Best Thin Clients for DOS/Win9x 'and' XP \ VOGONS

Best Thin Clients for DOS/Win9x 'and' XP

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First post, by ras2a

Posted on 2019-02-26, 20:50

ras2a Offline

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Hi guys,

I've been researching YT, and, more specifically, PhilsComputerLab YT channel (which is absolutely excellent) for advice on what the best options/builds are to run:

1st build) A good range of DOS / Win9x games with good compatibility, performance and sound support for both DOS & Win (considering just installing Win9x for this build and using 'DOS mode' for the DOS games). I'm looking for a single build here.
2nd build) A good range of WinXP games with good/great performance

I've concluded that the HP Thin Clients: T610/T610 Plus/T5720 etc could possibly be suitable for the above 'builds' to run games at decent performance and also that I may be able to get away without going for a dedicated build

Questions:
1) What do you lovely people think of the above Thin Clients and are they suitably powerful enough for the above jobs or if I should be looking at alternatives or dedicated full 'period' PC builds?
2) Are the above devices ok in terms of driver support under the listed OS'es and will there be any video/sound issues?

Other thoughts:
I could, alternatively, use one of the above Thin Clients as a Win10 / DOSBox build (as per another of Phil's fantastic videos) with MUNT emulation etc, which could be great? That still wouldn't cover off the Win9x requirements, however.

Thanks ever so much for any advice guys - very much appreciated
-ras

Reply 1 of 6, by oeuvre

Posted on 2019-02-28, 13:59

oeuvre Offline

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What games are you playing?

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7

Reply 2 of 6, by Ant_222

Posted on 2022-06-29, 21:29

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ras2a,
Do you mean the T610 can run DOS and Windows 98 natively, and all necessary drivers exist and are findable?

Reply 3 of 6, by Solo761

Posted on 2022-06-30, 06:09

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I'd say T5710 has the best chance to fulfull your needs if DOS gaming is your target. Simply because of you can enable SoundBlaster support on integrated audio in (pure) DOS. It's not anything stellar, but it works.

I have DOS 6.22 installed on one and it works. Only problematic part is CPU, Transmeta Crusoe, when I set it up there was no tool to disable cache and similar features so you can't slow it down. So if game runs too fast... I don't know if there were some advancements on this issue in the meantime.

Reply 4 of 6, by Ant_222

Posted on 2022-06-30, 08:24

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Solo761,
What about my question apart from Sound Blaster and DOS? I can find a T610 easily, whereas procuring a T5710 will be harder. As to CPU speed, have you tried any of the various throttling utilities, e.g. throttle?

Reply 5 of 6, by Solo761

Posted on 2022-07-01, 06:41

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T610 looks like too new a machine for Win98. Dual core, sata, dual or quad core... after all, it was made in 2012 while t5710 is from 2006.
I have T610 Plus, which is similar, only a bit bigger and with active cooling, haven't tried with Win98 as Windows 7 run fine on this machine. After all, that's why T5710 are pricier 😀. T610 is OK for retro WinXP gaming.

Throttle works, I'm just not sure if that is enough in every (game) case. On more popular CPUs people use tools to disable CPU features to slow it down.

Reply 6 of 6, by RandomStranger

Posted on 2022-07-01, 07:05

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There are decent thin clients for DOS/W9x, but they are too slow for XP and if you go for the faster ones, you'll likely sacrifice W9x compatibility while not gaining too much for XP era gaming performance.

Imho the XP era was too long, the changes compared to DOS/W9x era were too big so the don't overlap well to cover them with a single PC. Especially not with a thin client.