I use ancient hardware for recent games *lol*

I have an Atari 8-bit Computer for games like Moon Patrol, B.C's Quest for Tires, Star Raiders, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, Gateway to Apshi, and a few others.

I have my grandparents old WinXP machine, it'll run LEGO Island (but not some older games designed for Win95 and 98). I'm currently on an old Win7 machine but looking to upgrade.

I play all of my games, from late 80s to current year, on a single system: a Debian Sid. In the last couple of years, it has seen ~700 games. Of course, I did not play all of these through completion, far from that.

~400 of these are native Linux games, mostly games from 2010-2020. ~200 are Windows games, and the rest are older DOS-era ones.

And of course there is Crimson Skies. The only game I did not manage to get working in an enjoyable state on this system since I ditched Windows 15 years ago.

It takes me a very long time for me to upgrade since I ride my tech to the wheels fall off but I also take very good care of my tech so it tends to last me longer than usual. My main rig was built in 2009 and I have not plans to upgrade or migrate to another rig til 2023.

I recently sold a lot of my LAN basement setup since I moved but I had some original cabs of arcade games like Tekken 1, MVS cab with Metal Slug 2/Fatal Fury Special/Breakers/Cross Swords and two others. I also sold my original Amiga 5000 along with 22 games and 8 Dell Optiplex 780's and over 400 Windows/DOS gaming boxed games.

I have one older set of Windows game (keeping) that do not work on modern day Windows no matter what you do and seems to only work on Linux using Wine:

Limited Edition Virtua Fighter PC (Demo)
Virtua Fighter PC
Virtua Fighter 2 PC

I tried to have an offline Windows 98 SE machine for a bit in the early 2000's but it was no go due to the usual Windows issues at the time.

Why not using CD's? Should be way easier.

Regarding your question, no I don't use older hardware but then again I usually don't play computer games that old (sometimes emulated consoles on Retroarch/Fightcade).
My oldest hardware current in use is a AMD Turion Laptop but I dont play games there, other than that my Batcave pc is a AMD Phenom from 2007/2008? wich I use to play some games, mainly turn based stuff while doing something else. Can that be considered old enough?

I play/do everything on a custom win 10 machine with a 3080, 64gb of ram etc. I have a PS4,3,2,1, wii, GameCube, 1080 win 10, older gtx card with win 7, various virtual images of most windows versions etc. Simply put, there is no reason at all to do anything other than use the most up to date you have. I have not turned any of my old hardware on since getting the new machine, or in fact the previous machine, no compatability issues, no problems, everything runs from really old emulated to bang up to date. I will keep a few backup machines, but they are exactly that, backup machines only for when everything else fails. Win 10 bang up to date machine FTW every time.

Just picked up a Win 98 mini pc with an external CD ROM drive specifically for 16 bit games from that particular era. Unfortunately, until my apartment finishes reno, I don't have a place for it yet, so it still sits, forlorn, in its bubble wrap, awaiting the day.

I'm not using anything old but a cheaper weak laptop with Ryzen 5700U and a Vega 8 iGPU currently because my gaming PC went boom during the worst time ever and i want to buy all parts at same time more or less but getting a gpu is tough right now. I planned to buy a 3080 TI but decided to hold out until RTX 4080/90 or a equivalent RDNA 3 card instead.

Still there's plenty of games i can play anyway.

While I'd love to own a breadbin C64, the fact of the matter is, I literally don't have the room for much anything retrocomputing related. And I'm sure as hell ain't bringing a CRT back into my life.

Besides, I own an Optiplex 9010, isn't that retro enough?

In theory I could.

I have several 3,5" floppy drives, and even a couple 5,25" ones.
I also have fully working Amiga 500 and Commodore 64C computers available.

But if I need to play something old, I use the fastest hardware and emulation for convenience.

Whatever is lost in terms of authenticity, is more than balanced in, for instance, the ease of getting screenshots.

AO725

I don't see the point of keeping a genuine MS-DOS PC (with Soundblaster 16, Roland SCC-1, Roland CM-32L) around anymore because MS-DOS games tend to run just fine on DOSBox, with pretty much perfect support for all those sound devices with VirtualMIDISynth, Munt etc. It is even easier than with a real MS-DOS machine because you can effortlessly make separate "config.sys/autoexec.bat" even for every game if needed, and also you can change your "machine speed" easily with DOSBox, as some MS-DOS games were designed for certain CPU speeds (e.g. even in the GOG version of Shattered Steel, the laser weapons don't work right if the CPU is too fast, but with DOSBox, you can easily change the "CPU speed" even during the gameplay).

For old Windows games that might have issues on newer Windows or newer PCs, I still have several older PCs running either Windows XP and/or Windows98SE (albeit I very rarely, if ever, run something that works in 98SE but not on XP... I did that with the Direct3D version of Dungeon Keeper though, IIRC).

The main reasons to use the older retrogaming PCs are:

1. It is a retail CD/DVD game with copy protection that does not work on Windows 7, let alone Windows 10. I guess finding a suitable noCD crack fixes most of these, in case you are still able to find such working cracks, especially for an updated version of the game, not just the original 0-day 1.0.0 warez version.

2. The game is designed for a certain CPU speed, e.g. Interstate'97 (even the GOG version) and Mechwarrior 3 physics break down if the CPU/framerate is too fast. So you need a slower PC for those.

There used to be also that some 3D games relied on certain features of older 3D cards (e.g. I recall Heavy Gear 2 graphics being broken on modern graphics cards because the differences in how Z-buffer is handled in old and new graphics cards; also I think some Splinter Cell games relied on certain NVidia Geforce features for lightning etc. that don't work similarly on newer graphics cards), but I at least hope wrappers like dgVoodoo2 can fix these kinds of issues nowadays. At least it is able to fix e.g. Might&Magic 9 graphics issues like not seeing anything underwater...

Some say they like to play on an old PC with CRT etc. because then the game feels more authentic, but I couldn't care less about that. As long as the game runs fine, I'm fine, even if I am playing it on a Windows 10 laptop. The same goes to playing old console games on an emulator, vs. the original console connected to an old CRT TV... I just don't care, emulators are usually fine and even preferred, due to offering save states support etc. Why do you need to use a floppy drive anyway? As far as I can tell, old floppy MS-DOS games didn't usually have any copy protections, and they were used to only install the game, not running directly the game from the floppies.

For instance, I originally installed Red Baron and Wing Commander 1/2 + expansion packs from the original floppy disks, back in the 90s.

However, after that initital installation, I never had to touch those installation floppy disks anymore. I could just zip (or "arj") those installation directories myself, move them to another PC, and continue playing there.

To this day, I still have those original installations for those three games, running nowadays happily in DOSBox. I even have the save games there intact, all the way from the 90s when I played the games. The original installation floppy disks... I think I threw them to trashbin already back in the 90s.

So, floppy disks? For what? I am pretty sure that if you can buy some old MS-DOS games on floppies, the magnetic data from those floppy disks has perished already decades ago, and the floppies are useless.

I would actually even bypass floppies altogether, because even under optimal storage circumstances, they can still go bad.
A flash card solution would be so much more convenient, as you can load drivers, OS, and any other software from your modern setup, then transfer over so much quicker and ideally, hassle free.