Retro PC Gaming...

[Alex Kidd]

I've been thinking of building a machine that'll be a great for playing PC Games from mid '93 to early '96.

I want a first generation Pentium chip and run it on MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. I figure the 586 class chip shouldn't be too fast to run anything that required 386 but some things that required a 286 may present a problem, but they should be rare. Plus I'll be able to have a simple PCI video card which will be great for games of that era. I figure 36MB of RAM will do. A 1.5 or 2 gig harddrive and 8X CD-ROM drive. And of course what ever is the best Creative Labs soundcard compatible.
I figure by not running Win95 I'll be excluding myself from most of the software that requires running a high-end pentium system. Which I don't want to do, I want to focus it on, as I said, DOS and Win3.1 games from 93-96 so here's my problem... what speed pentium should I buy? the pentum had many of them too! the P60 I figure is usless cause i already have a 486DX2/66 which is alright but not quite powerful enough for some homebrewed Doom WADs Duke Nukem, Quake, or even most games higher res than 320x200 (unless in windows). But if anyone can clue me in on the P60 being more powerful than the aforementioned, please let me kow.
Then there is the P75,P90,P100,P133.

I afraid the P100 and P133s will be too fast. Not sure if it's the multiplier, the front side bus, or what, but a lot of older games seem to crap out on these so I don't wanna try 'em (once again, unless some can enlighten me).

So that leaves me with the P75 or P90... and I'm leaning towards the P75.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Alex Kidd

[rhiohki]

What are the games you want to play that you are ceertain WON'T run in DOS mode in Windows 95?

I was under the assumption that you could use DOS mode in windows 95 to run your DOS games.

[tom]

You gotta try out several options, because it's also a lot to do with software.

I got an old IBM Thinkpad Pentium 133 MHz, DOS/WIN 3.1, which runs all my 80's/early 90s PC softs at perfect speed (even 086 stuff). So no problems there above 100 MHz, but then, it is a LT, they were different beasts altogether.

As for running 93 - 96 type of games, you don't have to worry about the Win 95 issue anyway.

A Desktop P75 should be fine.

[dunkoff]

double post...

[dunkoff]

What are the games you want to play that you are ceertain WON'T run in DOS mode in Windows 95?

I was under the assumption that you could use DOS mode in windows 95 to run your DOS games.

Win95 eats up your conventional memory, even in DOS mode. Any game that relies on conventional memory, such as Ultima 7 & 8, won't run in DOS mode.

However, you can easily make a DOS boot disk that will bypass Win95, but still load your drivers. In this case, you should be able to play those games (that's what I did).

[Alex Kidd]

Doesn't matter, I don't want to run Win95.
Just what would be a beast of a processor for DOS and Win3.1 games, primarily from the 93-96 era and any thng else i could run would be gravy. I lookin at runnin games like Classic Apogee Shareware titles, Sierra Quest Series, Microprose Tycoon and X-Com games, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, TekWar blast it! Command & Conquer, Need For Speed, Heroes of Might and Magic, LucasArts Adventure Titles, the early Elder Scrolls series, and Warcraft... and All those Bizarro multimedia type games. It's hard to describe what I mean, but they were like kinda FMV-ish and very high res graphics, kinda of like adventure games... Dark Seed II comes to mind, and D, Bad Mojo, Star Control 3, The Terminator games by Bethesda and Shadow Warrior, now I'm rambling titles!

Alex Kidd

[Juganawt]

why not just run MS DOS and MoSlow on your existing PC?

seems like a lot less hassle for pretty much the same result.

[ventrra]

Or perhaps http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ DOSBox?

[Alex Kidd]

I've had very little positive experience with either; DosBOX emulates at about a 286's speed on my machine.

So far the only person to actually answer my question has said P75, and so far that is my choice.

Alex Kidd

[Jorpho]

What sort of machine were you trying to run DOSBox on? DOSBox's speed is entirely adjustable and also varies considerably depending on what you are trying to run.

Far more than just allowing you to run DOS games under different environments, DOSBox also saves an incredible amount of hassle as far as messing with conventional memory and sound card drivers goes.

