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First post, by Chaniyth

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Greetings,

It's been years since i've had a DOS/Win 3.x only PC. My main goal is to have an "Ultimate DOS" and early [possibly up to year 2000 perhaps earlier] Win9x gaming rig.

I recently saved a working Pentium III PC from impending doom [was left by the side of the road for trash to pick up]. It works great, it's a Pentium III 550Mhz with 256mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, DVD RW drive, ATI Radeon [32mb AGP 2x], 13GB hard drive and SB Live! PCI soundcard.

Now my question is, is this "too powerful" of a machine for classic DOS and Win 3.x/Win9x gaming? I know games such as One Must Fall 2097 play just way too fast [is there a way to safely temporarily slowdown the CPU?]

My gf told me to just use DOSBox, but in my opinion, emulation [of anything] just doesn't feel right.

Please remember, I only want it mainly for DOS gaming, and from time to time maybe some Win 3.1/Win9x games as well.

Thanks all in advance for your input and/or hardware and software suggestions. 😎

Reply 1 of 17, by Mau1wurf1977

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No such thing as "Ultimate DOS machine".

IMO you won't get around building two machines for what you're after.

My recommendations:

DOS: A 486 or a Pentium with BIOS options for L1 and L2 cache
W98: Pentium 3

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Reply 2 of 17, by Jorpho

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Instead of trying to define some kind of nebulous "Ultimate DOS" gaming rig, why not just decide what you want to play, and then build an appropriate machine for what you want to play? You're not going to play everything, whatever your intentions might be.

OMF 2097 has a manual speed throttle built right into the program. It's not particularly obvious, but it's there.

Reply 3 of 17, by Jolaes76

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What Mau said.

even if you focus on the DOS era only, there are the early DOS games which were designed for really slow CPUs and small amount of RAM, CGA cards etc. and there are the late DOS extender games (without hardware acceleration) supporting SVGA modes.

For the first group, you either build the chronologically correct machine (286 / 386) or use a 486 / Pentium with throttling.

For the second group, you might want to have the P3, K6-2+, K6-III+ or even stronger CPUs. These games usually have no timing problems, and have far fewer issues.

There are quite a few slowdown proggies, some of them are pretty decent but do not expect them to work as well as DosBox in terms of accurate speed throttling (without jerks and hiccups). Wait until someone gives you a comparison of slowdown utils like Mo'Slow, Bremse, The Throttle etc. Or try and test them yourself.

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 4 of 17, by Chaniyth

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I guess the era's would be EGA - SVGA DOS games, mainly stuff I grew up with in the early 90's through late 90's. , and to be honest computing back in those days, and all the BBS' etc just produced grand time back then compared to todays mediocre internet and lackluster games both PC wise and console wise.

I do have an AMD Am5x86-133 486 rig I purchased at a local thriftstore several years back [hah, I only paid $10 for it]. It has the infamous "Turbo" button so I can throttle down using it [had to utilize it for The Adventures of Willy Beamish (certain areas of the game require slower CPU for precise timing)]. It runs DOS games just fine, Alien Rampage ran at a smooth 60FPS on it even.

However due to constraints financially, etc when I moved, I left the 486 with my parents when I moved from out of state, perhaps I should call them up and have them ship it too me. Should cost me only $40 or less to ship it.

Was a great little system and played all DOS games I threw at it, dunno what it's limitations are though. 😁

Reply 5 of 17, by sliderider

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:
No such thing as "Ultimate DOS machine". […]
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No such thing as "Ultimate DOS machine".

IMO you won't get around building two machines for what you're after.

My recommendations:

DOS: A 486 or a Pentium with BIOS options for L1 and L2 cache
W98: Pentium 3

True this. Early DOS games are going to require a slow processor and old hardware because later hardware may be too fast or unsupported by the game. Later DOS games probably won't run on very early DOS machines because the developers probably wouldn't have left support in for a lot of very old hardware so having an older machine for early games that are speed sensitive and a newer one for later games with higher hardware requirements is going to be a must. Be careful, though, because once you get started building old gaming rigs you're going to start wondering about ways to tweak the system for better performance or the advantages of one piece of hardware over another and that will lead to building even more systems for "testing and evaluation", you'll rapidly run out of space in your house, your electricity bill will soar and you'll become an outcast among your friends and family members. 😁

Reply 6 of 17, by Mau1wurf1977

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sliderider wrote:

you're going to start wondering about ways to tweak the system for better performance or the advantages of one piece of hardware over another and that will lead to building even more systems for "testing and evaluation", you'll rapidly run out of space in your house, your electricity bill will soar and you'll become an outcast among your friends and family members. 😁

So true 😀

But you're right, ideally you could do with way more than just 2 systems. Like one from each period.

