The game controller was probably the single trickiest bit, as I want a modern handheld controller with high-quality analog stick but I also need DOS joystick compatibility. Thank God for the USB4VC Kickstarter project, as it finally filled that void! I can run a brand-new XBox controller and it works in Win98 AND DOS! Lastly, a nice CRT monitor is a must-have for me. I've tried really hard to find an LCD setup that's "good enough" but so far it just doesn't seem to exist. Some day my 21" Sony Trinitron CRT will die and it will be a very sad day for me.

Always a great video and a great way to start my Friday mornings before I login to work.

Phil, love your work mate! I don't have time, space or funds to do any retro stuff but your videos keep me satiated. UFO Enemy Unknown, Syndicate, Dune 2 and Simcity 2000 are some my fave retro games. If you haven't checked any of them out you should!

I am fortunate in that I still have my original P233 MMX AT machine I bought 20 years ago for $100 (I was a poor college student at the time). It's mostly original parts but with the capacitors replaced, storage upgraded to an SD card, and using a more modern ATX power supply. Tonight booting up Win98 and installing from CD then playing some Sim City 2000 felt like I got into a time machine and went back to the 90's. Perfect nostalgia. But just as you said it struggles with many demanding games that came out just after like Half Life and Quake II. Well struggles compared to what are pampered with today. Back then 20-30fps was considered more than playable as we were far more interested in graphics and games being pretty than silky smooth 60+ framerates! Thus nowadays I tend to play games on 1-2 newer generation hardware instead. Full specs: Asus P/I-P55T2P4, P233 MMX, 96MB EDO Ram, Soundblaster 32, ATI Rage 8MB, IDE to SD Card adapter, 8GB SD Card, CD Rom, 3.5 floppy, Win98SE.

I run the best of both worlds... Modern PC with a CRT monitor. The iiyama Vision Master Pro 455. =P Keyboard used to be a dell "Bigfoot" before a cat dumped tea over it.

I'm a "combination" kind of guy. I don't have time to bother with making old IDE harddrives work - so for that, I use SD2IDE or similar. Same goes for Floppies, where I tend to go with GoTek out of convenience. I rarely need floppies for anything besides the initial setup of DOS or whatever is required to partition and prepare the machine. Rest stays somewhat "period correct" , so motherboard, graphics card , PSU, case, monitor.

I like to Mix the best of both worlds. Always depends on Avail Parts. I have a P4 Mobo with Floppy/IDE/SATA/Firewire. I can do it all!

Great video Phil, I lean towards the Time Machine but definitely see a role for both. I'm a big fan of mixing new parts with old and have got three time machines - Pentium MMX (DOS/Win95), Pentium 4 (Windows 98) and Ivy Bridge i5 (Windows XP). Next build is going to be a Pentium III with a Voodoo3 for some period correctness - it will be a bit of a 1999/2000 machine, likely with some modern conveniences thrown in. I should have all my bases covered after that, but we'll see where the hardware tinkering takes me... In terms of peripherals, I found a some great options for mouse and keyboard - I have two (modern) Leopold Mechanical keyboards that are USB and PS/2 compatible so I can use them on all my machines. One of them has the classic 90s beige colour scheme too and really looks the part. I also have a Cherry 5400 optical mouse in grey that is USB and PS/2 compatible. None of this trackball nonsense!! Those can stay relegated to the 90s, no nostalgia for that... I still haven't convinced myself to get a CRT monitor (I recently lost a 20" 1600x1200 LCD monitor which was tough) although I do have a nice Sony PVM for my consoles 🙂

Thank you for being so inspirational in your videos. I wanted to tell you I finally had success using a 120GB Samsung SSD as an HDD on a Pentium 233 mmx system with an Intel AN430TX motherboard. I made 3 Fat32 partitions and Windows 98 installed. I have tried your other methods with success, but I really wanted to use one SSD. Thank You again, if it weren't for you, I would not have had the motivation to wrestle with this until I got it to work.

