Best computer for old DOS games

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

You can always hit up ebay for Socket 7 hardware. I keep a ton of it around. My current Dos/Windows98/ME gaming system I have thrown together is a Socket 7 AMD K6-3 400 mhz system. I paired it with a lan card, Geforce 256, and a AWE 32. So far it hasnt given me any problems. I use it to run stuff like Megarace, Screamers,Quake, Wolfenstien, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat, ect. Pretty much has me covered for DOS and Direct X gaming up to Direct X 6. Alot of Socket 7 hardware is just ATX and Micro ATX based, so you could easily use a newer style case and power supply if you need to. You can also go the Pentium 2/3 slot-1 way. 440BX was pretty reliable for its time. I have a friend who uses that platform specifically for his DOS box. Stuffs dirt cheap.

[Jorpho]

What's the motherboard you're using? If it's a K6-3, I reckon it must be a Super Socket 7 with AGP. (400 MHz is a little fast for older games, isn't it?)

Also, does it have USB? If not, how do you transfer files over to it?

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=1578

Thats the board Im using. Yea it supports USB, but I mean, I can transfer stuff over to it via cd also. I have two cd-r burners in the system. Yea some would consider 400 mhz a bit much, but it comes in handy for Quake and alot of the other more 3d'ish Dos based games, along with Direct X based stuff. I like to use it for a large range of games.

[Ze_ro]

Do you have a lot of 5.25" disks you want to use with this drive? It's not like blanks are easy to find anymore, and they were never particularly reliable.

Actually, my experience has been that 5.25" disks are more reliable in the long run... though most of that experience is with double density disks.

Anyways, if you collect retail games, quite a few of them are on 5.25" disks. I have a real copy of Pools of Darkness, and it includes the game on 2 high-density 5.25" disks AND 3 double-density 3.5" disks... so in at least that case, the 5.25" disks are actually a tiny bit easier.

I have scumm vm but i still want n original machine.

In many respects, ScummVM actually does a better job than an original machine does... same with Exult vs. actual Ultima VII. But whatever, we're certainly not here building DOS machines because it's the practical solution.

Yea some would consider 400 mhz a bit much

Certainly no more unnecessary than 2 CD burners... what's the point of that?

--Zero

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

Burners are in there because I have more burners laying around then normal drives these days, and they tend to read short strategy disc alot better.

[Jorpho]

I can transfer stuff over to it via cd also.

I suppose that's an option if you have huge quantities of CD-Rs that you don't mind treating as a disposable commodity.

[Ze_ro]

I've always had trouble with that myself. I can't bring myself to waste a CD when it's only 5MB worth of data. I know they're cheap, but it still bothers me at some level. CD-RW's would seem like a great idea, but I have a bad history with RW's somehow becoming unrecoverable coasters, and I no longer trust them enough to buy them.

At one point, I tried getting a Zip drive setup going... I had found some drives at the local thrift store, and some disks, and it seemed like the perfect solution. However, I had a ton of trouble getting any of it working (possibly due to the infamous click of death, though I'm still not entirely sure). I've since found a few different mechanisms that might make things a bit easier, but past experience has really soured me on the idea.

At another point, I put a USB add-in card into the computer, but getting USB working under DOS is a nightmare in itself. Most of the tools available are geared towards using USB hard drives, and generally don't do anything other than USB mass storage. At the time, I had no USB flash drives, but was trying to get things working with an SD card reader. It's USB mass storage, right? Shouldn't be much different from a hard drive, right? Well all I managed to accomplish was corrupting the file system on the SD card, and wasting tons of conventional memory on USB drivers.

What I usually do is use the "split" command in Unix to break large files up into 1.4MB pieces, which I then take to the other computer on floppy disks. Once I have all the pieces, the DOS copy command can be used to recombine them. Not a particularly fun way of doing things, but at least it feels less wasteful.

If none of those options appeal to you (which I would certainly understand!), you could always connect the DOS machine to your modern PC via the network. Set up an FTP server on your PC and use an FTP client on the DOS machine to copy the files over. Internet software for DOS can be a little dicey (and lord help you if you try it in Win 3.1), but you'd be surprised at how many ethernet card manufacturers still offer DOS drivers for their cards. I keep planning to do this some day, but my DOS machine is in the basement while the rest of my network is on the main floor, which causes some problems.

