VOGONS


First post, by Sphere0161

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Hello everybody,

This is going to be a very simple post. I am thinking on getting some old hardware in order to play (exclusively) DOS games (No w95 nor W98 games). But I would like to take advantage and get some decent hardware that shall be able to run the games smoothly. I am sure I will stomp into problems, so I wanted to gather some knowledge before discovering some of those problems after spent my money in ebay.

When I was young I used to have a 66MHz 486 that for example struggle to run the game Screamer. But games like Jazz Jackrabbit, Raptor or Baryon run very well on that hardware. What I am afraid is that if I got a pentium III at 733 with freeDos or a pentium II at 233Mhz, might not run old games properly because the CPU is too fast. And I wonder if there is a solution for this CPU/too fast problem other than emulation, or several computers.

The other issue I might be likely to get is playing audio, as in my initial research it looks like it is a common problem. Any recommendation on the audio topic?

And finally, can you come up with any other likely problem I am going to stomp into?

Reply 1 of 43, by Zup

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Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-23, 10:30:

And I wonder if there is a solution for this CPU/too fast problem other than emulation, or several computers.

There are some slowdown utilities than can help (i.e.: moslo). Also, Jazz Jackrabbit will fail at around 200Mhz, but there are some utilities to patch it (look for borland error 200, or tppatch).

Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-23, 10:30:

Any recommendation on the audio topic?

Most ISA cards would work fine. For most compatibility, get a Sound Blaster Pro or 16.

Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-23, 10:30:

can you come up with any other likely problem I am going to stomp into?

Memory management. Some games will require EMS, other XMS, other ludicrous amounts of conventional memory... also, there will be games that refuse to run with EMM386 loaded... At that time, memory management was some form of art.

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Reply 2 of 43, by HanSolo

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Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-23, 10:30:

And I wonder if there is a solution for this CPU/too fast problem other than emulation, or several computers.

You will always bump into a game that struggles with a too fast CPU, no matter what system you have. The common solution to this is underclocking and disabling caches.
Some CPUs/mainboards are better suited for this than others.

And finally, can you come up with any other likely problem I am going to stomp into?

Dying capacitors, leaking batteries, IRQ conflicts, hardware incompatibilities, lack of AT-style cases, image scaling on LCDs, LCDs only showing 60 Hz, ... 😀

Reply 3 of 43, by konc

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Some platforms are better than others in being able to adjust speed, maybe some research in that field would be helpful.

Also what does "DOS games" mean? Since you started with a 486/66 it's unlikely that you want to go further back. But if you include early CGA games you'll also face the bad CGA emulation of VGA cards, apart from the obvious speed problem.

Reply 5 of 43, by Shponglefan

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Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-23, 10:30:

What I am afraid is that if I got a pentium III at 733 with freeDos or a pentium II at 233Mhz, might not run old games properly because the CPU is too fast. And I wonder if there is a solution for this CPU/too fast problem other than emulation, or several computers.

A Pentium II or Pentium III system will be complete overkill for a DOS-only system. You can throttle them, but it's a little bit like buying a Ferrari and then only driving it around residential streets.

Your best bet will probably be a Pentium or Pentium MMX class computer. As per the link danieljm posted, you can build a system around a processor like a Pentium MMX 200 and then use the SETMUL utility (available here: SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86) to tune to it to various performance levels from 386 through Pentium.

That will allow you to use that one system to nicely cover 90s DOS gaming, which based on the games you listed in the OP, seems to be what you're aiming for.

The other issue I might be likely to get is playing audio, as in my initial research it looks like it is a common problem. Any recommendation on the audio topic?

Audio shouldn't be that much of an issue. This is an area that largely comes down to personal taste. Often it either depends on whether one is looking to recreate the authentic sound they remember via a specific sound card.

Otherwise, there are a whole host of Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster compatible audio options for DOS gaming. Personally I'm a big fan of ESS based cards (ESS 1688 or 1868).

And finally, can you come up with any other likely problem I am going to stomp into?

The biggest challenge will probably be finding working era appropriate hardware at a reasonable price, especially if want to use a CRT monitor for full authenticity.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 6 of 43, by LewisRaz

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A socket 7 machine with an ISA sound card should suffice. Disabling caches can get the performance right down as others have posted about above. Thats probably the most cost effective way to do it.

Else you could get a late 486 board with PCI and an Am5x86 but those can get expensive.

