yawetaG wrote:

filipetolhuizen wrote:

Epic games's MOD-based soundtrack simply blows others away for its time.
For Windows 3.11 games there is also SimEarth, Simcity Classic, Simcity 2000, Nitemare 3D (this version can take advantage of wavetable MIDI, rather than the DOS version), MS Arcade package 1 and 2, not to metion the WEPs, the WGDs and the Symantec games pack. All should run fine on your system as long as you install the required libraries.

And actually get the Windows versions for the Maxis games, as most of them also have DOS versions. I vaguely remember SimIsle was supposed to be able to run both from DOS or Windows with no problems, but IIRC I never got it to work in Windows without crashing on start-up.

If you like flight sims, Flight Simulator 5.1 is a great DOS simulator, with several add-ons such as BAO Flightshop that worked from Windows.

Thank you for the recommendations, I'll take a look at them! Flight simulator might be a bit too demanding for this machine though.

If you're into puzzle/adventure games, you can also consider Myst, the original PC release was for Windows 3.1 if I remember correctly.

I welcome any suggestions for games and useful software for both DOS and Windows 3.11. Right now I still have 1.6GB free on the C: Partition and the D: Partition is still untouched. I need to fill that!

Microsoft Entertainment Packs (1-4) and Symantec Game Pack! Also screensavers (think After Dark) and various Windows enhancements as shown here.

Also, Bad Mojo is actually a Win3.1 game if I remember correctly.

In the future I want to add a NIC to make file transfer easier. Now it's either a truckload of floppies, burning CDs or plugging the HDD into another system.

How do you plan to do file transfer, using Win 3.11 apps or mtcp?

A 100 Mb parallel ZIP drive would also be a good option, provided you can find one without the click-of-death. Or add a SCSI controller and use a later SCSI ZIP drive or a MO-drive.

Hellistor wrote:

Thank you for the recommendations, I'll take a look at them! Flight simulator might be a bit too demanding for this machine though.

Flight Simulator will be perfectly fine on your machine. FS5.1 is DOS-based and fairly lightweight, it will run on a 386 with 2 Mb of RAM (preferred: 486 with 4 Mb of RAM). All of the textures get loaded into expanded or extended memory. Furthermore, the program offers tons of options to fine-tune performance. IIRC the biggest resource hog is using clouds with haze enabled, but you video card is explicitly listed in the manual as supporting the highest graphics mode (640x400 SVGA 256 colors with haze). Just be sure to get version 5.1 on CD-ROM (there's also a version on 4 floppies, but it doesn't include the extra textures), not 5.0 or the Windows 95 version.

Also, FS 5.1 still has third party scenery and aircraft available from the community.

Thanks again for all the recommendations! I greatly appreciate it!

jheronimus wrote:

How do you plan to do file transfer, using Win 3.11 apps or mtcp?

I was thinking of using a network shared drive between my Dual Pentium III (Win98SE/2k) and the 486. As far as I know Windows 3.11 can access shared drives. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

yawetaG wrote:

A 100 Mb parallel ZIP drive would also be a good option, provided you can find one without the click-of-death. Or add a SCSI controller and use a later SCSI ZIP drive or a MO-drive.

I'm going to keep my eyes open but I haven't really seen many of those around. Would make it a lot easier though.

yawetaG wrote:

Flight Simulator will be perfectly fine on your machine. FS5.1 is DOS-based and fairly lightweight, it will run on a 386 with 2 Mb of RAM (preferred: 486 with 4 Mb of RAM). All of the textures get loaded into expanded or extended memory. Furthermore, the program offers tons of options to fine-tune performance. IIRC the biggest resource hog is using clouds with haze enabled, but you video card is explicitly listed in the manual as supporting the highest graphics mode (640x400 SVGA 256 colors with haze). Just be sure to get version 5.1 on CD-ROM (there's also a version on 4 floppies, but it doesn't include the extra textures), not 5.0 or the Windows 95 version.

Oh I didn't know that. I went by the pictures and figured it looked more demanding than it is. Thanks!

gdjacobs wrote:

Also, FS 5.1 still has third party scenery and aircraft available from the community.

It's amazing what the communities still do for some games.

