If I had the cash, I would go on a buying spree to get a few old PCs to play the old games as they were meant to be played. I would buy three or four PCs with the idea of achieving maximum compatibility. I would buy my PCs with the idea of capturing a "snapshot" of PC performance at a certain time. But what would I buy and what would I stock them with?

PC#1 - IBM PC 5150
Inside I would populate this PC with a 20MB MFM hard drive and a floppy/hard disk drive controller, a Hercules Monochrome Graphics card and a Color Graphics Adapter, and set it up for dual monitor action (preferably an IBM 5151 and a IBM 5153.) The Hercules Card with its Monochrome [and Printer] Display Adapter support will be welcome for games that support multiple display adapters. I think a 360KB 5.25" and a 720KB 3.5" (if I can find one) half height disk drives will do nicely. The fourth and fifth slots will be used for a Serial + Parallel Card and a Game Port card. Dos should be no better than 3.3. This is for the booters and CGA games only. 256KB on the motherboard if you can get it, perhaps more on a memory card.

PC#2 - IBM PS/2 Model 40
This computer comes with a 386SX @20MHz, 2MB of RAM (upgradeable with PS/2 SIMMs) VGA on the motherboard and five 16-bit ISA slots. (It is the last machine released by IBM with ISA slots, everything over the 40 uses MCA, which isn't gaming friendly at all.) 80 or 40 MB hard drive likely, 1.44MB floppy, 101 Enhanced Keyboard, room for a 1.2 MB Floppy and a Quad Speed CD-ROM drive. This is good for the EGA and ealier VGA games, but I wouldn't run Doom on it. Use Dos 5.0 for good results. This is a fun machine, I would suggest a Sound Blaster Pro, a Gravis Ultrasound and a Roland LAPC-1.

The above two systems are, unfortunately, not entirely free of hassles as they are IBM machines. I may replace the IBM PC with a Tandy 1000. The former will redefine your idea of slowness. The latter can be a pain to upgrade and the processor may seem too slow for some games that are supposed to run on it. But they use IBM hardware and logically must be the best thing around in PC compatibility. The CGA will deal with those booters and DOS games that tweak it. The VGA adapter built into the early PS/2 models will be the guide for future software using it. It should allow EGA and MCGA games to work without flaw, being only the combination of those two standards. This is the swiss army knife of PC gaming. (IBM's EGA cards are difficult to find upgraded to 256KB and I have never encountered IBM's ISA VGA card, the PS/2 Display Adapter, in the wild.) If it doesn't work on IBM hardware, it has to right to work at all.

PC#3 - Generic, Build-it-yourself PC
This is for Doom and the latest and last DOS games. It should have Dos 6.22 and Win 3.11. 32-64MB of memory. For sound cards I suggest a SCC-1 and a Sound Blaster AWE. 600MB-1GB hard drive is good. A 20X CD-ROM will do. Pentium processor at 200MHz. VESA compliant 2D card and 3Dfx Voodoo 1 for those few games that support 3D acceleration. Use MoSlo for those games without speed limiters (the 200MHz speed gives integral reduction ratios.) LAN/Modem perhaps. Could also be used for Windows 95 games that don't like faster machines or XP, but get a 2GB hard drive.