There is a board that you can connect to that slot A CPU to modify its multiplier. Also you need to apply thermal paste between the slot casing and the heating at least. I remember the casings paste application was bad but the heatsink has absolutely 0 thermal paste leading to very hot temperatures very quickly. After the thermal paste fix it’ll run very cool. I had an 800 MHz version of that.

What i really like is to mount a "top of the line" period correct with a little newer gpu. For exemple a Tualatin 1.4 with a fx5900 gpu is great. It flies on win9x.

I think i'll meet you halfway on this. I won't give up on having some classical stuff, such as a CRT, but i'm willing to adopt modern conveniences whenever possible and practical. This is true for retro PC gaming, but also for my ZX Spectrum experience. I had a modest collection of ZX Spectrum machines, and I donated most of them to the local ZX Spectrum museum (only keeping the TC 2048 clone from my childhood), because every time i get back to those old machines for any period of time, the different keyboard layout kills my brain. I just cannot handle retro keyboards (like on the ZX Spectrum or C64). However, i have to admit i have a few old PCs, from 486 to Pentium and Pentium II range, and I'll happily play MSDOS games from the late 80s / early 90s on those (and prefer those to modern machines) edit: yeah so that means i often emulate my ZX Spectrum stuff on these 90s PC machines. Ah, and give me an optical mouse. I've tried using a serial mouse with a mouse ball again, and i can do without the frustration of the mouse getting stuck when dirt sneaks in :) So i guess it's half / half for me

seeing that slot a cartridge makes me mad jelly 😂

Period correct is cool to have, but not practical for many people, especially as time goes on. (Availability of parts dwindles, parts break over time, extra machines take up space...etc.) I still have my period correct Windows XP PC, but if/when it breaks I don't think I'd replace it with another period correct one.

By your definition I have several time machines and only one period correct tower, but I also play games up to the mid to late 2000s, so up to Crysis and GTA 4 on these systems on a 1920x1200 display, so in the fastest of the "retro" systems is a phenom ii x4 975 and a GTX 670 running Windows Vista for DX10 support. The period correct is an AT style Zida Tomato socket 370 board with a PIII 600 and a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP, HDD and Windows 98SE, I don't have a CRT though.

I usually go for a period correct "look" with a CRT monitor, PS/2 keyboard/mouse and beige cases for Windows 9x machines, BUT I also opted for 19" monitors, CPUs one generation newer than supposed to, bigger HDDs and the biggest amount of memory that the OS officially supports. Getting period correct high end GPUs card is sometimes very hard/expensive, so having a computer that can squeeze out more performance out of period correct mid-range GPUs is a good compromise. By the way, Windows 98 can run on HDDs bigger than 120GB if you replace the default IDE driver (ESDI_506.PDR) with a patched or updated version with 48-bit LBA support. Mine works perfectly fine on a 320GB HDD dual-booting with Windows 2000 on one single partition.

I still have my athlon 64 somewhere. I’d love to build a time machine and run windows xp. I had a great time in my xp days.

I love watching your videos because it's like a time capsule for me. I'm however happy with my modern PC. I can run the vast majority of my old games on my modern PC, and they look and run better than ever. For example Unreal Tournament 1999, this game runs at locked 170Hz 1440p on my modern PC and I'm also using high resolution textures. On period correct PC the same game would run with around 50fps in 1024x786x16 on voodoo3. I can even use the nGlide wrapper if I want to remember how Glide API games looked on Voodoo cards (even dithering filter works).

IMHO Phil - go for both. Why not?

Due to your videos I ended up with a period correct Win98/Dos PC. Original Wingman flight stick, CRT monitor, TNT2, Awe 64, MT-32, Roland Speakers, Pentium MMX 200 and motherboard that was released in 1998. It's installed in a beige period correct case. I found a new old stock external CF card reader that connects through printer port. This lets me transfer files from my modern computer to the Win98/Dos pc. The only modern convince upgrade I did was replacing the mechanical hard drive to one of those industrial ide dom's. That was the best decision for me.