I had a 486DX4/100 with a nice turbo button on the case. Depending on what you want to do exactly, a turbo button like that could be immensely useful. (I don't think any Pentium boards had equivalent functionality.)

[Synergy]

Holy crap, and I thought I was the only one to think about setting up a "retro" gaming PC to branch off all my DOS and early Windows games to. It's awesome to see someone mention the Apogee games, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Need For Speed, X-Com, and Shadow Warrior. Such classic stuff there.


I've had very little positive experience with either; DosBOX emulates at about a 286's speed on my machine.

So far the only person to actually answer my question has said P75, and so far that is my choice.

DOSBox is a nice little program, but gets finnicky with me sometimes. Usually it's good with late 80s, early 90s games because they don't need that much CPU power and whatnot, but when you start moving into the "protected-mode" titles and get closer to Windows 95, that's when it starts to get fun. :/

Other games I love such as Blood, Redneck Rampage, and Star Wars: Dark Forces used the "Build" engine, that is strictly DOS, yet needs the power of a Pentium processor. If you're interested in playing those types of games, I'd go higher then a P75. In my opinion, at least a P133 with 32MB of RAM. That's the recommended requirements for Redneck Rampage Rides Again which came out in 1998. At least, that's what I would throw into it if I went through with it.

[Jorpho]

Did I mention the latest version of DOSBox, 0.65, was substantially improved over earlier versions?


Other games I love such as Blood, Redneck Rampage, and Star Wars: Dark Forces used the "Build" engine, that is strictly DOS, yet needs the power of a Pentium processor.

Dark Forces was certainly not Build. I'm also told that most Build games will in fact run under Win2K/XP if you use VDMSound and the NoLFB patch. Duke Nukem 3D has a much improved source port, of course.

If you have a board that can handle lots of RAM (and if it doesn't take those tiny, expensive SIMMs) it may be worthwhile to set up a large RAM disk. Could offer a nice speed boost if needed.

[Synergy]

Dark Forces was certainly not Build. I'm also told that most Build games will in fact run under Win2K/XP if you use VDMSound and the NoLFB patch. Duke Nukem 3D has a much improved source port, of course.

You are correct, I just read this from the Wiki article on it:

"The "Jedi Engine," as it was called, was in the end more advanced than the Doom engine, containing features such as rooms over rooms, polygonal objects, haze and fog and the ability to look up and down."

I just keep throwing it in with "Build" because it looks a lot like it to me for some reason. :) I've also used VDMSound and NOLFB, and they work pretty well, but it's still annoying to tinker with them, at least on my PC where they don't like to behave all the time.

I've also known about the Duke3D port as well as the various DOOM ports, but I'm not too big on playing ports when I'm feeling nostalgic for a certain game. The DOS versions of DOOM were perfect with the music and such, and when I went to play the Doom Collector's Edition which had the Windows versions, it just felt uncomfortable to me.

[YoshiM]

DOSBox is okay but some titles don't seem to run well with it. Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall is one (backing up using the arrow keys sometimes doesn't happen) and definitely Command and Conquer: Red Alert (no sound and crash). I haven't tried playing games in a window (if possible) but some titles look like creamed ass on my 17" CRT (blocky, hazy-don't know if it's a dot pitch issue or if my monitor doesn't like lower resolutions) but looks just like I remember 'em on my Packard Bell 14" monitor: nice and crisp.

The Pentium 60 is actually faster than your 486/DX2 66. I don't have my old sales charts from when I sold computers, but there was a visible difference. I would do demonstrations with what remaining 486's we had with the brand spankin' new Pentiums.

What games crapped out on the 100+MHz Pentiums? I've got a 133 MHz Acer (a hunk of crap that was given to me by a co-worker) and I can run pretty much anything I throw at it. Any issues usually boil down to mismanaged memory (some games can be finicky), video (usually games that required a VESA driver) or sound (my Acer sound card isn't overly SB compatable....and the system doesn't like anything BUT its card...dammit-I got a Pro Audio Spectrum I wanna use!). Except for some top down shooter (can't remember the title) that REQUIRED an x86 processor, I've never run into a processor issue other than being too fast-which in itself was rare playing 90's games.

