This is kind of tricky because there's a lot of variables...

First off, gaining DOS experience, I don't know how experienced you are with DOS, I just know that you are interested in running actual hardware that runs DOS. Overall, working deductively, that would put - based on your software choices - an 80486 DX2 a minimum, and a Pentium III would be the highesst I'd go. Ideally it sounds like a Pentium II would be the best solution IMHO because it's right at that magical point where the old-world IBM compatible elements still existed (dual floppies, FM on a sound card, older, weird, graphics modes), but the new elements were coming in (3D AGP accelerated graphics, memory sizes above 256MB, the ability to run a newer version of Windows like 98 or Me really fast).

As one who has tried to make an all-in-one system, you will most likely run into more challenges than people realize. Pentium III was when they started to phase out the ISA slots for PCI and AGP slots mostly. I had a Pentium III that acted as an "all-in-one" solution, but I was running DOSbox on Windows 2000 SP4 and Nuvie, and Exult, and all these other modernized custom engines to get the best experience - while still playing my modern games on it (this was in 2003-2010) - so you're still running Emulation. Might have a better experience on a slower Pentium III (ie below 667MHz). That system was retro to a T - it was in a mid-80's AT case.

Pentium II is what I'm always told was a good one for retro-stuff because that's the last refuge when options like dual floppy drives and ISA slots were pretty much a given. I could see that being a very good option, though you still might run into trouble.

The Pentium era is a solid choice but things get gradually more expensive as you go back before the Pentium 4 nowadays. The pros to it is that it will run pure dos extremely well, and Windows 9x will also run on it, and you can actually bring it UP to a level close to a Pentium II with a PCI 3D accelerator and gobs of RAM (up to 256MB depending on your motherboard).

The lowest thing anything you want will run on based on your software list is a 486 DX2-40/50/66 model. At that point you might be able to inch somewhat into 9x territory but I don't know what you'd be wanting to get into. Older 9x stuff will run happily on a 486 system but anything past about 1996-1997 or so won't run well or at all.

When it comes to laptops - the Pentium era is when it's at, the ideal is a 640x480 pixel active matrix laptop computer with a SoundBlaster compatible (ESS, IBM MWAVE) sound card installed, and a trackball or touchpad for the pointing device. My top choice has been NEC versas because the prices have not gotten as insane yet as the Toshiba/Compaq/IBM stuff has and parts have been fairly easy to find for a laptop nearing 25-30 years of age.

The thing is, the Pentium came out when 800x600 started to be a thing. I have a Pentium 75 laptop - a NEC Versa P/75, and that laptop is 800x600, so I deal with "letterboxing". but if you can find a P/75 at a reasonable price you could also find an older 486 base unit (versa E/M/Ultralite) with the 640x480 Active Matrix and just latch the screen in place on the Pentium if you want 640x480p (which won't letterbox/leave blank lines around the screen at lower resolutions not divisible by 640x480). That was a big reason I chose the Versa ecosystem right up to a docking station. That said, you might prefer to only own one machine it seems. Which makes it tough. If you're willing to spend, a IBM ThinkPad 755CD or Compaq LTE Pentium 75 model might be the ticket as they came in 640x480 and came with a Pentium or 486 CPU and SoundBlaster compatible audio.

Thin Clients and by extention embedded stuff can be tricky and you have to know exactly what you are getting in order to have one that won't be a fiddly project you'll wind up wanting to throw out the window. There's a lot of small stuff like the fitPC and MediaGX based stuff that you have to be careful of that might not be able to have FM sound, or might be too fast for your application (crash/stack overflow). also, not all thinclients are x86 compatible.

As for desktop machines of the actual era, they can be pieced together over time for relatively cheap by social networking and/or just hunting around the internet at places like E-bay, Vintage Computer Federation forums marketplace, and Amibay. You could even luck out and find another old system somewhere, while they are scarce, they still exist.

Just know, most likely, if you get into hardware, you probably will end up getting more systems anyway. That's probably the biggest risk of all (but the most fun one). I've owned over 60 machines in the last 20 years doing this kind of stuff (I started before it was a "thing") and one thing I've found is once the hardware bug bites, it bites hard, and next thing you know you're buying $60 shelving for your closet to put your machines up neatly when not being used. 🤣.