I feel like the correct answer to this rhetorical question is somewhere in the middle. Certain components should be period-correct, because if they aren't, there will be massive compatibility issues. The CPU, for one, without some kind of throttling software that isn't always reliable, needs to run at a period-correct clock speed because otherwise, the games will often be unplayably fast. I also think the GPU should be relatively period-correct, because a lot of pre-DirectX or early-DirectX-era games make use of specific features of 3Dfx, Matrox, S3 ViRGE, PowerVR, etc. and while there are wrappers and ways to somewhat emulate the look that these cards produce, those can also be unreliable, unstable, or simply inaccurate. Other components, on the other hand, do little-to-nothing to affect actual gameplay and exist solely to make the boring parts of the system snappier or more efficient. A modern cooling system will extend the life of the machine, an SSD will shorten loading times, as will a newer optical drive. Floppy disk emulators are also faster than an old-school disk drive, some kind of modern networking dongle will get better internet speeds. The one area that's the most controvertial might be sound, as there are so many different period-accurate sounds cards each sounding a bit different, tons of MIDI add-ons, etc. I personally would go with something that is HARDWARE accurate but not PERIOD accurate, something like an Orpheus sound card that contains the proper period-accurate chips for the right sounds but has the versatility to behave as multiple sound cards in one.

Happy Friday Phil!

I recently recapped a Socket A board and put a Amd 2500xp in it. I have other boards that need recapping but simply dont have enough cases or space for them. At least not at the moment.

I find that each have their own advantages and disadvantages that are often complementary. So I tend to run both. I was very lucky when a couple of years ago I got a trio of old Dell Pentium 3 machines dropped into my lap to be recycled that I ended up taking home. They were literally stored in a barn and came to me covered in cobwebs and I had to clean straw out of them. All have identical motherboards, 1 GHZ chips, and maxed out ram with a variety of other components. Its allowed me to keep multiple period correct machines running for basement LAN gaming when my brother visits. But I also find that keeping a time machine or two from some slightly later eras around is also beneficial. When you want to play a game like say Freelancer and want to max out the graphics its nice that I also have some Core 2 Duo, and Late 2000s rigs that let me really run those late big box and small box games silky smooth on maxed out settings.

Great video as always. Period correct hardware is normally an issue due to the age of components. As most of the viewers can note that capacitors, hard drive mechanics and crt as a whole are a reliablility issue. I have been in this arena since the '70's and really do not have a desire to go back too far. In the '90's, PC's in general began the slow climb to great gaming platforms. When I bought a Orchid Voodoo 1 in 1998, gaming became visually spectacular. At the time I played Quake 1 off and online. Final comment, the only retro games I play these days is UT99 and the Quake III/Arena on a win 10 system.

I'm in the middle as I prefer CRT monitors, especially for 2D VGA games, but was always a fan of silent PCs, so no HDDs, quiet fans, CD-Rom spin slowdown tools and all in a modern case with noise dampening foam. Still have 3.5 and 5.25" disk drives for my Big Box collection but they are more for disk imaging. Also love that with the 136in1 Pentium 233 MMX I can change the speed depending on the game. Already have enough systems without going into the direction of separate 386, 486 and so on systems. (not counting countless consoles, C64 and Amiga) That being said, I also have a place in my heart for the classic cases like I had back in the day. Especially the ones that show the clock speed in a little display. Always wanted this back then but my PC didn't come with these. Mentioning old price lists of hardware, I have backups of multiple Vobis flyers (Highscreen) because I also love to look at these from time to time. I mean they include my first PC. :D

There’s a difference between any random period correct build and a period correct build from exactly the last moment that build still was correct. So Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME extended support ended on July 11, 2006. Up until about that time, windows 9x compatible hardware was still built. Until around 2003, I actually still dual-booted my PC with Windows 98 and Windows XP. I guess what I’m saying is, one should pick a specific year (and maybe month) to be period correct about the system one is assembling. I’ve also recently came to the conclusion that building a PC from, for instance, 1998, and upgrading it with y2k appropriate upgrades is also very satisfying (not talking about hybrids). Perhaps an idea for a new video (series), @Phil?

I'm weird and never really liked beige, I usually prefer simplistic black or silver PC cases. I like to use an SSD and I have a DELL 2007FPb 1600x1200 for some awesome hi-res 4:3. You should see if you can get your hands on a ASRock P4i945GC, it's a P4 board with DDR2 + PCIe.

