I dumped all my old computers years ago although some choice parts are in boxes in my closet.
I do keep a couple of old laptops around for DOS testing.

People here develop or beta test DOSBox. To do so we need to compare with real hardware.
DOSBox is an emulator and as such is nowhere near exactly the same as the original hardware (This is good and bad).
DOSBox is not feature complete.

16bit Windows games work fine in Windows 3.1 in DOSBox

The latest version of Virtual PC works fine on Windows 7 Home Premium. "XP Mode" is just a installer that packages a .VHD containing Windows XP. You can probably figure out a way to bypass the installer and point virtual PC to it or just install a copy of Windows XP in Virtual PC.....or use a better emulator like Vmware/Virtualbox.

For me it has been two motivations-

1) Exploration of various hardware that I've read about and have wanted to try
2) Old Win9x games that require old hardware to work their best. Games that use Aureal A3D, 3Dfx Glide, and some picky old D3D titles. There are very few games that really fit in this category though.

For DOS, I do use DOSBOX.

Playing with old hardware is simply fun and enriching.
There is something "magical" about running stuff on its original hardware.
As time goes im getting less attracted to emulation, in favor of the real thing.

Don't get me wrong, Dosbox is awesome. I used it alot, and still use it for various tasks and testing.

I also really like sound cards, to the point of compulsively collecting them. So when it comes to using my Isa/Pci soundcards, of course i need a real machine.
Same is also valid for any kind of old hardware collector who actually wants to use his stuff. ( Im definitely not the sealed box kind )

I think i can total agree with Maxwar.. Because:

1. Its nice to have those old computers in your home, specially if you know that there a lot of those stuff are throwing away.. So its more like i still have those computers, and many other people havent. That also increase the value of those computers..

2. The smell is nice, the technical side how the stuff is made. I think ISA stuff is more nicer to have then the components now days, because of the `real thing`

3 Emulators arent that good compared the `real stuff`

So its for experience the real feeling of playing dos games, and the historic value about that technology.

And iam not a sealed box kind collector to.. Everthing i buy a also going to use it like its ment to be.

If you had a old steam train, then you dont let it rust away and do nothing with it. No use it. Enjoy the feeling, enjoy that is working!

>People here develop or beta test DOSBox. To do so we need to compare with real hardware.

Yes, that makes sense. I can see how you'd need real machines to test against emulated machines.

>DOSBox is an emulator and as such is nowhere near exactly the same as the original hardware (This is good and bad).

> DOSBox is not feature complete.

I didn't know that DOSBox wasn't complete (as in completely emulating a DOS based PC). I just assumed that it was more or less 99% accurate and feature rich, since it's done everything I asked of it, and I've not seen anyone comment on it lacking any given feature or that it's in any way inaccurate. I know that emulators tend never to be 100% accurate as (as I understand it, from my non-coder's point of view) there are usually hardware quirks, or obscure CPU features or video peculiarities that either aren't known by the emulator's authors, or just aren't worth the trouble of emulating since they either aren't used by any known game, or their absence makes no tangible difference at all.

I play games on various emulated machines (ZX Spectrum, C64, SNES, MAME, Atari ST, etc) and they all run every game exactly as they should (in my experience) even though it does get mentioned in the readme.txt files or on their forums that the emulation of a given component is only 99.9% accurate.

I realised of course that DOSBox can't possibly emulate all PC hardware of the time, but I assumed it emulated all of the most common components, and with near total accuracy (except for 3D cards, but I downloaded a build that lets you use nGlide to run the DOS version of Carmageddon in 3DFX mode - brilliant!), but what doesn't DOSBox emulate, and what does it emulate with appreciable problems? And do any of the thing it doesn't emulate effect games? Admittedly I'm not a huge DOS gamer, but for what it's worth my experience of it has been great (especially since I discovered the D.O.G. front-end to help with the configuration settings), and I've never had cause for complaint.

>16bit Windows games work fine in Windows 3.1 in DOSBox

Ah, maybe those two games will work that way then? Thanks, I might try that out.

The latest version of Virtual PC works fine on Windows 7 Home Premium. "XP Mode" is just a installer that packages a .VHD containing Windows XP. You can probably figure out a way to bypass the installer and point virtual PC to it or just install a copy of Windows XP in Virtual PC.....or use a better emulator like Vmware/Virtualbox.

