1. Dual-slot1 of around 1GHz CPUs, because it's old enough to be considered "retro" (has ISA slots for example) and is new enough for what I usually do with a PC.

Should be packed with 1GB of RAM (for Win2K/XP), RivaTNT or newer video card (for games like Unreal, Undying, Half-Life), 10/100Mbps NIC, ISA sound card, decent PSU, IDE DVD-RW and large SATA drive on a PCI controller (a fast and quiet SCSI drive might also be an option, but size is an issue there and I don't want more than one HDD in my system). Everything of known brands, of course (no no-names) 😀.

2. 486DX2/66 on a VLB mainboard, with 16-32MB of RAM, 2MB or 4MB VLB video card (some S3 or Tseng), VLB I/O controller, a decent ISA sound card and some NIC.

This should be enough for most DOS games and should provide smooth Win3x experience.

3. I would say a 286 but, since I cannot seem to find a mainboard for my 286-10 and 287-10 AMD chips, I would settle for a "matched pair" (CPU+NPU) of 386 generation - something like Intel's 386DX-33/387DX-33 or Cyrix's 486DLC-40/87DLC-40 - with 8MB of RAM, 1MB or 2MB ISA video card, some NIC and a Sound Blaster.

I would use this system to learn programming all over again (assembly language included) and every once in a while for some less resource-demanding DOS game.

4. This would be the "spare slot" - there's always some brand-name system or retro kit to test, clean and/or repair 😀...

i would choose these, cos they are what i have settled on in practice as covering my needs very well:

1. k6/3 + ga5ax + matrox g200 + ews64xl + db50xg + gus ace
System can play warcraft 1 more or less like a 386 [which is the only speed-sensitive game i care about] without graphical glitches. wide enough sound capability to make me happy [gus music in heretic etc] and a nice front panel midi connection for an mt32.

2. xp2000 + a7m266 + voodoo 5 + mx300 + v2 + sp724 + scb7
System can play diablo 2 in glide and a3d about as fast as it can be got i think [i reckon its limited by texture loading speed, and its the v5 that causes the remaining slight slowdowns]. remaining bits extend compatibility.

3. p4 qrg4 es + p4gax + v2sli + sblive + sb16 + sw60xg
Mainly for warcraft 3 [dx8.1] which plays nice on vp card and gets eax from sblive. other items extend compatibility - eg. qrg4 can go down to x8 multiplier and with winthrottle at 87.5% slowdown as well, i can play warcraft 1 at nice speed without too nasty strobing of water [though it is still a little faster than a 386]. v2sli means i can play glquake nice in glide or [on wildcat] full opengl.

4. something up to date, backwards compatibility not an issue as the previous 4 cover what i want.

ratfink wrote:

3. P4 engineering sample in P4GAX, Win98, SB Live [for EAX], Wildcat VP870 [for opengl and directx8.1], SB16 and SW60XG. Can slow down a long way if need be from 2.8ghz max, wide support for games and I hope [...] fast enough at full speed for dx8 games I wanna play. If it ain't, I'll swap the VP870 for a GF Ti4.

From what I read it seems the minimum P4 E.S. multiplier is 14x. Hardly a slowdown. Whereas Pentium II, III, Tualatin E.S. have a minimum of resp. 2x, 3x and 4x.

Only 1 machine: Modern PC with DOSBox

2 machines: + 486

3 machines: + Super Socket 7

4 machines + Pentium 3 1 - 1.4 GHz

sgt76 wrote:

Would this number even be enough?

Definitely not! 😜

Once my attic is cleared up I plan to materialize a couple planned builds I have and this would include 3 Tualatin rigs with various graphics and sound cards for a retro LAN 😁
Adding to this would be 3 regular LAN rigs and I'm already "over budget" 😜

sgt76 wrote:

If not, what would the minimum number be?

I'm not sure yet. If all goes well, I'll want 3 LAN rigs (+ a spare one), 3 Tualatin rigs, at least 1 Super 7 rig (already build) and at the very least 1 stable 486 (cuz my current 486 kinda sucks 😵 ).
On top of that I'm considering one (retro) HTPC and at least 1 "system" rig for doing stuff like backing up files from harddrives and such.
And of course I also have my offline database and my modern W7 rig.

I would consider the mentioned rigs my personal bare minimum as theres a couple other rigs I'd like to try, for instance:
At least 1 Super 7 rig with a Cyrix MII, one "Super 7 impersonator rig" using s370 and a Nehemiah with 9x and I'd want at least 1 AT rig which I want to put in a "Commodore" PC-AT minitower case (and I don't really care what I put inside it or if I'll ever use that rig. I basically just want to use that case! 😁 ).