I suggest at LEAST a 133Mhz if you want to play games like Quake or Duke Nukem 3D. 90's games should work just fine, especially in the year range you mention. You want to get a genuine Sound Blaster card that can play DOS games right out of the box-no "virtual DOS mode" drivers or anything. DOS 6.22 will work great and if you can find it try and get Quarterdecks' QEMM-386 for the best memory management IMO. Its "Stealth mode" could give numbers in the 630K region.

[Trebuken]

There seems to be three levels for PC gaming...DOS, Win95 (or 98), and XP, with Vista en route. I think you need a setup for each level if you are discontent with DosBox and such. The XP machine is easy, the Windows 98 machine is easy, a laptop is really convenient in this category, they are not overly expensive, I have a Pentium II 233 Mhz for it, though I would suggest something faster, maybe 600-800 Mhz to maximize the number of games you can play. For DOS games I think you could also consider anything up to a Pentium II 233, but you might need MoSlo or similar speed limiting software, which I believe run under DOS anyways. I think your better having a little too much power than too little the cost difference will be negligible for these old parts. Of course if you know exactly which games you want to play look for the one with the highest recommended settings and go with that.

I'd like to know what you come up with I have never found a good solution myself.

Later,
Trebuken

[Trebuken]

There seems to be three levels for PC gaming...DOS, Win95 (or 98), and XP, with Vista en route. I think you need a setup for each level if you are discontent with DosBox and such. The XP machine is easy, the Windows 98 machine is easy, a laptop is really convenient in this category, they are not overly expensive, I have a Pentium II 233 Mhz for it, though I would suggest something faster, maybe 600-800 Mhz to maximize the number of games you can play. For DOS games I think you could also consider anything up to a Pentium II 233, but you might need MoSlo or similar speed limiting software, which I believe run under DOS anyways. I think your better having a little too much power than too little the cost difference will be negligible for these old parts. Of course if you know exactly which games you want to play look for the one with the highest recommended settings and go with that.

I'd like to know what you come up with I have never found a good solution myself.

Later,
Trebuken

[suppafly]

You might wanna get more ram.

That way you can make a RAMDRIVE and load the games to the ram.

Theyll load faster and work smoother!

[Jorpho]

Except for some top down shooter (can't remember the title) that REQUIRED an x86 processor, I've never run into a processor issue other than being too fast-which in itself was rare playing 90's games.

Well, the Pentium is still an x86, just not in name. Anyway, you're referring to Zone 66, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't confirmed myself that it won't run on anything higher than a 486 (it might just be a memory management issue), but it runs under DOSBox now.


You want to get a genuine Sound Blaster card that can play DOS games right out of the box-no "virtual DOS mode" drivers or anything.

While the ISA PnP Sound Blasters certainly aren't as convenient as those that don't need the PnP stuff, I've also been told that the older technology in some older cards just plain doesn't sound as nice as the newer cards. There was a big thread at VOGONS (http://vogons.zetafleet.com) about this.


DOS 6.22 will work great and if you can find it try and get Quarterdecks' QEMM-386 for the best memory management IMO. Its "Stealth mode" could give numbers in the 630K region.

"Stealth mode" is also resoundingly incompatible with a lot of things.

http://www.mdgx.com has some cool stuff, but it's pretty hard to navigate. In particular, see the bit about UMBPCI (http://www.mdgx.com/umb.htm). http://www.mdgx.com/dos.htm is also especially useful.

[roushimsx]

Anyone having trouble getting games to run at acceptable speeds in DOSbox needs to try enabling timesynched in their dosbox.conf file. Even on my ghettofabulous Athlon 2500+ I can get nearly fullspeed in Duke3D/Blood/Shadow Warrior at 640x480. Woo!

Honestly dude, DOSbox IS your best bet. Upgrade your main rig and learn how to properly configure DOSbox and pretty much everything you'll want to play, you'll be able to play. Hell, if you so desire, you'll be able to run the games in higher resolutions than they ever supported in the first place (trust me, playing X-Com in 1280x960 in Scale2x is quite awesome and quite playable on my current setup). Additionally, it can scale to any CPU speed so while building a DOS machine may work for a certian era of games, you'll still have to use programs like moslo and whatnot to run other games. ALSO (!!!!) it emulates a good selection of soundcards so you're not limited by what you find, you don't have to worry about drivers, toubleshooting is easier, etc. Perhaps you've forgotten how much it sucked to have to change the IRQ/DMA via jumpers.