thanks for actually taking the time to respond, really!
Yeah, looking back at the stuff that I'd want to run, id probably want to go with anything between a Pentium i 133, and something like an amd-k6 300mhz~ish. While i maybe would want to run some later windows 98 stuff, i can run games like quake 3 arena and half life on my modern computer no problem. Despite windows 95 making life easier for managing files and not having to futz around the DOS command prompt, id probably just stick to windows 3.11, as most of the windows stuff that I'd ever want to run is 16-bit (i used to play the crap out of simtower when i was pretty little like 10 years ago on my dads winxp p4 whatever)
As for experience with DOS, im familiar with dosbox, navigating, messing with irq and dma addresses, and editing config.sys and autoexec.bat, but that's all the dos knowledge i have 🤣. Im not an expert by any means, and i have no clue how dos works under the hood at all. I don't really want to go with a Pentium 2, as id probably favor the versatility that socket 7 offers over slot 1 in CPU choice. 486 systems hurt my brain by how expensive they are, so they're a no go, unfortunately, as those pcs are way cool. Laptops, while i do like that they don't take up space, im not a fan at all of the fact that you cant really swap out any components, especially since they have either no soundcard, or really weird midi emulation chipsets that sound kinda bad. again, thanks for replying dude, Its really hard to get good advice on a lot of modern social media sites, so im glad i joined this forum

Hey, there is more than one file manager for DOS.

The Microsoft one is DOSSHELL and works fine if you are used to it.

There are more fancier ones but I never had any of them back in the day.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-02-01, 03:50:

Hey, there is more than one file manager for DOS.

The Microsoft one is DOSSHELL and works fine if you are used to it.

There are more fancier ones but I never had any of them back in the day.

Another great one is Access/XX Menu for DOS. I use that on ALL of my vintage machines so that my wife could get on one and play DOS games if she wants, since she never used a DOS machine before. It's also super easy to use as all the menu commands are at the bottom of the screen and it has mouse support.

poisonsdeer wrote on 2022-02-01, 02:30:

thanks for actually taking the time to respond, really!
Yeah, looking back at the stuff that I'd want to run, id probably want to go with anything between a Pentium i 133, and something like an amd-k6 300mhz~ish. While i maybe would want to run some later windows 98 stuff, i can run games like quake 3 arena and half life on my modern computer no problem. Despite windows 95 making life easier for managing files and not having to futz around the DOS command prompt, id probably just stick to windows 3.11, as most of the windows stuff that I'd ever want to run is 16-bit (i used to play the crap out of simtower when i was pretty little like 10 years ago on my dads winxp p4 whatever)
As for experience with DOS, im familiar with dosbox, navigating, messing with irq and dma addresses, and editing config.sys and autoexec.bat, but that's all the dos knowledge i have 🤣. Im not an expert by any means, and i have no clue how dos works under the hood at all. I don't really want to go with a Pentium 2, as id probably favor the versatility that socket 7 offers over slot 1 in CPU choice. 486 systems hurt my brain by how expensive they are, so they're a no go, unfortunately, as those pcs are way cool. Laptops, while i do like that they don't take up space, im not a fan at all of the fact that you cant really swap out any components, especially since they have either no soundcard, or really weird midi emulation chipsets that sound kinda bad. again, thanks for replying dude, Its really hard to get good advice on a lot of modern social media sites, so im glad i joined this forum

The Pentium 133 and AMD K-6 would be great choices as well. Sounds like you're like me, I play all my post-97' era stuff on my modern box through Lutris/Wine (I'm a Linux user), I just don't find the experience of actual hardware that special on anything beyond a PII or above TBH so that's why all my boxen are Socket 5 Pentium or older.

System prices are nuts on e-bay more than anywhere else I've found. That said, it seems to mostly depend on the seller and whether the system announces what it is or is obviously 486 or older. Too many people read those silly clickbait articles about how they have a "goldmine" in their attic when the reality is your Bunnykill Alabama Computerworks AT clone is not worth as much as a vintage IBM or Compaq. Some tricks I've heard is actually offering to a seller and sometimes they let them go for drastically lower, though I've had the experience myself of being ignored for reasonable amounts. Also, I think e-bay is going to die for our community since everyone seems so freaked out over the recent IRS crackdown on people not reporting sales on their taxes. People either are going to sell for much cheaper now (to prevent hitting the $600 mark that causes e-bay to send you a form), or they are just going to quit selling there altogether to avoid the "hobby tax".

I'd try Vintage Computer Federation marketplace (vcfed.org), they might have stuff there. Heck, I might end up building another 486 or socket 7 system at this point and putting it up there if the AT case I have up for bids does not sell on e-bay (assuming I can finish fixing up one of the Pc Chips boards, one's a K6 equipped SS7, the other is a Socket 3 486 M919). I kind of have noticed people are not bidding as much anymore despite my usual undercutting the BINs for the reasons mentioned hence why I'm a little down on e-bay.