- modern PC with DOSBox, as Mau1wurf put it

- for really early DOS games - "XT turbo"-class machine, CGA (or dual-mode CGA/Herc card or an EGA/VGA card that has good CGA compatibility), ideally one of those multi-mode monitors that can go color/mono amber/mono green, ~40mb HDD, and a hi-density floppy controller w/1.44 and 1.2MB drives

- PII / tualatin PIII with a good gaming config for really LATE dos games and Win9x, don't know nearly enough about these systems to be specific though 🙁

- for "middle period" games, something like a 486 DX2/66 w/32 MB RAM, decent VESA capable SVGA card, SB AWE32 and a really nice VGA CRT, two floppies, CD drive and whatever HD i can find. This should nicely cover 286/386-era stuff too.

for me all of this is "wishful thinking" though, and even if it wasn't I still lack the required knowledge, so there ya go.

1) One productive PC, Intel Core something. Something silent and reliable and snappy. max 350W PSU. Windows XP. 4:3 TFT screen. Undecided regarding NVidia vs AMD/ATI.
2) Mobile sub-notebook/netbook with long battery life, Intel Atom does for now, but AMD Fusion or Intel ULV would be nicer. Solid state disk. Windows XP. With Midi to USB adapter so I can also use it as a software synth external module.
3) Retro PC. Intel P-III Engineering Sample CPU. i440BX mainboard. Voodoo 3 or maybe GF MX440. Flash Disk. Some soundcard combo that gives me SB16 + OPL3 + MPU. DOS 7.10, Windows 98SE. CRT screen.

Since I can have four, I 'll put together this one too. But I don't really know what to do with it.
4) Another Retro PC. ALI Super socket 7 mainboard. K6 mobile CPU. S3 Virge 4MB. Yamaha OPL3-Sa3 soundcard + 4M midi DB.

gerwin wrote:

ratfink wrote:

3. P4 engineering sample in P4GAX, Win98, SB Live [for EAX], Wildcat VP870 [for opengl and directx8.1], SB16 and SW60XG. Can slow down a long way if need be from 2.8ghz max, wide support for games and I hope [...] fast enough at full speed for dx8 games I wanna play. If it ain't, I'll swap the VP870 for a GF Ti4.

From what I read it seems the minimum P4 E.S. multiplier is 14x. Hardly a slowdown. Whereas Pentium II, III, Tualatin E.S. have a minimum of resp. 2x, 3x and 4x.

Seems a needless put-down gerwin, this thread was just some light chat i thought. But since you raise it, the slow-down that's possible on my p4 es is sufficient for my needs whwen combined with winthrottle. And my p4 goes down to an x8 multiplier. I read that somewhere... oh yeah, on my screen...

Never enough... ever... I always want MORE!!!! (Yes, I am greedy, and I approve this message).
Edit: A few systems that I want (for too many purposes to list) are in my signature.

this is funny because I already have 4 machines 😜
I'll just post what I have:

1. Main PC - Sandy Bridge i5 2500K, Asus P8P67M pro, 8GB RAM, Radeon HD6950, Sound blaster X-Fi titanium, 3x 1TB Samsungs in RAID5, Win7 x64

2. Old DOS games rig - 386DX-40, 8MB RAM, contaq motherboard, SB Pro 2 with attached CDU311A, ET4000 VGA, 425MB Conner HDD, Music Quest MPU-401 ISA card, Roland MT32, DOS 5

3. Later DOS games rig: Am486DX4-100, 16MB RAM, IH-4077C motherboard, Acer Magic S20 with XR385, Gravis Ultrasound Classic 3.4 1MB, ET4000W32/p 2MB VLB, 1.2GB Seagate HDD, DOS 6.22

4. Win9x games rig: Pentium 2 400 (got a 1.2 tualatin on a slocket to throw in there if I need to), 2x 12MB Voodoo 2's in SLI, Abit BX6 motherboard, Diamond MX300 (Aureal Vortex 2), 256MB RAM, 40GB Seagate HDD, Win98SE

They seem to do pretty rwell for what I want. I find that anything that won't run on the win98 rig can usually be made to work on my main machine.

I do have a couple of other machines on the backburner. One is a 286 rig with EGA graphics and another is a Slot A machine with Voodoo 5, if I could only have 4 I'd probably replace the 98 rig with the Slot A and I don't think I'd keep the 286 as I'd rather the 386/486. (286's are a lot slower 😀 )

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Only 1 machine: Modern PC with DOSBox […]
Show full quote

Only 1 machine: Modern PC with DOSBox

2 machines: + 486

3 machines: + Super Socket 7

4 machines + Pentium 3 1 - 1.4 GHz

I would choose for..

