Anyone else want to use the "correct" hardware so it's Oldies Games plus Oldies PCs?

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During the period 1997-2002, or so, I was still working, and for the only time ever, enjoying going to work. I wasn't making much doing it, and would regret that when I had to retire, and my Social Security benefit had decreased due to the many quarters of part-time teaching that hadn't been very rewarding financially.

I put in a lot more time away from the classroom than was probably necessary, but I was just getting so much back out of my experience, that it wasn't exactly like "work". Anyway, I kept reading the game magazines, and buying new games, without playing hardly any (Might and Magic 6 being the big exception).

Icewind Dale wouldn't run for me back then, and I may be ready to try it again, soon. However, instead of struggling with a more recent Windows, and far more current PCs, I decided to dig out old parts (had to buy some, since I'd passed a lot onward to a nephew). It took a LOT of false starts to get a couple of systems going to suit my idea about what I wanted to use instead of a late model PC.

Are there any other old fogies out there doing anything similar?

 

I don't know about being old, and I'm just starting my career rather than retireing, but I still have all my old computers that still function. Ironically, it was my newer XP computers that have failed, everything before that still works. As such, I only installed games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale on the computer from the era it was built for. It allows me to for the most part avoid issues with newer OSes. Thus, I play Baldur's Gate on a computer running Windows 98SE that's just a year or two shy of 10 years old. It probably should have come with Windows ME, but it came with 98SE.

The exception being that my XP computer died, my 98 computer doesn't have a good enough graphics card, so I've had to install Neverwinter Nights on Vista.

 

Was there ever a "Disk Two"?

It's been too long since I looked into the IWD box, but when I did so, the CD case only had a single CD, although there is a second spindle-clip on the underside for a second CD. Do I need to dig into the oldest of my CD storage containers to see whether Disk Two was mis-filed when I put it away?

(Edited - added in 3 hours later: The game's own install confirmed that it wanted its "Play Disk" next, and it took awhile to turn it up. I looked around with Google for a place tp download the Play Disk, and didn't find it anywhere I would trust, and now the question is which comes next, HoW, or the patch 1.06 ?)

Incidentally, four years ago, I had the public Beta copies of Vista, and was not impressed by it at all. I never bought a copy of the actual OS, although I have four copies of XP, and now have one copy of Windows 7. My personal preference of all the Windows OSes is Windows 2000.

 

ive still got an old 2001 computer or so that came out of a school that was made for windows 98se with a max amout of 512 ram with a p3 running at around 930 mhz with intergrated intel 810 graphics sence its an old dell optilpex gx115 and it still sruns great i just need to pick up a geforce fx5500 for it sence i know it works cuase thats what i had in it at one time and i had no issues with the weak 300w psu running it

 

Kiwi - I never thought much of either Win 98 or of 2000. In fact, after running both operating systems I was about to give up on MS and switch to Apple. But XP won me back before that happened. I've had pretty good luck running older games on XP. MM6 requires a patch to run in XP. As for 98, I still have an older computer running a mulit-boot system with XP and 98SE. And as usual I run everything in XP on that machine, since 98SE is just a pain, even with older games. I built that machine in 2004, so it might be that the hardware is still a bit too new for some older games in 98.

P4@2.6 (Intel D865P mainboard)
2GB of DDR2 RAM
6800 nVidia VC
SB Live SC

Icewind Dale, BG2 and PST all run fine in XP on that machine. But MM6 won't run without a patch. MM7 won't run at all but it does run in 98, when it's not in BSoD.

 

I didn't have troubles with Win98se, and was using it daily

Yes, daily, right through 2006 or so. It was what I had on the then-server for file backup, images, printer server, and web surfing utility box. It was a Gigabyte with a Via chipset, and AMD XP 2000 processor (it had started with an Athlon Thunderbird 1.4, though). When it failed, I had two other K7 systems that literally seemed to go into mourning & started having problems.

I'd gone up to Win2000 on my s939 PCs because Win98se wasn't as reliable when used with a GB of RAM, whether it was told to ignore all but 512 or not. WinXP has remained strictly for gaming with newer games. Only one of the K7 systems is still operating pretty much as it was when I built it, save that I've just upgraded it from 1 GB to 2 GBs.

That one has three OSes, but I almost always had some video driver complaints from Win98se, versus the Radeon X000 series that it was concurrent with (although not so much with Geforce FXes & 6000s). I tried to run TES:IV with that one, and an FX 5900 Ultra, no luck. That's when the first X800 came in.

Right now, the system I've been playing some Arcanum on, with another K7 PC, and another Via chipset, but a newer one than I'd had in my Gigabyte K7 system, from MSI, with a Duron 900 in it, is the one I put IWD-I on yesterday and the install balked when faced with Win2000. There is only Win98se and Win2000 on that one, so I will be running the game in W98.

With an FX 5200, after the Geforce GTS Ultra I was playing Arcanum with starting doing weird stuff. I would like to know which comes next, though between HoW and 1.06, or do I even need 1.06 as long as I have HoW already?

 

I don't know why you would torture yourself. Really if you like it, KiWi, then great. I know some people like it. I sold hundreds of computers with 98SE, but was elated at fisrt to get ME from MS. For me, ME worked OK. But again, a lot of computers I sold with ME had lots of problems, and unhappy customers. The track record for ME is terrible. As for 2000, I used it at work and hated it more than 98, since I lost so much work to system crashes. It's just a corporate (NT) version of 98 as far as I'm concerned.

I don't install any patches for Icewind Dale and it works great in XP, but only with an older graphics card. My newer cards have issues with IWD. This is the order I install and it works for me:

Icewind Dale > Heart of Winter > Trials of the Loremaster. After that install your version should be 1.42. At least it works for me.