Hi all, been toying with a few ideas recently and it's brought me back to a previous musing on building a pc to pay homage to one of my favourite all-time games. I made a Sketchup way back of what I might be able to do but I based it around the technology in my antique Win95 rig (because I already had it!)
I'm thinking now that it would probably be a much better idea to start from scratch as it would give me a more stable, more compact and much longer lasting result. But I've never tried to make an old rig before so I'm hoping for some help from those who know more than myself on such things!
I'm a hardcore XP fan and based on how utterly crap Vista and 7 seem to be I will continue building my current rigs with that. For a retro rig however I'd like to return to basics as it will be intended to run older games that aren't particularly compatible or stable with newer versions of Windows. I'm thinking it'll let me throw out or recycle a few of the computers I'm stuill hanging onto from the old days this way as well as save me downloading so many patches and emulators and such to get these games running!
So what I'd like to end up with is the ability to run 95,98 and 2000 on this comp, something I've never toyed with before so some advice on multiple OS's would be great as I've not got the first idea! I'll be wanting support for floppies and cd's due to the purpose of the rig and some form of more modern removable storage would be good too. USB would be great but I have no idea how possible that would be based on the dated OS's in question...
Of course games that are old enough to warrant installation on this system rather than my current XP one will almost certainly run at maximum efficiency on even the most basic on-board features of a semi-modern board but again please correct me if I'm wrong.
The final thought for this is that I'd like to use a fairly small LCD panel for a screen and incorporate it into the design so everything is complete (save keyboard and mouse) Based on age and maximum available resolutions for the kind of programs I'd be looking to run on this I'm thinking it wouldn't need to be very big at all but any thoughts on viable sizes would also be great.
Key to this making sense is to keep everything fairly small which I can't forsee being difficult due to the lack of anything much besides a motherboard, DDs and PSU but again please someone correct me if I'm wrong! I think I saw a CDD/HDD combo unit on here at some point, is there such a thing or am I making it up? Also a small low power PSU would suit my purposes fine and ideally could be used to power the screen as well so I can run everything from one plug. And while I think about it a few small built in speakers would be nice too, also powered internally.
That's my list done though! This is one of two builds I'm currently hoping to undertake since circumstance stopped my last one dead in it's tracks. This will be a quicker easier and cheaper ordeal though I believe so I'd really appreciate any feedback and advice. The other plan is for a future-proof (don't laugh just a few years will do!) gaming rig which I need mucho advice on so expect more questions to follow but I won't go on anymore for now!
Thanks for reading and in advance for any help!