I didn't know I could run it (presumably a quick Google would reveal a tutorial on how to fool it into thinking I was authorised to run it?), so thanks for that. How are Vmware/Virtualbox better than Virtual PC, what are the differences between the three?

The DACs 😁

That, and DOSBox doesn't "support" Windows 95. Only emulators that do are emulators that are either too slow (Qemu, Bochs, Pcem?) or way too fast (VirtualPC)

>For me it has been two motivations-

> 1) Exploration of various hardware that I've read about and have wanted to try

Oh, I certainly understand that! I used to love messing about with PC hardware, and I really enjoyed solving (and learning from) PC based problems. Then I got a job maintaining/building with PCs, and now when I get home at night I just want my PC to work without any effort on my part...

> 2) Old Win9x games that require old hardware to work their best. Games that use Aureal A3D, 3Dfx Glide, and some picky old D3D titles. There are very few games that really fit in this category though.

You can use Glide using the version of DOSBox linked from:

http://atombomb.no-ip.org/blog/2010/12/10/how … igh-resolution/

though maybe there are better builds now, or maybe emulation of Glide still isn't as good as the real thing, either quality-wise or as regards compatibility? It's great for Carmageddon I think, but for all I know the emulated version might not look as good as the read 3dfx version.

>Playing with old hardware is simply fun and enriching.
> There is something "magical" about running stuff on its original hardware.
> As time goes im getting less attracted to emulation, in favor of the real thing.

I go on several emulation forums (8-bit and 16-bit home computers and consoles, mainly) and I see a few people saying that, they just prefer playing on the original machines, which isn't something I really agree with, but each to their own. I do however still use my N64, as no matter what I do the emulators just aren't stable or glitch-free. I'd really love to use emulators, as you get save/load state snapshotting, you can run the (few) mods that have been made for some N64 games, and you can play the games online against other people, but the emulation is just too unstable, and even when it works it doesn't 'feel' right to me. Thankfully, every other emulated machine I use is rock solid and 'feels right, be it the ZX Spectrum, a Mr Do! arcade machine (you have to love MAME!), or a DOS based PC.

N64 emulators are also the only emulators that I know of that require you to use plugins, for some reason. Maybe emulators for other machines need them (PS1/PS2/XBox 1/Gamecube/etc) but I've not tried emulators for those machines.

> I also really like sound cards, to the point of compulsively collecting them. So when it comes to using my Isa/Pci soundcards, of course i need a real machine.

> Same is also valid for any kind of old hardware collector who actually wants to use his stuff. ( Im definitely not the sealed box kind )

No, I don't understand the people who buy a factory sealed game for an old machine for £200 - £600, and never open it, just leave it on a shelf and look at the box sometimes. Aside from the fact that the box might be empty (or more likely be weighted with something valueless) and re-sealed by the seller, I always think that part of the fun of a collection is being able to use what you buy, hence I collect books, video games, and comedy/science fiction/thriller DVDS.

Kerr Avon wrote:

Why do so many people here like using old PCs to play their games?

One word: 3dfx 😊

...and since the 3dfx rig is old 'nuff and has an ISA slot its good to try out a bunch of different sound cards and daughter-boards - DOS and the rest are just a very nice bonus.

There are a bunch of 3dfx wrappers out there, but none is as good as original, really. Whoever didnt play NFS 2/3/4 in 4xFSAA 3dfx mode doesnt know what he missed. Especially paired with 3D stereo glasses. I usually play every old 3dfx game in 640x480@160Hz (CRT) and 4x FSAA. 😎

>I think i can total agree with Maxwar.. Because:

> 1. Its nice to have those old computers in your home, specially if you know that there a lot of those stuff are throwing away.. So its more like i still have those computers, and many other people havent. That also increase the value of those computers..

