Anyone remember their OLD favorite gaming hardware?

[XoRn]

You know the stuff I'm talking about! The latest and greatest gaming mouse that you fell in love with... 20 years ago. Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer? Saitek Eclipse? Sound Blaster Audigy. Radeon X1650 Pro!

I'm just hoping to tickle that little nostalgia muscle. Some good old Memberries.

Wolfking Warrior?

https://imgur.com/pdRO0BO

View: https://imgur.com/pdRO0BO



Anyone remember the 6 months there where physics cards looked like they might be a thing?

What old gaming hardware do you miss? Do you still have any of it sitting around? I know I still have my Saitek Eclipse and MX518 in the closet.

 

[Brian Boru]

That's a mean keypad! I still have a Logitech pad somewhere, but sadly I never got to make use of it—life interrupted gaming for a while

First thing I got excited about was a massive 21" CRT monitor I got in '99 for $600 on an auction site—that was half the new price, and it lasted me a long time, probably 7-8 years. The Command & Conquer + Red Alert series looked great!

Thereafter I moved to 2 TVs as monitors, which has been my screen config to this day. Civ4 & Far Cry on 36" were super cool, but I guess the biggie was Supreme Commander, which used both monitors! Sadly that never took off as a big thing, although quite a few have it:

PCGamingWiki List of Games

Other than that infatuation with big screens, my old gaming stuff was pretty standard.

 

[XoRn]

First thing I got excited about was a massive 21" CRT monitor I got in '99 for $600

I don't know how I forgot CRT's were a thing. My dad brought home a 22" CRT on a dolly when I was 12. It weighed 100 something pounds! We used to buckle them in with seat belts when we went to lan parties on the off chance we rolled the car so they would be less likely to kill us.

 

[CParsons]

Not quite an accessory but I remember I built a computer years ago when the first AMD Phenom X4 64's dropped. Had a buddy who worked at a computer parts shop and could get me stuff at cost. I thought I was a king then.

 

[Alm]

I remember my friend having a voodoo graphics card and playing Incoming. That impressed me at the time.

Edit: A hardware highlight, but component rather than peripheral.

 

[SHaines]

Something I was never able to afford, but I had a fairly well off neighbor who owned it. Long before people saw the film the Matrix, the closest I came to virtual reality, was the incredible power of the Mattel Intellivoice.

 

[spvtnik1]

Hmmmm. Nothing really crazy. It was just me and the Tandy until about the Windows 3.1 days.

But my favorite old I/O device? An original Thrustmaster HO...S. Yes, just the stick, but modeled after the F-16 yoke I think. And wow, I still have the nomenclature on that one imprinted in my hand. Unfortunately my young, virile hands, and Comanche: Maximum Overkill were enough to ruin the springs on that piece.

Ironically, I installed STAR WARS: Squadrons recently to see how it performs on my new PC. Very nicely. BUT, as anyone who has tried knows, playing with a controller just doesn't really vibe. I had a dream that night that I found an old, gray, one-button parallel/VGA joystick and attempted to see if it worked with the game.

 

[Krud]

Something I was never able to afford, but I had a fairly well off neighbor who owned it. Long before people saw the film the Matrix, the closest I came to virtual reality, was the incredible power of the Mattel Intellivoice.

My grandma had this for her Intellivision! So I sorta did by association. It was kinda cool, though the only game we had for it was "Bomb Squad," but I remember everything it would say (about a dozen phrases if that.) It was a simple but fun enough game where you defused bombs and tried to guess what the LED readout was before the time ran out. Even today when there's an ATM code or something else, my sister or mom or whoever else remembers it will often say "The code, the code, you must figure out the code!" (One of the often repeated lines.)

 

[Krud]

I remember my first sound card, the Thunderboard, which was a fairly robust Soundblaster knockoff. I loved that thing. Prior to that I'd been stuck with loud annoying PC beeps, which suuuucked. (Though a few games tried to force digital sound through the PC speaker with mixed results.) I bought it shortly after I'd seen a friend play Space Quest III on his Tandy and I was blown away by how much better it sounded on his. Multi-note music! Vague drum-like sounds! Sound effects that didn't sound like a kid blowing bubbles through a kazoo! From then on, my biggest investment had always been sound, culminating in a 5.1 surround layout, but then games started getting aurally lazy once online gaming took over and everyone started relying on headphones. Anyway.

 

[PCG Chris]

Well this is embarrassing but ages ago (like late 1990s) I couldn't figure out a reliable way to take screenshots of games. So I bought an actual device called a "Snappy" which plugged into, like, a parallel port or something, and then you could just press a key and it would take picture of whatever game you were playing. I think it probably had enough memory for about 30 screenshots or so.

 

[XoRn]

I remember my first sound card, the Thunderboard, which was a fairly robust Soundblaster knockoff. I loved that thing. Prior to that I'd been stuck with loud annoying PC beeps, which suuuucked

Man, I remember when my dad upgraded and got a sound blaster card. I was so used to the blips and bloops of Wolfenstein 3d that the soundtrack alone for Doom blew me away.

Well this is embarrassing but ages ago (like late 1990s) I couldn't figure out a reliable way to take screenshots of games. So I bought an actual device called a "Snappy" which plugged into, like, a parallel port or something, and then you could just press a key and it would take picture of whatever game you were playing. I think it probably had enough memory for about 30 screenshots or so.

That's a weird bit of tech. Did it show up as a hard drive for you to access the pictures with?

 

[Colif]

Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Keyboard

Microsoft Sidewinder X8 Mouse

I guess I miss keyboard more, the detachable keypad was so handy

Logitech Z5500 5.1 speakers

I still miss those speakers.

 

[Frindis]

Still got my Microsoft SideWinder 3D Pro and it works

 

[CParsons]

Recent LTT video reminded me of this thread.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzz4wMlDZ6c

 

[MrShadow]

attending bowlers computer fair in manchester with my family back in early nineties looking for commodore 64 stuff. classic place-for car boot sales,fairs and raves.


buying-from the UK gaming shop-GAME, a geforce FX5200 with 64mb of dedicated RAM,back when they actualy sold PC parts.
i knew nothing about PC fixing or about my old trashy first PC back then and it had its GPU slot blocked so a dedicated GPU coudnt be fitted,,i just gave away my FX5200.