I guess you don't get the whole preservation-for-future-generation aspects behind the motives of emulation of older hardware.

I have a cool AM5x86-133 rig I use for DOS games, but I know it ain't going to last forever.

The convenience of having a modern machine and still run old software. Not everyone has the space for all that high functioning junk just to play old games.

The thing is that in 10-20 years the retro computer we use might all be dead. It's like wanting to play the original pong. Who has that piece of hardware at home?

So I also see it as a form of preserving many masterpieces and allowing future generations to experience them as well.

It's true that emulation isn't 100% accurate, but it's very good and in most cases "good enough". There are also many things that are better through emulation, like having a decent mouse and changing the speed on the fly.

They are also very convenient and in many cases heaps more user friendly compared to the real thing.

Early windows emulation seems to be quite the challenge, especially with the multitude of 3D accelerator cards. It was a very fast moving period and many standards came and went, leaving games incompatible with newer technology.

Something I also notice is that the progress of hardware has slowed down. The processing power required to emulate a Xbox360 or PS3 are certainly huge and I don't know if we will reach that point soon.

We don't all have room for at least 3 old PC's (probably the minimum amount you'll need to play all DOS games) and spare parts for when they go bad or the the knowledge on how to build them and keep them compatible across the numerous amount of hardware required.

pinkdonut666 wrote:

Okay, I'v seen many posts about how can i emulate this or that... But the fact is, emulation is an ass alternative to the real thing, and when it comes to late dos early windows, it's soooooooooo cheeaaaaaapppppp!!!!!! computer parts from 1997-2001 are not old enough to be considered Highly priced vintage collectors items worth megabucks, and there not new enough for home users. So that means for example: My Pentium III build is a P3 1000, 512mb's of rd ram, 80+40gb hd's, 230w psu, radeon 9000 pro 128, SB live, 2x DVDrom CDrw drives, ethernet, and with Win98SE. I'v run the numbers and this PC in 2000 would have cost well over $3000, but today i built it for under $100 bucks. It will run everything from doom 2 and duke 3D to Halo PC, half life, and serious sam. Why even bother with emulation? this PC will run almost anything from the late 90's to early 2000's no problem. (just make sure for dos u have a dos compatible sound card. I really don't see the point in emulation when i can build one of these machines every week for a month and spend less than going to an NHL game!

Because it's easier for many people to run everything on one computer than to have several computers for running different generations of games. It takes up less physical space, and you can store more games and access them more quickly on a modern PC with a humongous hard drive than you can a vintage PC with the tiny hard drives with slow transfer rates that were available then. It's also easier (and more secure) to be able to access the internet for a nudge in the right direction if you get stuck in a game with a newer computer running a newer OS, a more modern browser, and more up to date anti-virus/anti-malware protection. Windows 98, along with the browsers and anti-viruses of that era, haven't been updated for a long time so you take a huge risk just connecting with an old PC.

sliderider wrote:

Because it's easier for many people to run everything on one computer than to have several computers for running different generations of games. It takes up less physical space, and you can store more games and access them more quickly on a modern PC with a humongous hard drive than you can a vintage PC with the tiny hard drives with slow transfer rates that were available then. It's also easier (and more secure) to be able to access the internet for a nudge in the right direction if you get stuck in a game with a newer computer running a newer OS, a more modern browser, and more up to date anti-virus/anti-malware protection. Windows 98, along with the browsers and anti-viruses of that era, haven't been updated for a long time so you take a huge risk just connecting with an old PC.

All true. And the thing with having tons of computers around is, I keep loosing track of what game I installed where and how far I've progressen in a game on any particular rig 😜

All valid points, Things don't last forever. But to my experiences hardware lasts the longest. and as a matter of space i can see that as being legit too, personally i don't have a lot of space, my bedroom and a small part of my basement, but i'v been able to fit 3pc's, 7tv/monitors, countless consoles ect. But if we all start going towards emulation than we are going to loose the hardware and the knowledge to use it. If someone docent keep their 486 till 30 years from now than that will be lost to something we can read about on the internet. And I don't know about you,ut i'd rather be playing Doom on authentic hardware than reading about it or playing some "good enough" emulation.

pinkdonut666 wrote:

And I don't know about you,ut i'd rather be playing Doom on authentic hardware than reading about it or playing some "good enough" emulation.

