I'm always saddened by the complete lack of respect vintage PCs get, particularly the DOS kind. Now, I may not be so hardcore that I have old beige AT systems lying around, but I did make an Micro ATX Socket 7 PC which is still seriously old by now, good for quite a few DOS uses.
That said, I have great respect for DOS-era hardware, early Windows 9x/NT too. In many ways, ATX hasn't changed much over the years. I understand completely why AT is not popular, but ATX is very easy to get into if you know even a little bit of modern ATX.
My overall point though is unlike over in game console communities where emulation is a dirty word because real hardware is where it's at, even around here at times, people recommend DOSBox like it's no big deal, which is still emulation. Why is this a problem?
Because ever since we've had software emulation, it has never been truly 100% accurate. Even today, the best console and PC emulators cannot be perfectly transistor-for-transistor accurate. Why? Because that level of emulation would be so slow that even monster PCs of today would be worse than a slideshow.
Check out the DICE emulator:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dice/
And read this article:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accurac … nes-emulator/1/
I love this one quote from it:
"Take the case of DICE, the digital integrated circuit emulator. Here is an emulator that works at the transistor level for absolutely perfect recreation of the very first video games ever created. To run Pong at about 5-10fps, DICE requires a 3GHz processor. Yes, you read that right: no computer processor at this time that can run Pong at the circuit level at full speed. It's not that DICE is a slow program; indeed, it is very well optimized. It's that there is enormous overhead to simulating every last transitor propagation delay."
Now think about our favorite emulators like DOSBox. Those are far more advanced than Pong, which didn't even have a CPU. What we need to realize is every software emulator is essentially an approximation. They are just barely cohesive enough to look like they're completely identical to what they're emulating, but they're actually not. Even if DOSBox works "flawlessly", as a fan of electronic hardware, I am bothered by replacing my hardware with what is basically a software hackjob.
In the case of Virtual Machines, I despise them because they are always slower than a real PC, they either don't support any good hardware (Virtual PC, VMWare Player) or are too slow to be usable (VirtualBox) or are impossible to figure out (Bochs) and they are a pain in the ass to setup and get working, not to mention they're even more fragile than a real PC. It's incredibly easy to lose a virtual HDD image to corruption or accidents, not so with a real HDD or equivalent.
Another reason I use years/decades old PC hardware regularly is because they're cheap, easy to get parts for, not harsh on the local landfill and aren't wasteful. What annoys the hell out of me is seeing people using overpriced and overpowered PCs for tasks that could be easily done on far cheaper and far more efficient hardware. Are we really such a first world country (USA/Canada) that we throw away perfectly good older PC hardware because new is where it's at? Even though it's a pain in the ass messing with software emulation and hacks just to enjoy our favorite games and programs from yesteryear? It blows my mind.
Enjoy your PCs the right way, go real hardware. Until we see emulators of CPU-based systems reach transistor-level accuracy, I will stick to real hardware.