Seriously, there's too many drawbacks and limitations to building a dedicated PC that are solved by running DOSbox on a more powerful machine than you have now rather than building multiple retro PCs.

...and if you're really hard up to play some of those games at full speed, investigate the wonders of VirtualPC 5.1 (of which I believe there's a fully functional 30 day trial still available around the internet). Whereas DOSbox requires a good bit of cpu power to play games like Crusader No Remorse, VirtualPC plays 'em just super spiffy dandy.

But yea, if you want to build a PC, more power to ya. I'd suggest getting a Sound Blaster Pro (the 16 wasn't fully backwards compatible with the Pro, so in games that supported the Soundblaster and Pro, you'd be stuck using the Soundblaster setting if you got a SB16), an STB Lightspeed 128 PCI (best 2d card of the era imo), 4 4meg SIMMs, a 1.3 gig hard drive (should do you fine), any ol' 52x CD-ROM, and the best damn 19" CRT you can find.

...but really, dude. Don't dismiss DOSbox + a current PC upgrade. For real.

Hell, you can even video capture in DOSbox. Video capture! I recorded a video of me sucking in One Must Fall 2097 just because I could, and you know what? It rocked!

[Dave Farquhar]

I know some DOS games my buddies and I liked to play were too fast even on a Pentium-100. But some older Pentium mobos had a "turbo" button on them (most 486 boards had them) which dropped the speed down. The result varied, but usually you got a system running at somewhere from 8 to 33 MHz, depending on the board and the CPU's multiplier. If you can find a Pentium board with this feature enabled, that would be ideal, because then you could put a 200 MHz chip on it for games that can use the speed, and still run the stuff that acted goofy at high speeds.

You're on the right track to use plain-jane DOS, BTW. There are a handful of vintage games that don't even like the DOS 7.0 you get when you make a boot disk with Win95. There weren't many, and I don't remember specific titles anymore.

I've considered building a retro PC out of a 486--I still have the Compaq 486 I bought in 1994--but I haven't gotten around to it. There were some killer DOS games back then, and some of them are indeed a lot easier to get running on older hardware. I actually published a magazine article a few years ago that talked about how to get cranky games running under Windows, but now that old 486s and Pentiums are essentially free for the asking, I like the dedicated-machine approach.

A good PCI sound card to look for, by the way, is either the Ensoniq AudioPCI or an early PCI Sound Blaster. The Ensoniq AudioPCI's Sound Blaster emulation was so good, Creative Labs bought the company so they could rebadge the card and get the Ensoniq engineers who designed it. The audio quality is pretty good too--Ensoniq was a synthesizer company.

[Trebuken]

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=360cafd6-5098-4c64-9ca7-a30f225859f6&DisplayLang=en

Is this it?

I'm gonna try it...I got some abandonware to experiment with...

Later,
Trebuken

[Trebuken]

Double.

[roushimsx]

Is this it?


IIRC 5.1 had a better video chipset emulated or some such; I'm trying to dig up the info right now. But yea, that's the product (just a much more recent version of it).

[mezrabad]

DOSBox is okay but some titles don't seem to run well with it. Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall is one (backing up using the arrow keys sometimes doesn't happen)

Agreed. I've never gotten DOSbox to work well on my Dell PC, but as I mentioned in an Oblivion thread I'm able to get Daggerfall running in DOSbox on OS X and it's running better than I was ever able to get it to run on my P166 back in the day.

To answer the original poster, I would say a P75 wouldn't suck for running alot of the games from the era you mentioned. I think it's much better to play the games on the original hardware for which it was written. If I ever chronogame PC games (daunting task) that's how I'll be doing it. (I've already got 4 486DX2/66 boxes and monitors that I plan to set up for DOOM deathmatches)

good luck to you. :)

[Jorpho]

A good PCI sound card to look for, by the way, is either the Ensoniq AudioPCI or an early PCI Sound Blaster. The Ensoniq AudioPCI's Sound Blaster emulation was so good, Creative Labs bought the company so they could rebadge the card and get the Ensoniq engineers who designed it. The audio quality is pretty good too--Ensoniq was a synthesizer company.