If its Windows for Workgroups you just need the correct driver for your network card and the updated TCP stack from here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/99891

You have to map drives to connect to anything, or simply share a folder and use the other computer to browse the network
Transfer speeds are slower then ftp, but like you said not that many reasons for Win3x, and this gives me one.
3 games I always install is
Skifree,
Lunar Lander
Tetris
None are very demanding, you can even play while waiting for that file to copy over!

I usually put my games on D:\ that way if I need to wipe the OS for whatever reason, my games are all nice and safe on another partition.

The download link on that page is no longer valid.

Love it. Awesome system! Thank you for the share.

chinny22 wrote:

If its Windows for Workgroups you just need the correct driver for your network card and the updated TCP stack from here https:/ […]
Show full quote

If its Windows for Workgroups you just need the correct driver for your network card and the updated TCP stack from here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/99891

You have to map drives to connect to anything, or simply share a folder and use the other computer to browse the network
Transfer speeds are slower then ftp, but like you said not that many reasons for Win3x, and this gives me one.

Thank you for the link. While the download is dead I think I'm going to be able to find the TCP stack somewhere else.

I have my main '90s rig set up with Windows 98SE. I have a workgroup with shared drives going that my other Win98SE machines can access just fine.
Am I going to be able to add this 486 with Win 3.11 to the workgroup and use it in a similar fashion as in Win98SE? I figured it should work since, well, it's in the name of the OS.

It'll take some time until I can try it anyway as I need to get a network card first anyway. Thanks for the game recommendations!

beastlike wrote:

Love it. Awesome system! Thank you for the share.

Thank you! I really love this machine. Sharing these things is one of the reasons I love this forum.

Hellistor wrote:

Thank you for the link. While the download is dead I think I'm going to be able to find the TCP stack somewhere else. […]
Show full quote

Thank you for the link. While the download is dead I think I'm going to be able to find the TCP stack somewhere else.

I have my main '90s rig set up with Windows 98SE. I have a workgroup with shared drives going that my other Win98SE machines can access just fine.
Am I going to be able to add this 486 with Win 3.11 to the workgroup and use it in a similar fashion as in Win98SE? I figured it should work since, well, it's in the name of the OS.

It'll take some time until I can try it anyway as I need to get a network card first anyway. Thanks for the game recommendations!

Yeh its pretty easy to find just search for Tcp32b.exe and works with fine with 98SE without needing to do anything special
Just make sure you can find the Ndis3 drivers for the network card, which is what 3.x uses

jheronimus wrote:

Microsoft Entertainment Packs (1-4) and Symantec Game Pack! Also screensavers (think After Dark) and various Windows enhancements as shown here.

Awesome video share! I forgot all about ICON-DOIT 🤣

UPDATE!

I have now aquired a Roland MT-32 (OLD)!!! High Resolutions versions of the images are available here.

It took me a few days to get it running. I had to find a Gameport to Midi cable. Which turns out was wired wrong so I had to swap the 5V and the Midi data stream. But now it works!

This is Ultima 6 running with the MT-32

Here we have Silpheed.

Now I have also recorded some short video bits and uploaded them
The screen flickers quite a bit, just a warning.

Silpheed Gameplay
Sam and Max Hit the Road Intro Sequence
Strike Commander Tent Music
Strike Commander "Gameplay"

You might also spot a clue to my next system!

Hellistor wrote:

UPDATE!

I have now aquired a Roland MT-32 (OLD)!!!

Congratulations! I really hope to get one myself some day 😀 Are you going to get an MPU-401 card for it as well?

You might also spot a clue to my next system!

I'm seeing a Pentium chip on your IBM keyboard (third picture). So I'm guessing a Socket 7 build? Any particular reason you need one? I mean, you do have a "fast" 486 and a P3 there.

Looking at your setup I came up with a device I really need to source next — an AT-compatible KVM. I don't have a lot of space, so being able to use one keyboard/mouse/screen with two computers would be really awesome.

jheronimus wrote:

Congratulations! I really hope to get one myself some day 😀 Are you going to get an MPU-401 card for it as well.