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Reply 7 of 43, by donbright

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i played dos games in the 80s/90s.

the solution to sound problems is to play around with IRQ settings and io ports make sure they dont conflict with other hardware. if still no luck, try a different sound card or motherboard.

the other thing with the memory is that you may have to play around with what drivers your system is loading in order to free up enough RAM for the game to start. along with getting the various expanded / extended memory manager settings correct. this means a lot of editing of config.sys and autoexec.bat

however the good thing is there is 20+ years of people figuring this stuff out so you have tons of hints and tips and tricks just a web search away (maybe even chat gpt?) there are tons of youtube videos of people trying to get old games running too.

you probably wont have to deal with bad CDROMs , bad floppies, bad hard disks, etc etc like we did back in the day.

good luck

Reply 8 of 43, by kaputnik

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LewisRaz wrote on 2023-04-23, 20:27:

A socket 7 machine with an ISA sound card should suffice. Disabling caches can get the performance right down as others have posted about above. Thats probably the most cost effective way to do it.

Else you could get a late 486 board with PCI and an Am5x86 but those can get expensive.

Yep, the Socket 7 platform, especially Pentium MMX, is more or less perfect for the DOS computing newbie in my opinion. It's still not prohibitively expensive, is modern enough to be easy to work with, and the speed can be tuned to match most DOS era hardware by manipulating caches and TR12 registers. The FSB and multiplier selection jumper headers can also be wired up to switches for even more finely grained speed tuning.

Stick a S3 Trio V64 or Virge graphics adapter (cheap and compatible) and an ESS ES1868 based ISA sound card (cheap and has great SB emulation, make sure to get one with wavetable header) in it, and you're good to go 😀 The only thing it can't handle are later DOS games like the Build ones in higher resolutions. That's where a high end PIII machine or similar comes into play.

Reply 9 of 43, by chinny22

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Sound like your more into mid-late 90's games?
If that's the case your right your going to want something faster than a 486.

This list gives a rundown of known troublesome games and patches, etc to get them working.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

But don't try and get 100% compatibility, its simply not possible. As long as the rig you build can play the majority of your games then it's a successful build

Reply 10 of 43, by Zeerex

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Some findings of late.

Jazz Jackrabbit- on a fast machine following TPPatch, in this case it was a 1GHz Tualatin, the in game menu doesn’t work when using a Gameport joystick. It flickers like things are too fast and it’s near impossible to navigate even with keyboard.

Since someone brought up LCD. I have a couple of old LCD 4:3 and 5:4 and I frequently have an issue with any game Windows and DOS that change screen mode. My LCDs will try to automatically adjust to it but it generally ends up chopping off some of the image and I need to do an adjust on the hardware of the monitor. Sometimes in game, for example Jazz, between the menu and level start the monitor adjusts.

Reply 11 of 43, by Sphere0161

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Thank you for your answer, I have been reading through all of them, and clearly I cannot use a pentium III at 733Mhx.

As most of you have figured it out, most of the DOS games I want to play are pretty much from the 486 times. Perhaps some slightly older than that. I definitely would like to run Screamer smoothly so I should go for something more powerful than 66Mhz 486. If I could get hold of the original recommended requirements of the game that would be great, but I can't find them anywhere.

It seems that using a Pentium or Pentium MMX is much better option than for example, trying to use an AM5x86 at 133Mhz. Isn't it? Also I should avoid anything faster than 200Mhz so anythin larger or equal to Pentium 2 is not a good idea.

Regarding sounds, it seems I shall go for Soundblaster, it is the most compatible one and also I think it is what I got. So it should sound as I remember (Which is probably more important that sounding better).

Your answers are being very useful! Looks like I need a S3 Virge videocard too.

Reply 12 of 43, by Shponglefan

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Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-24, 20:46:

I definitely would like to run Screamer smoothly so I should go for something more powerful than 66Mhz 486. If I could get hold of the original recommended requirements of the game that would be great, but I can't find them anywhere.

PC Gaming Wiki is the best place I've found for finding original system requirements.

Looks like the recommended specs for Screamer was a Pentium 90: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Screamer

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 13 of 43, by Jo22

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Just checked, in 1995, a Pentium 90 was really high-end.
Maybe that's why the recommendation was a Pentium 90.
It was among the fastest there was.

If anything higher was widely available at the time, the Pentium 90s perhaps wouldn't have made it to the recommend specs.