386, SS7, and athlon 1400mhz.

Why 386? Most games that are to fast for 486 runs better on an 386..
For most games that you need a fast 486 for (mostly begins at 100mhz) that games runs also fine on an ss7 motherbord with k6 II processor.

Robin4 wrote:

Why 386? Most games that are to fast for 486 runs better on an 386..

i think most games from the 386 era (and 286 too) were programmed with variable clock speeds/processors in mind, so they generally do their own throttling. In my experience it's mostly 8088-era games that have a difficulty in adapting, but even there it varies.

can you name a few games that run too fast on a 486 but fine on a 386? (serious question... always looking to learn here.)

Wing Commander is the first one that comes to mind.
Scorched Earth is another, if you have a maths copro (like the 486DX has) choosing your angle/power is impossible because it goes too fast and shots go at light speed.
Strike 2 is another game that doesn't like fast 486's.
I also had trouble getting some old Lucusarts games like Monkey Island to work correctly with my MT32 on the 486 unless I hit the turbo button. That's the beauty of these old machines is that you can hit the turbo button and basically get 286 performance 😀

I think I'm just attached to my 386. If I had to give all of them away except for one I'd probably keep that one 😀

VileRancour wrote:

can you name a few games that run too fast on a 486 but fine on a 386? (serious question... always looking to learn here.)

There are a few like Wing Commander and Test Drive 3.

However turning off the Cache on the 486 (can be done through BIOS or command line tools) solves this issue. Most 486 also have a Turbo button, which gives you even more flexibility.

Hence why I wouldn't choose a 386 at all!

UNLESS it's a Vobis Highscreen 386-DX 33 desktop 🤣 That was my first ever PC...

ratfink wrote:

Seems a needless put-down gerwin, this thread was just some light chat i thought. But since you raise it, the slow-down that's possible on my p4 es is sufficient for my needs whwen combined with winthrottle. And my p4 goes down to an x8 multiplier. I read that somewhere... oh yeah, on my screen...

Sorry, I did not mean to sound harsh. I am just so interested in underclockable CPU's. And when you mentioned the P4 I could not help but investigate briefly, without actually having one, and note my observation here for reference. Good to know your P4 does 8x instead.

DonutKing wrote:

Wing Commander is the first one that comes to mind. Scorched Earth is another, if you have a maths copro (like the 486DX has) ch […]
Show full quote

Wing Commander is the first one that comes to mind.
Scorched Earth is another, if you have a maths copro (like the 486DX has) choosing your angle/power is impossible because it goes too fast and shots go at light speed.
Strike 2 is another game that doesn't like fast 486's.
I also had trouble getting some old Lucusarts games like Monkey Island to work correctly with my MT32 on the 486 unless I hit the turbo button. That's the beauty of these old machines is that you can hit the turbo button and basically get 286 performance 😀

I think I'm just attached to my 386. If I had to give all of them away except for one I'd probably keep that one 😀

You don't happen to mean Tankwars by any chance? I thought Scorched Earth was made later then Tankwars 😜

Anyway, in Tankwars you can slow the game down though when getting near Katmai's, it's approaching the max the game can be slowed down.

Never actually played Tankwars.... it was definitely scorched earth, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_Earth_(video_game)
Played it on DOS around 94/95, got it on a shareware disk with a heap of Apogee and Soleau games on it 😀
Although the version I had was older than the one pictured, it only had single colour landscapes, didn't have the photo landscapes like the iceberg in the picture there.

Worked perfectly fine on a 486SX but if you go to DX it goes nuts

DonutKing wrote:

Never actually played Tankwars.... it was definitely scorched earth, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_Earth_(video_gam […]
Show full quote

Never actually played Tankwars.... it was definitely scorched earth, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_Earth_(video_game)
Played it on DOS around 94/95, got it on a shareware disk with a heap of Apogee and Soleau games on it 😀
Although the version I had was older than the one pictured, it only had single colour landscapes, didn't have the photo landscapes like the iceberg in the picture there.

Worked perfectly fine on a 486SX but if you go to DX it goes nuts

Your link goes to the wrong usage of Scorched Earth. It goes to the military policy and not the video game.

Also, why would a game work on a 486SX and not a DX? There's no possible reason for that. They are identical chips. Games didn't use the FPU back then so it can't even be the unlocked FPU speeding things up to the point of being unplayable in such a case.

Good point. Maybe it was a DX2 or DX4?