Demolition-Man wrote on 2023-04-19, 17:37:
ZSNES has high requirements that are actually too extreme for DOS. But it would be great if this would also work on the faster PCs with AC97 here , on Win98.I know there are other emulators for Windows 98, but ZSNES is my favourite.
Nah, it's fine. 🙂 A humble Pentium III at 733 MHz hasn't the slightest issue running it, as far as I can remember.
That's what we had at home in 2000, when Windows 98SE and ZSNES were still current.
Just because a software is targeting DOS as a platform doesn't (didn't) mean it's retro or lightweight. It was just a port, with similar requirements to the original.
Back in early 2000s, the arcade scene ran lots of upto-date emulators on DOS.
A DOS machine with a VGA card could be much better interfaced with existing arcade cabinets.
Using DOS based utilities, VGA could directly drive those 15KHz CRT screens (at game's native resolution) in the arcade cabs.
Also, DOS had much lower latency. No nasty pop-ups etc.
It was very easy to use as an embedded hardware platform.
ROM-DOS and other DOSes ran on modern embedded hardware of the time, too.
Similarly, the QBasic and QuickBasic scene was very active in the early-mid 2000s.
Lots of projects were being underway.
And they were not exactly made with a slow 4,77 MHz PC w/ CGA in mind.
This was before DOS was considered retro, I remember.
Rather, DirectX and Super VGA/VESA was what was being worked with.
Late DOS games using Allegro library required close to/more than 16 MB of RAM, sometimes.
A Sonic fan game I remember from 2004 or so needed 64 MB to run best, if memory serves me well.
All in all, DOS wasn't dead as a platform, aslong as Windows 98SE/Me was around.
From a temporal view, I mean. They weren't directly dependent of each other.
Some people used DOS 7 as stand-alone OS on their free will, without installing Windows 98 and using 2k/XP instead.
Or in other words, I mean to say that developers saw DOS both as an alternative to Windows and as an alternate mode of Windows, with more control over hardware.
Edit: Edited.
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