Origin's "Ultima 6" doesn't work well on 486s, because they are all too fast. Both intro animations play too quickly, and so too does the game. However, you can address this issue by disabling the cache on the mobo.

My recipe:

1. Socket 3 + 486DX4
2. Socket 7 + K6-III
3. Socket A + Athlon XP
4. contemporary machine with DOSBox

The three legacy machines provide an almost continuous range from 50 MHz to 2 GHz. 😀 With CPU swapping this gets even better...

retro games 100 wrote:

Origin's "Ultima 6" doesn't work well on 486s, because they are all too fast. Both intro animations play too quickly, and so too does the game. However, you can address this issue by disabling the cache on the mobo.

Have you tried it with a 486SX-16? I'm surprised it doesn't work right with a 486 since it came out in 1990 and the 486 came out in 89. It shouldn't work right with a 386DX-40, either since that is as fast as a 486-25.

The cost of a 486 based PC in '89 must have been huge - I would imagine that it was too much for the game playing masses at that time. Circa 1990, the best that some people had was probably some semi decent 386. BTW, the 486 SX CPUs were first introduced in '91.

sliderider wrote:

Your link goes to the wrong usage of Scorched Earth. It goes to the military policy and not the video game.

Also, why would a game work on a 486SX and not a DX? There's no possible reason for that. They are identical chips. Games didn't use the FPU back then so it can't even be the unlocked FPU speeding things up to the point of being unplayable in such a case.

You need to copy and paste the whole line, as this forums parser excludes the part in parentheses.

And, this game does in fact make use of a floating point unit. Its even in the readme. Thus why its too fast on a 486DX. It does not require an FPU though, so it works on 486SX and earlier machines without one.

You shouldn't assume that 'no games that old used a floating point unit' as its not true. It's been shown on these very forums that the original Sim City runs faster using a maths copro for example. There are probably a few more games out there too.

ah yes, forgot all about Scorched Earth when I made that post.

Now I remember why my friends and I stopped playing it... even if you somehow got that turret to swing, you couldn't even catch your nice big missile flying through the air anymore - you blinked and half the playfield would be in ruins.

I think Supaplex also had a similar issue, but perhaps not fpu-related (and might have been too fast on 386s too).

it's funny that '90s games have this problem, while some really old PC/XT-era games actually do their own speed throttling, and play just fine even on a pentium II... despite the fact that 4.77MHz was the ONLY clock speed they could even consider back then (take Orion Software's games from 1982 for instance).

sliderider wrote:

Have you tried it with a 486SX-16?

Problem is finding a motherboard that supports 16Mhz 😵
The only board I know besides the Dell board I pulled it from is the ASUS SP3.

VileRancour wrote:

ah yes, forgot all about Scorched Earth when I made that post. […]
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ah yes, forgot all about Scorched Earth when I made that post.

Now I remember why my friends and I stopped playing it... even if you somehow got that turret to swing, you couldn't even catch your nice big missile flying through the air anymore - you blinked and half the playfield would be in ruins.

I think Supaplex also had a similar issue, but perhaps not fpu-related (and might have been too fast on 386s too).

it's funny that '90s games have this problem, while some really old PC/XT-era games actually do their own speed throttling, and play just fine even on a pentium II... despite the fact that 4.77MHz was the ONLY clock speed they could even consider back then (take Orion Software's games from 1982 for instance).

There were more variables.

For instance in this case it sounds like the game was designed to cope with varying CPU speeds, but it was not designed to cope with a floating point unit, which was not as widely used at the time, nor as fast as later FPUs.

Wing Commander III comes to mind as during the install process I remember being told specifically that it was designed to cope with changing CPU speed. It doesn't though when you hit the FMV's, it wasn't designed to cope with a faster CD drive 🤣.

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Have you tried it with a 486SX-16?

Problem is finding a motherboard that supports 16Mhz 😵
The only board I know besides the Dell board I pulled it from is the ASUS SP3.

Here's one

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/D/DI … 6-20-25UCE.html

1. Commodore Amiga 500 (it's my favourite nostalgic computer).

2. AMD or Intel spec modern gaming rig (at least quad core with a decent Nvidia or AMD GPU).

3. Intel/AMD/IBM 486DX4 @ 100mhz for DOS gaming (With Creative SB16 or Pro 2.0 and pretty much any 2mb PCI video card).

4. Intel Pentium 3 or AMD Athlon T'bird for Windows 98 gaming (with a Geforce 2 and a pair of Voodoo 2's in SLI).

Looks like 486s and PIIIs get much love here. One for DOS and another for Win98/ Glide compatibility. What about if you substitute the PIII with a P4/ Athlon XP running Win98SE? Would be the same except more powerful wouldn't it?

sgt76 wrote:

What about if you substitute the PIII with a P4/ Athlon XP running Win98SE? Would be the same except more powerful wouldn't it?

