A Pentium II is great for a range of DOS games. With MMX support, you can slow it down for older games. Some games can be patched to run in faster systems as well.

DOS games are not my forte yet so I cannot give you any sound advice on that. My first retro rig is intel 440bx ausus p2b mainboard and a p2 400mhz and riva tnt card. I would recommend a intel 440bx mobo without any hesitation.

I did not run any problems I could not solve with a short google search and for windos 98 games it runs quite well. It starts to show it's age from games from 99 onwards but that is irrevelant for you because it way way beyond the time frame of the games you are interested in.

The only grew hourse is the Dos compability of such system. But like I said in geneneral I would recommend such a system.

You dont need another computer for windows games when you already have P3 1GHz. Setup dual booking if you really want to suffer win95, or just play all the games in win98SE (guessing thats your system of choice) .
Even dos games will be fine on P3. Dos games stopped being cpu speed dependent around 286 to 386 transition.

What to do with Pentium 2? Sell it, nail it to the wall, put in a drawer for grandchildren 😀

I used to run MS-DOS games on a Pentium II and remember disabling certain caches in the BIOS setup used to slow the system down significantly. Just a tip should want to use your system for that purpose and a game runs too fast.

You can underclock it to 266 Mhz (200 on some boards). It's far from being optimal for everything DOS related though.

Throttle is another option that uses ACPI throttling to slow down things, but YMMV in experience. I recommend using -C command line switch because it disables the L1 cache by default in DOS.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-28, 08:17:

Even dos games will be fine on P3. Dos games stopped being cpu speed dependent around 286 to 386 transition.

Although most of the popular DOS games run fine, there are still speed-sensitive ones after that transition. I have tried slowing down a PIII-750 and still wasn't able to run some of these with the intended/correct speed no matter what I do. The CPU multiplier being locked on every retail Pentium III CPUs doesn't help.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-08-28, 11:26:

You can underclock it to 266 Mhz (200 on some boards). It's far from being optimal for everything DOS related though.

Indeed, earlier Pentium II CPUs have the multiplier unlocked and with RayeR's SMB, the FSB can be changed on the fly provided that the PLL clock generator chip on the motherboard is supported by the utility.

SoftMenu-like options in the BIOS setup on certain motherboards has similar capabilities regarding the FSB but it is slightly less flexible.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-28, 08:17:

Even dos games will be fine on P3. Dos games stopped being cpu speed dependent around 286 to 386 transition.

There are still some speed sensitive DOS games in the 486 and Pentium eras, and surprisingly even a handful of Windows 95 games.

List of CPU speed sensitive games

List of speed sensitive windows games (NOT DOS)

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-28, 14:16:

There are still some speed sensitive DOS games in the 486 and Pentium eras, and surprisingly even a handful of Windows 95 games. […]
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rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-28, 08:17:

Even dos games will be fine on P3. Dos games stopped being cpu speed dependent around 286 to 386 transition.

There are still some speed sensitive DOS games in the 486 and Pentium eras, and surprisingly even a handful of Windows 95 games.

List of CPU speed sensitive games

List of speed sensitive windows games (NOT DOS)

I think those lists are incomplete as well. I've gotten that runtime 200 error on other DOS games that aren't listed. Disabling the cache on my CPU fixed the problem for them.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-08-28, 17:23:

I think those lists are incomplete as well. I've gotten that runtime 200 error on other DOS games that aren't listed. Disabling the cache on my CPU fixed the problem for them.

While turning off L1 cache can mitigate "runtime error 200" this is suboptimal for games that need a 486 class CPU (or better) to run properly. With the cache disabled, those would run too slow.

For example, the retail version of Tyrian (1.1) suffers from the runtime error 200 bug, and that game actually runs best on a Pentium class CPU when all graphical options are maxed out. Of course, you can patch the executable to bypass this, but doing that for every single game that's affected gets really tedious.

For that reason, I like using a Pentium MMX for DOS gaming, since it's not affected by this bug and can be slowed down to 486 and 386 levels via SetMul very easily.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-28, 14:16:

There are still some speed sensitive DOS games in the 486 and Pentium eras

That dos list is >95% 286-386 transition, but outliers are quite surprising like Sierra flop Alien Legacy crapping out at 150MHz while Intel was already shipping 100MHz cpus when game was released 😮. Hi-Octane (1996) is in same boat, but can be forgiven since afaik its been developed in couple of weeks (reusing magic carpet engine) to plug publishers empty schedule. Sid Meier's Colonization (1994) is the biggest surprise to me, as is whole Windows list.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-08-28, 17:23:

I think those lists are incomplete as well. I've gotten that runtime 200 error on other DOS games that aren't listed. Disabling the cache on my CPU fixed the problem for them.

Thats just Turbo Pascal 6 released in 1990 when even 386 was an expensive proposition and 286 rained supreme.

IIRC, I've gotten the runtime 200 error for games released years after 1990. I had to disable my cache to get Traffic Department 2192 to work . I'd have to double check, but I think it was due to the runtime error. If I'm correct, then I got it for a game released in 1994.

To anyone claiming speed issues disappeared with later DOS games, this is mostly true imho, but not quite. Sierra SCI1 games, for example, are notoriously buggy when it comes to speed.

The retail versions of Jazz Jackrabbit (1994) and Tyrian (1995) both suffer from runtime error 200.

It's not limited to early '90s DOS games.

Also original retail installers of Raptor: Call of the Shadows (1994 floppy version) and Mortal Kombat II (1994) fail giving runtime error 200 with a too fast CPU unless you slow it down, the games themselves work fine though.

