Hmmm. The first computer I bought was a Gateway 2000 200-MHz MMX desktop so they hold special meanings for me. A Pentium 1 with 64MB RAM, S3 PCI video card, 3dfx Voodoo1 3D card and a ISA (pick your poison) sound card running Windows 98 is pretty hard to beat for a lot of gaming. Pentiums can be slowed down with disabling L1 and L2 cache so older games can be played. AMD K6-2/3+ CPU's might be more flexible but definitely not required for a 'time machine'. Even phil shows (cant remember where) that a Pentium 200-MMX running at 200-MHz (2x100 FSB) with cache disabled is about the perfect 486 DX2 66 substitute. I love playing with a lot of things but a P1 system like I described would be pretty awesome.

Look at it this way:
-a 486 with cache and turbo manipulation, can play games from the mid 1980s to 1993 no problem. Even some games from 1994-1995 (graphic adventures and other non-demanding games).
-a fast (P133+) Pentium with cache manipulation can play games from 1990 to 1996.

So there are some older games that will work on the 486 but not the Pentium. And some newer games that will run well on the Pentium but not the 486. Target the games you want to play and see where they fall. That will determine whether a Pentium is the right choice for you.

I spent THOUSANDS of hours playing Starcraft on a pentium 133.

In reality, it all comes down to what games you want to play.

Depends on the kind of games/software you're running I suppose?
The Pentium was THE system for Quake.
Also, the Pentium era was when the first 3D accelerators came out. So Pentium + VooDoo was an interesting platform for example.

For me personally, the Pentium was the first machine that could run Windows NT 4.0 nicely, and formed a great development machine with Visual C++ 6.0. NT 4.0 was super-stable, and you had very smooth multitasking and nice 32-bit disk access etc. It was the first time a PC gave me that Amiga-feeling in terms of smoothness and being able to multitask properly.

Pentiums were also really interesting to optimize in assembly for, with their dual pipeline configuration. You could make it go REALLY fast with properly hand-tuned code.
Then the Pentium MMX came out, which was the icing on the cake for people optimizing graphics code in assembly.

So yea, for me the Pentium was a pretty cool era.

It's mostly nostalgia for me, as some of the first PCs I could call my own had P5x CPUs (66, MMX 233, 133). It's one reason why I keep the Toshiba in my sig running.

Pentiums have their place, especially for late (1995-1997ish) DOS games as well as early Win9x games which are sometimes speed-sensitive and run too fast on P2s and up.

Pentium 1 systems to me are the budget option when 386 and 486 hardware is too hard or costly to be had (very much so for some parts of the world) and one can avoid the troubles of building an AT build this way. The upsides to Socket 7 is that there are ATX boards still available in small numbers and one doesn't have to struggle with finding decent dos compatible pci graphics cards. The cherry on top is being able to do performance emulation through clock and cache manipulation so you can emulate 386 and 486 performance but it is not the complete range. In short yes socket 7 is the way to go for most building their first system or just want a 3 or 4 in one to reduce build cost but for pure dos gaming one is better off building a proper 386 and 486 systems instead of a single build.

If you got money to burn and the room just go for it building several systems to cover a wider range with better support for speed sensitive games.

Pentiums are pretty nice for a wide range of stuff, but they're bland. A P200MMX was the first machine I bought with my own money as a teen. Having spent nearly six years with it, my own retro interests are in different things now.

I don't understand why a 386 or 486 'better' for a pure DOS machine?

A 486 stops at a 486 speed - DOS gaming goes beyond this speed. And besides, you can get a full range of speeds from a 8088, 8086, 286, 386, 486, Pentium and Pentium II-class speeds from the right Socket 7 board and CPU combination, just not with the popular combinations posted here (SS7 + Pentium/ K6s)...

486's are pretty neat in various ways. You get the turbo button, VESA Local Bus, a ton of ISA slots for multiple sound cards, compact Baby AT cases with massive power switches, a mostly passively cooled system, and a 100-133 MHz 486 can do just about everything you need out of a pure DOS/Win3.1x machine.

firage wrote:

486's are pretty neat in various ways. You get the turbo button, VESA Local Bus, a ton of ISA slots for multiple sound cards, compact Baby AT cases with massive power switches, a mostly passively cooled system, and a 100-133 MHz 486 can do just about everything you need out of a pure DOS/Win3.1x machine.

