Gateway Astro 1999 PC

[Nate Allen]

I acquired the PC named in the subject and was getting it back to good
condition. I found all the drivers for Windows 98 SE and found a USB to
NIC driver that I had that still had drivers for 9x. I was playing
around with Protoweb and other retro legacy internet emulators. For the
moment I am simply doing legacy games that don't require much memory
(platforms and simple FPS). I tried Tiny Core Linux but that was useless
when paired with such limited hardware. This is a cautionary tale of
trying to recreate the past, you see it for what it is and not what it
felt like.

I asked those on vogons.org what to do with it, maybe suggest some games
I hadn't played or run era period software.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2023 21:25:52 -0400

Post by Nate Allen
I acquired the PC named in the subject and was getting it back to good
condition. I found all the drivers for Windows 98 SE and found a USB to
NIC driver that I had that still had drivers for 9x. I was playing
around with Protoweb and other retro legacy internet emulators. For the
moment I am simply doing legacy games that don't require much memory
(platforms and simple FPS). I tried Tiny Core Linux but that was useless
when paired with such limited hardware. This is a cautionary tale of
trying to recreate the past, you see it for what it is and not what it
felt like.

Browsing the internet is getting fraught, even with a Windows XP PC. Lots
of websites have been "updated" with scripted stuff that won't work
anymore.

Post by Nate Allen
I asked those on vogons.org what to do with it, maybe suggest some games
I hadn't played or run era period software.

retro-coding?

DOS games. I have an interest in small (e.g.256 byte) ones.
Tetris,snake,pong,invaders

Bigger:
Most of the Windmill titles: Digger, Zaxxon?
Commander Keen
v. Tombraider
Windows
Minesweeper
Pinball
Jezzball
Boxworld
Peggle
Plants v Zombies
Slay

Bigger again:
Duke Nukem 3D (or the eduke32 rewrite for later machines)



and of course any number of text adventures

[Bozo User]

Post by Nate Allen
I acquired the PC named in the subject and was getting it back to good
condition. I found all the drivers for Windows 98 SE and found a USB to
NIC driver that I had that still had drivers for 9x. I was playing
around with Protoweb and other retro legacy internet emulators. For the
moment I am simply doing legacy games that don't require much memory
(platforms and simple FPS). I tried Tiny Core Linux but that was useless
when paired with such limited hardware. This is a cautionary tale of
trying to recreate the past, you see it for what it is and not what it
felt like.
I asked those on vogons.org what to do with it, maybe suggest some games
I hadn't played or run era period software.

Get Retrozilla from https://www.piteusz.ovh/files/windows/9x-nt/
so you can read at least some news over HTTP/gopher and
lots of news sites:

http://68k.news
gopher://magical.fish

Adblock will be useful too, maybe this XPI
https://www.piteusz.ovh/files/windows/9x-nt/adblock_plus-1.0.2.xpi
will work, if not, get this hosts file, uncompress it and
double click on the bat file:

https://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip

For gaming, get WinFrotz for Windows98 to play decent, modernish
text adventures, surpassing even the old Infocom ones:

https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/WinFrotzR53.zip

And here there are lots of games.

https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html

Among the best ones, there are Anchorhead (close to Alone in the
dark in text mode but with better ambientation); Spider and Web
cool if you like Memento/Metal Gear like stories; All Thing Devours,
a scifi time-travelling puzzle ; Entangled (another one, but
less scientific); : Vicioys Cicles,
Curses! and its sequel Jigsaw;
Spiritwrak...