Playing Far Cry on Sandy Bridge under XP is retro by age, but it hardly feels like it. Then an idea appeared — ridiculous at first, but it kept coming back, and every time it did it felt more like a challenge: can this 2011 office box run unpatched 90s games well, on the operating system they were written for?
Technically possible, it turned out — but not easy, and not on the first try. If every failed attempt had made the cut, this would be a trilogy. What you get instead is the clean run — read the full article here.
The hardware
- Dell OptiPlex 990 — the same $42 machine from EP01: Core i5 2500, 4 GB dual-channel DDR3, SSD in AHCI mode.
- Radeon X550 — the most retro part in the box, one working DirectX 9 driver away from glory.
- Sound Blaster Audigy (SB0090) in the PCI slot, for proper 3D audio.