I'm not really sure I need one. I'm using SoftMPU and so far every game works. It would be nice to have of course but the thing is, the MT-32 (OLD) has the buffer overflow problem with later games which SoftMPU can circumvent. I'm not sure the actual MPU-401 card has a way to do that.

jheronimus wrote:

I'm seeing a Pentium chip on your IBM keyboard (third picture). So I'm guessing a Socket 7 build? Any particular reason you need one? I mean, you do have a "fast" 486 and a P3 there.

Yup that is correct!

Well the thing is, I have gathered quite a lot of hardware since I started collecting and I like to build the systems. I do it for fun.
Also I try to get one system for each socket/processor type. I need some more hardware to do that but I'm pretty happy with what I have so far.

It will be a 133MHz Pentium-S AT build. To be honest it's actually done already, I just need to take some pictures.
Although I'm thinking of putting in a 100Mhz AMD K5 or a Cyrix 6x86 P150+GP (120MHz).
I'm going to make some more posts this coming week starting with that one.

jheronimus wrote:

Looking at your setup I came up with a device I really need to source next — an AT-compatible KVM. I don't have a lot of space, so being able to use one keyboard/mouse/screen with two computers would be really awesome.

Well you don't really need a "AT compatible" KVM. A normal PS/2 KVM would work well enough for most stuff. You can just get an adapter for the keyboard. The only problem would be serial mice but you can just have several mice next to each other, they're easier to keep around than keyboards.

You also reminded me I need to get one. Switching around the computers is getting tedious. 🤣

Hellistor wrote:

Well you don't really need a "AT compatible" KVM. A normal PS/2 KVM would work well enough for most stuff. You can just get an adapter for the keyboard. The only problem would be serial mice but you can just have several mice next to each other, they're easier to keep around than keyboards.

PS/2 mouses that can be used as serial mouses with a PS/2->serial adapter exist. Wouldn't those work?

yawetaG wrote:

PS/2 mouses that can be used as serial mouses with a PS/2->serial adapter exist. Wouldn't those work?

You mean plug a PS/2 mouse into the KVM and then run the mouse PS/2 cable from the KVM into a serial adapter on the PC?
It could work but you'd have to find a serial capable PS/2 mouse first. I haven't actually seen one of those yet, which is why I think it would be easier to have one mouse per machine.

Something I have seen that could work though is a KVM that translates the PS/2 mouse to serial. You can look up the "Master View Plus CS-138D" for example. That might function but I'd personally just get any old PS/2 KVM and use seperate mice.

I personally find having multiple mice on the desktop irritating. For this reason, I try to seek out 486 motherboards with PS/2 mouse ports or PS/2 mouse headers. Some VLB and PCI boards have the headers, for others, it can be added with some motherboard modifications. I tried to create a PS/2 mod for a 386 board but had trouble getting it working for some odd reason.

I have a ps/2 mouse which can also do serial protocal. What the other member proposed doing does not work - I tried it! I think the issue is because the KVM can only pass PS/2 signal.

yawetaG wrote:

Hellistor wrote:

Well you don't really need a "AT compatible" KVM. A normal PS/2 KVM would work well enough for most stuff. You can just get an adapter for the keyboard. The only problem would be serial mice but you can just have several mice next to each other, they're easier to keep around than keyboards.

PS/2 mouses that can be used as serial mouses with a PS/2->serial adapter exist. Wouldn't those work?

This will only work on PS/2 mice that are serial-compatible. That rules out most, if not all modern PS/2 mice. I went through quite a few mice before I found one that worked. It's a Logitec MouseMan, Serial-MousePort. This one:
http://gordogato.com/oscommerce/catalog/produ … products_id=176
I'm sure there are others. But these are likely first generation PS/2 mice when they co-existed with serial in the market, so they had to make them electrically compatible (they usually came with adapters in the retail packaging).

feipoa wrote:

I personally find having multiple mice on the desktop irritating. For this reason, I try to seek out 486 motherboards with PS/2 mouse ports or PS/2 mouse headers. Some VLB and PCI boards have the headers, for others, it can be added with some motherboard modifications. I tried to create a PS/2 mod for a 386 board but had trouble getting it working for some odd reason.

I'm personally not that bothered by multiple mice, I'd just keep then on top of one of the PC cases or the monitor so they're out of the way. But I can see how it can get annoying.