Reply 7 of 17, by SquallStrife

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sliderider wrote:

Be careful, though, because once you get started building old gaming rigs you're going to start wondering about ways to tweak the system for better performance or the advantages of one piece of hardware over another and that will lead to building even more systems for "testing and evaluation", you'll rapidly run out of space in your house, your electricity bill will soar and you'll become an outcast among your friends and family members. 😁

You'll also be broke, have an eBay feedback score in the high thousands, and wind up on a first-name basis with your post man.

VogonsDrivers.com | Link | News Thread

Reply 8 of 17, by Chaniyth

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LMAO. 🤣

Thanks for all the awesome replies, looks like i'll be tinkering with both my 486 and Pentium III systems for now. My other half is already complaining about "too many", and as I replied to her, "Pffft, you can't have too many!" 😜

Reply 9 of 17, by Jorpho

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SquallStrife wrote:
sliderider wrote:

Be careful, though, because once you get started building old gaming rigs you're going to start wondering about ways to tweak the system for better performance or the advantages of one piece of hardware over another and that will lead to building even more systems for "testing and evaluation", you'll rapidly run out of space in your house, your electricity bill will soar and you'll become an outcast among your friends and family members. 😁

You'll also be broke, have an eBay feedback score in the high thousands, and wind up on a first-name basis with your post man.

And then one day you wake up and realize, "Hey, wasn't I doing this to play video games? Eh, whatever," and go out dumpster diving again.

Reply 10 of 17, by badmojo

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Jorpho wrote:

"Hey, wasn't I doing this to play video games? Eh, whatever," and go out dumpster diving again.

Thank goodness this isn't just me. I finally put together my ideal 486, I love it, I sit down to play some classic games at long last... then I start wondering "what would that broken down old box with the leaking battery look like with some TLC?" And off I go again; soldering, cleaning PSU's with compressed air, etc.

It's just like dusty old lego with 240v running through it - very addictive.

Reply 11 of 17, by Tetrium

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Jorpho wrote:

And then one day you wake up and realize, "Hey, wasn't I doing this to play video games? Eh, whatever," and go out dumpster diving again.

Lmao! Right now (after not having build anything for months) I'm slowly working on my last of 3 9x LAN rigs even though I barely even used the other 2 rigs except for installing their drivers and using them to test some more hardware like my external 250MB ZIP drive 😜

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Reply 13 of 17, by Mau1wurf1977

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I feel the same. I do love to play with the hardware, but I admit that when I played Space Quest or Fate of Atlantis, I played them in DOSBox.

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Reply 14 of 17, by Chaniyth

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filipetolhuizen wrote:

Some DOS games like GP2 and Hioctane at maximum detail will hog even on a PII.

Hmmm, but GP2's and Hioctane's mimimum requirements are only a 486 class system with 8MB of RAM. I guess it would be a system stresser though especially at maximum detail due to it being fully 3D.

I must admit also, even though GP2 is software rendering, it sports some incredible 3D effects at maximum detail.

Also did you know GP2 has an active online community since 2001? It has a plethora of addons for the game. Check them out here.

Reply 15 of 17, by filipetolhuizen

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Chaniyth wrote:
Hmmm, but GP2's and Hioctane's mimimum requirements are only a 486 class system with 8MB of RAM. I guess it would be a system st […]
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filipetolhuizen wrote:

Some DOS games like GP2 and Hioctane at maximum detail will hog even on a PII.

Hmmm, but GP2's and Hioctane's mimimum requirements are only a 486 class system with 8MB of RAM. I guess it would be a system stresser though especially at maximum detail due to it being fully 3D.

I must admit also, even though GP2 is software rendering, it sports some incredible 3D effects at maximum detail.

Also did you know GP2 has an active online community since 2001? It has a plethora of addons for the game. Check them out here.

They will run fine on a 486 on low-res mode. But switch to hires and you'll only get decent fps on a PII 300+. GP2 will only achieve maximum fps on a PII 450.

Reply 16 of 17, by Mau1wurf1977

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Yea for DOS SVGA you can't have enough grunt. Best I could do was a 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 with a single ISA slot. But I haven't tested any DOS SVGA games on that config.

You could even get a few Athlon boards with ISA slots or use PCI sound cards, which work great in these late DOS games (much better drivers).

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
My YouTube channel

Reply 17 of 17, by jmcinvale

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For running GOS games all you need is a computer running Windows 95. I remember having a Windows 95 machine and running all my DOS games without a single problem. When I switched to Windows 98 some games would run too fast.