i'm really not sure what to say jorpho, i don't have problems when people use dosbox i think its a great tool but to eatch his own.
its just a matter of taste. i used to emulate all the time, consoles other computers, basicly everything i could, it was just so much easier and convient but after awhile it just didn't feel right. thats my own personnal thing. this was especially wierd for me with the PC because unlike consoles a pc is a pc wether its useing DOS or windows. i didn't really heavily get into retro pc's till maybe 2 years ago and since then i've just sort of had to make a comprimise with myself about emulation, its not a perfect one but i like it.
i've had fun putting together old machines, hunting down parts messing with old OS's i never really delt with before, yes i do make comprimises at times for convience. if a game runs fine under windows XP i'll play it there. if not i'll run it under win98SE or DOS. basicly the game is just to try to not use emulation tools such as dosbox. its not for everyone but its fun for me.
as for the CPU i have a fan and heatsink but i'm just testing the thing right now and switching cpu's and jumpers to check out settings. i don't want to fiddle with the heatsink/fan every 5 minutes so they stay off till i get the setup i want.
i don't acually want it overclocked, i think it may be to fast for my purposes as it is i just don't know how to unoverclock it. my concern is that the extra stress will damage the cpu or anything else even with a heatsink/fan. i never overclocked anything before and i don't know if certain cpus can be safely overclocked like mine is. lets just pretend this is 1997 for a minute and you want to overclock the newes cpus avalible. is it ok to leave the cpu overclocked or should i keep trying to adjust it if i can because its liable to cause damage?