Yes!

But the challenge is finding a system that is compatible with W98 and has drivers for W98.

At least that's what I heard a few times here...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes!

But the challenge is finding a system that is compatible with W98 and has drivers for W98.

At least that's what I heard a few times here...

I have a couple of s478 boards from 2002 that I'm pretty sure support Win98, maybe I should give them a try.

My period correct 1999 Katmai 600mhz machine drives me up the wall when I have to surf with it!

Hell yea! Would make an awesome W98 machine!

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Have you tried it with a 486SX-16?

Problem is finding a motherboard that supports 16Mhz 😵
The only board I know besides the Dell board I pulled it from is the ASUS SP3.

Here's one

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/D/DI … 6-20-25UCE.html

Thanks 🤣 😜
But it looks like the CPU is soldered and only the FPU *ahem 😜* has a socket.

sgt76 wrote:

Looks like 486s and PIIIs get much love here. One for DOS and another for Win98/ Glide compatibility. What about if you substitute the PIII with a P4/ Athlon XP running Win98SE? Would be the same except more powerful wouldn't it?

Don't forget Super 7 😉

PIII is pretty good as it's the last main CPU before both Intel and AMD started to require a LOT more power and they have universal AGP.
I really like PIII (especially once you move into Coppermine/Tualatin territory 😀 ).

sgt76 wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes!

But the challenge is finding a system that is compatible with W98 and has drivers for W98.

At least that's what I heard a few times here...

I have a couple of s478 boards from 2002 that I'm pretty sure support Win98, maybe I should give them a try.

My period correct 1999 Katmai 600mhz machine drives me up the wall when I have to surf with it!

Anything Win9X drives me up the wall when I try and surf with it as I've not found a satisfactory web browser. That aside, almost all of the S478 boards have Win98 drivers, especially if they use an Intel chipset. Some of the later boards with PCIe may not have drivers, but anything with AGP should be okay. IIRC all the way up to the 915 or 925 had Win9x drivers available from Intel, so you could even have a PCie win9x box if you find the right motherboard and pair it with a Geforce 6 series card. There are also beta drivers for the x800 series if you want to go with Ati.

Anything Win9X drives me up the wall when I try and surf with it as I've not found a satisfactory web browser.

Well, atm Opera 10.63 seems to be working reasonably well for me at least. No kernelEx or anything, just plain OS install and a few updates.
(some problem with cookies seemingly not there on occation(ebay), prompting a new login, but still... Win98FE! on a Celeron566!!!)

Though I suppose some variant of Linux(Mint?) is next for me, eventually.... 😲
(I get a sneaking feeling win98+internet is kinda dead soon... at least for using webshops, banking etc etc)

Try K-Meleon, latest version still works on Win98. But the challenge rather than the browser is that even Flash 9 is getting outdated and Win9x inability to multithread really hurts browsing as theres 6 million different things to process at the same time so it gets bogged down. You could alleviate this somewhat by using brute horsepower to push 1 procesing thread through at a time as fast as possible- but it'll still be a shitty solution.

bestemor wrote:

(some problem with cookies seemingly not there on occation(ebay), prompting a new login, but still... Win98FE! on a Celeron566!!!)

I think this is an Opera problem as I have this issue also using W7
I can't remember how I fix this, I just try different settings for a while and at some point it will work again.

1 : My main rig (see my sig) - obviously my main PC is the fastest flashiest PC I can afford at the time on my measly slave wage.

2 : Pentium 1 200 vanilla with a Matrox 2D card and a Voodoo 1. Running Dos and windows 95. Aureal sound card. Would change clocks from 75-200 as required.

3 : K6-3 550 with a TNT2 Ultra and Voodoo 2 SLI. Soundblaster Live or AWE64. Running windows 98se. The ultimate Glide machine.

4 : Athlon 64 4000+, with 1950 xtx SLI and an audigy. Lanparty mobo. Mint case. Totally silent with overkill cooling. OC'ed to high heaven. The ultimate XP single core rig. Just to have a pimping looking PC, inside and out.

I actually own all of these. I could deal with just having them. I have no plans to build another - having given up on tualatin because finding a good working mobo is like winning the lottery.