retro pc for dos games?

[blackoak]

Looking into building a DOS pc (486 or Pentium I), and I seem to recall someone on this forum selling them or talking about selling them. Anyone remember this? I can't seem to find the thread through google or the forum search function though.

Aside from that, I'd be interested to hear advice/opinions from anyone who here who has built something like this. I'm mostly into the late 80s/early 90s stuff, SSI gold box games, etc. The stuff I've seen advertised on ebay seems crazy expensive (like ~$300)... is craigslist my best bet? I seem to see a lot of Pentium III tech, but very little before that. For those who've had comparative experience, how does DOSbox hold up? I've used it a little, but not enough to have an informed opinion.

[BIL]

I can't help with the PC gaming, but I do remember a trade forum thread like that too - is it this one?

[blackoak]

That's not the one (did I imagine the whole thing? haha), but he does have active ebay sales. Unfortunately they're for more powerful chips, and I've read that for older 2d games you want to avoid anything past Pentium 1 because of CPU timing issues. Apparently the really hardcore have multiple legacy machines for multiple, finely delineated eras, but thats a little beyond me at this point.

[Ex-Cyber]

One of the biggest problems facing the use of a single PC for classic games is that there is no single CPU that will run everything properly. Some games actually require a slower CPU, others require a newer or faster CPU. Your best bet would probably be to find a 486 DX2 box that has a "turbo" button to clock it down to 25 or 33 MHz. That's one of the big benefits of DOSBox; you can tweak the emulated CPU speed to get what any given game runs best with.

I've had pretty good experiences with DOSBox, but the DOS era was long enough ago that I haven't played on native hardware in a long time; I probably wouldn't know what to look for as far as inaccuracies and sorting out emulation bugs from the enormous mounds of bugs native to classic DOS games.

[Ed Oscuro]

DOSbox is probably more reliable than an old PC.

I found DOSbox's sound very nice, although configuring it isn't anywhere near as nice (or as full-featured) as a program like zDOOM, I think. A bit of a wash there. Actually, DOSbox itself can be a pain to configure past the basics, although once you get the hang of mounting hard drives and traversing directories, it's not too bad. I never did get the cutscenes on Shadowcaster CD working though. The very clean signals you get out of modern hardware aren't likely matched by common old stuff, but I did find this reference to a clean-sounding Sound Blaster 16 with a real Yamaha OPL3. AWE64 cards (following a link in that article) have 90db SNR, but a couple modern soundcards selected at random off Newegg (a Xonar and a Audigy) have over 105db SNR.

One thing to keep in mind when plugging into the sound output of old soundcards: They aren't guaranteed to play nice; you could get bursts of static or very loud sounds at some times (especially with newer low-ohm equipment) and they probably work best with a small pair of older speakers. I plug headphones into mine, and obviously you don't want to put them on before you start playing your music, so you can correct the volume level if necessary.

I believe a nice Pentium or Pentium II will be the way to go. The Pentium 1 was a breakthrough for multimedia because not only was it much faster than the old stuff, but the MMX versions gave you access to newer THREE-DEE types of games, woohoo!

- General storage issues
The older the hardware, the more likely you will need too much legacy hardware, and the tougher it will be to get regular processing tasks done - especially transmitting files. For Pentium machines I have used an obscure and quite obsolete floppy disk adapter for flash memory (unfortunately the old, obsolete Olympus type), the SanDisk FlashPath (uses SmartMedia, which is an old, obsolete, and no-longer produced type used in Olympus digital cameras and limited to sizes of about 64MB - lots of storage compared to a floppy though). You want to find something with USB if possible; USB2 flash drives should be usable on older machines if you have a Pentium II or so. My own Pentium 200MHz MMX machine does not have a USB port.

- RAM and the CPU
I haven't any experience running DOS programs on a Pentium II. Actually, an Athlon or K6-2 (or so) might be just as good an option here; AMD was actually competitive with Intel at one time. I don't know anything about these timing issues as a result. However, elsewhere I detail some other issues you can expect if you use a too-old CPU (mainly: hard to get files on and off of them, lack of standard or more current options).

