Retro computing in Sweden
Hello all,
I have decided that I simply have to play my old PC games (Doom, Unreal Tournament, Diablo II, and good old Duke Nukem 3d amongst others). I discovered that most, if not all, of the games I have can be repurchased from gog and Steam, but I don't want to pay for the digital copies when I already possess the CDs... Feels a little like the games are being held hostage, or something.
I figured that the money would be better spent on rebuilding a Windows 98 machine that is capable of playing these games and also writing some code for the machine (I mean, why not take on an extra challenge, right?).
So far, so nerdy. Where I get stuck is finding decently retro HW here in Sweden (I am in the Gothenburg area). I have managed to acquire a Pentium 4 @ 2GHz, an Asus P4S800, and 2x256MB of compatible RAM. I cannot find anyone with a chassis available on the usual websites that are within driving distance from me (plenty of stuff in the south and Stockholm area, but shipping costs a fortune and driving would be an 8 hour round trip...).
Is there anybody in the area that can recommend good resources for picking up parts? I have contacted the local municipality to see if they have any old hardware that they no longer have any use for (sans HDD, naturally).
I have decided that I simply have to play my old PC games (Doom, Unreal Tournament, Diablo II, and good old Duke Nukem 3d amongst others). I discovered that most, if not all, of the games I have can be repurchased from gog and Steam, but I don't want to pay for the digital copies when I already possess the CDs... Feels a little like the games are being held hostage, or something.
I figured that the money would be better spent on rebuilding a Windows 98 machine that is capable of playing these games and also writing some code for the machine (I mean, why not take on an extra challenge, right?).
So far, so nerdy. Where I get stuck is finding decently retro HW here in Sweden (I am in the Gothenburg area). I have managed to acquire a Pentium 4 @ 2GHz, an Asus P4S800, and 2x256MB of compatible RAM. I cannot find anyone with a chassis available on the usual websites that are within driving distance from me (plenty of stuff in the south and Stockholm area, but shipping costs a fortune and driving would be an 8 hour round trip...).
Is there anybody in the area that can recommend good resources for picking up parts? I have contacted the local municipality to see if they have any old hardware that they no longer have any use for (sans HDD, naturally).
Comments
Diablo II (and Lord of Destruction) got some official patches just last year, one of the changes being official support for Windows 7, 8.x and 10.
As for Unreal Tournament, get patch 436 if you're not running the Game of the Year Edition.
I realise that with a little effort, I can probably get most games playing (although the Windows compatibility options are not working very well for me). Retro computing is an active interest and, if I'm being complete honest, nostalgia is playing its part as well.
Nostalgia aside, I play OpenTTD as it is superior to the TTD I played way back when. I had no idea, by the way, that Duke 3D had been open sourced and ported; Doom open source I've known about from years of lurking the gamedev.net forums
All in all, while I appreciate your input, I am after some fun retro hardware building project with the satisfying (hopefully) result of playing some classics on it and even dusting off some old code I have. I am a glutton for punishment in this respect, so I am in it for the long haul, warts and all