--Zero

[Jorpho]

CD-RW's would seem like a great idea, but I have a bad history with RW's somehow becoming unrecoverable coasters, and I no longer trust them enoug to buy them.

Aye, likewise.

Most of the tools available are geared towards using USB hard drives, and generally don't do anything other than USB mass storage.

In the limited experience I've had with them, they're not so bad. Those USB expansion cards are still $20 a pop, though. The last one I tried had some weird power consumption issues.

At the time, I had no USB flash drives, but was trying to get things working with an SD card reader. It's USB mass storage, right? Shouldn't be much different from a hard drive, right? Well all I managed to accomplish was corrupting the file system on the SD card, and wasting tons of conventional memory on USB drivers.

Apparently there are Compact Flash-to-IDE adapters that will work even on very, very old computers, but I've never tried them myself. Plus I reckon they might not be plug-and-play.

Internet software for DOS can be a little dicey (and lord help you if you try it in Win 3.1)

If you have Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, apparently it's not bad at all. But dealing with DOS drivers is just icky. You might as well try a null modem cable if you go that way - not that I had much success with that either.

[Ze_ro]

Apparently there are Compact Flash-to-IDE adapters that will work even on very, very old computers, but I've never tried them myself. Plus I reckon they might not be plug-and-play.

I've actually wanted to do this with my DOS computer for a while... take out the hard drives, and just have a CF slot on the front of the computer hooked straight into the main IDE channel. Then I could just have a CF card with an MS-DOS install, another with Win 98, and another with OS/2 for whatever reason. These days it's hard to find good deals on compact flash though, as the format is largely obsolete.

If you have Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, apparently it's not bad at all. But dealing with DOS drivers is just icky. You might as well try a null modem cable if you go that way - not that I had much success with that either.

Well, I lived through the early days of the internet on Win 3.1, and it was NOT fun... screwing around with Trumpet Winsock and such. I gladly would have lived entirely from the DOS command line, except Netscape only worked in Windows

--Zero

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

I suppose that's an option if you have huge quantities of CD-Rs that you don't mind treating as a disposable commodity.

I've always had trouble with that myself. I can't bring myself to waste a CD when it's only 5MB worth of data. I know they're cheap, but it still bothers me at some level. CD-RW's would seem like a great idea, but I have a bad history with RW's somehow becoming unrecoverable coasters, and I no longer trust them enough to buy them.

I think you guys got me all wrong here. I do have large quantities of cd-rs, but I don't treat them as disposable if I can help it. Ill only toss a disc out if its gone bad due to the ink rotting or its a bad burn, and I dont just leave the stuff laying around. The reason I use burners is because older normal cd drives tend to have a harder time reading anything burned on newer short strategy (Ritek Co. ect) disc.

As with that, I wont burn anything on a disc unless its required, ISO, ect, or its enough data to fill up the majority of the disc. Burning off just one or two Dos games per disc would be a huge waste. Just not something Id be willing to do. On the CD-RW thing, yea I've ha d a bad history with them too. They tend to go bad early. Also, they have a knack for killing some burners quicker, so I stopped using them around 4 years ago.

[Jorpho]

Burning off just one or two Dos games per disc would be a huge waste. Just not something Id be willing to do.

But what if you only have one or two DOS games you want to play at a particular time?

[Edmond Dantes]

I've always had trouble with that myself. I can't bring myself to waste a CD when it's only 5MB worth of data. I know they're cheap, but it still bothers me at some level. CD-RW's would seem like a great idea, but I have a bad history with RW's somehow becoming unrecoverable coasters, and I no longer trust them enough to buy them.

You and Jorpho DO realize CD-Rs (even if they're not RWs) can be used more than once, right?

You're not "wasting" a CDR with 5mb, because you can go in and add more files later. I'm not sure what you're doing that would render that 5mb transfer a one-time deal.

[RP2A03]

With older versions of Windows you can't access all of the data on multisession CDs without the use of a third party application, and accessing all of the data on multisession CDs in DOS is dependent on having a driver that can deal with such things.