There are plenty of problems configuring a Windows machine to play nice with DOS, and as I mainly was into the early FPSes (which included DOS expanders like DOS4GW as standard) I wasn't much accustomed to fooling around with this. There should be some tutorials here and there online about this, though.

For really old DOS programs that run nicely from within Windows, but too fast, you should check out Mo'Slo. This was, since at least the '90s, THE go-to CPU slowdown / speed-fixing software. As a plus, current versions claim some handy features, some of which go beyond merely CPU limiting. It is not simply burning up CPU times and shortening the lifespan of your old hardware.

- Do you want more RAM?
For an old PC, you also will likely run into some difficulties finding out what the maximum RAM is, as well as finding exactly what type it is, and then finding some vendors of good memory sticks online (probably eBay, although I got my own "vintage" EDO RAM for a Pentium ten years ago!). If your machine comes with ample RAM preloaded, then there may be no problem. Since the Pentium machine I've got set up is used for other tasks, I boosted its RAM significantly, and a good thing about DOS is that most of its programs are very humble with RAM requirements. 64MB (which I have installed) is only needed for much newer programs (it wasn't until the Quake III engine era that you started seeing that as a requirement; 128MB for American McGee's Alice, whoa!), and even Quake 1 wants only 8MB as standard. However, I wouldn't want to run Windows operating systems with just the minimum amount of RAM; you're probably used to multitasking and you might want to load in a few modern utilities (Irfanview and a new version of 7-zip for example) and more RAM will be handy there.

- Power supplies
Something I haven't thought about much is that old machines might have different voltage and current requirements, and I don't know if all the necessary plug types are found on newer equipment (certainly, power plugs found on enthusiast PSUs for modern graphics cards will be useless on an old machine). On the other hand, using some ancient 286-era PSU is risky at best, and an ongoing gamble with your equipment at worst.

- Utilities and Windows
Windows ME was much hated, but it was better in some significant ways than Windows98SE (which can be commonly found online and easily installed). I think that any of these versions will actually preserve pretty reasonable DOS compatibility. If you go for Windows 98, there are a few utilities from ME that could or should be used to replace the 98 versions, see here.

- Hard drives
Hard drives can die; but by going with a Pentium II class machine (or so) you should be able to make use of fairly modern IDE hard drives. Since '05 (or so) these have been superseded by SATA for most PCs but there should still be a few out there. It goes without saying that a fast hard drive will keep time spent waiting on installs and file transfers to the minimum. 20+GB drives would be my target.

If you just want a PURE DOS machine, a lot of this won't apply, but you will probably end up spending a lot of time swapping floppies.

- drivers
I don't know much about old drivers. But, just like today, there are old drivers and then there are obsolete drivers. You generally want to find new drivers, and possibly some firmware, for products to get them stable. This should especially be the case with things related to storage, music, and video output.

- joysticks
I think that most old Game Port-connected joysticks are crap, but there are some favorites; Gravis and Logitech controllers and joysticks remain favorites for many. I think I've seen some Microsoft branded pads that look serviceable too. While you're at it, get a comfortable keyboard and mouse!

Man, sometime I ought to put together a really amazing gaming retro-PC, with silent fans and the like. Sounds like fun.

[BryanM]

Yeah, it looks really hard to find anything sub-2 Ghz.

Even a Pentium 1 might be a little too speedy for your purposes. Gorsh that is crazy.

<- This man played Diablo 1 on a 486. One time through with each class. It took 100 hours per game. On a full-speed computer, Diablo is a 10 hour game when played full speed. Calculate how much this man loved Diablo.

For those who've had comparative experience, how does DOSbox hold up?

It seems pretty good. Everyone died on the Oregon Trail except for me*, complete genocide of the kobold race was accomplished, the whole shabazo.

