#1 wrong forum.
#2 if you really want to run old games you should be using Win98.
#3 if you really really REALLY want to run old games you should be using an old computer.

Thanks for the info, apparently I couldn't figure out that one myself. Still looking for advise from someone who does have an opinion as to what video and sound cards they would purchase.

What video or sound card you buy is irrelevant. In the case of DosBox, DosBox doesn't give a crap what kind of sound or video hardware you have. VDMSound is similar in operation as far as sound card independence. For example, DosBox runs great on my PC, with a SB Live and GeForce3. Likewise, it also runs great on my laptop with its built-in video and sound. To reiterate what Snover said though, if you're really looking to play old games the oldskool style, then buy an old (say 5-7 years old), used computer. Should work fine.

I guess in short... there is no video or sound card that you really could buy that would help you run these games. For any real hardware you'll either need to salvage it or search for it on e-bay.

Thanks for the info. Right now all the old Sierra titles that use either "AGI" or "SCI" run great with my current video card. I only have to use VDMS to emulate the sound card. I don't have to use NAGI or FreeSCI to get them running. I really want to get the older SSI titles like "Age of Rifles" or "Steel Panthers" to run without losing support for games that are already running fine with my current video card. I had that happen before when upgrading a video card where some game that ran fine before, doesn't work anymore and games that didn't run on the old video card now work. As for DOSBox, it works great, easy to use... it solved two issues I was having with "Steel Panthers" 1. the game just wouldn't run. 2. It would start to load with VDMS with vesa support checked and the come back saying that the game couldn't find my CD-ROM, didn't matter which drive I put it in. Problem with DOSBox, the game ran so slow it was almost unplayable. Before I posted I spent a lot of time searching and reading other posts. The answer is probably out there and I just missed it.

The issues are more OS, memory and software configuration related than hardware related.

If you don't get on with VDMSound or DOSBox then use a boot/partition manager and install a late version of MS-DOS. Setup suitable autoexec.bat and config.sys files loading low memory usage drivers like CuteMouse and vide-cdd.sys.

The video card should be irrelevant since anything recent should still support VGA and VESA 3.0. If the game stumbles due to the shortcomings of VESA 3.0's backwards compatibility then try http://home.student.utwente.nl/r.muller/unirefresh/.

Sound cards are more problematic. Since the switch from DOS to Windows more or less coincided with the switch from ISA to PCI sound cards a schism was created. PCI cards were unable to supply suitable DMA access without special hardware. PC/PCI and other standards never made it because they weren't a requirement for Windows so, for backwards compatibility, we're stuck with driver cludges. Worse than this, we're stuck with Creative Lab's driver cludges. Your best bet for an XP and DOS compatible sound card would be an SBLive or, possibly, an Audigy. DOS support for these is provided by Creative's old and unsupported Sbeinit.com and related files. This support is reasonable but by no means comprehensive. Most DOS games will work fine in DOS with Sbeinit.com. For those that don't you could always try VDMSound in Windows. 😁

Unirefresh.... What a great program that would have been.... but my video card doesn't support VESA 3.0 only VESA 2.0 according to Unirefresh. Anyway I happened across VirtualPC 5.2 Trial and have been playing with it. The sound emulation is a little tinny, but so was the sound on my old Packard Bell. I've set up guest PC's for MS-DOS 6.22, WFW 3.11, Win95, Win98, WinME and Win2000Pro and Mandrake 8.0 (Yes, I actually bought all of these OS's over the years, except Win95 which a friend gave me when he toasted his old Dell laptop and WinME which my dad gave me, it came via coupon with his Compaq he bought right when MS was switching from 98SE to ME, he stayed with 98SE). So far I've only run into two games that I can't either get to run with VDMS in XP or on the MS-DOS VPC. Those games are Duke Nukem 3D and Redneck Rampage. Both use the same sound setup and both crash when you test the sound in setup, if you skip that step, both freeze on the first screen of the game. I even installed updated SB16 drivers on the MS-DOS and Win98 VPC. Both games run fine without sound.

I had 98 installed on my machine when I first built it (had to take ndis.vxd off the WinME disk to get it to work with networking installed and had to tell 98 that I only had 512K of memory, kind of a waste when I had put 1gig in it and had to disable hyper-threading in BIOS). Machine ran rock-solid, but I still had video card issues with some games.

Everyone is right in that if I really wanted to run all these old games I should just build an old machine. I have access to tons of old pc equipment thru my father-in-law's salvage/restoration business and could probably do so for about $40-$50 without a monitor, but space on my desk gets kind of tight with two machines and two monitors, printer and scanner. Virtual PC for $129 (ver. 2004 is supposed to be out by the end of the year, which is good because my trial ends in 13 days) looks expensive at first glance, but being able to put to use just about all the software I've bought over the years, share folders, share internet connections, play old games, switch in and out of OS's with the click of a mouse, not worry about screwing up my machine's OS and do it all on one machine makes it look like a bargain to me.

We've already talked a lot a lot a lot about VMware/VirtualPC and how they just aren't good alternatives. They're slow, they do more than is necessary, their sound emulation sucks, and if your computer is too fast it will be too fast in those programs as well!

snkelley wrote:

Everyone is right in that if I really wanted to run all these old games I should just build an old machine. I have access to tons of old pc equipment thru my father-in-law's salvage/restoration business and could probably do so for about - without a monitor, but space on my desk gets kind of tight with two machines and two monitors, printer and scanner. Virtual PC for 9 (ver. 2004 is supposed to be out by the end of the year, which is good because my trial ends in 13 days) looks expensive at first glance,

As a DosBox developer, I'm presently working on a virtualizing/dynamic recompilation for DosBox. Once its finished it should have the capacity to rival the speed of Virtual PC or Plex86. If you're patient you may be able to save yourself $129 and get complete sound emulation, video emulation, etc.

Patience. I hate the word.

Oops, wrong play 😉