Crt and ide drives❤ thx for the video😊

It`s always nice to have a Vintage period correct system if you can afford to. but with the cost and hard to find parts a Time Machine is the easier option. i am lucky to have a good mix of both but it has taken many years and a lot of work . Still a great hobby. Thanks for the video.

I have both but for me my favourite system to use is my (now called thanks to this video) Windows XP Time Machine. I went for a New old stock "gaming" case with a window, loaded with LED fans and fan controller etc so it looks like the style I had back in the day with new parts. I Run a gigabyte socket 775 motherboard, core2quad Q8200, modern watercooler, 4gb ram, an Nvidia 660TI along with a 500gb SSD (lets me LOAD IT UP with games!!!). New PSU, new optical drive, modern gaming keyboard and mouse along with for me, the best part, a brand new Phillips IPS LED 19Blp monitor, 1280x1024 @ 75hz and old-school non widescreen aspect ratio! Granted my games I play are generally 2000-2006 ish era but I've never had a single issue so far with compatibility and the machine never breaks a sweat! If I'm playing older games I bring out my old beige period correct Pentium II with Win 98 and mechanical hard drive, I sometimes bring it out just to hear the HDD spin up when I press the power button!

Great topic, and one that can be debated endlessly. :) Generally, I prefer period correct hardware for older stuff, e.g. DOS. I really like the 486/Pentium era hardware and love playing with that. Once I go into WIn98-era and later, I tend to do hybrid builds. I have lost patience for tinkering with hard drives and old keyboards/mice so they're nearly always modern. Same thing with monitors - I've had so many CRTs die over the years, it's sad. Nowadays I use a fairly old Eizo 1920x1200 LCD that still works great, and mostly run at 1600x1200 or 800x600 for older stuff. One thing that keeps me busy is whenever I find a game I really want to play through, I sit down and theorize the perfect build for that game, and attempt to build it. That's a lot of fun I think, and I get to play with many of my old parts regularly. Keeps my collection relevant, and forces me to use parts and ensure they're still working. The one big thing I've had lots of problems with, is power supplies. I've had to trash so many over the years, and finding good working ones is quite hard & expensive these days. Would love to hear about a modern solution for classic AT-style systems, if there are any? Cheers Phil, hope your morning coffee is good!

I sort of went with both, I setup my socket 7 K6-2 550 with a SATA to IDE adaptor and used a 120GB SSD along with a Radeon 7550 LE to make an underdog machine like I had back in the day.

Ach wie schön. Die PC-PlAYER war ein großartiges Magazin. Wurde von mir um die 2000-Wende auch immer gerne gekauft und gelesen👍

I think I prefer a little bit of both. I like the air flow of newer cases, the stability of a new power supply, and the speed of solid state storage. However, I love using original motherboards, video cards, and sound cards. Especially with Creative sound cards, the drivers just work in DOS, Win9x, or later. You can’t beat that. (I especially like the late beige Antec cases that have better air flow options. They still look relatively period correct, but help keep Voodoo cards cool.)

I'm building a period pc from 1999, just found the same model case i had 23 years ago.

I’m all period correct stuff (except I’ve started to use SSD drives or CF on some of my systems lately mostly because of the convenience) because hardware including repairs is very important part of my hobby, but then again I have quite many systems so I can tackle different eras. I also have zero interest in late XP era HW or games, so I have no use for some beefy Core2Duo/Quad etc. Many later XP era games can be run on a modern system without any problems, so there’s that too. So, 2003 top-end Socket A system is the latest and it runs pretty much everything from the era beautifully. But I can understand time machines if you want to keep the number of systems as low as possible and it is also much cheaper.

Period correct is more for hardware/tech enthusiasts and historians. For general retro gamers though, the time machine is the better experience.

The old 4:3 HP and Dell monitors (examples: HP 1740 and 1950 or Dell 1704) are a good alternative to a CRT if you can't find one or don't want one. They made millions of them for businesses.