I've run into about 13 games from 93-95 that are CPU sensitive in a way or another and I've just been testing and playing games I know and like, which isn't a very long list.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-28, 08:17:

You dont need another computer for windows games when you already have P3 1GHz. Setup dual booking if you really want to suffer win95, or just play all the games in win98SE (guessing thats your system of choice) .
Even dos games will be fine on P3. Dos games stopped being cpu speed dependent around 286 to 386 transition.

What to do with Pentium 2? Sell it, nail it to the wall, put in a drawer for grandchildren 😀

Thanks for the info. Win98Se is indeed my system of choice. it is good to know from a practical point of view that it would be possible to use my p3 system for earlier time frames as well.

Having a DOS system would be cool thing though but if I can use my p3 as a working horse for earlier gameas as well it might not be really necessary.

in that case I should dedicate my second upcoming system to the win xp area instead.

But I need to find out first which DOS games I want to play and I need to find out how well these games are running in general.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-28, 17:46:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-28, 14:16:

There are still some speed sensitive DOS games in the 486 and Pentium eras

That dos list is >95% 286-386 transition, but outliers are quite surprising like Sierra flop Alien Legacy crapping out at 150MHz while Intel was already shipping 100MHz cpus when game was released 😮. Hi-Octane (1996) is in same boat, but can be forgiven since afaik its been developed in couple of weeks (reusing magic carpet engine) to plug publishers empty schedule. Sid Meier's Colonization (1994) is the biggest surprise to me, as is whole Windows list.

One big surprise to me is Carmageddon - the original Carmageddon is from 1997-1998, late in the DOS era, I believe it has some Voodoo support, etc. Seems so odd to be making speed-sensitive games at a time when speeds were increasing extraordinarily quickly. Then again, making a DOS game that required Win9x MS-DOS mode at that time... also... seems like a bad judgment call.

I was going to say that I don't understand how a turn-based game like Sid Meier's Colonization could be speed-sensitive, but the wiki answers that - it's not that it runs too fast, it just crashes for some reason.

Also surprising to see Unreal Tournament on the list - I've always considered it to be a well-behaved game (and I think it ran fine on Win2000, which was not the case for a lot of things *cough* EA), but I guess by the mid-late 2000s it was starting to have some issues too.

The other game I was going to mention is OMF 2097 but it's already on the list - I remember having a demo of it on a 486 in 1995 and it was perfectly playable, but I never did anything beyond the demo. Then I remember trying it later (Wikipedia tells me it was made freeware in 1999 but it might have taken a little while for me to notice) and... whatever system I was running at the time, it was unplayably fast.

Slot 1 system makes for a great late dos/Win9x System. The CPU doesn't make much difference for dos side of things but will increase how many 9x games are playable.
Anything but the slowest Slot 1 CPU is already crazy fast for dos and as already mentioned P2's are tricker to slow down then say a Pentium MMX.
That said just about all my games run fine on a P3 600, The Runtime Error 200 being the most common issue, but this is easily patched.
https://www.pcmicro.com/elebbs/faq/rte200.htm … 0Error%20200%20(Divide,unit%20included%20with%20these%20compilers.

However if your S370 P3 has an ISA slot the slot 1 PC doesn't really offer any benefits apart from allowing you to use different video/sound card then in your main rig.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-08-29, 04:25:

Slot 1 system makes for a great late dos/Win9x System. The CPU doesn't make much difference for dos side of things but will incr […]
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Slot 1 system makes for a great late dos/Win9x System. The CPU doesn't make much difference for dos side of things but will increase how many 9x games are playable.
Anything but the slowest Slot 1 CPU is already crazy fast for dos and as already mentioned P2's are tricker to slow down then say a Pentium MMX.
That said just about all my games run fine on a P3 600, The Runtime Error 200 being the most common issue, but this is easily patched.
https://www.pcmicro.com/elebbs/faq/rte200.htm … 0Error%20200%20(Divide,unit%20included%20with%20these%20compilers.

However if your S370 P3 has an ISA slot the slot 1 PC doesn't really offer any benefits apart from allowing you to use different video/sound card then in your main rig.

Thanks a lot for your answer. Having a rig with a different graphics card compared to my riva card is indeed of one the reasons why I might consider getting another rig. having a slot 1 system in general would also be very nice.

I have also been interested in getting a Voodoo 2 card and system for quite some time. My birthday is next month and in case I should get money (as always) as present and no other goods I could finally justify to spend the money on the V2 card.

Of course there also would be the possibilty to just replace the TNT card with the V2 card and get another partner card but I am not sure if a P3 1 GHZ would not be too fast for the good old Voodoo 2.

A neat slot 1 system with the p2 400 mhz would feel more approrpriate.

I need to do some more research if really neeed a second rig from that area.

The retro fever has got me already and gettinga second rig is inevitable in the long run but I would not be mad if my research would lead to the conclusion that I do not need a second rig from that time frame.

Getting a Win XP System would be as interesting for me as getting a slot 1 rig.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-28, 18:48:

The retail versions of Jazz Jackrabbit (1994) and Tyrian (1995) both suffer from runtime error 200.

It's not limited to early '90s DOS games.

Error comes from Turbo Pascal 6 (released in 1990). Both published by Epic (as shareware?). Jazz was Arjan Brussee first game, Tyrian Jason Emery first PC game/program ever. I think Epic dgaf about those games and treated them more as developer orientation.

VivienM wrote on 2023-08-28, 22:04:

Also surprising to see Unreal Tournament on the list - I've always considered it to be a well-behaved game (and I think it ran fine on Win2000, which was not the case for a lot of things *cough* EA), but I guess by the mid-late 2000s it was starting to have some issues too.

Its not the speed that breaks Unreal games, its variable CPU clock - something hard to predict pre 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_frequency_scaling
I think it might have been Transmeta who came up with it, they sued Intel the moment first SpeedStep cpu shipped in 2005, and I found some AMD settlement news.