2. The smell is nice, the technical side how the stuff is made. I think ISA stuff is more nicer to have then the components now days, because of the `real thing`

> 3 Emulators arent that good compared the `real stuff`

That's both subjective and objective. Objectively, some emulators are troublesome or don't 'feel' right, true. But I think that many emulators, at least for any machine older than the N64, are good enough to serve as replacements for the hardware, objectively. But subjectively of course some people feel differently. On one of the forums I frequent a number of people still use ZX Spectrums, even to the extent of loading games from cassette, and in fact buy new games (homebrew games are still being written for the machine, which was introduced in 1982) only on cassette. Me, I use an emulator as I can load .tap/.tzx virtual cassette files instantaneously, can snapshot save and load, can speed up or slow down the emulated machine, can set the machine to emulate a variety of different Spectrum models and hardware addons, can save a screenshot at any time, can enter cheats directly into the game's memory pool, etc. And the emulators are perfectly stable, have total audio/graphical/timing accuracy as far as I can see, and I can store literary thousands of it's games on a small fraction of my PC's hard dive. I really don't see why people prefer to use the real machine, on a TV, loading from tape, having to store masses of tapes nearby (and these few people who still use the original machines tend to be hardcore collectors, who have *hundreds* or more games cassettes), and limiting themselves to the incompatabilities of their chosen model of Spectrum (every version of the Spectrum had incompatabilities with the other versions, although the number of games was very small, and most were fixed by amateur hackers), but they do, and it makes them happy. Not me though, I've never agreed with those who say that (good and accurate) emulation loses something form the original, though lots of people do feel that way.

> So its for experience the real feeling of playing dos games, and the historic value about that technology.

I understand mate.

> And iam not a sealed box kind collector to.. Everthing i buy a also going to use it like its ment to be.

> If you had a old steam train, then you dont let it rust away and do nothing with it. No use it. Enjoy the feeling, enjoy that is working!

Yep. I've never understood the people who buy books, not to read, but to put them on the bookshelf so people will *think* they've read them. Not quite the same thing, I know, but people like that baffle me.

>The DACs

What's that? A quick Google threw up several possibilities, but I couldn't decide which it was, as like most people who are PC-savy, my expertise doesn't extend to much more than either building/upgrading PCs or the daily problems I get in IT support. Anything remotely technical is out of my experience.

> That, and DOSBox doesn't "support" Windows 95. Only emulators that do are emulators that are either too slow (Qemu, Bochs, Pcem?) or way too fast (VirtualPC)

Right. Why doesn't DOSBox support it? And why is VirtualPC too fast (and how can that be a problem - can Windows 95 only work on CPUs below a certain speed)? It's my understanding that VirtualPC (or any virtual machine) doesn't support 3D hardware, does Bosch etc? Though from what you've said, even if they did, it would be impractical for gaming due to the speed issues.

>One word: 3dfx

> ...and since the 3dfx rig is old 'nuff and has an ISA slot its good to try out a bunch of different sound cards and daughter-boards - DOS and the rest are just a very nice bonus.

> There are a bunch of 3dfx wrappers out there, but none is as good as original, really. Whoever didnt play NFS 2/3/4 in 4xFSAA 3dfx mode doesnt know what he missed. Especially paired with 3D stereo glasses. I usually play every old 3dfx game in 640x480@160Hz (CRT)

I see. Most of the games I emulate don't use 3dfx, or at least have alternative 3D card support. Only Carmageddon doesn't, and I have to use a special build of DOSBox to run that with my 3D card and Windows 7. Regarding soundcards, is DOSBox as good as a real PC + real soundcard? It sounds great to me, but my hearing isn't great, so I probably wouldn't notice unless DOSBox has terrible sound (which it hasn't).

VirtualPC only tries hard to be the fastest, however its input responsiveness and fullscreen directx support is very screwy. It doesn't support 3d hardware either, but it's the fastest VM that can support Win9x (well, the 2007 edition anyway)

DOSBox gratituously screws up under Windows 95 as it was not intended for it. For starters, since there's a lack of IDE, you don't get a CD-ROM drive, and then there's the issue of maximizing your DOS games running through Windows. Also there's even calculation errors - if you try to play Unreal Tournament through DOSBox you'll get very screwed up lighting. Win95 support is a curiously challenging guilty pleasure for some on this forum and is in no way official.

Kerr Avon wrote:

But I think that many emulators, at least for any machine older than the N64, are good enough to serve as replacements for the hardware, objectively.

Heh.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accurac … -snes-emulator/

http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy

Not to mention the other half of emulating consoles and home-computers, which is emulating the display device faithfully. Most of the popular emulators support shaders and filters to simulate the CRT look, but not all of them, and many of the ones that do are pretty average.

bsnes's goal stopped being about accuracy,and more about 'let's change the way roms are loaded for the sake of it because I say so while I cram more and more imperfect emulators in and support some unproven video codec theory so i can fulfill my watch anime neko boys on a snes fantasy' lately.

