VOGONS


The Suitability of the PS/2 for Gaming

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First post, by Great Hierophant

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If you want to buy an old computer for DOS gaming purposes, the PS/2 line from IBM offers a unique set of advantages and challenges. The first advantage is that the systems are by IBM, which means that they are well-built and boast excellent compatibility. Second, the PS/2 still has a remarkable amount of support these days. There are two major varieties of PS/2, the ISA based systems and the MCA based systems. First I will talk about the ISA systems, then the MCA systems.

I. The ISA based PS/2 systems include the following models:
8525 - 8086@8MHz, MCGA, 512KB, 2x 8-bit ISA, 720KB Floppy (integrated color or mono monitor)
8525-286 - 80286@10MHz, VGA, 512KB, 2x 16-bit ISA, 1.44MB Floppy (integrated color or mono monitor)
8530 - 8086@8MHz, MCGA, 640KB, 3x 8-bit ISA, 720KB Floppy
8530-286 - 80286@10MHz, VGA, 512KB, 3x 16-bit ISA, 1.44MB Floppy
8535 - 80386sx@20MHz, VGA, 2MB, 3x 16-bit ISA, 1.44MB Floppy
8535slc - 80386slc@20MHz, VGA, 2MB, 3x 16-bit ISA, 2.88MB Floppy
8540 - 80386@20MHz, VGA, 2MB, 5x 16-bit ISA, 1.44MB Floppy
8540slc - 80386slc@20MHz, VGA, 2MB, 3x 16-bit ISA, 2.88MB Floppy

The 8086 systems can be upgraded to 640KB of RAM, the 286 systems 4MB of RAM on motherboard, 16MB with adapter cards, and the 386 systems 16MB of RAM on board. Only the slc models are guaranteed to have hard drives, and the hard drives come in sizes from 20MB in the lower models to up to 80MB in the best models. Finally, the 386slc still has the 16-bit external data bus of the 386sx, but the 8KB of cache makes it reach DX speeds.

I see three weaknesses to these systems. First, most have limited expansion slots. However, all of them have serial and parallel ports built-in, unlike the PC line. Second, the integrated graphics adapters cannot be upgraded. These adapters are, however, the most compatible available for any graphics that use the VGA or lower standards. Third and perhaps most important, the processor speeds are somewhat anemic. You will have some trouble getting VGA games made in 1992 and 1993 to work at playable speeds, and you may need to purchase a processor upgrade card for better speeds.

My recommendations are to get the 8086 systems only if you don't like the clunkiness of the PC and XTs, the 286s for the AT and the 386 for generic PCs. The 8540 is a very, very nice machine. The MCGA adapter is unique to the 8525 abd 8530, but it is not paired well with the processor and it is not compatible with EGA, the prevailing standard at that time (low resolution EGA graphics can be adapted for it, and many games support this.)

II. There are many models in the MCA PS/2 line, too many to detail here. However, there are no particular advantages in the 855x-856x machines over the earlier machines described above. The MCA bus poses two problems, video and audio. Lets consider both separately.

Video:
MCA systems up to the 8590 use integrated VGA, 8590 and 8595 use integrated XGA and systems of the 95xx series almost invariably use XGA-2 adapters (which are not integrated.) According to IBM's Technical Reference, the XGA adapters are register compatible with the VGA adapter. While the XGA can offer 1024x768x16/256 (upgraded) and 640x480x65536 and the XGA-2 640x480x65536, 800x600x65536 and 1024x768x256. No DOS game I know of uses more than the 640x480 resolution or true color. The only question is do games that support these SVGA-like resolutions work with the XGA adapters? Otherwise you will need to find SVGA MCA adapters. Neither XGA adapter is the fastest around compared to some SVGA card's advanced features.

Sound:
An even more difficult problem is obtaining the most compatible sound. For midi tunes, there is only one option, the Roland MPU-IMC midi processing card. This will give you a full MPU-401 interface with which you can connect external modules to. Anything from an MT-32 to a SC-55mkII, knock yourself out. FM and digitized sound is a bigger problem. Creative did produce the Sound Blaster MCV and Sound Blaster Pro MCV, essentially Microchannel versions of the ISA Sound Blaster 2.0 and Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 respectively. These cards have problems with faster PS/2s, so I am told. You can forget about a GUS. If you want a more advanced sound card, then you will have to do with third parties. I have heard good things about the ChipChat 32-bit MCA card, which boasts a wavetable connector and Sound Blaster 16 compatibility. Also consider the Reply card, which uses Creative's Vibra 16 chip. Finally, some models, like the 8530-286 do not have a full PC speaker but only a pietzo tweeter, so games that tweak the PC speaker for multiple chords or digitized PCM samples will sound poor.