Same here. And besides, building these retro rigs is fun 😀

As many here have pointed out not many people ave the room or resources to have every vintage machine be it a PC or some other earlier computer or game console. Emulators offer the convenience of running old software on current hardware and OSs.

Not to mention that if you live with that much junk, you are likely living alone.
I don't see any validity in your point about lost knowledge. Computers are mostly the same today as in the 3/486 days. You lost isa and mostly ide now but the principle is the same. The how to use dos still lives on in the emulators/virtual machines.
And consoles? C'mon not much knowledge to lose there. There is no secret to hooking up and playing ANY of the consoles.

Convenience. Portable Nostalgia. I can still play King's Quest V an dSecret of Monkey Island, using Dosbox for Android or ScummVM for Android on my Android cellphone, even when I'm on vacation at Bali. Listening to Mark Seibert's music from Sierra games while lying on the beach.

Amiga Forever, C64 Forever packages enable me to have multiple machines in my notebook. It's much easier to restart WinUAE using different configs, rather than having different machines - A500, A1200 etc.

And nowadays, PCs and Notebooks are so powerful, that they CAN emulate.

Of course, when back in my room, I use my actual 486 and Pentium MMX systems.

> it's soooooooooo cheeaaaaaapppppp!!!!!!

Guess how long it would be cheap if emulation stopped existing tomorrow...

I love emulation. It allows insane flexibility. DOS games on Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, IOS, PSP, Xbox, Wii, and even JavaScript! This is definitely advantageous and it's exciting.

DOSBox also has far better compatibility than any real DOS hardware setup, and obviously it is insanely faster to reconfigure its "hardware".

Also, how about emulated hardware is sometimes better than the real thing? DOSBox SB16 outputting thru a nice modern sound card absolutely dusts the nasty analog circuitry of the real Creative cards.

It's not always cheap, especially if you want the best hardware, it can be massively expensive. Not to mention you have to deal with CRT monitors, which are very expensive to run because of the wattage required, and they take up a ton of space. I don't have room for 3 or 4 monitors and 5 machines anymore. I also love my commodore 64 stuff, but it's just too space consuming and power hungry to keep it setup anymore, and the disks and tapes are starting to rot (which is why I try to preserve them). It's always nice to use the real thing, but emulators like VICE are very very accurate these days. I hope to see also better vintage PC hardware emulation along the same lines, but it takes a massive effort by many people to do such things, especially when they don't get paid for it.

pinkdonut666 wrote:

And I don't know about you,ut i'd rather be playing Doom on authentic hardware than reading about it or playing some "good enough" emulation.

With console emulation you might have a point. Aside from minor revisions, there is really only one particular hardware configuration that is a true Super Nintendo, for instance, and if you want the true Super Nintendo experience, you need to get an original Super Nintendo.

But it's not the same with PCs. A game like Doom was designed to run on hundreds (or thousands?) of possible different permutations of CPUs, RAM, sound hardware, video hardware, and so on. There is no one true PC that the game was designed for; as such, there is no one single piece of hardware that can offer the authentic Doom experience.

So yes, emulation is "good enough". It's just as good as pretty much everything else.

I'm not dissing emulation, (or a least not trying to). But there are a few of your comments i disagree with. for starters i have several ways i'v heard SB 16 music/sound effects, DOSBOX, SBlive emulation, and a real SB 16. And in my own opinion NOTHING can beat the real sound of the real card. 2nd, as long as you have a pc with vga you can use any flat screen. I have Flat screens i use for eyefinty and i had the old 386 hooked up to that and it work fine, if your worried about ega or cga, than you must have the room for a CRT. I know PC games were designed with almost any PC in mind, But emulation of ANYTHING will never be as good as the real thing. I understand that some people don't have the room, and they are definitely entitled to use emulation if they have no other choice. It can be difficult to find older PC components, but if you look around, very bit of hardware is cheap. Just try not to give some guy on ebay $200 for something you could pick up at a thrift store for $2

pinkdonut666 wrote:

I'm not dissing emulation, (or a least not trying to).

pinkdonut666 wrote:

But the fact is, emulation is an ass alternative to the real thing

Try harder, sir.

pinkdonut666 wrote:

for starters i have several ways i'v heard SB 16 music/sound effects, DOSBOX, SBlive emulation, and a real SB 16. And in my own opinion NOTHING can beat the real sound of the real card.