Usually I try to match all parts in my retro PCs so that they are from the same "era". I always use old IDE hard drives, but I normally disconect the Floppy, (most of them are broken anyways...) and although a Geforce FX5200 is cheap and good for Windows 98, some really old games stuggle to run on this "modern" hardware. I mainly use Pentium 3 from 500 to 933 mhz or old AMD Athlon XP.

I remember at the time playing Tachyon on my Celeron 800 with a 32mb PCI Radeon 7200 that the experience was pretty ok. I couldn't tell you what frame rates were, but it wasn't often that I felt like the machine was holding anything back for software/games at the time. Also played Tachyon with my MS Precision Pro 2 joystick. Still have this machine and joystick. Definitely plan to keep both forever as they're each firsts for me. First PC bought with my own money. First major gaming peripheral. The system only had 2 PCI slots for expansion, so I opted to install a USB2.0 card at the time to add network, WiFi, CD burners, etc at the time and used the Intel AC97 sound. Certainly prefer to use a SB card now, but what I had at the time.

Im fairly lucky in that I started picking up my retro pc stuff from 2017 and spread out some of the costlier purchases (3dfx cards etc). Def need a lot of spare parts though as ram and cd drives tend to fail. Motherboards though still going strong touch wood

For me, personally, I mix the PC and TM depending on what I have at hand. I really prefer to make and use a PC computer but I am not willing to sacrifice space, money and time (to find components) for building it, so whenever I need and can, I use the comfort of modern components. For example, I prefer ms-dos to have less than 200MHz CPU (clocked down or native clock), an ISA sound card and a 1-2M VGA that have no issues with old dos games. For Win 95 I go for a CPU with up to 300-500MHz, ISA sound and PCI video, for Win98 or Win2k I go with 750-1GHz CPU, PCI only peripherals and AGP video. For XP I prefer 2-3GHz CPU, single-core or multicore/multithreading and 3-4G of RAM (I like XP computers maxed out, I admit). Always I use modern IDE or SATA optical drives, I am not into 2x-8x speed drives; the newest are more reliable and faster, and for HDD´s as I have many older spinning drives, from 20,40G up to 250, 320G, I use them, even if I need to deal with BIOS limitations. And I always use HDDs with at least 80% remaining life just to be sure (Disk Genius is a great tool to check the HDDs). I am not concerned with the noise, for me the computer IS always noisy (not vacuum cleaner levels of noise ofcourse) and a quiet computer makes me anxious.

I like using a mix of original and new components. I use a s478 P4 with a Voodoo 3, in a new case with good ventilation and a modded new cooler, to keep these old components working a bit longer

Ive got machines from every generation, but my favourite retro system i use is athlon xp 2400+, running windows 98, audigy 2zs, voodoo 5, with a 21" Panasonic CRT, just finished another play through of unreal gold, and now half life 1. Best of both worlds glide games at constant 60fps

I prefer a retro machine with modern conveniences. My machine is an old emachines running XP. They used Intel boards which are generally less affected by the plague. And XP offers me a great balance between windows 9x software compatibility and modern hardware support.

if you can, your screen should be a multiple of the resolution most games should play at, you can sorta brute force and "fix" the issue if you use your modern high DPI display, though you may need adapter circuitry.

Whether period correct or emulator beast, cheap available parts or holy grail hardware, I think all of these are valid, so long as we are happy with what we build! I look for hardware natively compatible in MS-DOS - so, ISA sound cards - but also insert modern conveniences such as flash storage, USB 2.0 and a fast NIC for times I've booted into Windows.

I like frankensteining it, overkill performance, pushing windows 98 or xp to their limits, then an ssd on top for a silky smooth experience

thank you

I do a mix. Original hard drives come with too .any issues, and I prefer CF cards so you can swap set ups. For example, I am building one with Win98, DOS, OS/2 Warp and OpenStep. Getting the right hardware that works for those is part of the fun! Apparently Matrox is one of the few video cards that have great support for all. Ironically, it probably works worse in DOS...

I date the machine by the CPU/motherboard combo. Then add the best RAM I can. Add to that a GPU about 2 years newer - I like to assume I would have upgraded it once. Then the games have to be period correct or older than the CPU/motherboard and should work with high settings with that GPU I selected.

