There is no one best computer for MS-DOS games.

There are various threads on the forum about this.

Here's one of them:
My oldschool rigs (updated once again)

Thanks!

Back in 1996 I had a computer like this:

Motherboard: I think it's a PCChips
Video: Trident 1MB PCI (Quake1 in 320x200 to play full-speed, Abe's Oddysee was always slow 🙁 )
Sound: Sound Blaster 1.0
Memory: 32MB RAM (I think it was DIMM) and 640k conventional memory hahahahaha
HD 1,6GB
16x CDROM
S/O: Win98

You want to play very old 80s DOS games, and you also want to play more modern Windows 98 3D games? You need to consider building more than 1 machine.

For the very old stuff, (80s) a 386 DX mobo is I believe your best choice.

For the early to mid 90s stuff, a 486 DX is prolly the best choice.

To get SVGA DOS games running fast and smoothly, consider a Pentium 2.

To get 3D windows 98 games to run fast and smoothly, consider a Pentium 3. If you go for a Pentium 3, then this will also handle your SVGA DOS games. You don't need any fancy. 500mhz CPU will be fine.

If you only build one machine, consider DOSBox emulator to handle all of your ancient and speed sensitive game requirements. Then build a Pentium 3 machine for everything else, which includes all DOS games which don't care about fast CPUs, all SVGA DOS games, all win9x games.

I think that's your best move. However, I am a relative noob to all of this, and there's loads of other people on this forum who know a lot more about this than I do. So, that's just my 2 pennies worth.

HTH + good luck! 😀

Thank you! I was thinking the same...I don't need such a motherfucking slow computer to run these games...

In my old computer, SVGA games was simple unplayable on the Trident video card, TOO SLOW!!

And another important thing: a Pentium 1 PC cost near the same as a Pentium 3 one!
So I'm thinking of buying something like this:

Motherboard: any that have ISA, PCI and AGP slots.
Processor: Pentium 3 (any idea of speed?)
Video: 32MB PCI or AGP (don't know any model 🙁 )
Sound: My SoundBlaster AWE64 \o/ (read on various forums that has a awesome audio quality, even in recent days)
RAM: 128MB
HD 80GB IDE

What do you think??

Another games I remembered:
Commandos: Behind The Enemy Lines \o/
Command and Conquer Red Alert
Simcity (how do I scroll the screen not THAT FAST?)
Megarace 2
Cyberia 2
Descent 1 and 2
Duke Nukem 3D
Blood

Yep, get one with ISA PCI and AGP. "Slot 1" and "socket 370" are mobos which spring to mind. I'm sure there are others. As for speed, old CPUs are so cheap on ebay, why not just pick up a couple of them? Different speeds. Just check out the results. Pick the one you like the best. I like the basic P3 500mhz. You might want something better. Some P3 boards go up to crazy speeds, eg 1.4ghz!

I like putting in 2 graphics cards in my systems. One in AGP, one in PCI. You can toggle between the 2 in the BIOS. Usually. That way if you pick a card (say TNT2 or an old GeForce) that gives you some compatibility probs with a few games, you can switch over to the other card. You'll need to set up hardware profiles in win98 though, but it's fairly easy to do.

32mb video will be fine. Try a TNT2 or an old MX? GeForce. Others to consider are Matrox G cards and Voodoo 3.

Ram - 128 is ok, 256 could improve a few things here and there.

Sound - I think you'll be okay with the awe64. Dunno if you want to consider maybe a PCI card though? santa cruz, audigy 2, terratec, there's loads of 'em! (Although these will only be good for win games, not dos. So maybe stick with your isa sound card, although it is possible to have 2 sound cards in 1 system.)

HD - 80 gig = fine!

To give a rough idea of one of my Dos based setups : (This is a PIII based system)

DFI 6AC1 Motherboard with 2 ISA, 4 PCI, 1 AGP slots
Pentium III 1GHz Socket 370 CPU
256MB PC133 SDRAM
GeForce Ti4200
S3 ViRGE
Voodoo2
SB AWE32 CT3980 - the joystick port connected to my SC-55 MKII
LAPC-I
40GB HDD - Multiple Partitions, one for DOS 6.22 booting and one with Win95c
80GB HDD - Win98SE, (planning to install Win2000pro in another partition)

I'm using Dosbox in my newer pc which is a Q9300 based system.

I've discarded the idea of setting up the slowest based system for a dos game since there are too many things to worry about in building one.
For one, newer systems have better bios to support newer hard drives, and the ability to boot to different drives is a plus.
If you're building a system for really old games, in terms of speed alignment, only the said games will be playing well. The rest will suffer from lack of speed.
Most of the games you listed will be more comfortable in a newer pc.
The presence of Dosbox really removes the need to build an old system for dos gaming purposes. The amount of configurability of dosbox is staggering. You can, for instance, set the PERFECT speed for Wing Commander I.