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Reply 14 of 43, by Shponglefan

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A Pentium 90 or 100 would have been the fastest chips at the start of 1995.

During 1995 the Pentium 120 and 133 were released. I use a Pentium 133 in my 1995-era pure DOS build. It's probably my favorite of my DOS machines, as it plays everything really well for that era.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 15 of 43, by aitotat

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I just recently tested a lot of CPUs on a socket 7 motherboard with HX chipset. More information here. I can highly recommend K6plus-CPUs if you have a motherboard that supports them. Although they are Super Socket 7 CPUs, they do really well on a Socket 7 motherboard. You can easily get them down to 386 speeds and at maximum, they are far faster than MMX CPUs.

MMX Pentiums are very good too, especially at 166 MHz. It is the easiest. 200 and 233 should be fine too although in some cases you might need to slow them down to 386 speeds where MMX-166 is fine at 486 speeds. None of the tested CPUs, and this included the K6-3+@450 MHz (note 75 MHz bus. 100 MHz bus might be a different thing. I did not test with 100 MHz bus since this is a socket 7 motherboard), was affected by the "200" MHz turbo pascal bug.

So MMX Pentiums are good but so is Pentium Classic 200 MHz. For DOS, it is a bit faster than MMX 166 (with fastest RAM timings) and you can slow it to be a bit slower than MMX 166. But for Windows I would choose the MMX-166 instead.

Reply 16 of 43, by dionb

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Sphere0161 wrote on 2023-04-24, 20:46:

Thank you for your answer, I have been reading through all of them, and clearly I cannot use a pentium III at 733Mhx.

Not ideal, but don't get to worried. Some speed-sensitive titles might not work, but they are in the minority and a lot will work. I also like late DOS games and my system for running them has a P3-500. The difference is that I have a separate system for older stuff (a 486SX-33 with turbo function to drop it to XT speeds).

Now, I'm not suggesting you immediately go down the rabbit hole of multiple systems (with multiple sound cards each etc. etc.), but rather a reality check: if you are completely new to doing this 'bare metal' on old hardware, I'd strongly recommend not trying to make the ultimate system that does everything perfectly. It can be done, but massively increases complexity, both in hardware (specific uncommon CPUs, motherboards, sound cards) and software.

If you already have a P3-733, by all means start with seeing what you can do on that. Most late DOS stuff will run perfectly well on it. Only start looking for other hardware if you hit issues.

As most of you have figured it out, most of the DOS games I want to play are pretty much from the 486 times. Perhaps some slightly older than that. I definitely would like to run Screamer smoothly so I should go for something more powerful than 66Mhz 486. If I could get hold of the original recommended requirements of the game that would be great, but I can't find them anywhere.

It seems that using a Pentium or Pentium MMX is much better option than for example, trying to use an AM5x86 at 133Mhz. Isn't it? Also I should avoid anything faster than 200Mhz so anythin larger or equal to Pentium 2 is not a good idea.

For bare metal DOS stuff, the biggest requirement is an ISA slot for an ISA sound card (yes, PCI might be possible, but is a headache). Apart from that, if you are new to the game, go for convenience. 1995-1997 Socket 7 motherboards are relatively common and easy to work with. I wouldn't rule out Am5x86, but 486 boards are more expensive, much more fiddly to configure and Screamer would probably prefer something faster.

Don't focus on that MHz number too much - the 'MHz myth' is a thing. You can only compare CPUs in the same family by MHz, but as soon as the design is different, the numbers become increasingly meaningless. Any Pentium-class CPU has a 64b wide memory bus where a 486 has a 32b wide bus. That goes a long way to explain why an Am5x86-133 is about the same speed as a Pentium 75 in most things. But "most things" doesn't necessarily mean what you want to run. Compared to 486, Pentium has a much stronger FPU (floating point unit) so where Quake is essentially unplayable on any 486 (including 5x86), it will run on an early Pentium - however apart from Quake almost no games of the time used the FPU. The same happens again with P1 vs P2: there the L2 cache moves from bus speed to (near) CPU clock which hugely boosts overall performance and the FPU is once again massively improved, and by 1997 games were (starting) to use it. In general, marketing claims focused on instructions (Pentium, MMX, SSE etc), but as a rule any benefits from them only became relevant years after indroduction. The big performance improvements came from simple things like memory bandwidth and cache size and speed. A Pentium MMX is significantly faster than an identically clocked Pentium non-MMX on the same board. Is it the MMX instructions? No. Chances are nothing that system is running will even use MMX. The difference is mostly due to the doubling of L1 cache from 16kB to 32kB.

