[Mongoose]

Just looked through my back catalogue of games and come up with:

Ground Control 1 should just run on a 233

Heh, I'm playing through that right now.  The best part is that it's now freeware (provided you have a GameSpy account to get the CD key, anyway).

[Davros]

These should keep you going for a few years
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1995/
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1996/
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1997/

ps: that pc would really benefit from a voodoo card

[sigtau]

I don't know about you guys, but BIOS inconsistencies with Windows 95's configurations that can't be easily fixed are ****ing irritating, especially when they involve multiple reinstallations due to the same damned thing.  This is what I'm talking about, in case you don't know.  Windows 95 doesn't prompt me for new drivers on reboot, or at least it didn't the first time.

Slowly but surely losing my patience, so I'm going to try one more time before I start doing something drastic.

Also, the new GPU broke soft reboots.  I can still hard-reboot and get the same result, however.

EDIT: Also, Windows 95 is an OS that requires Windows 3.1 to be installed, and is not on its own bootable disc.  This means every time I **** up badly enough, I have to reinstall DOS 6, followed by Windows 3.1, followed by Windows 95.  Life sucks.

[Davros]

windows 95 Does not require windows 3.1 in any way
it comes with a bootable floppy

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138349

[headdie]

Windows upgrade versions especially from the 9x era have a reputation for being horribly unstable, get a full version and do a clean install scratch

[Davros]

a full version of win95 should be available for buttons now days

[Grizzly]

Do not EVER forget Mechwarrior.

[Vidmaster]

Castles 2: Siege and Conquest
System Shock 1 and 2
WingCommander 1-5
Independence War 1
Mechwarrior 4

why the hell installing FS2 when it is so much prettier with SCP?

[BloodEagle]

You can run SS2 on XP, with enhanced textures and the like.

Just sayin'.

[Kosh]

I don't know about you guys, but BIOS inconsistencies with Windows 95's configurations that can't be easily fixed are ****ing irritating, especially when they involve multiple reinstallations due to the same damned thing.  This is what I'm talking about, in case you don't know.  Windows 95 doesn't prompt me for new drivers on reboot, or at least it didn't the first time.

Slowly but surely losing my patience, so I'm going to try one more time before I start doing something drastic.

Also, the new GPU broke soft reboots.  I can still hard-reboot and get the same result, however.

EDIT: Also, Windows 95 is an OS that requires Windows 3.1 to be installed, and is not on its own bootable disc.  This means every time I **** up badly enough, I have to reinstall DOS 6, followed by Windows 3.1, followed by Windows 95.  Life sucks.

Wait a minute, didn't this machine originally have Windows 98? Also what version of 95 are you using?

[headdie]

I don't know about you guys, but BIOS inconsistencies with Windows 95's configurations that can't be easily fixed are ****ing irritating, especially when they involve multiple reinstallations due to the same damned thing.  This is what I'm talking about, in case you don't know.  Windows 95 doesn't prompt me for new drivers on reboot, or at least it didn't the first time.

Slowly but surely losing my patience, so I'm going to try one more time before I start doing something drastic.

Also, the new GPU broke soft reboots.  I can still hard-reboot and get the same result, however.

EDIT: Also, Windows 95 is an OS that requires Windows 3.1 to be installed, and is not on its own bootable disc.  This means every time I **** up badly enough, I have to reinstall DOS 6, followed by Windows 3.1, followed by Windows 95.  Life sucks.

Wait a minute, didn't this machine originally have Windows 98? Also what version of 95 are you using?

from the edit it dont matter that much cause it's an upgrade version (Win 3.1x -> 95) which is more problematic than a normal build ayway

[CP5670]

You can run SS2 on XP, with enhanced textures and the like.

Just sayin'.

Most of the games people are talking about here will work perfectly fine on a modern PC. They can certainly be played on an old system, but there would be nothing to gain from it (in fact, a modern system will let you use high resolutions and AA levels that were not possible back then).

The handful of games that actually require this kind of machine are mostly from that 1996-98 period when 3D hardware was just starting to become mainstream. The only ones I have encountered are Nuclear Strike and to some extent Red Alert 1. Some games have bugs that can be worked around, especially if you have both an Nvidia and AMD card available. Both companies' drivers have issues in different old games, but you can cover most bases by having access to both.

[sigtau]

Wait a minute, didn't this machine originally have Windows 98? Also what version of 95 are you using?

Actually, the retail box came with Windows 95, but someone did the upgrade at some point to Windows 98 (and such installation had a very half-assed partitioning job done on it, giving me only 200MB of space compared to the 2.515GB the drive has overall).  I find the driver setup to be much more of a breeze on Windows 95, however, in addition to the fact that Windows 95 doesn't break like a ***** when you uninstall Internet Explorer (Try uninstalling it in Windows 98, and tell me how it works out for you).

Returning to the issues currently at hand, here's my situation with this computer:

1. The PCI error is gone, it was due to a faulty driver in Windows 95's handling of IDE.
2. I currently have my graphics card (GeForce2 MX 400 PCI 32MB) in this machine.  The drivers installed without a hitch, however whenever I try to boot into normal Windows, I either get stuck on a black screen after the Windows logo, or the system resets itself.  I read somewhere that there's possibly a jumper or switch on the mainboard that will permit the BIOS to give all graphical jurisdiction to the graphics card (and the BIOS settings only have options in the Video category for using EGA/CGA vs. VGA).  POST routine tells me that video BIOS shadowing is enabled.  Booting into safe mode yields the fallback VGA driver, at a 16 color 640x480 resolution.

Does anyone know what I can do to fix this?  I'm not at the machine at the moment so I can't look for the jumper or switch on the mainboard (if one even exists).

[headdie]

windows 9x safe mode only loads the basic video driver which is a VGA standard.

what happens when you just run normal mode with just the basic driver?

[jr2]

What.is.your.mobo.model.number!

[sigtau]

It starts up fine without a hitch if I use the fallback standard VGA driver.

I don't know the mobo model number.  It's a proprietary by HP and has no clear markings as to which of the numbers glued to it could be the actual model number.

If it helps, the computer itself is an HP Vectra VL400 with a Pentium MMX 233MHz.

[jr2]

That helps.  Also, CPU-Z is your friend. (Sometimes it can cut through the OEM BS and give you the actual model #)

[sigtau]

Just tried reinstalling drivers using the latest ones from NVidia.  No luck.

Any other ideas as to what it could be?

[Davros]

geforce 2mx 400 win 95 drivers

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/win9x_81.98_uk.html

[sigtau]

I installed using those drivers, still a black screen or auto-reset on startup.