justkevin7 wrote:

Everyone, thanks all for your thoughts on this. Part of the problem is that I don't know what games will or will not work if I built a retro PC. I am still really torn about it.

I had never considered building a semi-vintage PC before. That is, playing some of the games natively, and some through DOSbox. That seems to be a great idea and probably the route I will take. Would a Pentium II 300 be fast enough for DOSbox to play older games? (486 era?) I also have a pentium III 700, if need be.

I don't believe this is the recommendation of the thread. You would build a Pentium II/III era machine to play games natively, not through DOSBox. You would still use DOSBox on your "main" PC (which I assume is much faster).

-Robert

Uhg.. Sounds like I need a CM-32 to really make this happen the way I would want. My LAPC-I ties me to the ISA bus limiting my options. Thats why I don't just play the old games on my current system. (AMD FX-60) That is, unless DOSbox MT32 emulation suddenly improves drastically, but I don't see that happening. Maybe in 5 years or so the scene will look a little different, but I really want to get started on this project.

I guess what I'm looking at is:

A) Ressurect my 440BX P3-700 (it can overclock to 1ghz) and throw my LAPC-I in there and see what I can do between DOSbox and running native on the system. Maybe hope I can get a MT/CM-32 at some point.

B) Forget DOSbox and get my older P2 or AMD K6-2 mobo going and just see if I can run everything on there.. and just moslo it if things are to fast.

You know that you can get a real MT-32 for not that much money. DOSBox works great with mine. I once wanted put together a dinosaur for old games, but that was before DOSBox had improved to the great degree that it has. I no longer have any desire to waste money, space and time on one for next to NO benefit. As I said, DOSBox works great with a real MT-32.

Yeah, I might do that. I just wanted a CM-32 because of the "extra" sounds they had. That, and because it was basically what I am familiar with (LAPC-I). - I know how it sounds, and how compatible it is, just wanted to keep things the same. But, yes the MT-32's are MUCH easier to come by.

While building an old machine to play the games as they were is fun, but can be very frustrating for all the reasons everyone has already posted. I have tons of old harware that I have collected over the years and I built 4 486 boxes complete with NICs and setup a classic gaming network running IPX/SPX so friends and I could play Doom and Duke3D and what not. This was very fun indeed, but the space for it all was severely limited since I had these 4 huge computers, old ass monitors and keyboards AND all my new hardware cramped in one room.

When I found DOSbox earlier this year I was able to eliminate all the old computers since it runs all the FPS games great on my new system and the IPX network emulation/packet tunneling works superbly there was no need for the old systems.

Just a few days ago I snagged an old KDS 15" monitor out of the garage and hooked it up to the second output on my vid card and when I play DOS games I turned off the big 21 incher and use the 15 incher. I tried using an old 14" CTX monitor, but it only had analog adjusters for the screen atributes where as the 15" was all digital and could save the settings for each of the different resolutions the different games used. It is pretty much what I had back in the day, just better and easier to deal with.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

The problem is that it is virtually impossible to build a retro gaming PC that is optimal for various DOS games of different eras. A Pentium 100, for instance, is way too fast to run games like Origin's Wing Commander or Sierra's Code Name: Iceman (I still remember losing the sub battle over and over again since the game was just too fast for me to react).

The systems described above are of course too fast for old DOS games like King's Quest or Ultima Underworld (and mind you, Origin's games are notoriously clockspeed-dependent). Thus, you better use DOSBox for such games.

Keep in mind, a P2 would be perfect. Back then they were what today are the Dual Core and P4s There were "dosbox" programs but their only job was to stem processor excess. That was it. There was ZERO emulation. Simply weigh down the CPU so the gamespeed is realistic to the XT days.

varislo is one such utility
slowcpu is another.

There had to be at least 12 of them back then.

That is your best bet. I am using a P2 and a dual boot. W98 and True 6.21 Dos (the best version IMO) Setting it up was a chore with all the environment strings in config.sys and autoexec.bat but other than that, it's a great system and plays EVERYTHING I throw at it. In fact name a game and I will try it and see. (Obviously not a game beyond a P2 capability)

Oh and I forgot, if you have ANY GS compliant MIDI device then just get your favorite soundcard that works easily AND has a midi out port.
Let the game send the midi stream via midi cable to your external synth. It can be a keyboard, a racked sound module, mt32, etc. As long as if it's newer than an MT32 (or roland D5/10/110/20) that it is GS compliant. Also it must be multitimbral (hence a D-50 won't work) For about $200 (which kills me b/c I paid $1,300 for mine) you can get a Roland JV-1080 which is a very powerful 2U synth and would be like an MT32 on steroids. It would sound the same timbre wise but be WAY better quality. It would sound EXACTLY like a trumpet or piano, not sort of.

Finally...

CodeJunkie wrote:

While building an old machine to play the games as they were is fun, but can be very frustrating for all the reasons everyone has already posted. I have tons of old harware that I have collected over the years and I built 4 486 boxes complete with NICs and setup a classic gaming network running IPX/SPX so friends and I could play Doom and Duke3D and what not. This was very fun indeed, but the space for it all was severely limited since I had these 4 huge computers, old ass monitors and keyboards AND all my new hardware cramped in one room.

Doom95!!! w00t (TCP/IP)

Yeah, Doom95 in pretty cool, but now I can play any IPX/SPX game 😁

true that. Although wtf other than doom exists? I am not being a smartass. I really don't know b/c that is ALL I played in the multiplayer IPX days. I'm that much of a loser. I know there had to be other stuff. (Oh yeah, Decent, which was awesome but it supported TCP with that patch that darklord made)

Doom
Doom 2
Duke Nukem 3D
Blood
Descent
Descent 2
Death Rally
Warcraft (can't remember if it actually had MP though)
Warcraft 2
Quake

This list goes on and on.

Weird, for me Warcraft2 and the Decent series supported TCP/IP.
(of course I used patches from the underground.)
Those are about the only two I played back then. I have never even heard of blood.

Today it's CSS. Addicting when you get a great server and good teams.
BORING if the server is lame or the teams are full of unskilled rambos.

http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,82/p,2/

Not DOS though, but all the old Command & Conquer games are using IPX.

radivx wrote:

Not DOS though, but all the old Command & Conquer games are using IPX.

C&C was a DOS game. I have the original games on CD. I'm not sure if they originally had MP though. The newer episodes were Windows based.

C&C - DOS
C&C Covert Operations - DOS
C&C Red Alert - I think this one may have been DOS/Win95, but could be where it they went all Windows. There were a lot more after this one too.

Anarakull wrote:

Weird, for me Warcraft2 and the Decent series supported TCP/IP. (of course I used patches from the underground.) Those are about […]
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Weird, for me Warcraft2 and the Decent series supported TCP/IP.
(of course I used patches from the underground.)
Those are about the only two I played back then. I have never even heard of blood.

Today it's CSS. Addicting when you get a great server and good teams.
BORING if the server is lame or the teams are full of unskilled rambos.

The original Warcraft 2 supported network play over an IPX/SPX network. I think blizzard released a patch that allowed you to play it in Windows with TXP/IP support, but then they released the Battle.net edition which obviously is Windows and has TCP/IP support.

Some of the details on these games are a little foggy however since it has been ages since I have actually played them in a MP fasion.