Regarding sounds, it seems I shall go for Soundblaster, it is the most compatible one and also I think it is what I got. So it should sound as I remember (Which is probably more important that sounding better).

Very valid last point.

Creative cards, particularly the SB16, are and were a buggy mess (particularly with MIDI, but even without that they all had clicks, hisses or ringing sounds). They are a clear example of marketing trumping actual technical quality. But they are what a lot of people remember from the 'good old days'. If that's what you're after, go for it - indeed, try to find exactly which model you were used to hear so you can look for one with similar behaviour.

Your answers are being very useful! Looks like I need a S3 Virge videocard too.

In an ideal situation: yes. But here as with the CPU: don't go mad in getting the 'perfect' system straight away.

Screamer has a 3D accelerated version for the S3 Virge, but the Virge is famously derided as '3D decelerator' as performance was often better with software rendering. More generally, S3's VESA SVGA implementation was one of the best, but the number of games that a) used SVGA at all and b) had issues with some bad VESA implementations was very small. I never even noticed back in the day. Here I'd also suggest going with whatever you have and only looking for new hardware if you hit specific issues on stuff you are doing.

Note by the way that S3 Virge cards are very common, but a lot of cheaper implementations have extremely poor analog circuitry, leading to fuzzy output and - worse - a washed-out, white-ish image. Vendors like Diamond, ELSA, Miro and Number Nine made extremely good S3 Virge cards, but they can be more sought-after/expensive than the crappy ones. Here again, there are rabbit holes to go down - the performance of the VRAM-based VirgeVX is frequently derided by DOS gaming enthousiasts, and indeed it is lower than the then cheaper Virge DX DRAM cards. But that's a few percent slower, which is peanuts >25 years later. Conversely, VRAM-based cards were more expensive and tend to have better build quality (and analog circuitry) so I actually prefer them.

TLDR: don't try to get the perfect systems straight away. Get an easy system and run with that till you hit its limits.

If you are building from scratch, I'd suggest:
- ATX form factor (AT is fine, but needs harder to find cases, power supplies, keyboards and mice)
- Socket 7 motherboard. Something with Intel i430TX would be rock-solid. Via MVP3 gives more performance options (faster and slower) but can be more fiddly.
- S3 or nVidia TNT video card (for compatibiltiy - but in both cases get a good brand as cheap ones offer poor quality)
- ISA sound card. If you remember Soundblaster 16, go for that. If they are too expensive, check out something with OPTi 929/930 chip > very compatible and much easier to find cheaply
- you *can* mess around with original HDDs, but an IDE-CF adapter and a 4GB CF card is so much easier. Note that >=8GB you might hit BIOS limits with So7 systems, so stick with max 4GB for fewest hassles.

Reply 18 of 43, by AlexZ

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If DOS is a priority then get a Pentium II 333 + 440LX/BX (not VIA). Those have open multiplier and thus can down clock if needed. You should be able to play games also in SVGA. 486 and Pentium 120 do not have have sufficient speed for SVGA games. You will be missing a lot.

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Reply 19 of 43, by CharlieFoxtrot

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AlexZ wrote on 2023-04-25, 17:05:

If DOS is a priority then get a Pentium II 333 + 440LX/BX (not VIA). Those have open multiplier and thus can down clock if needed. You should be able to play games also in SVGA. 486 and Pentium 120 do not have have sufficient speed for SVGA games. You will be missing a lot.

IMO it really depends what you want out of the experience. Back in the day me and my pals simply didn't play any games in SVGA resolutions with our Pentiums other than just quick tests to see what that slide show looks like. When systems were beefy enough to run those games in P2 era, pretty much everything we played were by that time 3D accelerated, thus old DOS games weren't mostly any priority, but "new" things.

So, if you want to play most games as people did back in the day, you don't need more performance and regular Pentium systems are more than fine. They can run pretty much everything that were designed for DOS and 486s extremely well. Unless you specifically want to play games that require relatively high FPS (racing, simulators, FPS etc.) necessarily in SVGA resolutions. If that is the requirement, I wouldn't build it as a pure DOS machine anymore in any case and would install Windows on it and use it for late 90s 3D accelerated games too.