Malvineous wrote:

I've actually found that of all the games, Vinyl Goddess From Mars actually runs extremely well on a 16MHz 286. Some of the levels are slow in parts, but the full-screen VGA animation is incredibly smooth. I'm not sure how they did it but it's considerably better than most other platform scrollers, and it's 256-colour as well.

Is Vinyl Goddess From Mars the latest commercial game that runs on a 286?

When I was young I had a 286 and I love side scrolling platform games.
On that computer I've played the following platform games:
Alien Carnage (not the Halloween Harry version)
Arctic Adventure
Avoid the Noid
Barbarian
Bio Menace
The Blues Brothers
Bubble Bobble
Captain Comic
Commander Keen 1-6 and Keen Dreams
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
Crystal Caves
Dangerous Dave
Dark Ages
Duke Nukem 1 (not the Duke Nukum version 😀)
Electrobody
Fantasy World Dizzy
Fury of the Furies
Gods
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Jetsons
Jill of the Jungle
Monster Bash
Ninja Rabbits
Prehistorik 1 (Prehistorik 2 didn't work because it didn't like my VGA card)
Prince of Persia 1 and 2
Rick Dangerous 1 and 2
Risky Woods
Secret Agent
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants
Skunny: Save our Pizzas
Spider-Man
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Thexder
Trolls
Xargon
Zool

But I didn't know about Duke Nukem 2 and Vinyl Goddess From Mars.

I didn't know there are so many games that can run on a 286. That makes it a very useful gaming machine to have. Sure, you can run 98% of these on a 486 or pentium machines, but I noticed some just don't run right on a faster system. Take Dyna for example - it's a bit on the fast side on a 486 - the bear thingies and the mop thingies are almost impossible to trap on a fast machine. Lemmings 1 is also easier to play on a 286 or slow 386 - seems more relaxed somehow. Golden Axe can also be a bit of a pain on a fast machine. On my K6, the enemies hit you so fast you sometimes lose a whole life because an enemy keeps hitting you and you can't move. I haven't experienced that on my 286 after about 1 hour of gameplay 😀.

alexanrs wrote:

MEM /F /P if memory doesn't fail me. This will give you an overview of available memory regions. The procedure then is as follow […]
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MEM /F /P if memory doesn't fail me.
This will give you an overview of available memory regions. The procedure then is as follows:

• By default LOADHIGH and DEVICEHIGH load stuff to the UMB block with the largest quantity of available memory, you need to override that
• Run MEM /C and take note of how large each driver/TSR is
• Edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS and specify the region manually with "DEVICEHIGH /L:?=..." and "LH /L:? ...", where "?" is the region number. Beware some odd drivers like KEYB.COM and UNIVBE: they require large amounts of free memory when loading (UNIVBE is, in particular, horrendous about it - in some machines I can't load it high no matter what), and then they will relinquish a bunch of memory back to the OS, so one of these should be one of the first things you load on a smaller block.
• Reboot and use "MEM /C /P" and "MEM /F /P" to see how are the drivers distributed now. If a driver fails to load at the specified region it will fall back to the default behaviour.
• Change the specified block and order of loading drivers until you are satisfied

thanks for the step-by-step. I'll give it a go!

Calvero wrote:

Is Vinyl Goddess From Mars the latest commercial game that runs on a 286?

Pretty sure there are other later games, but probably tricky to find out as most sites that index DOS games don't include the minimum CPU required.

kanecvr wrote:

I didn't know there are so many games that can run on a 286. That makes it a very useful gaming machine to have.

CGA+EGA games were done for 10 years. For VGA games 386DX 33 is better.

kanecvr wrote:

That makes it a very useful gaming machine to have.

I agree! I love my 286 16MHz - it does EGA and early VGA perfectly. My Headland board is set to 0 wait states by default, but with 1 wait states and turbo off, it does an 8MHz machine to a tee if need be.

I have a 386DX40 too but b/w my 286 and 486 I don't seem to ever find a need for it.

badmojo wrote:

I have a 386DX40 too but b/w my 286 and 486 I don't seem to ever find a need for it.

Your 486 33 MHz is period correct for early VGA, unlike DX2 and later. For example, even having >+30% speed compared to 386DX of same frequency, it may have no speed issues (especially with slow VGA) in mentioned Dyna Blaster, - would be interesting to check. But when 386DX 33 with Turbo off may run good some speed sensetive CGA games, for 486 it's doubtful. And when games began need 486 as mainstream in 1994-1995, your 33 MHz is already slow for many. Your 386 may to be optimum system for 1986-1993 years games, but it's only theory.

There is speed issues theme. Would be nice if you guys write there your experience where 286 is better than 486 and 386DX.
As for me I don't know where 286 may be more useful for EGA/VGA gaming compared to 386DX 33 (with Turbo button), for example. How much CGA games run good on 286 compared to 386DX. And how many EGA/VGA games have problems with 486DX2 66 is also interesting.