Developers seem to think it's commercial grade, since everything from Wolfenstein to Sierra games to X-Com gets released with it.

* You'd think people back then would still have known it's not a good idea to play with snakes.

[Ed Oscuro]

y u playin oregon trail on not an apple II

or the color mac version (fuck me for passing that one up, btw), I don't mean the 1993 one btw, but an actual colorized version of the original

I should take the super solvers / Dr Brain games sometime and install them, see how well they fare in terms of accuracy

I am pretty sure that the Shadowcaster goshdarn cutscenes will render better on that Pentium than they did in DOSBox, though. Of course, I can't really do video recordings from a PC without aiming a camera at the monitor or using VGA capture methods (lol).

[null1024]

Looking into building a DOS pc (486 or Pentium I), and I seem to recall someone on this forum selling them or talking about selling them. Anyone remember this? I can't seem to find the thread through google or the forum search function though.

Aside from that, I'd be interested to hear advice/opinions from anyone who here who has built something like this. I'm mostly into the late 80s/early 90s stuff, SSI gold box games, etc. The stuff I've seen advertised on ebay seems crazy expensive (like ~$300)... is craigslist my best bet? I seem to see a lot of Pentium III tech, but very little before that. For those who've had comparative experience, how does DOSbox hold up? I've used it a little, but not enough to have an informed opinion.

DOSBox holds up well enough for the majority of things, but for many late DOS games, from like, 94-97, you need a really really beefy [CPUwise, and keep in mind, my last proper machine was purchased in 2009, so beefy then might be mid-line today] machine to run them. Also, there are definite inaccuracies, some coming from the fact that the simulated DOS isn't exactly like real MS-DOS and other things of that nature. Still, good enough for like, 90% of what you would probably want.

If you're really into getting a machine [especially if you are into getting real OPL sound and things of that nature], Craigslist is probably your best bet, I was looking for an older pre-PIII machine recently [like, 2 weeks ago] on eBay, and they all are silly expensive.

Also, a turbo button is a must, considering the speed issues Ex-Cyber brings up -- even if a game does do cycle speed checking, after a certain point, loads of them get it wrong, remember that effing Turbo Pascal error that made games unplayable on Pentium class machines?

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh yeah, one other random thing I remembered

(Pretend I am holding up a PCMCIA sized laptop card.)

You see this card? This is a New Media .WAVjammer, a 16-bit stereo sound card with some kind of OPL (I forget which) in it, or at least OPL compatibility, and it got pretty good reviews back in the day. Cost me $5 a few years ago (or something).

I can't use this thing because it requires a dongle which wasn't supplied.

Oh well - back to scouring eBay and other places for real OPL cards and the like.

[shmuppyLove]

Good luck to you ... I had come across an old Pentium 90MHz laptop a few years ago, and briefly had a bit of fun with it, playing some old Lucasarts games and OMF 2097. But with no ethernet or USB, it was a huge pain to get data onto it, and I couldn't plug a proper keyboard or mouse into it.

It did have a CDROM drive, so I ended up burning things to CDs, which worked quite well, but it's something to consider.

[BryanM]

Pish, colors.

You hippies are always going on about your colors.

Just eat a mushroom already pothead!

after a certain point, loads of them get it wrong

Good lord wasn't DirectX like being saved by God?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

how does DOSbox hold up? I've used it a little, but not enough to have an informed opinion.

DOSbox takes a bit of experimentation to get running, setup the CD Rom drive, etc, and some games are a bit finicky about the speed setting so you may need to use a different config file for games that need cycles setting that's not at Max, but I have my old DOS hard drive in my new machine setup to be read as the C:\ in DOSbox, and everything plays pretty much just fine like I'm on my old Pentium machine. Absolutely no complaints.

[beatsgo]

Another place to look for legacy hardware is at those recycling stores that recycle computers, but also sell old ones as well. There's always the thrifts shops where people just give away their old computers because they are worth nothing at that moment. But I'll put my best bet for finding such equipment on craigslists, maybe through the collectibles, electronics, or computers for sale sections.