Aye, it's a nice card, but you still have to load a driver to get it working in DOS - and the driver requires EMS, which some games don't like.

I notice that VMware has a FreeDOS VM (http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/378) up for download that will work with the free VMware Player. Perhaps not your best option, though.

[YoshiM]

Except for some top down shooter (can't remember the title) that REQUIRED an x86 processor, I've never run into a processor issue other than being too fast-which in itself was rare playing 90's games.

Well, the Pentium is still an x86, just not in name. Anyway, you're referring to Zone 66, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't confirmed myself that it won't run on anything higher than a 486 (it might just be a memory management issue), but it runs under DOSBox now.

Details, details :P Yeah it's considered a 586 but it's called "Pentium". A 486 is a "486". For naming differences, I just lumped 286/386/486 as "x86", which many people get.

And it is Zone 66. According to The Underdogs:

"The game was developed on a 386 running at 16MHz. For an action game with full-screen updates, this was a technical achievement. Tran [demoscene nick of designer Thomas Pytel] was able to eek more speed out of such a machine because he used a preliminary version of his own 386 protected-mode extender "pmode". Unfortunately, due to the extender being an early version, the game is incompatible with all Pentiums and higher."



You want to get a genuine Sound Blaster card that can play DOS games right out of the box-no "virtual DOS mode" drivers or anything.

While the ISA PnP Sound Blasters certainly aren't as convenient as those that don't need the PnP stuff, I've also been told that the older technology in some older cards just plain doesn't sound as nice as the newer cards. There was a big thread at VOGONS (http://vogons.zetafleet.com) about this.


I think I read that thread. Depends what you mean by "newer" cards. It seemed like mid 90's tech would be good. Ensoniq, if I'm not mistaken, got some decent praise from a few.




DOS 6.22 will work great and if you can find it try and get Quarterdecks' QEMM-386 for the best memory management IMO. Its "Stealth mode" could give numbers in the 630K region.

"Stealth mode" is also resoundingly incompatible with a lot of things.

Really? Like with what? I remember some article saying that QEMM wasn't compatible with Tie Fighter but the sucker ran fine on my Packard Bell. I searched those Vogon forums (briefly) and didn't see anyone having any issues. By the time I got into games like Duke Nukem and such I had moved to Windows 95 (using a Pentium Overdrive processor in place of my 486 SX-25) and my QEMM was not compatible.

[Jorpho]

And it is Zone 66. According to The Underdogs:

Well, HOTU is the only place I've read that particular tidbit (though it seems Wikipedia has since picked it up). And HOTU has been wrong before.


I remember some article saying that QEMM wasn't compatible with Tie Fighter but the sucker ran fine on my Packard Bell. I searched those Vogon forums (briefly) and didn't see anyone having any issues. By the time I got into games like Duke Nukem and such I had moved to Windows 95 (using a Pentium Overdrive processor in place of my 486 SX-25) and my QEMM was not compatible.

I remember reading a lot of readmes and docs that said "disable Stealth Mode before you run this game" or some such. Perhaps the danger was ultimately overstated, as suggested by your experience with Tie Fighter and this article you mention.

Considering QEMM isn't used by a lot of people anymore (or so I would imagine, if for no other reason than the fact that it was never really released into the public domain), it would not be surprising that there is a dearth of information about it at VOGONS. And Quarterdeck actually did release a Win9x version of QEMM at one point.

[prismra]

I have an old Dell Pentium 133 with 32 mb of ram. It is frickin awesome for playing old games. Everything runs awesome on it. It's even got a SoundBlaster AWE32 in it so the midi rocks. I don't really use it anymore though so you can have it cheap if you want it. It's got DOS 6.22, QEMM, a bunch of games etc.

Right now I use DosBox almost exclusively now. I have an MT-32 and a Roland Soundcanvas connected to my computer with an M-Audio card so I have authentic, incredible midi on all my old DOS games. 8-)

[lakeflaccid]

I would recommend getting a Pentium 133 or 166. It should be plenty fast enough for Quake or Duke Nukem 3D or any other fairly demanding old titles.

