MoSlo
CPUgrab
Turbo
CPU Killer
WinThrottle

I've used all of these at one point or another to slow down the CPU for older cycle-dependent games. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but in the end a dedicated retro box with a 486/low end Pentium has proved the best solution for these sorts of games.

Try a Rage 128. I currently use a Rage 128 VR 32MB PCI card on my piledriver AM3+ setup, and it throttles games that run too fast. Works great, but framerates get slower around 640x480 or higher (also depends how the game draws; Carmageddon runs like an arcade game @ fluid 60 FPS, but Build engine games hover around 25-50 fps at the same 640x480 resolution). Not recommended if you want to play software rendered games above 640x480; even Doom 95 struggles at 640x480.

Holering wrote:

Try a Rage 128. I currently use a Rage 128 VR 32MB PCI card on my piledriver AM3+ setup, and it throttles games that run too fast.

By that do you mean that it makes demanding games run more slowly..? Do you have some basis for suggesting that it will slow down DOS games written years before the card ever came out?

Not really an answer, but I just want to say congratulations on being another living person who still keeps their old Windows 98 computer to play old games. I seriously thought I was the only one still doing that... at least, several years ago until I got fed up with that and threw in the towel and started using DOS Box.

I still have an old 486 that I used to use for pure DOS games, mostly the ones old enough to use only an internal speaker for sound. But it didn't have the sound support for some of the later ones, so I would use my Windows 98 machine for that one. I used moslo a lot, and that worked for me, although it does have some problems, such as not being able to run batch files, and if I remember correctly, it also couldn't pass arguments to certain games, so you had to load the entire DOS shell with moslo and then create a batch file if you wanted to pass an argument to a program. For some Windows games that were too fast, I loaded in MS-DOS mode and then loaded the entire Windows 98 environment in moslo.

It just got too much after a while, and I agree with the others who say that DOSBox, Wine, and others work just fine. I'm much happier using them now than I was with my old setup. I don't understand why it's a hassle to load DOSBox for your games. For me, the hassle was going to a 1998 computer and waiting 10 minutes for it to start up every time I wanted to play one of my old games.

Dos = DosBox
W9x = dedicated retro box

Dos = DosBox
W9x = dedicated retro box

Just out of curiosity, why is a dedicated retro box needed for that? What's the problem with using Wine or VirtualBox?

VirtualBox does not have 3D hardware acceleration in Win9x; neither does Virtual PC or VMware. DOSBox, Bochs, and PCem are pretty much the only way you can run Win9x as a "guest" with 3D hardware acceleration, and none of those are particularly good options.

Wine can be a perfectly acceptable solution, but it isn't perfect.

And for Aureal A3D (with proper soundcards e.g. Vortex2) for games that support it of course. That's the biggest reason to keep a good win9x rig around IMO.

Basically that's it. 3D acceleration is *huge* [your choice; Glide, Rendition or any of the other niche api's), and A3D/positional audio. I have no experience with emulated W9x so I may be wrong, but a fair number of games from that period are a bit 'prickly' about which version of windows is running - 95 vs 98 for instance, and with which 3DFX card they run best, so having a dedicated box or two is the simplest way to solve compatibility issues.

tincup wrote:

I have no experience with emulated W9x so I may be wrong, but a fair number of games from that period are a bit 'prickly' about which version of windows is running - 95 vs 98 for instance

I don't think I've heard of any games that will run under 95 but not 98 and vice-versa. But we're probably getting off topic.

Some do get 'prickly'. Hind 3Dfx runs much better on W95. I can only get Aces of the Deep CE to run properly and without graphic issues on W95. There are others - mainly simulation type games - that never got fully W98 patched. I keep both W95 and W98 boxes just for this reason.

Back on topic...

Please remove moslo from your list to avoid wasting others time as its non free. Who the hell want to pay for a 90s junk software in 2020 when there are better free alternatives.

CPUGrab is exactly what I was looking for to play Commandos 1. It was unplayably fast, this tool helped with setting it to 90% cpu boggle the game is just as it should be.

Please do not necro a thread from !2014! just to complain about Moslo usage in !2020!