And what is the "real card"? There were many different revisions of the Sound Blaster, and some of them offer a quantifiably better signal-to-noise ratio than others. There is no "real thing".

pinkdonut666 wrote:

2nd, as long as you have a pc with vga you can use any flat screen. I have Flat screens i use for eyefinty and i had the old 386 hooked up to that and it work fine

And now you're brazenly contradicting yourself! There weren't any consumer-priced flat screens in existence when Doom came out (aside from really terrible laptop screens), so how can a flat screen offer the "authentic experience" ? If the distinction between different models of Sound Blaster cards is important to you, then the fact that a flat screen cannot offer the same response times or blackness levels of a CRT ought to be vastly more significant.

It can be difficult to find older PC components, but if you look around, very bit of hardware is cheap. Just try not to give some guy on ebay $200 for something you could pick up at a thrift store for $2

If it takes you forty hours over a period of weeks to find this thing at the thrift store for $2, you are not saving yourself anything.

Jorpho wrote:

It can be difficult to find older PC components, but if you look around, very bit of hardware is cheap. Just try not to give some guy on ebay $200 for something you could pick up at a thrift store for $2

If it takes you forty hours over a period of weeks to find this thing at the thrift store for $2, you are not saving yourself anything.

I have to agree with this. Some parts can be more difficult to locate than you seem to realize. If something doesn't show up on ebay but once every few years, it's not very likely to be in your local junk shop on the same day that you go looking for it. It's possible, yes, but far from likely. Sometimes it is better just to grit your teeth and pay the price online than to wait years for another one to turn up because another one may never turn up at all. Paying $50-$100 for a really hard to find video or sound card just to save you the aggravation of having to wait another 5 years before the next one turns up can be worth the money. Waiting until you can find a seller that isn't aware of what he has and is letting it go too cheap may mean you end up not getting one at all because if you aren't willing to pay then there is always someone else who is. Basically, you have to factor in how much your waiting time is worth to you along with any expenses incurred if you decide to search for one locally. If you decide to spend a weekend scouring all the junk shops and flea markets within a 20 mile radius looking for one, you'll spend more in gas driving to all those places than if you'd just bought whatever it was on ebay.

To get back at the original post, I can understand perfectly well why people prefer to use emulators. A friend of mine was on a visit last week and showed me Alien Breed 2 on his modern laptop while I was trying to get Interstate 76 to work on one of my retro rigs (and failed 🤣).
Playing old games with help of an emulator or (trying to) play it on the real hardware, it's just a matter of choice to me.
I'm quite happy using an emulator for playing (S)NES games.

The people who play and make it work on the real thing generally like to tinker with (old) computers. Theres a difference in that.

For me, sure I have a lot of junk at home. Sure, I live alone, but I don't mind. I wouldn't even want to live with someone else in 1 house, I want my peace and quiet when I'm at home.
And about the cost of buying parts, sure it may cost a lot, but sometimes you get lucky, just read the "Bought these (retro) hardware today" thread, people still get lucky in these days. Heck, I got 2 486's last year for practically free! All it cost me was some gas for the car and a stack of dead graphics cards and in exchange I got to pull apart 2 486 rigs again and had an exciting afternoon at someone's place I didn't even know, it was interesting for me.

Same with flea markets, I find it fun browsing around other people's junk and when I see something interesting, trying to get some of the price off. I'm not on flea markets "just" for old hardware, but also for the experience itself.

Same goes with building these rigs, it's the experience of actually building one that is part of the fun 😀
I remember having played Unreal on my then main rig (a Celeron 400 with a TNT2 M64) and wondering what glide would look like. So later I simply build myself a glide rig, because I was curious 😀

Sure, having all these parts takes up most of my attic and part of the living room (where I have 3 seats for 3 people playing in a LAN) but that's my choice. I don't really have any other hobbies (got a few sleeping hobbies though) so why not?

I build myself a 486 because I wanted to experience the building process, including all the strange undocumented little problems I ran in to.
Maybe it's just bragging rights? But without the bragging.

And for me, building a 486 won't cost me anything now because I already have all the parts I need, and then some, so why not?
I can always toss or sell it if I ever get sick of it, but my interest in computers is already in it's 10th year and I still find it fun. And as long as I find it fun, I'll probably continue to soldier on like I have (with the difference that I got more organized as the years past by).

And again, I have nothing against people who use an emulator. Why shouldn't they?

Dang, this post got a little longer then I expected 😅