And if it's too fast, you can slow it down by disabling the internal/external cache in the BIOS. Okay, that probably sounds hard, but it's not. It doesn't require any hardware changes or anything frustrating (at least not on any of the computers I've used).

[Jibbajaba]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/images/avatars/113859881543dd3abbbb526.jpg

Dude that's a freakin sweet avatar. One of my favorite games.

Chris

[Alex Kidd]

I'm leaving dosbox out of the question, because the PC I have now is only a PIII 700, I can play Doom thru win98 perfect, try running it thru DosBox, and it's like trying to play it on a 286!
Plus I have no intention of upgrading my PC untill I HAVE to because all i use my PC for now is the net and typing shit up and some emulators. I have no interest in the PC Gaming market now, aside from there being very few titles coming that interest me, as soon as one does come out, you have to buy a new part to play it! game requirements are making jumps now more than EVER.

So a P100 or 133 you say? and it will run even games such as say Catacomb Abyss 3D and other EGA era games? because while I know it would be a definite help for the newest titles (ala quake and duke 3d) I'm not too picky about resolutions, even just 640x400 (or even 512x384 for quake) is good for me.
I remember playin the hell outta Quake and Duke 3D in 320x200 on my old 486!
Plus I hope to one day be able to sit down and really play thru TekWar, seriously, I know i've heard nothing good about it but I just really wanna play it thru after so long., I've had that game for about 8-9 years now. My 486 was alright for MOST of the levels in 320x200 res but even some areas had too much going on and my framrate would just drop completely, and the only one or two places in the Matrix was I able to navigate.

Alex Kidd

[Jorpho]

So a P100 or 133 you say? and it will run even games such as say Catacomb Abyss 3D and other EGA era games?

Didn't those run on a 386 originally?

Back when I had a PII 333, I would encounter the famouos Runtime Error 200 bug maybe one out of every ten times when trying to run a program with such a problem, you you're probably perfectly safe from that at speeds like 133. But there are still plenty of 286 and older games for which a slowdown utility will be vital.

[Red Hedgehog]

I use a Pentium 120 with 32MB of RAM to run my older games. Some games I have no trouble running. These include: Colonization, Darklands, Earthworm Jim, Heroes of Might and Magic, Master of Magic, Pirates, Pirates Gold (though I prefer the original), Railroad Tycoon, X-Com, and X-Com 2. I had a difficult time getting Star Control 2 working (especially with sound) and no matter what I do, I can't get sound working in Betrayal at Krondor. Also, some older games (Defender of the Crown is one from what I can remember) required me to use moslo so that it ran at an appropriate speed.

It works well for what I want, but I recently installed DOSbox on my 1.25GHz OS X machine and haven't yet seen how well that works. The only game I tested it with was Betrayal at Krondor where the sound worked fine, but it ran a little slow (and seemed to get slower the more I played).

[ghostangelofcky]

sorry if this has already been brought up.

I just use DOS BOX to run all my old pc-dos games, and i have a new computer it works great on just about everything i own, 30+ games,

bad sound on some weird ones ie cyborgirl... go figure

[roushimsx]

I'm leaving dosbox out of the question, because the PC I have now is only a PIII 700, I can play Doom thru win98 perfect, try running it thru DosBox, and it's like trying to play it on a 286!

Wait, why on earth would you try to play Doom in DOSbox? There's about a bajillion source ports of it out there right now that allow you to run it on virtually any modern machine/operating system with a variety of enhancemenets from plain-jane-vanilla-Doom to shitty-3d-models-and-high-res-textures-with-jumping-Doom (+flashy-effects-special-edition).

[Trebuken]

I'm leaving dosbox out of the question, because the PC I have now is only a PIII 700, I can play Doom thru win98 perfect, try running it thru DosBox, and it's like trying to play it on a 286!

Wait, why on earth would you try to play Doom in DOSbox? There's about a bajillion source ports of it out there right now that allow you to run it on virtually any modern machine/operating system with a variety of enhancemenets from plain-jane-vanilla-Doom to shitty-3d-models-and-high-res-textures-with-jumping-Doom (+flashy-effects-special-edition).

