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Greetings, and welcome to an LGR thing and today,

I would like to answer a very broad topic.

It's a question or set of questions that I get asked

*all* the time, ever since I've started LGR, and that is

"What classic computer should I buy?" Like I wanna get into playing old computer games,

How do I do it? What's the best way for me?

And you know what, that's just such a deep topic that goes all over the place that it's really hard to answer.

I attempted to do this seven or eight years ago with a video titled "What DOS PC Should You Buy?"

And while there are several things that I mentioned there that are still going to be brought up here,

'cause they're still relevant,

there are several of the items that I would like to talk about that have gotten more expensive or harder to find

and beyond that, I don't want you to just take my word for it, so I have asked *nine* other YouTubers

to be a part of this video and give their input on the topic.

These are not only all channels that I totally recommend and watch all the time,

but I know that they're active in coming up with solutions to the kind of problems that we're gonna be discussing today.

So the questions I asked each of them was what is your *go-to solution* for playing old PC games,

whether it be earlier Windows games

or DOS games, pretty much anything from 1981 to 2001 or so.

Yeah, there are just a lot of topics to cover and a variety of issues, so let's get right to it!

So for this video, we'll be assuming that your goal is retro gaming,

and for that, you'll really want to ask the question, "What do YOU want to do with an old PC?"

or whatever solution that you happen to come up with because different games are gonna require different things.

And in regards to this, the most frequent questions that I get about this are:

Should I stick to pre-made computers from back in the day?

Classic hardware from Compaq or Hewlett Packard or Dell or whoever.

Or should I customize a slightly later machine with more modern components,

and then install stuff as needed for compatibility with older games?

Or should I build my own classic computer from scratch using spare parts?

Or should I maybe just skip all of that altogether and stick to emulation and virtual machines or buying games off of GOG?

Before we get to that, my personal go-to pick for an old computer that I like to play old games on

is the LGR Woodgrain 486.

I mean, that's why I built it here on the channel after all.

It serves my goal of imitating my first PC that I had as a kid, but

it also has all the bells and whistles that I lusted after back in the day.

And it's also covered in woodgrain! *Chuckles*

Which, granted, you know, I customized that and made that happen myself, but uh, you know, I like that.

And it also serves as a base for playing with early to mid '90s upgrades, because I just don't like to leave it static.

I like to swap parts out and see what can be done in terms of appropriate hardware and software from the mid '90s.

As it's configured right now though, it is a 66 megahertz AMD 486, a DX2 CPU,

has 16 megabytes of RAM,

a 1 megabyte Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB video card,

a Creative Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 sound card,

1.2 meg 5¼ floppy drive and 1.44 meg 3½ disk drive,

a 4x CD-ROM drive,

and it also has a flash card interface for convenient file transfers.

You can do this either by CompactFlash or SD cards or any number of other solutions.

And all of this is connected to an AOpen VI15G Socket 3 motherboard,

with 256K of L2 cache installed and a standard CR2032 button battery.

And that's actually one big reason I chose this board is because many batteries

on a lot of these older computers are gonna have something that's gonna leak.

Look for one with a modern battery that is less prone to leaking.

And something else that is absolutely not required but I happen to like it on these older machines,

is this green display here, which shows the current speed of the computer in megahertz.

This paired with a turbo button is extremely useful,

because a lot of games in the early '90s and late '80s looked for a slower CPU,

and the turbo button, you enable that, and it's going to slow down your computer.

What it does exactly is gonna vary depending on the computer you have, but generally, it slows things down.

I've done an entire video about this in the past, so if you're curious, you can check that out.

As for the operating system, this thing runs MS-DOS 6.22,

but I also have another CompactFlash card that I swap out with Windows 3.11 on there.

But the thing is though, it doesn't stop there! This computer is great for a lot of things, but

there are games earlier and later and even around the same time that are way more picky and...

this is just not going to work with it, or at least it won't be ideal.

I keep several early IBM PC compatibles hooked up for older games,

like original IBM PCs with a 4.77 megahertz 8088 and some with a

8 megahertz, 286 CPU.

These can be very valuable for early '80s games, throughout around 1987 or so,

and as far as sound, *Chuckles* there's not much.

These just come with a PC speaker, or in the case of my IBM AT, an AdLib card.

Yes, just the original AdLib, which gives you that twangy FM synthesis sound.

And it's also worth noting that if you get many, many later cards that are compatible with the Sound Blaster standard,

they're gonna give you that AdLib FM synth sound, either in OPL2 or in OPL3 or something emulating it.

A slight step up from these are the 386 machines that I keep around, such as

these computers that are around 16 to 25 megahertz, a 386 SX or DX.

These are amazing for games that run too fast on even a mid-range 486, but are too slow on a 286 or 8088.

Perfect for earlier VGA games and later EGA games,

and I usually pair these kind of things with a Sound Blaster 2.0 or equivalent.

I also keep several machines set up with Windows 3.1 and 95 on there all the time.

And these have anything from a 100 megahertz 486DX4 CPU,

all the way up to a 233 megahertz Pentium MMX.

Usually with SVGA, a Sound Blaster 16, or one of those clones from the time period.

And finally for later '90s Windows gaming, I largely stick to Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows XP machines.

something with around an 800 megahertz Pentium III,

on up to a 2.4 gigahertz Pentium 4, depending on what I need.

Voodoo graphics are what I stick to for these for the most part,

since the supplied 3DFX Glide mode, which is an incredibly popular thing,

is different than Direct3D and OpenGL, so that's worth keeping in mind.

And some of the later ones I'll stick a NVIDIA GeForce 2 or an 8800 Ultra in there.

