You'll probably want to go Pentium as a bare minimum for multimedia, as its faster FPU will make a difference in MP3 playing. As for software:

• Multimedia
  MpxPlay - Can play just about any DRM-free non-MIDI sound file you'll need, including . Also supports FTP. You can set up a nifty FTP server with all your songs and just play them remotely on your retro-PC with this. Also, supports several PCI sound cards natively.
  QView - Great for (but not restricted to) vídeo files. Won't work miracles on a processor that just isn't fast enough, though, so don't expect a lowly 486-class or even P5 class hardware to play 480p vídeos well. Also, not freeware.
  MPlayer - I believe there is a DOS port of MPlayer which would enable you to play vídeo files as well, but remember - it wont work miracles on old hardware.
• Office
  WordPerfect 6.2 - IMHO the ultimate WYSIWYG word processor for MS-DOS. I'd go as far as to say it is still pretty good even by today's standards once you set it up. I don't recall it supporting images with more than 256 colors though, but that should the the only major limitation.
  WordPerfect Presentations 2.0 - PowerPoint alternative for DOS. IMHO did not age as well as its word processor brother
• Internet
  Arachne - As far as DOS graphical web browsers go, this is the most mature one. Will fail miserably on modern web sites though.
  mTCP - Includes nifty stuff like a command based FTP client and a WGET-like utility, among other networking stuff.
• PDFs
  Adobe Acrobat 1.0 for DOS - Useless unless you restrict yourself to decades-old PDF documents
  Arachne + PDF plugin - There is a plugin for Arachne that allows it to view PDF files. No experience with it.
  muPDF - Beta port of a PDF viewing utility. Read this

This may be interesting for you.

386SX wrote:

I'd like to build a system using retro 486 more or less class machine with msdos as main pc, so with all applications possible to even play multimedia, surf web, mail, pdf, office...

Office, mail, basic web - sure, better in Win3x or 9x. 486 for mpeg4 and flash is doubtful to be enough.

Thanks! I was thinking about Pentium or latest 486. Surely it will be a suffering experience on the web but if arachne on fast machine performs similar to some Opera version, it will be enough (no jscript obviously).

386SX wrote:

I was thinking about Pentium or latest 486.

There is example of recommendations for Pentium machine, what is better for late DOS games and Win9x software, but may to be less compatible with DOS games.

Tertz wrote:

386SX wrote:

I was thinking about Pentium or latest 486.

There is example of recommendations for Pentium machine, what is better for late DOS games and Win9x software, but may to be less compatible with DOS games.

Yeah that is the reason I was thinking an all in one configuration for old game but also new apps. 😁
Not real sense I know but I want to push it to the lower limits even if I will have to stay on only text experience.

alexanrs wrote:

MpxPlay - Can play just about any DRM-free non-MIDI sound file you'll need, including . Also supports FTP. You can set up a nifty FTP server with all your songs and just play them remotely on your retro-PC with this. Also, supports several PCI sound cards natively.
QView - Great for (but not restricted to) vídeo files. Won't work miracles on a processor that just isn't fast enough, though, so don't expect a lowly 486-class or even P5 class hardware to play 480p vídeos well. Also, not freeware.

I can vouch for these two cool programs, and can also suggest XTC-Play and Cubic Player / OpenCP as music player alternatives.

Tertz wrote:

There is example of recommendations for Pentium machine, what is better for late DOS games and Win9x software, but may to be less compatible with DOS games.

That is a great and very comprehensive manual. I'd have to try some of its suggestions in regards to USB flash support in DOS. So far, I didn't really bother with enabling USB / network in DOS, because my DOS system is in fact a Win98SE system. So every time I need connectivity with a different machine (LAN or WAN), I just load up Windows, and transfer via USB / network.

In any case, to actually browse the modern web, I think DOS will not cut it, no matter how you try. So Win9x is a minimum. Even Win98SE has issues, as the default browsers supported by it are very very outdated (IE6 / Firefox 2 / Opera 10), and will not support all modern web features. But I think with some hacks you can somehow stretch the compatibility, whereas Arachne (DOS) is probably a lost cause.

I set up a config with this:

chaintech 5agm2 512kb l2 cache
pentium mmx 166mhz
256mb sdram
6.4gb ide
s3 virge dx 4mb pci
orchid voodoo 4mb
creative awe64 isa
ne2000 ìsa nic

i will update..

That machine would be a great system to dual boot with Windows 2000. W2K is far more usable than 98se on the web in my experience. Im running a laptop with similar specs to your sytem with 2k and love it.

386SX wrote:

I'd like to build a system using retro 486 more or less class machine with msdos as main pc, so with all applications possible to even play multimedia, surf web, mail, pdf, office... 😁

Anyone tried? What hardware would you think will be useless (too much modern) to build something like that?

At best, this would be a novelty that would not be worth the trouble it would take to set up.

DISPLAY is also a very useful DOS multimedia program, despite having a terrible name.
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/dispinst.exe

But for an old machine, a live Linux distro is probably the way to go, namely an old version of MoviX or Geexbox.

Update!!!

I got it! Now posting through Arachne in dos and finally got to make my
ne2000 isa card running (damn interrupt...).

Let me say, as I was used to try Arachne on 486/66 machine... Pentium
166 (mmx) is a real beast! 😁 Arachne running as never seen.

I was impressed by W98 first version performance with this config this
morning but dos fly on this cpu.

Now I would like to try some Glide demo running on Dos, can you advice me some?
I tried Nature demo but I got a black screen and not images. Quake run in sw mode
I don't think it exist a minigl quake dos patch right?

What is DISPLAY?

Two good voodoo games for dos are descent 2 and tomb raider. No dos voodoo quake sorry.

kreats wrote:

What is DISPLAY?

Like I said: a DOS multimedia program with a terrible name. Useful for displaying images and particularly video, though QView is generally a little better. (Or QuickView Pro, rather.)

Jorpho: still doesn't tell me/us a lot - any descriptive links (rather than just a link to the exe)?

I am trying Dillo for Dos browser and it is certainly better on the
rendering side though it is MUCH slower than arachne. I don't
understand why even the cursor is slow.
Do you have any experience with that?

what about a simple text only browser

You've read my mind! I am trying Doslynx latest version and it's AMAZING!!! So fast it could run on a 386 I would bet. 😁

I'm actually posting with that!

And the old "edit style" it's even more amazing...

anyone has a QVIEW link? I can't find it :\

There os one in Jorpho's post