I believe the best starting point is to just go through this very forum and look at the PC's people have built. They usually include their notes in the thread as to what it was built for.

For the oldest of games (286,386+) that are speed sensitive I highly recommend you run DOSBox on a modern PC instead. In many ways, it's even more compatible than the original hardware back then (no memory management issues, better sound quality, etc.) Also, parts are harder to come by as most places have disposed of those vintage computers years ago. That being said, if you are patient enough, they come up on eBay now and then.

For a mid 90's Pentium II/III computer, that's a little easier. These would run all the later DOS games and Win 9x games with ease. I recommend 440BX chipset boards, as these still give you the treasured ISA slots. The ASUS P2B series are very popular and readily available on eBay.

Here are mine: Pair of Retro PC's

I woulds build two rigs with the following specs from my own experiences with games from the late 80's up to circa 1997-98

For late 80's games up to 1993-94 I would build a 386DX 33-40mhz machine with 8-16mb ram, Sound Blaster Pro or compatible card, a GM midi device and a Roland LA synth of some sort

With this system in non turbo mode you can run alot of early DOS titles and have enough horse power for later games.
Wing Commander 1 & 2 will run perfect on this system which might run too fast even on slow 486 systems.

For later DOS games and early Windows games I would build a Socket 7 rig with a Pentium 200-233mhz MMX cpu and 128-256mb RAM, a fast 2D PCI gfx card, a Voodoo 2 or dual Voodoo 2's for GLide game support, a Soundblaster 16, a GM Midi device and a Gravis Ultrasound soundcard.

With this system you can run most titles after 1994-95 with some horsepower in reserve...games like Wing Commander 3 might still cause problems with this "fast CPU", it even complains and might not install properly if your cd-rom is too "fast"
Wing Commander Privateer might have some glitches with this CPU rating also like sound problems

Is there anything specific I should be looking for in an ISA video card for the 386? Or should I just be looking for something fast and compatible? Any recommendations, or does it matter?

Tseng ET4000 is good for ISA or VLB. I'm sure there are others. And yes, it mattered more then than now.

So, I looked up the et4000s. Is there a specific version fo that chipset I should look for? Is the w32i the one I should be looking for on a card?

Cirrus Logic GD542x ISA cards also are fast, compatible, cheap and easy to obtain. Just stay away from the infamous Trident and OAK cards.

senrew wrote:

So, I looked up the et4000s. Is there a specific version fo that chipset I should look for? Is the w32i the one I should be looking for on a card?

The more advanced chipsets (w32p, w32i) have some advantages like support for bigger RAM size, faster RAM access and 2D acceleration, but these only matter if you want to run a GUI (Windows, X11). For DOS games on a 386, the basic ET4000AX is good enough.

I find 256 Mb RAM (and even 128) overkill for a 200-233 CPU. The benefits of that size is that you can run comfortably Win98SE or Win2000. But if it's a system built for early 3D games the best suited is Win95 OSR 2.1 (USB support, works great on 32 Mb and upwards).
I did some tests (Unreal, HalfLife and SiN) on a system of mine, P/233 then K6/200, 64 and 96 Mb SDRAM, with a speedy Matrox Millenium and a Voodoo2....
I had excellent performance in HL and SiN. For Unreal the CPU speed matters too; I recommend at least a P II/K6 at 300 to fully enjoy that superb game at Voodoo2 resolutions. Have to try it with a SLI configuration too.
For older games that do not run properly on a Pentium, I use a 486DX/33, 8 Mb RAM, several VLB video cards (S3 928, Cirrus Logic 5428 or Tseng ET4000 W32). I have only 2 functional ISA videocards, but this is not an issue for me, since all my 486 boards have PCI or VLB.

fillosaurus wrote:

For older games that do not run properly on a Pentium, I use a 486DX/33, 8 Mb RAM, several VLB video cards (S3 928, Cirrus Logic 5428 or Tseng ET4000 W32). I have only 2 functional ISA videocards, but this is not an issue for me, since all my 486 boards have PCI or VLB.

Thread hijack/
For my own curiosity, do you have any games that requires the specific speed of a 386/486 which *won't* run in DOSBox? The oldest PC I still have left is a P166 (a Dolch PAC 62 luggable), and I have no desire to build older. I use DOSBox mostly now.

/return

Aside from the desire to play games on the original hardware, I have no reason to shun dosbox. However, the couple of games I can think of that absolutely require the original hardware are falcon 3.0 and wing commander I