And as far as displays, uh, I typically recommend going with a CRT if at all possible.

It takes up a lot of space, but the result is fantastic

in terms of reproduction of what the games are originally supposed to look like.

And while I do still use certain older LCDs every so often,

it's only if they're the right aspect ratio and don't do weird things with the scaling

because sometimes you can end up with stuff that looks blurred or the pixels aren't the correct size.

You don't always have square pixels in these older games.

And typically, as far as sound cards go,

you do want something a little better than Sound Blaster 16

for Windows 98 Second Edition or Windows XP.

Something like the Aureal Vortex 2, which provides A3D, a fantastic early 3D standard.

I use that in a couple of my machines.

And yes, Windows 98 is still built on top of MS-DOS, so things run quite well in DOS mode for the most part,

but you do wanna watch out for compatibility issues in terms of graphics, sound, and CPU speed.

And I'm not really gonna talk about Windows XP, since it doesn't really have a proper DOS mode,

and that's getting into DOSBox territory, and you can start moving onto emulation and virtual machines anyway.

With all that being said, though, there are so many other points of view on these kinds of topics.

So, without further ado, let's get to our guests in no particular order,

and we're gonna start with Nostalgia Nerd.

NN: Hello, my name is Nostalgia Nerd, and when it comes to DOS gaming,

*this* is all I need.

This thing being a Compaq Presario 4100.

As the name suggests, under the hood is an Intel DX4,

a clock tripled 486, and really, the crème de la crème of Intel 486 processors.

I've slotted a Sound Blaster 16 and CD-ROM drive in mine, as well as upgrading to a whopping

32 megabytes of RAM and two gigabyte hard drive to create a machine

that would have blown the minds and swollen tear ducts in 1994.

This machine is from the era of gaming I love the most.

I could always use a Pentium, but there's something about pushing the 486 to its limits that I find pleasing.

DOOM runs smooth as silk, and while it might struggle with some later games, I actually quite like that.

It also has a snazzy BIOS menu,

and I find the pairing of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 to be the peak of civilization.

Not to mention it's very aesthetically pleasing to look at,

even with a 17 inch CRT plonked on top.

All of these things combined make this my go-to machine for DOS gaming.

LGR: Well, as you might imagine, this is very much a viewpoint that I can get behind.

Sometimes a good, decent 486 is really all you need.

It's not the fastest, but it doesn't need to be. A lot of times, those limitations can be fun

and admittedly, tweaking and getting games to work that maybe shouldn't on a slightly slower computer

is a lot of the appeal of running games on older hardware, at least for me.

And really, a 100 megahertz DX4 machine is *plenty*, um, in fact, I'm also very fond of these Compaq Presarios.

Presarios or-

S- s- sudios or whatever-

they're very cool machines, I love my model 425 right here.

It's an all in one box, it's kind of a great middle ground of

having a full size desktop, but also smaller space it's taking up

and it has a CRT and it's very capable with the components inside.

But anyway, uh, let's move on to another point of view, and that is from Metal Jesus Rocks.

MJR: Hey guys, Metal Jesus here.

Now, in my retro gaming PC, I was looking for something

that perfectly encapsulated say, 1998 and 1999,

something that would run, say, Battle Bugs and also Septerra Core, and

all the rest of these games that I have behind me here.

Something that would run DOS and also Windows 98.

So what I ended up doing was starting with this Dell.

This is an XPS R400. It has a Intel Pentium II processor in there.

Then we maxed out the motherboard with 384 megabytes of RAM, I believe.

But as you guys know, it's the video card and the sound card

that determine how well all these games play.

So, for this machine,

we put a 3DFX Voodoo 3 in there, 3000 is the model number,

which works flawlessly both in DOS and in Windows.

For the sound card, I decided to not go with something exotic

because again, I'm looking for maximum compatibility both in DOS and Windows with every game I possibly can.

So I went with the standard.

I went with the Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16, and it works great.

The final must piece for my machine is the floppy drive because

so many of the games that I own are on either 3½ or 5¼ floppy.

The problem is is that my motherboard will only take one at a time, so,

right now I have a 3½ in there, but I do have a 5¼ that I can swap out if needed.

I'm very happy with it.

LGR: Alright, some very good points are brought up here because sometimes you wanna push it a little bit further than say a 486,

and go with something that can also do Windows 98, but

when you get into that era, or really, any era, sometimes you're gonna just have to compromise.

Like, in his case, where he was only able to run one type of floppy disk at the same time.

Sometimes, that can be due to the controller or the BIOS being used on the computer,

other times, you just don't have things working how it should, and it's weird.

I dunno, I've had that happen on several of my computers in that sort of late '90s, early 2000s era.

And then, the other thing to mention there is that uh,

while there are external 3½ inch drives for you know, older computers and more modern ones as well over USB,

5¼ inch, you're kind of stuck with an internal one.

There are some adapters that let you use 5¼ inch drives on USB,

but it's only a read-only thing for the most part.

Eh, writing is odd if you wanted to get it working externally, so something to keep in mind.

Well anyway, next person on the list is going to be Ancient DOS Games.

ADG: So when it comes to DOS gaming, you might think I'd be the kind of person who prefer to use real hardware.

But quite frankly, I just like emulating it on my Windows 10 machine.

Here's the thing:

If you wanna use real hardware for playing DOS games,

Sure, it's a perfectly valid option, it's just you kinda need like three different machines to cover the whole gamut.

You need something for the '80s, you need something for the early '90s, and you need something for the mid to late '90s.

So, with DOSBox, which is a DOS emulator, you can just... emulate all of those settings.

You can set your machine speed, you can set the type of video support, you can set up different audio devices.

And, you know wat the best part is?