Post up your DOS gaming machine!

[aaron7]

Figured it could be a neat thread.

I have two computers I dedicated to DOS gaming.

One is an old Micron laptop... nice big 15" screen, SoundBlaster audio (easy to configure!). Think it's a PII 333MHz with 128mb RAM. I have a 20gb hard drive in there to store all my stuff and run 98SE on it.

The other is my custom built all in one PC. It's a standard AT mini-tower that I glued a 15" LCD screen to the side and wired it up inside to the video card. It also has internal speakers. I added handles on the top to carry it around... still trying to figure out how to get some sort of flip-down keyboard and mouse to cover the screen. This system is a Pentium 233MMX, 128mb RAM, 20gb hard drive, Radeon 7000 64mb PCI video (tears through Quake and Duke3d!), AWE64 ISA sound card, and a PCI USB 2.0 card.

I'll get pics up when I get home.

[NayusDante]

Originally an HP Pavilion 8260

266Mhz Pentium II
128Mb PC100 SDRAM
80Gb IDE
Windows 95 on top of DOS 7.0
Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA
Iomega ZIP100 Drive
Lite-On CD-RW Drive
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Cheap black case from CompUSA ($15)
Small Dell LCD (goes about 1024x768)

Oldest thing I can remember running on it: Akalabeth
Most advanced thing I can remember running on it: System Shock 2

Things I'd like to do with it:
-Add networking
-Wheel-mouse support
-Set up a minimalist pure DOS environment, dual-booted
-Try Windows 7 on it
-Play Half-Life 2 on it
-Build a good integrated-monitor case like aaron7 made
-Bring it to a lan-party (we spend a lot of time playing UT99 anyway, why not?)

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

You know, I actually have a ton of Super Socket 7 K6-2&3 stuff, and Soundblaster 16 and 32 sound cards and what not. Enough to build 2-3 Dos comps possibly. Also have some Slot1, Socket A, and Socket 370 stuff as well incase I wanted to do Windows 98-Me Direct X 6 and prior, or XP Direct X 7-9 stuff. I should really go though and make a inventory list....

[blue lander]

I used to use a tricked out 8 bit IBM PC XT. The hardest thing about adding devices to the original PC is that it uses 8 bit ISA cards, not the 16 bit ones. It had...

EGA graphics adapter
Adlib sound card
20 megabyte hard card (it's an ISA card with a built in hard drive)
SCSI controller with a 600 mb hard disk and CD ROM drive
768k of RAM
Floppy controller with high density 5.25 and 3.5 inch disk drives
10base2 Ethernet controller

The device drivers to run all that hardware took up almost all the available memory, so it was more of an experiment in how much hardware I could shove in one computer. I pushed it too far when I eventually put a 386 card in there that would have effectively turned the computer into a 386. After installing the card and powering up, the computer beeped SOS a few times and then never turned on again. It killed BOTH the motherboard and the power supply. I tried putting a new power supply in, wouldn't work. I tried putting the old power supply into another XT, it wouldn't work. It completely killed my machine

Now I just use DOSBOX on a Pentium III. I have it multibooting into Windows 98, XP, and NetBSD so all my bases are covered.

[PentiumMMX]

While I have a 486, my main PC (A roughky 14-year-old NEC desktop) for older games is currently setup like this:

- Pentium (75Mhz)
- S3 graphics card (PCI-based, don't remember which model)
- Sound Blaster AWE64 (ISA-based)
- A pair of USB 2.0 ports
- 40MB RAM
- 6.8GB hard drive
- 3.5 & 5.25 floppy drives, 24X CD-ROM
- Windows 98SE

I've pushed the old hardware to the limits on countless occasions; at one point I had it successfully running Windows 2000 at a surprisingly usable speed. However, I still need to find a working network adapter for it...

[phreakindee]

For my oldest DOS games:

IBM PC 5150
Intel 8088 4.77Mhz
Intel 8087 Math Co-processor
DOS 3.2
640k RAM
CGA Graphics
2x 5.25" FH 360k Floppies

For 386 to Pentium-era:

HP Vectra-based
DOS 6.22
Pentium 100Mhz
24x CD-ROM
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Creative Sound Blaster 16
64MB RAM
10GB HDD
8MB 2D Graphics chipset

For 90's DOS/Win95 games:

Pentium II 400Mhz
Windows 95
48x CD-ROM
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
5.25" 1.2MB Floppy Drive
128MB RAM
20GB Hard Drive
ATI Mach64 2MB for 2D card
12MB Voodoo 2 PCI
Sound Blaster 128

Others:
Compaq All-In-One Presario 486 Overdrive
Toshiba Contura Aero 486
Random clones PCs

[phreakindee]

I used to use a tricked out 8 bit IBM PC XT. The hardest thing about adding devices to the original PC is that it uses 8 bit ISA cards, not the 16 bit ones. It had...

EGA graphics adapter
Adlib sound card
20 megabyte hard card (it's an ISA card with a built in hard drive)
SCSI controller with a 600 mb hard disk and CD ROM drive
768k of RAM
Floppy controller with high density 5.25 and 3.5 inch disk drives
10base2 Ethernet controller

The device drivers to run all that hardware took up almost all the available memory, so it was more of an experiment in how much hardware I could shove in one computer. I pushed it too far when I eventually put a 386 card in there that would have effectively turned the computer into a 386. After installing the card and powering up, the computer beeped SOS a few times and then never turned on again. It killed BOTH the motherboard and the power supply. I tried putting a new power supply in, wouldn't work. I tried putting the old power supply into another XT, it wouldn't work. It completely killed my machine

Oooooh, that sucks! Sounds like an awesome machine before!

Risk of things like that happening is why I've limited myself to only upgrading video and RAM on my IBM PCs.

[Poofta!]

ive considered making one on many occasions. i am very put off by the fact that i simply dont have the space for an extra pc & monitor. i thought about getting an old laptop and i am still playing with that idea, however am very anti paying 100-200$ for an arhiac laptop that would almost never be used.

i have resorted to using dos box. however i wonder how windows 7's xp environment will handle dos games. i also considered simply running a virtual system with the specs i wanted within my current pc (i have a beast of a pc with 2 21" LCDs and 8gb ram, amongst other things - allowing me a very vast amount of multitasking)

the set up i always wanted to set up as my dos box would be a 333mhz pentium with 128 or 256 ram. 20-40gb hd with dual boot into either dos w/ Norton Commander or Windows 98SE. that would pretty much cover all my bases, i could probably run most stuff in 98SE anyway.

im generally very busy with work and ive recently decided to start going to graduate school. between all of that and my gf & other friends i have no time for this kind of hobby project. im pretty much in between going full out virtualization and setting up the above specs w/ OS on it or find a laptop. something tells me it be virtualization due to it being free and space limitations.

[blue lander]

Oooooh, that sucks! Sounds like an awesome machine before!

Risk of things like that happening is why I've limited myself to only upgrading video and RAM on my IBM PCs.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have just put the hardcard, EGA card and extra memory in the thing. There's no real need for an XT to have a giant hard drive or a CD drive. What are you going to do with them? The 20 meg hard card was quite enough, and so much easier to configure than an older MFM hard drive controller. The ethernet card was nice, but the TSRs and whatnot took up almost all of the machine's memory