Not me!

DOSbox is nice for other less fortunate people but I prefer real hardware, that goes for consoles aswell.

Of course you don't need retro pc's for most games. But i think part of the enjoyment of this hobby comes in tracing and finding parts for a build and the actual build itself.
Maybe the some fixing to get this working again, lije replacing caps.
Most of the fun i get from retro computing, is going out for the hunt. Finding good deals and hardware i couldn't afford back then.
But i guess it's the same with other hobbies.

For me it's about the hardware. Original feeling keyboards, mice and gameport controllers, MIDI and GUS music, 3dfx Glide and PowerVR graphics, etc. There's good emulation for a lot of basic stuff, but you can't emulate everything.

A few of my reasons:

• 70 Hz smooth DOS scrolling
• Aureal A3D (surround over headphone technology)
• Splinter Cell (Only displays 100% correct on retro PC)
• Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (Only displays 100% correct on retro PC)
• Far Cry (Land Masses only show under Windows XP)
• Correct Game Blaster sound
• Roland
• 3dfx
• Playing with hardware that was once ultra high end, costing several thousands of dollars
• It just works!
• Annoyed at having to fix / tweak pretty much every GOG release there is
• I actually enjoy working with old hardware more than playing the games 😀

But you're right, there are many reasons to play them in DOSBox or on a modern PC

For DOS era where most of my nostalgia comes from i use retro rigs exclusively. For Windows games i can't be bothered and everything i wanted to play i was able to make it work in modern windows. Using patches and Glide wrappers worked well.

But for DOS i want real DOS running on a real machine.

Hah! Alright you've convinces me to buy all that stuff on ebay I was fantasizing about 😉

I don't have a DOS rig because of DOSBox and dgVoodoo2 is on the way to kill my legacy Windows machine. 😉

I like to play with hardware... in this case, an old one 😁

I love finding old hardware and getting it working. No more old hardware is ever getting made, so fixing it up and making it work feels worthwhile.

Installing Dosbox is easy and anyone can do it, it doesn't restore something that will become a limited resource in future.

To say the truth, I play most of my games in my contemporary rig, and they are mostly GOG and Steam versions. There are a very few set of games that I really want to play and needs old hardware. Probably, the items below are valid for me, too:

•Playing with hardware that was once ultra high end, costing several thousands of dollars (so was never able to put my hands on them originally)
•I actually enjoy working with old hardware more than playing the games

I have four active rigs (Core2quad Windows 7, Athlon 64 X2 Windows XP, Tualatin 1.4 Windows 9x and Pentium MMX DOS/Windows 3.1) and only two of them have any game installed on them. And there are still 5 more inactive ones (working condition but shelved) which I'm not using at all.

I'll be honest, when I start something in Dosbox, I end up playing more. It's the hardware I like.

Have done a lot, keep going from "Wow this is awesome I love messing with older hardware" to "screw this, I'm just gonna use Dosbox/VM"
Personally, I enjoy building and configuring hardware/software more than actually playing games most of the time, I have no idea why but I just do. Doesn't mean I don't play games/actually use my hardware, I use my Pentium II rig for MS-DOS Games and demos, and Impulse Tracker (Which I sometimes use to create music with).
TLDR - It's fun and interesting.

Mmmm.... I just like to tinker and with old hardware, look at old hardware, listen to it and then play some games and watch the stuff work together as if it was pre-1999 again. Cooking it down.... It's all about nostalgia, baby. 😜

Well... Forgot to mention the smell of old hardware. Nothing like the smell of the 90's 🤣

My sixteen year old daughter made the statement one day when she saw me building my second 1998's retro-box, "Dad, why do you build these if you are never going to play with them?" -- It's true that I spend more time on my primary machine doing business, email, forums, videos, and communication, but I honestly like the idea of having a secondary machine which is NOT Internet connected which I know is private for only me. I started collecting old game CDs a couple years ago and trying to play them with DOSbox and Oracle virtual machine, but they tend to be problematic and sluggish at best. Once I built a retro rig and connected it with an A/B switchbox to my primary monitor, running 3dfx I was in heaven. As for if I use the rig as often as she thinks, hey there are guys who build model air-planes, then after they are built, they put them on display and buy another kit. No one questions that.. 😀 (or maybe they do... 😀

I like the hunt for software... It's fun to find a gem for a buck or two at a second hand shop. Not real crazy about getting crap hardware from Ebay lately, but I guess that just adds to the challenge of getting these old machines up and running.

Yup... True. It's really hard to dig up old parts these day's.
Wich makes the hunt for parts, a part of the joy.

Just came back from a local 2nd hand computer shop...Guy said he threw away all the pentium 4s & older a little while ago 🙁

Most of the wares were core 2 duos and a single amd athlon 64 x2 (I think this was the oldest computer there - 50 euros for a pretty visually banged-up little system, so not a great find).

I guess it's all ebay for me for the moment!

tametick wrote:

Just came back from a local 2nd hand computer shop...Guy said he threw away all the pentium 4s & older a little while ago 🙁

Most of the wares were core 2 duos and a single amd athlon 64 x2 (I think this was the oldest computer there - 50 euros for a pretty visually banged-up little system, so not a great find).

I guess it's all ebay for me for the moment!

I would suggest Amibay, had some great bits from there, everyting has worked perfectly, was cheap & the sellers are retro fans like ourselves so packaging is way better than off most ebay sellers.

Well, I noticed that some things run better in DOSBox, others run better on the actual retro rig. Plus certain old games with low-res graphics look a lot better on an ancient CRT than a modern LCD.

As many have mentioned, it's really about the game of finding old, desirable hardware and making it function, even if it means I have to bust out my soldering rig and update the hardware with modern capacitors, new solder, newer more accurate resistors, new jacks, etc. It's a hobby, and I haven't made any money on it, yet but that's probably because I always end up fixing things for friends and acquaintances who I only have pay for the parts.

I do however, make a living restoring old automobiles, and the same principles could be applied to that.