Those are pretty modern for retro rigs 🤣 😜

But in the end it ofcourse comes down to what type of games you're interested in playing and I've heard mostly good things about DosBox.

Those are pretty modern for retro rigs
But in the end it ofcourse comes down to what type of games you're interested in playing and I've heard mostly good things about DosBox.

Well the reason that they are both Pentium Ds was the fact that older hardware is getting hard to get parts for, DOSbox is good enough to run most if not all DOS games without any problems. Old hardware would cost too much to run, finding all the parts.

I just saw you mentioned ScummVM!

For Lucasarts Games, specifically Monkey Island 2, ScummVM has this "Mixed Adlib mode". I recommend you use this mode!

Reason is because Lucasarts did a half arsed job for the MT-32 implementation. Many sound effects are missing (no fire crackling at the intro, no mug cleaning noise at the bar, no bats in the swamp...).

"Mixed Adlib Mode" gives you MT-32 music and Sound Blaster sound effects! Something the real game simply didn't support! I think this is the only game where this is useful, I believe Fate of Atlantis supported Sound Blaster and MT-32, at least the talkie version.

Regarding Retro PCs. Best case scenario they are free. Ask friends and family, but up an add, look on the side of roads. I recommend an old Pentium as they are new enough to be found easily and with cache disabled make a decent 386 / 486 equivalent. But yea DOSBox is great and you will have more time actually playing games. At the moment I hardly get to this, to busy mucking around with hardware 🤣

386 / 486 now that's where things get hard 🤣

Well funnily enough I got those two particular computer as hand-me-downs as I am a computer tech and I had to transfer their stuff on to their new machines. Originally Project Nega had a crappy Celeron D in it, but since it was a Socket 775 and I had a spare Pentium D 820 lying around from a machine that was lightning struck, I decided what the hell, upgrade it. Project Eggman, was similar, but I got the mobo, CPU and RAM and graphics card off my mate, since he upgraded his machine. But trust me, Dosbox did need a lot of tinkering to get some games running right, just like mucking around with CONFIG.SYS on an old 486 just to free up some bloody memory. GRRRRRR!! Just like when my brother had his old 486DX33 with 4MB RAM and he had to close every damn TSR just so he could play DOOM! He ended up upgrading to 8MB but it did cost him a bomb back then, but at least DOOM ran without any troubles. Those were the days, I was only a kid back then,

But thanks for the pointer about ScummVM, had similar problems with some of the older Sierra games like Space Quest 1 VGA, where you can't have the MT-32 music and Sound Blaster sound effects at the same time, but that was fixed with a modified sound driver. I'll give MI2 a go with what you said, loved that old game.

For DOSBox I can recommend "D-Fend Reloaded". It's user friendly and even advanced configs are sooo easy thanks to GUI!

It has DOSBox as part of the install and also features auto update. Quite handy 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

For DOSBox I can recommend "D-Fend Reloaded". It's user friendly and even advanced configs are sooo easy thanks to GUI!

It has DOSBox as part of the install and also features auto update. Quite handy 😀

I second that! I have been using D-Fend since it started as "D-Fend" in the beginning. Of all the dosbox frontends, this is my only favourite.

I'm using gr-lida as my shell at the moment plus I got my synth set up. I should be getting a first gen MT-32 soon as well. I wanted to get the best from my dos games. How is my hardware so far? Should I get other synths etc for better dos game experience?

Here is my synth collection so far. An MT-32 (old first gen model), CM-32L, and an SC-55mkII. MT-100's getting sold. Also waiting on an MU-80