RetroMultiplayer Tech Tips

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PC ​

After 25+ years of custom PC building and troubleshooting, i must admit the bullshit never ends. Consoles exist for a reason.

Operating Systems ​

  • Windows 11 - the most compatible OS for running modern games on modern hardware
  • Windows XP - the version of Windows that makes the most sense on pre-2008 hardware
  • SteamOS - opinionated handheld/livingroom gaming experience by Valve, but limited hardware support
  • Bazzite - SteamOS-like flavor of Fedora Linux, excellent out-of-box experience on a wide variety of PC hardware

Random PC Tips ​

  • Always check date and time are set correctly. No app will warn you about suspicious date, you'll just waste time troubleshooting seemingly random bugs and crashes.
  • Do not assume modular PSU cords are interchangeable. Corsair alone have 5+ different pin layouts. It's usually cheaper to replace a PSU than to release a magic smoke out of GPU.
  • PS/2 was never designed for hot-plugging. Usually you need to restart the PC for keyboard and mouse to work.
  • Some Pentium 4 and older PCs do not support USB keyboards in BIOS. Keep at least one PS/2 keyboard if you service older builds.

Bootable Media ​

Some Pentium 1-3 PCs do not support USB bootable media. If you want to maintain this kind of setup, i suggest having any of the following:

  • 3.5" Floppy drive and disks
    • For some motherboard this is the only way to update BIOS
  • CD-RW drive and empty disks
  • IDE to USB adapter and a backup of known good OS instance

Modern PCs have two ways to boot the OS - current industry standard UEFI, and Legacy CSM (BIOS). Some bootable images are only compatible with one of them. For most bootable images, Ventoy is an excellent solution. Rufus has a setting to choose UEFI or CSM mode when creating a bootable USB.