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Building a machine for DOS & win95-98

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First post, by hellzakk

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Hi all, as the title say id like to build a machine that run all game from dos to win98 ori can split this task in 2 machine 1 for dos game and another for win95-98.
Can you suggest me the best hardware for this?
Thanks for the help.

Reply 1 of 42, by obobskivich

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"All games" is probably far too broad to accomplish even with two machines - you'd be better figuring out specifically which games (or types of games, at least) that you actually want to play, and then finding the right hardware to match with that (which isn't terribly complicated with a bit of web searching for system requirements of the titles you have in mind).

Reply 2 of 42, by Jorpho

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Indeed, if you want to run "all games" then you are probably going to spend far more time messing around with ancient hardware than you will ever spend actually playing games.

So, what specific games do you want to run? And more importantly, why don't you want to run them on whatever computer you have currently?

Reply 3 of 42, by hellzakk

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tnx all for the very fast answers..

i dont have any specific title in mind, some are monkey island, indiana jones, mechwarrior, dune, c&c, baldurs gate, dungeon keeper but are too much...

im not very interested in the pre-90' dos game but id like to have 1 or 2 dedicated machine with the original s.o. and sound

Reply 4 of 42, by obobskivich

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At least some of those titles can either run natively or via emulation on modern hardware (C&C being a good example). I think ultimately you would need to flesh out specifically which titles (for example which Indiana Jones game - Emperor's Tomb is a very different animal from Fate of Atlantis, for example) to build a comprehensive list of system requirements for the games which cannot be emulated/natively run on a newer/contemporary system (of course if you just want to have an old computer (or 6) for the sake of having an old computer, that's fine, but if the goal is just getting the games to run, why not start with the ones you can get working on existant hardware?).

Reply 5 of 42, by hellzakk

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u're right, if the purpose is only to play some game it's better try if it can run on modern pc, but id like to have one (or two 😀 ) old machine fully working with it's s.o. to play with 😁

Reply 6 of 42, by Jorpho

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Then it doesn't really matter what kind of computer you get, does it?

Windows 95 and 98 will run on anything from an old 486 to a Pentium 4. (It gets increasingly impractical beyond those extremes.) Just pick one.

Reply 8 of 42, by hellzakk

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yes, i know it will work in this cpu-range but id like to know the best (cost and compatibility in mind 😀 ) hardware component like motherboard, video card and audio card to use with...

Reply 9 of 42, by Darkman

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as others have said, all games is going to be tough , some games will dislike a CPU thats too fast, although there are ways to deal with that.

imo you won't go wrong with a Katmai based PIII machine, most games up to , say Thief, Sin , or even System Shock 2 would run fine, it should be easy enough to slow down a 450Mhz PIII to play the speed sensitive DOS games of the early 90s.

Or if you don't care that much about later3D games, you could do with something like an AMD K6-2/3 CPU @ 450Mhz and a Super Socket7 motherboard.

the graphics and sound card would depend on your needs, if you care about running 3DFX glide games, I suggest a Voodoo3 card, fast for its time and good 2D quality, if not, you could go with a TNT2 from Nvidia.
for sound I would say go with either a Sound Blaster 16 (it has a more authentic FM sound) or if you want , find an AWE32/64 for better sound quality and native AWE32 music in supported games.

one last thing to note is that you probably shouldn't bother with Windows 95 with the CPUs I mentioned, they are more than capable of running Win98SE smoothly, and you will only benefit from the extra features 98 has (there is really nothing 95 does that 98 can't do), especially if you intend to run an AGP card, which most versions of Win95 don't support.

Reply 10 of 42, by hellzakk

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thanks you very much for this hint, i think i will go with this configuration 😉

Reply 11 of 42, by AlphaWing

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An Early Slot 1 Pentium II's Kalamath or one of the very few early model\release Deschutes that is multiplier unlocked. Covington Celeron, are also multiplier unlocked.
On an Softbios Jumperless motherboard that supports 50mhz FSB you can slow them down to 75mhz very easily without having to take the case cover off.

This can be a good choice. The Covington Celeron has no L2 cache tho, so it is a very slow performer. I think sometimes in some benchmarks a Pentium 233 MMX could beat it.

Reply 13 of 42, by Artex

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Not much to add 😀

Super socket 7 with a K6-2+ or K6-III+ and / or a Slot 1 machine with a PII would be good starters.

Like I said! If he would only check out your addicting videos. All bases are covered.

My Retro B:\ytes YouTube Channel & Retro Collection
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Reply 15 of 42, by hellzakk

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atm im working on the win98 machine, p3-450mhz + voodoo 3 and awe32 waiting some pieces...

i've just seen the video Building the Ultimate MS-DOS Gaming Time-machine but i dont have the gigabyte 5ax rev 5.2, what u think about:
- SOLTEK SL 56H5
- FIC PA-2010+ rev 4.1
- ASUS P5S VM
- ASUS P5S VM

Reply 16 of 42, by dacow

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hellzakk wrote:
atm im working on the win98 machine, p3-450mhz + voodoo 3 and awe32 waiting some pieces... […]
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atm im working on the win98 machine, p3-450mhz + voodoo 3 and awe32 waiting some pieces...

- SOLTEK SL 56H5
- FIC PA-2010+ rev 4.1
- ASUS P5S VM
- ASUS P5S VM

In that bunch you would go for the Soltek for the AGP slot, but it won't support a P3-450

Reply 17 of 42, by hellzakk

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for the p3-450mhz i have an Asus P2B-F and a Iwill BD 100 Plus.

In the other reply i mean the motherboard for a ms-dos dedicated machine to use with K6-III+

Reply 18 of 42, by hellzakk

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ok, the p3-450mhz is up and running with a 3dfx voodoo 3 2000 on windows 98 se.

Im waiting a voodoo 3000 and a awe64 gold.

atm i've installed the 3dfx 1.07.00 WHQL from here http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo3/drive … hive/windows9x/

dxdiag says that i have directx 6.1, what version i must install?

Reply 19 of 42, by Mau1wurf1977

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This is the site I get all my Voodoo drivers from: http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo3.htm

But that driver you mentioned should be fine. It is the latest reference driver from 3dfx, usually everything should work. At least with the V2 everything worked for me with the latest driver.

A lot of games from that era usually come with DirectX. So just install a game from CD and it should install it.

DirectX is compatible with older version. So you can install version 7 for a card that only do 6 if that makes sense.

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