Which is a shame. I still use 078 because it's the last version with the Blaarg NTSC shaders which compliment the CRT shader nicely. I'm not installing some new version that requires an additional shell extension just so I can load my games. K.I.S.S. took a turn for the worse.

leileilol wrote:

bsnes's goal stopped being about accuracy,and more about 'let's change the way roms are loaded for the sake of it because I say so while I cram more and more imperfect emulators in and support some unproven video codec theory so i can fulfill my watch anime neko boys on a snes fantasy' lately.

Sadly true.

That specific page I linked is relevant tho, I reckon.

Kerr Avon wrote:

>The DACs

What's that? A quick Google threw up several possibilities, but I couldn't decide which it was, as like most people who are PC-savy, my expertise doesn't extend to much more than either building/upgrading PCs or the daily problems I get in IT support. Anything remotely technical is out of my experience.

DAC = Digital to ANALOG CONVERTER

DAC's on sound cards take the digital audio stream and convert them into an ANALOG output signal for use with powered loudspeakers or an amplifier.

The only thing i still emulate lately is Arcade, because i have not yet reached a point where i want to build a supergun and invest hundreds of $ for a single PCB. I have real machines for pretty much everything else.

Why would I build an old PC to run old games?

The foremost reason is that there are obscure features that DOSBox can't replicate.

-TFX supports QSound, but only through the Creative ASP/CSP that some SB16 and AWE32 cards had.
-Eradicator makes use of the EMU8000 on AWE32 and AWE64 cards for reverb on sound effects, like a proto-EAX.
-Numerous games like Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and MechWarrior 2 support old head-tracking systems like the ones on the Forte VFX-1 and Virtual I/O i-glasses! that obviously don't work with my TrackIR.

Then, for Win9x-era stuff, current virtual machine software just plain sucks for that. Direct3D support is very iffy (especially DX7 and prior), and DirectSound3D and Aureal A3D support is obviously nonexistent. I won't accept that.

Yes, I do have some games that won't run even on 2000/XP. Terracide comes to mind, just hanging on the developer logo screen. Then there's MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries patched to 1.1 and then with the MeX client applied, which MechVM on a modern machine does NOT run whatsoever. (At least MechVM may run MW2: 31st Century Combat's 3dfx Glide version with the help of dgVoodoo.)

And, of course, there's the Win9x games that WILL run on later OSes, but you can't use A3D because Creative offed Aureal before they could develop good 2000/XP drivers, and didn't bother supporting A3D themselves. I intend to find out what the hype behind A3D was (I have a feeling it's more about binaural HRTF mixing over headphones than it was the wavetracing), and the only way to do that is with a Win9x system.

If the available emulators and virtual machine software could do exactly what I want on a modern computer, I wouldn't even bother with old hardware, but they can't and most likely never will.

I've used DosBox to play retro games, but I always had the hankering to relive the days when I played these games on my old Pentium and Pentium 2 rigs. The experience of running a game in its native environment on period hardware is quite entertaining in itself. I think maybe the experience is similar to driving an old classic car. Then there's the cool factor. Most of the hardware I've accumulated is stuff I'd have never been able to experience back when I was a kid, most of it was all just too expensive. I'd have never had the chance to play with hardware the likes of which I now have.

Oh... and it's just so cool running retro games on a dual P3 Xeon rig. How many people would have been doing that back in the day?

Kerr Avon wrote:

(( 3 Emulators arent that good compared the `real stuff` ))

> That's both subjective and objective. Objectively, some emulators are troublesome or don't 'feel' right, true. But I think that many emulators, at least for any machine older than the N64, are good enough to serve as replacements for the hardware, objectively.

With this, I totally agree. I still have ZX Spectrum and a full one cubic meter box - of tapes with all kinds of programs and games, with harrier attack, manic miner and oli and lisa my favorites - but I really, really prefer playing in emulator 😎 C'mon, lets be honest here - you really need to be a hardcore nostalgic 'nerd' if you willingly wait 5-10 min for a game to load while watching the screen blink red and blue squares. Add a possibility of wrong load timing and you gotta do it again. That's just a sadistic way of wasting time 🤣

...though I guess it could be fun if combined with a drinking game - for example blue square grab vodka, red square - tequila or smth (never did that back in the days, I was too young) 😁