If I recall, another way to play MS-DOS games is to create a virtual machine with MS-DOS operating system on it. Of course hardware will affect how fast games will run, so I would put this as either a side project or a last ditch effort if the world is coming to an end and you have that random urge to play ms-dos games.

[Ex-Cyber]

DOSbox takes a bit of experimentation to get running, setup the CD Rom drive, etc,

That part is accurate to the original experience, at least. People used to sometimes resort to keeping boot floppies around to have the right AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS setup for certain games. I haven't really used those settings in at least 15 years and I still remember bits and pieces of them from having to type and tweak them all the time.

[Ganelon]

For most clock cycle issues, as Ed mentioned, Mo'Slo will do the trick with a bit of tweaking. Assuming you plan to install games as intended, late 80s games sometimes came on 5.25" floppies so you'll have to consider having that drive handy (in addition to a 3.5 floppy drive and CD-ROM drive). The overwhelming majority of games in the late 80s/early 90s work fine with Windows 95 and many of these also work in Windows 98; if you want to run later games, a few late-90s games require Win 98 or higher and may not work perfectly in XP.

I have a dedicated Windows 98 machine but it's been left dormant for a few years, primarily because DOSBox has provided most of what I need. It's a great piece of software but you'll definitely want to tweak the settings (e.g. clock cycles). DOSBox is very convenient because all the main system settings are easily accessible in the CONF file, there's no need for boot disks, and there are quite a few sound card options available. Even though the Sound Blaster AWE line isn't supported, Ultrasound emulation and General MIDI work great. DOSBox also works with your choice of USB controllers. My standard PC setup—an HRAP2 with a Pelican PS3 converter—works fine (and can be remapped via Joy2Key albeit with input lag). On an old machine, you'll likely stick with one of the classic serial port controllers: a Gravis GamePad or a Microsoft SideWinder. The serial controllers may be nostalgic but I'd take modern USB controllers for quality any day, except for possibly the few games that have fixed button layouts for the Gravis.

DOSBox has been packaged in with plenty of official modern compilations so it's recognized as the best option for playing classics nowadays. However, there are issues. It is resource intensive so the last DOS games may not run completely smooth on a less-than amazing system. Some games have DOSBox-exclusive bugs (e.g. Daggerfall's invisible quest object bug). A big problem is that Windows exclusives started to become more common during the mid-to-late-90s (e.g. Emperor of the Fading Suns) and those don't work on any modern system (esp. 64-bit) without virtualization (which comes with lag and likely slowdown) or possibly some advanced partitioning (since everything before XP normally can't use NTFS). But if you want to get that far, then you'll have to worry about early era 3D graphics cards where certain games support graphical enhancements from specific cards or there's a huge difference using the preferred card (e.g. WipEout XL is optimized for PowerVR) and sometimes required MMX as well (e.g. Rebel Moon Rising).

[ED-057]

When I want to run DOS stuff with sound (or use my old flatbed scanner) I use a Pentium III with a SB16 ISA card in it. For games that are so old they need a certain speed CPU to run properly, I think emulation is probably the way to go. I remember games that were too fast even on a 386SX. I have a bunch of old hardware packed away but haven`t had any reason to use it in a long time (aside from my 486 laptop alarm clock).

many possibilities for transferring files to an old box:
1) take the HDD out (or a compact flash card + adaptor in place of a HDD... these are pretty cheap) and use a USB-to-IDE adaptor (also cheap) to access it
2) ethernet (WinXP can see Windows For Workgroups network shares and vice-versa)
3) serial null-modem cable
4) parallel port "laplink" cable

[Ed Oscuro]

Ganelon, good information there.

I should mention that 5.25" drives have started becoming more expensive on eBay, I don't know when it started. Some might be more compatible with some uses than others, too. If you can go the thrift route, it will work, but the 'Bay is more likely to have what you need on a reasonable time schedule. There are probably still a fair number of DOS and Win9x era machines coming in to thrift stores, but I haven't seen one in a while in my neck of the woods (a long while).