Also Xbox and Xbox 360 Doom now....

Later,
Trebuken

[roushimsx]

Also Xbox and Xbox 360 Doom now....


That's extremely awesome that they went so far as to support Doom and Doom 2 in the backwards compatibility for Doom 3.

Sega really needs to apply some leverage (not like they have any anymore :( ) and get Panzer Dragoon Orta and Jet Set Radio Future working so that I'll finally be able to play them in something other than 480i (stupid v1.6 Xbox :( )

[Alex Kidd]

Wait, why on earth would you try to play Doom in DOSbox? There's about a bajillion source ports of it out there right now that allow you to run it on virtually any modern machine/operating system with a variety of enhancemenets from plain-jane-vanilla-Doom to shitty-3d-models-and-high-res-textures-with-jumping-Doom (+flashy-effects-special-edition).

Dude, didn't I SAY that I play it fine on my system and NOT thru DOSbox??
My comparison was stating that even DOS games that DO run fine thru windows on my system, DON'T run well thru DOSbox, let alone the games that DON'T run well in Windows.

And to all the people describing these new 'ports' and upgrades to some games (higher res etc) that will help them run in windows... your missing my point entirely. I want these games as I remember them, for 'classic' gaming goodness. It'd be like taking the 2600's Pitfall! and anti-aliasing the corners, adding a soundtrack, scrolling background or voices effects for the vine swinging. Sure it might be a nicer version, but it just wouldn't be the same anymore.

Alex Kidd

[roushimsx]

Dude, didn't I SAY that I play it fine on my system and NOT thru DOSbox??


...well that doesn't answer my question of why you were trying to play it through DOSbox in the first place.



And to all the people describing these new 'ports' and upgrades to some games (higher res etc) that will help them run in windows... your missing my point entirely.


i think you missed that line where I said you had a choice to run them in any way you wanted, from higher resolution to the exact same experience you originally enjoyed. The additional effects offered through sourceports have granted us some badass Doom mods, though.

Seriously, try Batman Doom.

But yea, have fun with the whole building-a-pc thing. I recommend building two PCs (one low end 486 SX 33 and one low end pentium) for maximum compatibility (or as much as can be had without putzing around with moslo), but either route is still inferior to just biting the bullet and buying a single new PC with the intention of perfectly emulating older PCs :)

I'm looking at an Athlon X2 4400+ right now, and it should allow me to play pretty much anything I want, from Realms of the Haunting and Pandora Directive in DOSbox, Nights and Panzer Dragoon Saga in SSF, and FEAR and Condemed on PC. Modern classics AND classic classics? Score!

[Jorpho]

I've tried the whole build-a-PC thing, and frankly it stops being fun rather quickly. But maybe that's just me.

[Alex Kidd]

Dude, didn't I SAY that I play it fine on my system and NOT thru DOSbox??


...well that doesn't answer my question of why you were trying to play it through DOSbox in the first place.


Oh man... not tryin to start an arguement here but I DID say why i tried Doom on DOSBox... to give a comparison of how shittily my computer runs DOSBox, that even DOS games I can run normally thru Windows will NOT run normally thru DOSBox.

But anyway, there's now somehow two threads about this and I've got the info I need so thanks to those who helped me out.

Alex Kidd

[roushimsx]

Oh man... not tryin to start an arguement here but I DID say why i tried Doom on DOSBox... to give a comparison of how shittily my computer runs DOSBox, that even DOS games I can run normally thru Windows will NOT run normally thru DOSBox.


Call me crazy, but I don't believe the intention of DOSbox is to help you play games that you can already play fine without DOSbox....because if that were the case then there'd be no need for DOSbox. Craziness!

[Alex Kidd]

Man-oh-man you try my patience... this is gonna be a long entry, but it seems it's to be the only way I (might) get my point across to you.

