TECH TALES
WIN-CEPTION
The joy of running a virtual machine with an older OS within your modern rig
Collecting old hardware isn’t just a hobby now. There’s an element of archivism to it; of gathering important historical documents that might otherwise end up in landfill. Image how many Voodoo 3s are out there in landfill right now, covered in nappies and Hello Fresh leftovers and being pecked at by seagulls. Imagine.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s a faff, isn’t it? All the eBay alerts. All the postage fees. All the forumtrawling, the tracking down of ol’ manuals, the hoping and praying that various disparate beige parts will sing together in harmony rather than—more likely—start a small electrical fire.
There’s an alternative to retro PC gaming the analog way: just run a virtual machine inside your modern gaming rig. The benefits to this are numerous: no procession of fusty-smelling boxes arriving in the mail containing old PC parts you bought for slightly more than you’re happy about. Almost no financial outlay at all, in fact: only the cost of the operating system that you’ll install within that virtual machine, and which we definitely all always pay for. Like WinZip.