About DOSBox, do you have any luck running Bram Stoker's Dracula? I know that one needs more clock cycles, but I haven't been able to get past the intro on that one, even though it's listed working. Strangeness. As mentioned before, I also would love a fix on Shadowcaster's CD-ROM usage. Recording gameplay from within DOSBox also isn't as good as it could be, because of the lack of sound and the video modes don't carry over from section to section (maybe Shadowcaster and other games are using different res modes from within the program? I kind of doubt that, though...)

About Windows games, I believe DOSbox itself can run Windows, so maybe with the recommended dynamic core option it will work. Maybe VMware?

I had a bit of a brain fade earlier; I definitely did play a good number of Gold Box games, as I had the highly recommended Forgotten Realms Archives: Silver Edition. It's up there with the (sadly incredibly expensive) Ultima Collection. [I also would like to pick up Interplay's Ultimate RPG Archives and the Wizardry archives. I probably will just start playing Ultima 9 again though X_x]

It is very simple to play the original Gold Box games (Pool of Radiance and its trilogy, i.e. Silver Blades), and pretty easy to get Dungeon Hack running either within Windows, or booting into DOS, and the Eye of the Beholder series as well. Those should all play pretty nicely with regular RAM settings and just booting into or restarting into MS-DOS. On the other hand, I never had any luck with some of the other interesting games on that compilation, like Menzoberazzan (could watch the intro movie but then the main program failed to load). Another I tried installing more recently was the SSI CD-ROM game Wake of the Ravager. I don't think I got that one working, but keep in mind that there's little I'm willing to do with that machine to avoid fouling up the actual Windows component. All this being said, setting up a boot disk isn't a big deal. Although there's probably another expense: floppies. I still seem to find sealed boxes of new ones at the local thrift, though, and bought a huge one a year or two back.

This thread reminds me that there's a TON of DOS games I've collected that I need to back up. Not so much worries about the CD-ROM games but plenty of quirky titles on floppy to take care of.

[blackoak]

Thanks a ton for all the extremely informative advice, especially Ed and Ganelon. It sounds like I'm better off just tweaking DOSbox. There's some nostalgia for me with owning those old games in hard copy again... I was super into SSI's stuff, and later the wealth of isometric rpgs like The Summoning, Veil of Darkness, and Dark Sun. I don't think all them were particularly good games even... though the first Dark Sun was a favorite of mine until Fallout.

My ulterior motive for getting a legacy PC was actually to write x68000 floppies... Not sure what I'm going to do about that...

[Ed Oscuro]

You can probably write X68000 floppies, with the right stuff, in a Windows 7 PC, if your motherboard has an IDE connector (many new motherboards still have one connector).

Honestly, it's something I'm interested in, too. It's the main reason I bought a 5.25" drive. Unfortunately I can't be any help getting that done, though.

[Ganelon]

Ed: I'm afraid I've never played Dracula. Anytime an intro is involved, I would check the sound settings first (e.g. disable sound) and then memory. Windows within DOSBox is an interesting suggestion; I remember hearing about numerous issues with that configuration but I'll definitely try it when I have an opening sometime.

For Forgotten Realms, I have the identical Gamefest Forgotten Realms Classics version, which may or may not be cheaper than the Silver Edition depending on where you shop. I also recall quite a few games in the collection not working on DOSBox. Menzoberranzan worked but I know I had to make some modifications to the files to do so. For the Gold Box titles, I realized that some of the older RPGs just didn't appeal to me anymore and didn't bother.

I definitely miss SSI's wargames though, esp. the more casual Five Star series and stuff developed by (still alive!) SSG. It's too bad so many PC games require a significant time commitment to read the manual and then learn the game. It's great value but horrible for busy times.

[blackoak]

bump for a little dos update

My recently acquired Roland MT-32 (and soon to arrive roland sc-55mkii) has reinvigorated my love of dos games. Revisiting dune 2, sierra adventures, and lots more.

