Escapecraft

So I've got a guy willing to buy my 3dfx Voodoo 5500, (yay 60 bucks!) he also wants to build a pc around this card so he can play mid 90's to 99 games. Now if I remember correctly the most demanding game I have ever played from 1999 was UT. It's recommended specs were quite low:
Pentium III 500 or AMD Athlon 550 or faster PC.
128 megabytes of RAM.
3dfx Voodoo3 / Riva TNT2 class 3D accelerator.

Now for parts I've got:
3dfx Voodoo 5 5500
2x 256mb PC133
Creative SoundBlaster Live
Quantum Fireball HDD's
300 watt PSU

My main problem right now is finding a decent mobo for him to look for. The only board I've got comes from a Compaq, its and old ASPEN with a slot a AMD Athlon that I think is a 550. I've got other boards that are socket 370 with CPU's on em all so it'll just be a simple case of POST and repeat.

So my question is what would I have him look for in the mobo category? Also the objects I listed, are they a recipe for a decent or good 90's gaming pc?

Keep in mind I'll also use your suggestions to put my Geforce 3 Hercules card to use.

abracadabra

Why doesn't he just look into emulation? I'd suggest pricewatch.com to find old computer parts; they have a searchable database with hundreds of parts suppliers. eBay is a good source, too, if you have a part in mind already.

As far as your listed specs, they seem fine, though those specs would be for a computer produced at the very tail-end of the 90s. Concievably, he could have trouble running a game made in 1990, depending on how the game was coded. MoSlo was created not long after Windows98 came out in order to deal with games whose programming relied on processor speed and would run erratically. I think there is a DOSbox available for Windows 98, but it's also available for XP/Vista/7.

Right he was going for a mid to late 90's era pc. He would like to play games from 94 to 00. I sent the parts off to him so hopefully our postal service doesn't lose the parts. The purchase of my parts netted me some cash to upgrade my system which is quite cool! 2 more gigs of ddr3 couldn't be a bad thing. I also wanted to build a rig from that era so I can play Machines and a whole slew of other games again without having to jump through hoops to get it to run on XP. It's also cool to have retro tech...newer is not always better when it come to games from the golder era of gaming.

On a related note, I was running Windows 7, Windows XP, and two copies of Windows 98 all at the same time, all on the same computer yesterday. Trying to get Baldur's Gate co-op mode to work. I hate that old games give so much frustration; at the same time, making the system 100% backwards compatible leads to bloat.

Yeah that's why I figure it's not bad to have an older pc around, for retro gaming. Though I am not going to ever use a 5.25 floppy drive though that's too old.

I think I might try and use my old SE44BX-2 Mobo, as a base to build from until I can find a board that would run my Geforce 3 Hercules. As it stands right now I am stuck with a PII slot processor. A S3 diamond gfx card, and 512mb of PC100 ram. I wouldn't mind getting a hold of a legitimate disc of 98..I've got the book with the product key, I suppose I should just check the bay and hope someone doesn't want a kabillion dollars for an old OS.
This build would also give me reason to bust out my old Logitech wingman, and start playing some Freespace.