I've not been to Amibay in awhile, but that might also be a good place to look.

I'd say anything with a ISA slot is a good place to start. You just can't beat a ISA sound card, which one is up for debate but that's a different topic!
Most games you mention aren't effected by fast CPU's so don't really see a problem with a Win9x/Dos P3 build but truth is best way to find out what you need is to simply dip your toe in and before you know it you'll be talking about IRQ's DMA's, etc like it's 1995

IMHO any (Super) Socket 7 MB + processor with MMX instruction set (P55C or K6) will fit your need; most (if not all) of them can be slowed down either with turning CPU cache off or using software like SetMul. More details can be found at PhilsComputerLab's YouTube channel.

The pinnacle of this combination would be an SS7 MB with a K6-III+ CPU, but they are few and highly sought after by retro gamers; they don't appear on auction sites often and when they do, they won't be cheap. On the other end of the spectrum, earlier CPU without MMX (e.g. P54C or K5) can play most 2D game with ease but might start struggling with some early 3D games.

The 8-bit guy on youtube did a good vid on choosing an MS-DOS laptop. I got a Toshiba Tecra 500CDT, it's a Pentium 1, supports screen scaling, takes a standard figure-8 power cord. The screen is good too. Stereo speakers and compatible sound card. The CD drive reads burned CDs. I find it way more convenient than a PC, keyboard/mouse, screen.

The flipside is that having a desktop PC means you can build and upgrade more easily than a laptop. It's also going to be very standard to get parts for (my laptop is picky about RAM and has a custom HDD caddy/connector, and good luck finding the proprietary floppy drive for it!)

$30 pentium 2-3 Compaq/Dell from recycle center will fit your needs nicely. Socket 7 prices are insane with people paying hundreds of dollars for motherboards alone.

My few cents:

- it is possible to build systems that can do almost anything, from XT-era games up to Windows XP and beyond. But... the broader the spectrum you want to cover, the bigger the compromises you must make, and the more complex the configuration gets. My advice would be that if you are new to this game, keep it as simple as possible. Focus on one point in time and one platform/operating system. Once you get confident with that, you can look at extending it. 1990's DOS is clearly your main focus. I would suggest keeping it focused on that and not giving in to too much feature creep. Whatever else your system can do is a nice bonus, but not the goal.

- if you want something very specific and you want it now, you are going to pay through the teeth for it - see all those eBay prices. It's possible to get very nice hardware for far less, but then you need to work the other way round: look around (locally or further afield) at what is available for an acceptable price, and then see if what turns up is a good enough fit.

- pre-built systems (including laptops) tend to be less standard, less flexible and less compatible, and more difficult to maintain (spares...) even from big-name brands. Unless you have a specific nostalgic reason for a particular brand, I'd recommend keeping to standard components, i.e. AT or ATX case and motherboards, standard AT/ATX PSU, discrete (not onboard/integrated) CPU, graphics and sound. Some big-brands did that (Gateway2000, Escom, later Packard Bell etc), some notoriously did not (Compaq, IBM, Dell).

- assuming DOS and ability to play stuff from 1990's, I'd aim for a later Pentium 1 or similar, but tbh, CPU is one of the least interesting bits. Sound card is a much, much more relevant bit, as both compatibility and how stuff sounds was very dependent on specific hardware. Soundblaster 16 is a clear requirement (be aware though of the bewildering range of versions, and the fact almost all are noisy and/or buggy - particularly related to MIDI), so the easy choice is an ISA SB16 (or 32, or AWE32 or 64), so make sure your PC can hold one (at least one ISA slot capable of handling a fairly big card).

- whatever you choose, look local and look frequently. What is available, how much it costs and how to get hold of it varies wildly between localities. What works for me might not work for you, but common thread it that more creative you are and the more effort you put in, the better the availability and prices will be. Consider that very good deals even appear on eBay, they just get snapped up very quickly so what's left looks very expensive. It is, that's why it's left - so remember the early bird gets the worm.

poisonsdeer wrote on 2022-01-31, 23:13:

my only real condition is that it has good sb16 support

There are no laptops with SB16. The only ISA cards that support SB16 are Creative Sb16, AWE32, AWE64, and there are a few clones like ALS100 and theres a thread here about sb16 clones. So if you need sb16 stay away from laptops. Every other sound card out there is SBPro compatible.

That being said most DOS games don't do sb16. It's only some later DOS games and those arn't speed sensitive anyways. So CPU speed doesn't matter if you are only focusing on a very narrow amount of late dos games that have sb16 support.