Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What games are known to be good tests to see if a slowdown is working well?

Looking for something that works well on a 386 but breaks on faster machines...

I am confident you guys know of a few good "candidates"...

Wing Commander 1

It's even too fast on some 386DX 40mhz machines

Aces of the Pacific - Joystick calibration
Turbo Pascal written games will likely toss in the towel at about 266 MHz P2 power. SSI's clash of steel comes to mind.

Well my PIII 1 GHz with cache enabled gives me a Norton SI 8.0 score of 16.7 which makes it a 386SX 20 MHz.

Wing Commander 1 played fine, a bit on the slow side, but this makes it also an easier game...

I haven't got a joystick so I can't do the calibration, but I will try SSI's clash of steel and see what happens.

I really like Ultima VI. Watch the intro scenes carefully. It's too fast for any 486, but if you disable cache, then it looks OK but does appear to be a bit sluggish in some of the scrolling scenes.

Clash of steel seems fine! I didn't play a lot because I don't have a mouse yet. The computer moved his units, I could hear some firing from the PC speaker...

Will try Ultima 6 now...

Well Ultima 6 runs perfect! Smooth scrolling. Smooth fades. A bit boring though because I don't have any sound yet 🙁

However I feel like there is limit as to how fast I can get this machine. I have ordered a 1.4 GHz cpu which is the fastest model for this board, but I fear it will only have a minor impact.

And once I go to P4 I won't find a ISA slot unless I search for really exotic solutions.

I guess I could use that Ensoniq PCI sondcard which made Creative buy Ensoniq because the DOS support was so good!

However I wonder if you can disable the cache on P4 machines?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I guess I could use that Ensoniq PCI sondcard which made Creative buy Ensoniq because the DOS support was so good!

That's an exaggeration.
I could never get those things or the SB Live cards to play under DOS.
Tell me something though, how do you manage to be able to play those games so smoothly. I've got a Pentium 3 at 1GHz as well and I don't really care about those games but I'm interested in learning.

That's an exaggeration.
I could never get those things or the SB Live cards to play under DOS.

Hmm there might be a few reasons. My research so far has shown me that there where only a few models that used the Ensoniq chip from the Ensoniq AudioPCI. I believe yours doesn't use this chip at all...

I will know more soon. I have ordered 2 cards from the UK. The Ensoniq chip is quite obvious and Creative simply changed the label, otherwise the cards are identical.

Tell me something though, how do you manage to be able to play those games so smoothly. I've got a Pentium 3 at 1GHz as well and I don't really care about those games but I'm interested in learning.

Well everything is stock, latest BIOS. Motherboard is a ASUS S370 board with intel i815 chipset. CPU is a coppermine 1 GHz, a stick of 64mb Ram, a brand new IDE DVD burner and a 2 GB CF card though a CF>IDE adapter (which doesn't boot yet, work in progress...).

All I did was disable L1 cache in BIOS and load DOS.

Performance wise it turns the machine into a 386SX 20 MHz which is still a bit slow for my liking. My netbook becomes a 386DX 25 MHz, but there is no hope of getting any DOS level sound with a netbook (AFAIK)

I am playing with FreeDos at the moment. It worked with all the games so far, supports FAT 32, auto installs the CD drive and mouse driver (though I don't have a PS/2 mouse yet). It also loads memory managers and you have plenty of free memory for games.

I had 2 real Ensoniq Audio PCI sound cards and they wouldn't work.
Oh so you just disabled the L1 cache. I might give it a try sometime.Thanks.

Yea I am very interested to hear what they sound like...

They do not have a OPL chip for FM synthesis so they are using the wavetable system to emulate FM synthesis. It does support General Midi though and also Adlib Gold? Well I will check it out for sure 😁

F2bnp wrote:

That's an exaggeration.
or the SB Live cards to play under DOS.

iirc you had to use setver to con the setup program into installing the dos drivers

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What games are known to be good tests to see if a slowdown is working well?

Looking for something that works well on a 386 but breaks on faster machines...

I am confident you guys know of a few good "candidates"...

Theme Park

Theme Park

Hmm are you sure? That's quite a young game released in 1994 with the Pentium already on the market...

There are many games past 1994 which have speed issues. Some early windows games can cause trouble.

I've played WC on a P3-800 without internal cache, and it seemed slightly faster than on a 286-16.

Test Drive III is notoriously difficult to get working with the right speed. It's either running too fast or you get very low framerates, especially with all graphical details turned on.

It runs best on a fast 386 with a decent VGA card like the ET4000.

Ahhh yes Test Drive 3 I remember that game 😁

Well so far I haven't come across a game that doesn't run with the "cache disabled" trick...

That's more or less what I am trying to find out. If most games are able to be played with this trick...

ux-3 wrote:

There are many games past 1994 which have speed issues. Some early windows games can cause trouble.

I've played WC on a P3-800 without internal cache, and it seemed slightly faster than on a 286-16.

Yes the project is purely for DOS and games around 1992 mostly.

Amigaz wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What games are known to be good tests to see if a slowdown is working well?

Looking for something that works well on a 386 but breaks on faster machines...

I am confident you guys know of a few good "candidates"...

Wing Commander 1

It's even too fast on some 386DX 40mhz machines

Ditto.

Wing Commander already runs quite well! Just played a bit. WC2 is a lot easier 🤣 I could even kill a few with the keyboard!

Once I get my P III 1.4 GHz I believe I will have reached my goal.

I estimate that it will get me 386DX 25 MHz speed which I would be very happy with.

The machine is for DOS only and Games around 1992 and a few years later...

It may sound a bit like preaching wine and drinking water, but if you have trouble getting a tualatin to run, you could pull this stunt with an Athlon 1400 too. I keep that option in a drawer for now, literally.