I'm heading down to pick up a used 22" DIAMONDTRON crt off craigslist this evening to further the authentic experience. I've been using Dosbox SVN daum with the crt shaders, which honestly work very well after some tweaking. But I'd like a low input-lag solution, as my current desktop lcd is pretty shitty there. And perfect blacks and better motion resolution are just icing. Anyone use a real crt with dosbox? Any advice, remarks, arguments against, etc? Does the lack of platformers on dos make input lag not really that big a deal?

[SuperDeadite]

You can probably write X68000 floppies, with the right stuff, in a Windows 7 PC, if your motherboard has an IDE connector (many new motherboards still have one connector).

Honestly, it's something I'm interested in, too. It's the main reason I bought a 5.25" drive. Unfortunately I can't be any help getting that done, though.

The X68000 computer itself is a very powerful disk dumping and writing machine. With the correct programs you can even dump and write disks using exotic formats such as 2HDE and 2HS. Any serious X68K fan will be far better off investing in a compact flash board and using the computer itself to write disks then blowing money on an old DOS machine.


I use a CRT for DOS-Box. Hell I still use a CRT as my monitor of choice for my main every day Win 7 machine. If you get a decent one from the early 2000s, it will often support some insanely high resolutions. (Mine does QXGA at 120htz). I see no point in getting an LCD for desktop computer unless you plan to go 4K or need to move it quite often.

[Vexorg]

I think with DOSBox you will probably have an easier time just making ISOs of the CDs and mounting those than you would trying to use the CD drive directly.

As for a DOS PC, If I was looking for something that could handle basically any DOS games you throw at it, I'd probably go for something like a Pentium 133 with 32MB RAM, and probably something like a 3DFX Voodoo 2 or an nVidia Riva 128 or an early GeForce card. Basically, you're looking at a decent Windows 98 PC. You could use a program like MoSlo to do slowdown for programs that need it.

[louisg]

bump for a little dos update

My recently acquired Roland MT-32 (and soon to arrive roland sc-55mkii) has reinvigorated my love of dos games. Revisiting dune 2, sierra adventures, and lots more.

If you're using an MT-32 but not a genuine MPU-401 MIDI interface, you may need SoftMPU for some games that use the device in "intelligent mode". That program has been a lifesaver! It's enabled me to play Game Arts games with my Roland on a simple Sound Blaster Pro.

Yeah, I recently got a Pentium 200 off the street. It's great: it has both PCI and ISA slots, and runs most stuff fine.

[drauch]

Man, lost an auction for an SC-55 the other day and was going to call it quits for awhile on finding one. Now I'm inspired again to search for one... I've got too many PCs, but I still wind up having to go to DOSbox for certain older things. My oldest machine is just "too good" for some of the low demanding stuff sometimes. Tempting to have a PC for everything for authenticity sake, but space constraints make that a sacrifice I can't really take. The garage is already full of CRTs... :/

[Obiwanshinobi]

All that junk is only worth as much as you have actual room to play with it (not just storage space). Although I don't want any Batman cave, now I think getting one would ba a good stopgap on my way to pastures new. It can be done, but, eurgh, work.

[blackoak]

hehe, realized I didn't make it clear, but yeah, i gave up the dream of building a legacy computer after being dissuaded here and elsewhere. Dosbox does seem to work quite well, and now that I've got both an old CRT and some genuine midi devices, it feels quite authentic. Not sure it would even be worth it to go all the way, though I generally prefer hardware over emulation.

unrelated, but I also did get a floppy disk writing setup going on winxp. this was the thread that helped me: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4356.0

[drauch]

All that junk is only worth as much as you have actual room to play with it

Saving for the future yo. Who knows when my nice Viewsonic CRT goes out. VIOLA! SEALED ONE in the garage!

[drunkninja24]

I'll take one of those CRTs off your hands

[drauch]

Out of my cold, dead hands!