I have four period correct setups spanning MS-DOS to Windows XP, with an IBM ThinkPad work computer running Windows 2000. Period correct hardware IS the time machine, and brings me back to when I used each throughout my life. I love managing older tech, no matter how cumbersome it is.

If it plays the games the way I like to play them then I'm a happy camper usually.

Hey Phil, ich hoffe der Kaffee schmeckt 😂 Grüße from good old germany. For me it is an emotional decision playing period correct or with modern hardware. I like both 😊 Thanks for that fantastic videos. Tschüss

I built a time machine with a 20" trinitron CRT from 1996. Best of both worlds imho. It's a pretty good PC built from (semi)modern parts: An i7-3770k, 16GB ram, SSD and a 2080ti. It's powerful enough to get every older game running at mostly correct speed in dosbox (config file tweaking required in many cases), and retro windows games with modern ray-tracing options (like Quake2) or graphically intensive modern mods run fantastic at the monitors 1024x786 or lower (for some reason I find that some older games look better @640x480 instead of higher resolutions, maybe because of nostalgia). Because it's pretty powerful, I can run PCem up to a pentium 233 flawlessly, which is great for those older games that are very picky which dosbox has trouble with. The only thing I can't get working 100% to my liking is EAX support. It gets close with alchemy in some cases, but it doesn't reach the heights of my windows XP machine with a x-fi card.

performance issues made part of the experience back In the day!

Another great video thanks Phil! Perhaps you could do one on combining a scaler like ossc pro with a retro pc for improving the graphics when using an LCD while playing DOS games?

My stance has always been that I wanted the best I could get my hands on at any particular time. If I could pull computers from the future, something I actually fantasized about, I'd gladly do it. Therefore "time machines" are more satisfying for me even from a "nostalgia" standpoint because it'd be what I wanted even back then.

While a period correct machine might me more appropriate and immersive, I'm running a modified build of Windows XP on a second SSD on the computer that I'm writing this on (i7-8700k, z370); only compatibility issue I ran into was that XP obviously doesn't have drivers for the 10xx series of GPUs, so I just went out and bought a 730 and plugged it into my second PCIe slot. XP-era games, and the whole OS for that matter, runs so ridiculously fast that if the software I needed still supported it and I dared to connect it to the internet lest my computer be added to some sort of botnet, I'd have no problem daily driving it.

There was a clear drop in build quality of motherboards between the 90s and 2000s The market became very competitive and it into a bit of a race to the bottom for a time. Prices came down as well, but that's perhaps not as relevant to us today.

Period Correct ! For me it is the way to go, nice CRT and HDD noise is part of the nostalgia

I remember cribbing about the flicker rate on my 775ft monitor and always wanted a high res and smooth display at higher hz, always wished the hdd noise dissapeared and squeezed the last performance drop from the system, with 1 gb ram in year 1999, it was p3 933 on i815 with a lousy mx440. I say its a lot better to build a time machine but still own period correct stuff

I have my own nostalgia, experiencing a brand new Pentium machine in 1995... But, I would draw the line between DOS and Windows gaming, where I would recommend patches and compatibility layers for Windows games to be played on modern systems, with same or better fidelity. DOS games can command that vintage feel, but also obtaining rare hardware such compatible sound cards can be out of reach for many, so solutions like DOSBox which emulates many different hardware configurations from the early PC periods can also be recommended, as there is no one size fits all hardware for DOS gaming.

I like period correct time machines... maxed out, last available hardware officially supporting the OS; no major hacks, just the regular drivers.

Nice old Computers, I have them too!

One thing that became quickly apparent when I was building my own system was 'rediscovering' how game marketing changed through the 2000's with required specs. Nowadays 'minimum specifications' imply the hardware needed to play at a decent framerate at a reasonable resolution. Back then though it was what you needed just to "run" the game. Definitely a reason why consoles won for a bit when places like Bullfrog just couldn't be too honest on their boxes, listing the '1st Gen Pentium 166mhz' as Dungeon Keeper 2's minimum was just cruel, especially when the newer CPU's struggled with it