Reply 1 of 34, by PeterLI

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Great summary. The challenge with the ISA based models is that only the PS/2 Model 30 8086 and 80286 are common. The Model 35s / 40s are very rare and only pop up very infrequently. Model 25 80286 and 80286 pop up more frequently but these are even more limited with regards to expandability plus they have the built in monitor.

Reply 2 of 34, by GL1zdA

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As an owner of several PS/2s (MCA only) I can advice one thing: don't try to build a gaming machine on them. The sound cards are expensive unobtanium, only professional graphics adapters (I have a Matrox), limited HDD expansion options (mostly SCSI, often with proprietary cables). They're nice if you want to use MCA, but otherwise don't even think of them.

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Reply 3 of 34, by NJRoadfan

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The later PS/2 Model 76/77 with the "Lacuna" planer has on-board local-bus S3 928 video and LBA compatible IDE. There were also Ultimedia models that came with IBM's sound card (Audiovation?), but who knows how SB compatible those were. Also one of the few PS/2s that weren't total turkeys, they boosted real 486 chips with full 32-bit bus and memory interface.

Reply 4 of 34, by Jorpho

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Great Hierophant wrote:

The first advantage is that the systems are by IBM, which means that they are well-built and boast excellent compatibility.
...
These adapters are, however, the most compatible available for any graphics that use the VGA or lower standards.

Your metric for "compatibility" is unclear.

No DOS game I know of uses more than the 640x480 resolution or true color.

Well, there's Moraff's World and Moraff's Revenge – but then, it is pointless to design an entire machine around two games that one may never have any intention of ever playing. (Not that that stops some people...)

Reply 5 of 34, by NJRoadfan

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VESA BIOS Extension TSRs exist for the IBM XGA and XGA/2 cards.

Reply 6 of 34, by Samir

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NJRoadfan wrote:

VESA BIOS Extension TSRs exist for the IBM XGA and XGA/2 cards.

And that would be the only way to go for support of those higher resolutions. The VESA standards helped even out a lot of the video card incompatibility back these days of computing.

I have a 30-286 that's been upgraded to the full 4mb of ram, an additional 200mb SCSI hd, as well as a processor upgrade to a 486slc. Even in that state, the machine is good for general computing, not gaming. And that little piezo speaker was pretty annoying trying to play music, which it didn't do successfully 90% of the time.My generic 486 is a much better platform for that, as well as almost any generic 2/3/486 PC.

The bane of the PS/2 line was that it was hard to get almost anything to work with it that other computers in the day worked perfectly fine with. The irony is that the PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports became industry standard. 🤣

Bottom line, don't use a PS/2. They were expensive and propritary back in the day, and they still are.

Reply 7 of 34, by Norton Commander

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Samir wrote:

I have a 30-286 that's been upgraded to the full 4mb of ram, an additional 200mb SCSI hd, as well as a processor upgrade to a 486slc. Even in that state, the machine is good for general computing, not gaming. And that little piezo speaker was pretty annoying trying to play music, which it didn't do successfully 90% of the time.My generic 486 is a much better platform for that, as well as almost any generic 2/3/486 PC.

The bane of the PS/2 line was that it was hard to get almost anything to work with it that other computers in the day worked perfectly fine with. The irony is that the PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports became industry standard. 🤣

Bottom line, don't use a PS/2. They were expensive and propritary back in the day, and they still are.

Speaking as someone who was a PC tech when these machines were mainstream...

I wholeheartedly agree that PS/2s are the worst choice for PC gaming and would even question their suitability for general computing. I concur that they were very well built and installing/replacing components was easy from a hardware standpoint.

The software standpoint was an entirely different matter. Compatibility with any non-IBM product was virtually non-existant to the point where we just wouldn't put anything that wasn't IBM branded in these machines to avoid the headaches. Even then there were problems. There was no pressing of F2 to get into setup - PS/2s use a diskette when any changes need to be made to BIOS. Any peripherals you add had to have their own diskette with a config file you had to manually add to the setup diskette. Without this config file your add-on card was useless The diskettes were always going bad (errors) meaning we had to have multiple copies of everything and we ended up imaging every setup diskette we had for this reason.