One day I'm trying to play some old DOS games... but they don't run well... resulting in crashing, divide errors, runtime errors, sound issues, and a parade of other things.
So I go online looking for info to remedy my problem. I find amongst things a VESA emulator or something for video problems which I didn't need because I had no video problems... look some more I find this program called VDMSound which claims to emulate old SB technology, unfortunately I'm running Win98 and it's only compatible with Win2000/XP/NT.
So I continue my search... I find this program called DOSBox... seems cool... seems like it's just what I'm looking for. And it actually worked... somewhat... games will run, but sooooo sloooooow. I can seem to run ANYTHING at a decent framrate.
Now I begin to troubleshoot, hoping I can tweak this or that or do something to make it run better. While troubleshooting I think of something I learned in college; if something I use in conjection with something else doesn't work as desired I try to eliminate X factors by using known good units in place of my variables. Luckily I have my good old copy of Doom, not GLDoom or WINDoom or some other new thing, but Doom that came on four 3.5" floppy disks, that DOES work perfectly fine through Windows. My results? even Doom runs worse than it ever did on any computer I've ever played it on. I get the same results with Command & Conquer, Quake and some more titles. My conclusion? I have a system not powerful enough to emulate what it is I'm trying to emulate.

Jump ahead; I have a thread on the go on this very website and in response to my query people are claiming I should use DOSBox. I respond to them by telling them I can't use DOSBox and to help illustrate why I can't, I reference my experiences with DOSBox and my results obtained. Of course I didn't go into such detail as I have just now because I really didn't think it was necessary, and really it isn't, not even now, I'm just blown away at you're inability to comprehend what I've been saying and I had to clear this up.
Final Summation: I have a computer that cannot use DOSBox to emulate a computer with even a 386's speed, let alone a P75-P100 which was my goal.

And if you have anymore odd comments to make about my computer's inability to run Doom through DOSBox you will be wasting keystrokes because I can't make it any clearer than I just have.

Alex Kidd

I'm anticipating a response stating I should upgrade my PC so I CAN emulate a P75-P100 through DOSBox, to which I say please read my above post stating why I don't want to upgrade my computer at this time.

[mezrabad]

I just don't understand why everyone wants to talk you out of building an old pc or why they fixated on Doom.

This is one of the forums where I'm constantly seeing people prostelyze the "original version on the original hardware" there's very little talk of emulation simply because most of the viewpoints I've read seem to indicate that they prefer it on the "real thing". That's exactly what you're trying to accomplish and many people seem to think it is a waste of time. What don't THEY get?

[roushimsx]

This is one of the forums where I'm constantly seeing people prostelyze the "original version on the original hardware" there's very little talk of emulation simply because most of the viewpoints I've read seem to indicate that they prefer it on the "real thing".

Playing via DOSbox is the real thing because they're PC games and you're playing them on a PC. What's not to get?

The problem with the PC is that it's a moving target, so even when you look at a small timeframe, you're still looking at games that required a wide range of different pieces of hardware for "the optimal experience".

Whereas with a NES you just had to have a NES and some composite cables, with a PC you had to worry about (at the very least):

Different sound cards/hardware (did the game Tandy 3 Voice or did it support Sound Blaster? Did you have a Roland MT-32?)

Different graphics modes (CGA/EGA/VGA/SVGA/NINJA/whatever) with varying support between different cards (did your card support VESA?)

Different processors (if you played Doom on a 486SLC33 instead of a 486DX50 then your memory of how the game looked and played would be quite different from the kid that had the high end machine). Let's not forget the games that weren't compatible with Pentiums (hi, Zone 66!), the games that required Pentiums for optimal performance (Duke Nukem 3D, Terminal Velocity, etc), and the games that flat out ran too damn fast on anything above a 486 (Wing Commander 2!).

When you're building a new PC with DOSbox as your target, you're still playing PC games on a PC and it's trivial to properly configure each game to run on your one PC to run optimally (either in a retro-purist-way or in a graphics-whore-high-resolution-way). When you're building an old PC just to play old PC games, then you're stuck playing a small fraction of the games you could actually be playing, and even then you'd have a hell of a time playing all of the games you'd WANT to play.

....but that's all beside the point, because all of the games you've mentioned in this thread as wanting to play are perfectly playable in Win9x/2k/XP on your current hardware thanks to sourceports and engine rewrites.