Of course, building a "new" 386 or 486 is important for nostalgic purposes. I still can't shake away my interest in building one. I have re-built my Pentium 133 based system, and still trying to setup a good 486 based system. I just received another motherboard yesterday, with a 486DX2 66 cpu on it.

Excellent machine you have there Malik. 😎

Ah, the LAPC-I! 😀 Unfortunately I seem to have joined the "retro club" a bit too late, as that's another vintage soundcard I've never even seen (as in real life, not a seller's photo on ebay), let alone owned.

Ah well...at least there are plenty of old graphics cards and mobos still to be found on ebay, so it's still possible to build these old machines and get something working. 😀

retro games 100 wrote:

Excellent machine you have there Malik. 😎

Ah, the LAPC-I! 😀 Unfortunately I seem to have joined the "retro club" a bit too late, as that's another vintage soundcard I've never even seen (as in real life, not a seller's photo on ebay), let alone owned.

Ah well...at least there are plenty of old graphics cards and mobos still to be found on ebay, so it's still possible to build these old machines and get something working. 😀

It feels I haven't seen a Lapc-I on Ebay for ages.... 🙁
Up to last winter they showed up on Ebay...about 5-10 a year showed up for sale on Ebay

Amigaz wrote:

It feels I haven't seen a Lapc-I on Ebay for ages.... 🙁
Up to last winter they showed up on Ebay...about 5-10 a year showed up for sale on Ebay

I have a theory about this. I think it may have something to do with ebay's new feedback policy. Recently, (as I'm sure everyone is now aware), ebay introduced a new rule disallowing sellers to leave "tit for tat" negative feedback against buyers who left them bad feedback. I think some sellers are now scared about listing old junk which may not work properly. Perhaps it's just not worth the risk anymore?

Just my two pennies worth. It may not be the only reason why this is happening, but it could be part of the reason.

Ebay is becoming a bunch of wankers basically which is sad.

Malik, you have the perfect machine for my purposes:
- play old games (just a few ones)
- listen music
- play movies

2 things that are pushing me far away from the idea of buying a "not-fast" computer:
1) I'm fighting hard to find a motherboard with ISA slot. The only one I found is a Soyo K7VTA, but does not support Intel processor, only support SDRAM memory (WTF!!!) and has a bunch of problems (one of them being "exploding-capacitors" 😮 😁 😁 😁 )

2) The price. I can get a top-speed computer (2GHz-2GB RAM-128MB VIDEO) for twice the price of an "old computer", and will allow me to emulate all games with DOSBox.

The question now is: there is a game that DOSBox cannot emulate 100%? New onboard soundcards works well with DOSBox emulation?

May be better to use a new computer with Dosbox and see how far you get with the games you want to play.

If you find there are Dos games you cannot play with Dosbox to your satisfaction, or Windows games that don't play how you want under XP or whatever, then consider building something based on old hardware.

To give you an idea about the power of Dosbox, I'll give you a true scenario which I'm currently using :

My newest system is a quad core Q9300 based machine on which my dosbox is running. The midi out from my Soundblaster X-Fi's I/O drive is connected directly to my MT-32 module. In Dosbox's MIDI section, I configure it to pass the midi message to the MT-32 module (by forwarding the midi message to X-Fi's midi out). And I'm doing this for the Wing Commander I game. Titrate the speed factor in dosbox and voila! You are transported back to the early 1990's, playing the Wing Commander game with the MT-32 music, as though the game is just released and as though you are playing it when DOS was The King!!! (For me, good ol' DOS is still THE KING!! 😎)

To put it simply, with Dosbox, you can "imitate" (read emulate) an IBM PC XT,AT,286,386 and even the early 486s.

For the more resource demanding dos games, better to build a fast PII or PIII system to play the latter half of the 90's games smoothly. Of course, ISA slots are important for the classics. There are so many in ebay.

Thanks for the info.
But there is more motherboards that have ISA slots?
There is something like an "ISA adapter"?

diego gr wrote:

Thanks for the info.
But there is more motherboards that have ISA slots?
There is something like an "ISA adapter"?

There are so many boards with ISA slots. For example, by entering "ISA Slot Motherboard" in ebay search, i got the following results : http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38.l … -All-Categories
Those black slots are ISA slots. 😜

Yeah, but I think there is no motherboard with ISA slot that supports Pentium4 2GHz (or non-Intel), AGP 4x slot and DDR1 memory.
If I found one with that three things I would buy it.
That Soyo K7VTA only supports SDRAM memory, which does the whole idea not worth the money spent.

(Sorry if I'm annoying you all, but I'm hunting a mobo with that specs)

See this post : Could this be the ultimate fastest system with pure dos sound support?

Be ready to pay. A HUGE sum! 😁