Dedicated machine or Virtual PC?

[Kuros]

Which would be better for classic pc gaming?

I have a dedicated machine, but it's messing up right now and I'm gonna have to reinstall windows 98.

I wanna play DOS, 98 and 95 games.

[Ze_ro]

I prefer to keep a seperate machine for classic PC games. DOSBox, Wine, and VMware are fine programs, but I find it FAR easier to configure and set up an actual machine than poking around in emulator and virtual machine configuration files, and setting up filesystems within filesystems and such.

I personally prefer to keep Windows 95 off my DOS machine though... although I do keep Windows 3.1 installed mostly for the sake of morbid curiousity.

But, if you're having troubles reviving the machine, then give VMware or DOSBox a try. It might prove easier in your case, depending on how messed up the machine is.

--Zero

[cyberfluxor]

How is it messing up? If you install a classic machine you should take it online to get all updates installed and patch games that need it. It shouldn't be used to surf the internet casually or download random software, so antivirus and other protection isn't needed to eat up valuable resources. If you are getting hardware conflicts then narrow it down and look into replacing that part, but chances are a fresh format may fix it if you've been installing a bunch of random stuff.

Physical hardware > Emulation (naturality)
Emulation > Physical hardware (for overclocking)