Personally I like the 286 because although it has a protected mode, it's not commonly used, and I'm not aware of any games that do use it. So in that respect, it's like the fastest 8086 you can get. All games that run on it do so in real mode, working within the same limitations as introduced by the first 8086.

Once you go to a 386, you are in some ways moving from the fastest real-mode-only PC, to the slowest protected-mode one, and then you may as well go to a 486 or Pentium instead. There is of course the novelty value of having the first protected-mode capable PC, but since many protected mode games work better on a Pentium with PCI VGA, in my opinion the 386 is less flexible than the later options.

Of course all these systems run real mode games as well, and faster than a 286, so depending on your point of view maybe a 286 isn't that great either 😀

I stared PC era with 286 and for this reason only I wanted it. I wanted at least what I had or better.

Malvineous wrote:

then you may as well go to a 486 or Pentium instead

The idea is to find maximum Intel CPU without problems with old EGA/VGA games and maybe some CGA ones. Maximum is possibly 486DX 33 MHz or 386DX 33 MHz. Without CGA stuff seems 486 66 with help of Turbo button may fit.
Extensive data about games compatibility is needed to understand this - on wich max CPU they work fine.

As for Pentium - it should to have more compatibility problems and has no Turbo button. If at P133-166 swtich off CPU cache then they may become too slow - concrete number is needed, for example in Speed Test P3 1 GHz becomes ~286 20 MHz.

Tertz wrote:

Malvineous wrote:

then you may as well go to a 486 or Pentium instead

The idea is to find maximum Intel CPU without problems with old EGA/VGA games and maybe some CGA ones. Maximum is possibly 486DX 33 MHz or 386DX 33 MHz. .

What about a 25MHz bus 486?

l33ch wrote:

What about a 25MHz bus 486?

Close to 33 MHz. Practical data about CPU compatibility is missing, anyway.

If you like point and click you will get the earlier VGA versions of leisure suit larry going... I had hours of fun playing those back in the day.

kanecvr wrote on 2015-12-31, 15:38:

Hi guys. I'm messing around with a 12MHz 286 right now and I was wondering what good games would run well on such a machine. So […]
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Hi guys. I'm messing around with a 12MHz 286 right now and I was wondering what good games would run well on such a machine. So far I have tried:

- Prince of Persia
- Keen 1-6
- Supaplex
- Lemmings 1, 2 and 3
- Golden Axe (runs a little slow)

System configuration is:
- 12MHz AMD N80L286-12/S on a Headland chipset board
- 1MB of ram
- Western Digital Paradise WD90C31 1MB VGA
- SB PRO CT2600
- Winbond ISA I/O card
- 640MB Quantum Fireball HDD

Sorry if this thread is old, but I was not sure about lemmings 3 working on 286 and I tested it on pcem. It does not work 🙁.

EDIT: I got confused with so many names and games, "all new world of lemmings" = "lemmings 3" in my brain 😀.

kanecvr wrote on 2015-12-31, 15:38:

Hi guys. I'm messing around with a 12MHz 286 right now and I was wondering what good games would run well on such a machine. So […]
Show full quote

Hi guys. I'm messing around with a 12MHz 286 right now and I was wondering what good games would run well on such a machine. So far I have tried:

- Prince of Persia
- Keen 1-6
- Supaplex
- Lemmings 1, 2 and 3
- Golden Axe (runs a little slow)

System configuration is:
- 12MHz AMD N80L286-12/S on a Headland chipset board
- 1MB of ram
- Western Digital Paradise WD90C31 1MB VGA
- SB PRO CT2600
- Winbond ISA I/O card
- 640MB Quantum Fireball HDD

What other games could I run on it?

P.S. - Happy new year!

I have a 286 build in the exact same case 😀 but the configuration is a bit different:

16Mhz Headland 286
Unknown late 286 motherboard with Headland chipset and 4 SIMM slots
3MB of ram - 1MB installed in sockets on the motherboard + 2x 1MB 30 pin SIMMs.
Tseng ET3000AX
Creative Sound Blaster 2.0 CT1350
ISA Multi IO card
820MB IDE Conner HDD
2x NEC CD-ROM drive

I'm not the one who built it tough, I rescued it from my old highschool. The only thing I changed is the HDD, since it's original Toshiba 200MB drive was riddled with bad sectors.

My favorite games on a VGA 286 are Shadow Nights (ninja), Prince of Persia 1 and 2, Prehistorik 1 & 2, Lemmings, Lode Runner, Dyna Blaster (Bomberman), Legend of Monkey Island, Gremlins and Space Quest 3. Wolf 3D runs quite well on my machine too. I also managed to install windows 3.1 on it and it runs fairly well.

Grand Prix Circuit from Accolade should run well.