XGA was supported by CAD, Lotus and maybe Wordperfect. Games never heard of it.

VESA BIOS Extension TSRs? Bahahahahhahaha! NO. This was the DOS/Windows 3.1 era. Your 16 MB extended/expanded memory was irrelevant. Everything was starved for conventional memory. On a standard 386/486 DOS PC (even Compaq) you could load most TSRs high. PS/2 BIOS memory was mapped in such a way where practically nothing could be loaded high which means choose between CD-ROM, Mouse, Network but not all 3, maybe not even 2.

Good luck getting a new power supply or system board as everything is proprietary.

Ok that's the end of my rant - I just couldn't read this topic without replying that it's plain ridiculous to recommend a PS/2 be used as anything other than a boat anchor. This opinion was shared by my collegues, including those employed at other firms at the time.

Reply 8 of 34, by Great Hierophant

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Amazing how a post from over eight years ago can get resurrected 😉

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Reply 9 of 34, by Samir

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Great Hierophant wrote:

Amazing how a post from over eight years ago can get resurrected 😉

With new information as well. 😎 I suspected that VESA drivers might have existed for the XGA adapters, but wasn't sure until I saw the post that started the resurrection. 🤣

Reply 10 of 34, by PeterLI

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Last edited by PeterLI on 2016-12-17, 19:25. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 11 of 34, by Samir

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PeterLI wrote:

At some point I would like to build a PS/2 Model 30 80286 again as well. 😀

We actually built ours when it still was a 'current' model. We sunk a lot of money into that machine, but it did a lot of work before we built the 486. After that point, it was just a redundant machine.

Would you be interested in buying it if I was to consider selling it? I'd have to boot it up and get any data off of it before I did such a thing, so I'm not thinking about selling it in the next year or two. But if I do want to sell it, would you be interested?

Reply 12 of 34, by bristlehog

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PS/2 were my first PCs. My father was leading facultative courses of computer science in a school back in early 90's, and sometimes he took me with him. I were playing Prince of Persia and Golden Axe while he was teaching elder scholars of how to use Microsoft QBasic.

I can't say for sure what those PS/2 were. However, some details I still remember:

- they were 286-based
- had 640K of memory
- no HDDs, only 3,5" drives (720K if I'm not mistaken)
- if no boot diskette is inserted, some primitive BASIC was loaded from ROM. GWBASIC or BASICA maybe.
- I think there were EGA displays (non-integrated)
- no sound other than PC Speaker

What model could those machines belong to?

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Reply 13 of 34, by Samir

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Those had to be the PS/2 model 30s if it was dual 720k drives. But they were only 8 or 10mhz 8086, not 286 processors. I still remember that built-in GWBASIC. Pretty annoying if a disk went bad.

I still have one somewhere that was leftover from being the terminal of our System 36 Days Inn central reservation system computer. Then I pulled the terminal card out and replaced it with an 8-bit 10-base-2 network card and the system was reassigned as a terminal to the MSI Property Management System for the same Days Inn. Then the primary drive or 720k boot disk failed, so I needed to fix that to have it boot again, but I never found the time. It's sitting next to the 30-286 waiting to be revived. 🙁

Reply 14 of 34, by bristlehog

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AFAIR there was only one 3.5" drive. Looked pretty much like this:

ps2-30-286-complete-400x.jpg

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Reply 15 of 34, by Samir

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bristlehog wrote:
AFAIR there was only one 3.5" drive. Looked pretty much like this: […]
Show full quote

AFAIR there was only one 3.5" drive. Looked pretty much like this:

ps2-30-286-complete-400x.jpg

Ahh, then this is the 30-286. 😀 Looks identical to mine. The model 30 had an orange power switch. At first I hated such a solid power switch, but thinking back, I'd rather have that than the 'I'm smarter than you are and I'll tell you when I'll disconnect power' power switches of today.

Reply 17 of 34, by idspispopd

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It seems Marvin was created in 2008.
This thread started in 2005.

Reply 18 of 34, by swaaye

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Thread moved to Marvin forum.

Reply 19 of 34, by PeterLI

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Last edited by PeterLI on 2016-12-17, 19:26. Edited 1 time in total.