- Turbo: Can be found on S5 and S7. Granted they are rare, but so are the best S3 boards.
- VLB: It's just a bus. What's connected is more important.
- ISA slots: Three and four are plenty and can be found on S7 boards. There are boards with even more if required.
- AT cases: S7 boards are common in this format. Large, low RPM fans can easily be attached for silence. Adapters exist for CPUs taking larger fans.
- 133MHz 486: Struggles with later DOS games, especially SVGA compared to S7 CPUs.

Pentiums are out of place with most of these features, and stuff that struggles on a fast 486 runs best on a P2/P3.

firage wrote:

Pentiums are out of place with most of these features, and stuff that struggles on a fast 486 runs best on a P3.

How are they out of place when I just explained every point above?

Besides, jumping from a 486 to P3 also skips speed ranges in-between. Unless it's an unlocked P3. And you can skip P3 with Socket 775.

j^aws wrote:

firage wrote:

Pentiums are out of place with most of these features, and stuff that struggles on a fast 486 runs best on a P3.

How are they out of place when I just explained every point above?

Besides, jumping from a 486 to P3 also skips speed ranges in-between. Unless it's an unlocked P3. And you can skip P3 with Socket 775.

Just don't bother as some of us including myself have our own way of doing things and others have been around the block for decades so when they go to build something they know what works best. When we want our 386/486 systems we want them and the same goes for all the other eras. This hobby is like a bag of chips and one chip isn't enough until we have had the whole bag crumbs and all.

^^ Sorry, but "don't bother'" with what? Discussing?

I still don't have an answer to why a 386/ 486 is better for a pure DOS machine. The OP was asking a question about nostalgia...

j^aws wrote:

^^ Sorry, but "don't bother'" with what? Discussing?

I still don't have an answer to why a 386/ 486 is better for a pure DOS machine. The OP was asking a question about nostalgia...

The answer is already in this thread, the problem is that Pentium 1 systems do not emulate the full range of speeds that were seen on 386 and 486 systems as Pentium machines can either be too fast or too slow as there are limits to what most can accomplish through cache manipulation alone. Clocks even when the cache is turned off does matter and having a decent enough board to get the job done important if they want to play picky games other wise they have to miss out on some games. The 3 and 4 in 1 is great provided that you are ok with this plus they do save a lot of money, the only catch is that what most people are able to find are not particularly good as SS7 boards have become somewhat rare and expensive.

^^ There are better options than SS7 boards for speed sensitivity.

The too fast/ slow issue is resolved by boards that have very low FSBs, as low as 25/16 MHz for certain S5/ S7 boards. And there are slowdown techniques besides cache on/off. These boards have Turbo mechanisms for slowing. Some slowdown by forcing Write-thru cache policy on CPUs. These give a smooth range of speeds for 386/486 ranges.

With an interposer and K6-III+, and the right turbo-switched board, you can scale very smoothly from an 8088 to a PII (call it a 6in1). Even Slot 1 / Socket 370 with Ezra-T/ Ezra CPUs have a very smooth 386/486 range - better than the SS7 platform, which seems to be the constant reference point for slowdown.

So the problem that you're referring to is to do with the type of board attached to the Pentium (SS7), and not the Pentium itself.

nforce4max wrote:

j^aws wrote:

^^ Sorry, but "don't bother'" with what? Discussing?

I still don't have an answer to why a 386/ 486 is better for a pure DOS machine. The OP was asking a question about nostalgia...

The answer is already in this thread, the problem is that Pentium 1 systems do not emulate the full range of speeds that were seen on 386 and 486 systems as Pentium machines can either be too fast or too slow as there are limits to what most can accomplish through cache manipulation alone. Clocks even when the cache is turned off does matter and having a decent enough board to get the job done important if they want to play picky games other wise they have to miss out on some games. The 3 and 4 in 1 is great provided that you are ok with this plus they do save a lot of money, the only catch is that what most people are able to find are not particularly good as SS7 boards have become somewhat rare and expensive.

In steps the P54C with TR12 registers.

I love my Pentium 😀 It's my main DOS machine. But I did lots of tests and it runs the games that I like. So like people already stated, it all depends on what games you want to play.