Hello and welcome to the forums.

I would suggest that Duke3D and Quake would struggle on the 486.

As for a 486 graphics card, get a cheap 2MB or 4MB PCI card just to get things up and running. And then make an assessment on hardware.

You haven't mentioned sound cards on the 486. This would ideally be an ISA based card to work with a majority of DOS games. Ensure you have or can find the correct drivers for the card you have. This can be a pain to get right.

As for games on the 486, watch Phil's Computing Lab. You're looking at the likes of Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Lemmings, Speedball, Doom and Castle Wolfenstein for starters.

You haven't mentioned if you have a case for your 486, the correct power supply, keyboard and mouse etc.

Let us know.

Andrew.

Hi, thanks for the quick response. What do you mean by make an assessment on hardware regarding the video? I would like to get the "right" one immediately as i have a retro system up and runing already (The P4) so i am in no rush just to get it working at all. Any specific model that is known to work better than others for 2D games like Moneky Island, Alladin etc?

I did buy a CT-2910 ISA audio card which is on the way. I know it has some MIDI issues but i was able to get it dirt cheap.

As for the rest i havn't given it much thought yet as i thought any Baby-AT case and AT power supply would do?

486 and Quake go together like water and oil.

I like the S3 Virge based cards, use it in faster PC to play around with S3D and once the novelty wears off (and it will with only few games that support it) it makes a great Dos card.
or this list is very helpful on choosing something
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Midi is only an issue if your using an external device, so its a good deal.

The "split" is easy, whatever dos games Dont run on the 486 run on the P4.
Your looking at around mid 90's SVGA dos gaming as the cut off.

1) Which video card to get, i have ISA and PCI slots

Get a PCI card. S3 Virge or Trio would be best for compatibility, followed by Cirrus Logic. Matrox gives best image quality, Tseng ET6000/ET6100 gives best performance.

2) Where to make the „split” in which games to run on the 486 and what to try to make work on the P4

There is just such a huge gap between your two machines. You can most likely upgrade your 486 to something like AMD 5x86 (most PCI Socket 3 boards support it, but double check), but it's still will only be okay for games released before 1993-1994. Duke Nukem 3D will be playable, but not too smooth — it really needs something like a Pentium 166. Quake won't be playable even if you add some kind of a 3D card (like Voodoo).

So ideally I would just swap your 486 motherboard for a late Socket 7 board and get something like Pentium MMX 233. This will run everything a 486DX2 can, but also pretty much any DOS games that came out after that.

Thanks, found a good deal on an S3 Virge.

Would it be a bad idea to try to get Duke 3D and Quake running in DOS mode on the P4? I like the 486 and i ideally dont want a third box.

maciekish wrote:

Thanks, found a good deal on an S3 Virge.

Would it be a bad idea to try to get Duke 3D and Quake running in DOS mode on the P4? I like the 486 and i ideally dont want a third box.

I don't see why Quake would be a problem — it uses redbook audio for music. Duke Nukem 3D, however, relies on FM synthesis or wavetable for music and SB16 for sound effects. So I think it's doable, but not optimal.

A Sound Blaster Live could get you some sound in Win98 on your P4 but its DOS support can be a bit difficult at times. You also get EAX etc. with that card. But don't install the WDM drivers.

jheronimus wrote:

maciekish wrote:

Thanks, found a good deal on an S3 Virge.

Would it be a bad idea to try to get Duke 3D and Quake running in DOS mode on the P4? I like the 486 and i ideally dont want a third box.

I don't see why Quake would be a problem — it uses redbook audio for music. Duke Nukem 3D, however, relies on FM synthesis or wavetable for music and SB16 for sound effects. So I think it's doable, but not optimal.

Yeah duke nukem 3D is very hard to get working authentically.. In sound blaster 16 mode it requires high and low DMA channels but just about all genuine sound blasters have midi slowdown issues in this game.

maciekish wrote:

Thanks, found a good deal on an S3 Virge.

Would it be a bad idea to try to get Duke 3D and Quake running in DOS mode on the P4? I like the 486 and i ideally dont want a third box.

See if your 486 board supports DX4 chips if you would like to stretch it out for Duke3d. Duke 3D runs great for me at 320x200 on a 486DX4 @ 40 bus (120mhz) w/ 256k l2 cache.. Absolutely forget about SVGA though, not gonna happen 😎. Quake will also not run well, you would need to get a POD83 (Pentium OverDrive 83mhz) for "ok" playback of quake at 320x200.

On the p4 I would just go after a source port for Duke Nukem 3D, mainly because of sound issues.

Might I also suggest something like an IBM Thinkpad w/ Celeron or Pentium 3 if you want to save space without adding another big desktop? They will run quake and duke3d in SVGA very nicely. I have a model here that does full screen scaling and has very convincing OPL3 support for DOS games, can check the model on it tomorrow. Plenty of laptops floating around on Ebay like it though.

Not a bad idea, check it please.

Even a POD83 will leave you disappointed in Duke3d or Quake, if that's your sole reason for the upgrade I wouldn't worry about it.
Not saying its a bad processor, just that its not going to magically make these games run smooth.

Laptop is a good solution and of course you plug your screen, keyboard, etc and use it as a regular PC, downside is you cant add a voodoo card for Quake and you want something with good sound as you cant upgrade it like a "real" PC

Running Dos games from the P4 isn't a bad idea and the Vibra128 should be able to do this. Its just difficult to set up as you've already found.
You have 2 options here

Running the game from within Windows, When installing the drivers you want the option to install legacy drivers. This should create a legacy soundcard or something like that in device manager which is also where you can confirm the IRQ, DMA, settings to enter into the games setup program.

Booting into Dos mode.
You can download the drivers from here for your Vibra, but can be even more difficult to get going
http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/snddosdr.htm