Diablo, Subspace Continuum

You can run Google searches "top 50 PC games 1997" or similar and will find good suggestions and inspiration 😀

Close Combat? Comanche, Strike Commander, Privateer, X-Wing and Tie Fighter, Crusader: No Remorse all via DOS boot?

Nah, I want it to be a true windows game. I already have a PC-DOS install on another drive.

And thanks for the suggestion Phil, but when I looked up top 50 PC games 1995 or 1997 I only got listings for all time PC games. Thanks for the idea tho.

Command and Conquer Gold and Red Alert had improved graphics in Win95 and should still be playable on a 486
Played many a game of Return Fire against my brother on our 486 many years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire

486 + Win95 + games? Hmmm...
Sounds like a bad combi, unless we are talking 1995/96 games. The idea of a pure Win95 gaming rig, sounds like it is so obscure, that it is too cool.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is great, I just think you need a bit more CPU power because of Win95 eating all the resources. Cool idea never the less.

brostenen wrote:

486 + Win95 + games? Hmmm...
Sounds like a bad combi, unless we are talking 1995/96 games. The idea of a pure Win95 gaming rig, sounds like it is so obscure, that it is too cool.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is great, I just think you need a bit more CPU power because of Win95 eating all the resources. Cool idea never the less.

I think your right. I just played SimTower and it ran like crap. Everything that runs well also runs on Win16 based systems, so I might as well stick with OS/2 Warp 4.

I am looking to get a Slot 1 system, which are practically given away on EBay. It would make more sense for a P3 setup to use Win98, especially if I am going to be running a RIVA TNT2 or Voodoo graphics (If I can afford it. 🤣)

I still am pretty amazed at how crap my 486 runs SimTower on Win95. I have to try it on Win3.1

gdjacobs wrote:

Close Combat? Comanche, Strike Commander, Privateer, X-Wing and Tie Fighter, Crusader: No Remorse all via DOS boot?

I recently tried Tie Fighter on my 486DX2-66 and even in 320x200 it was painfully slow.

Which leads me to ask, why does the original TIE Fighter recommend a 386DX, while the Collector's CD-ROM recommend a 486DX2? My understanding is that at 320x200, they should perform the same. In other words, there were no graphical enhancements (other than the addition of a SVGA option) that would cause the minimum requirements to jump so high.

clueless1 wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Close Combat? Comanche, Strike Commander, Privateer, X-Wing and Tie Fighter, Crusader: No Remorse all via DOS boot?

I recently tried Tie Fighter on my 486DX2-66 and even in 320x200 it was painfully slow.

Which leads me to ask, why does the original TIE Fighter recommend a 386DX, while the Collector's CD-ROM recommend a 486DX2? My understanding is that at 320x200, they should perform the same. In other words, there were no graphical enhancements (other than the addition of a SVGA option) that would cause the minimum requirements to jump so high.

well my chip is twice as fast as a DX2-66 (the DX4-100 is running at 120mhz)

Win 3.11 are way better for a 486. Personally I used Dos for gaming exclusively, untill I got an K6-II-500 machine in 1998 (or was it 99, can't remember).

Not that I used Dos only in 95. I ran it from halfway into the test/beta stages. And from April testrelease I used Win95 for Word and other programs.

Dos was for gaming, Win95 was for productivity and I even used Os/2 for productivity as well. Yes. I was used to tripple boot from 1995 to the release of XP.

Can't remember how tie ran on the DX2-66 VL-Bus, CL5428, 8mb ram, side jr pro vlbus controller. That I had back in 95. I just remember that I used it and was completely satisfied with it back then.

brostenen wrote:

Win 3.11 are way better for a 486. Personally I used Dos for gaming exclusively, untill I got an K6-II-500 machine in 1998 (or was it 99, can't remember).

Not that I used Dos only in 95. I ran it from halfway into the test/beta stages. And from April testrelease I used Win95 for Word and other programs.

Dos was for gaming, Win95 was for productivity and I even used Os/2 for productivity as well. Yes. I was used to tripple boot from 1995 to the release of XP.

The irony is that the chip advertises Windows 95 right on there.

I dual booted Win 98 and NT5 before, but I don't think i've triple booted. I am currently dual booting Windows 7 and Server 2016 Datacenter.

brostenen wrote:

Can't remember how tie ran on the DX2-66 VL-Bus, CL5428, 8mb ram, side jr pro vlbus controller. That I had back in 95. I just remember that I used it and was completely satisfied with it back then.

Those are almost exactly my specs too. In various benchmarks my system runs faster than most DX2-66's in Phil's VGA Database. I was pretty surprised, to be honest. I expected it to run smoothly. But maybe my expectations were too high from playing it so much on a Pentium system before trying on the 486.

It was similar to my experience with Doom I and Descent I. Played those games to death on a Pentium with great framerates, then tried them on the DX2-66 and was like, what?

But then again, back in the day I completed Ultima 7 on a 386SX-20, and it seemed fine with no reference as to how it could perform on a 486. 🤣

Yea, I'm throwing NT 3.1 on there, might up it to 3.5. I think that's a bit more 486 friendly.

Further suggestions?

I'm totally not crazy. All my NT 3.1 floppies died long ago leaving me with the images

that i need to write

to 22 floppies

with the caveat being I only have one spare floppy around

shoot me, please.

Ampera wrote:

The irony is that the chip advertises Windows 95 right on there.

I think we can add Pentium to that too. (P-60/66/75)
486 (sx25?) with 4mb Ram was the minimum recommended for Win95, or do I remember incorreect?
Most of us nerds at the dorm, had machines from dx-33 to dx2-66 with eighter 4 or 8 mb Ram.
A few had sx25 and even fewer had a Pentium. I think 1 or 2 persons had 12mb Ram.

Ampera wrote:

Yea, I'm throwing NT 3.1 on there, might up it to 3.5. I think that's a bit more 486 friendly.

Further suggestions?

Give it somewere in the neighbourhood of 12 to 16 mb of Ram.

Ampera wrote:

I'm totally not crazy. All my NT 3.1 floppies died long ago leaving me with the images […]
Show full quote

I'm totally not crazy. All my NT 3.1 floppies died long ago leaving me with the images

that i need to write

to 22 floppies

with the caveat being I only have one spare floppy around

shoot me, please.

You can have the images on a modern machine, and write a new one on that floppy,
each time it asks for the next disc. I did that with Os/2 in 1995/96.
And I did that with Win95 April Testrelease. In April of 1995.
It will take a loooong time. Eventually you will have NT seated on the harddrive.

You can do it a different way though. Creating an extended partition (D:)
On that drive, you can have a directory "install" and inside that another called "NT".
Inside the NT directory, you make a new one for each floppy disks.
This would be something like: C:\INSTALL\NT\DISK01 and C:\INSTALL\NT\DISK02 and so on.
Then it is just a matter of filling those directories with the files from the right floppy.

Installing, would be something like booting a boot-floppy and starting the NT dos installer
program, that I simply can not remember what is called.

brostenen wrote:

Ampera wrote:

Yea, I'm throwing NT 3.1 on there, might up it to 3.5. I think that's a bit more 486 friendly.

Further suggestions?

Give it somewere in the neighbourhood of 12 to 16 mb of Ram.

It has 32.

And it will only ever have 32.

Ampera wrote:

Yea, I'm throwing NT 3.1 on there, might up it to 3.5. I think that's a bit more 486 friendly.

Further suggestions?

If you can't think of anything to do with it, and if it's going to be astoundingly difficult, perhaps you should reconsider doing it at all..? Or is that just crazy talk?

I sure can't think of anything aside from the usual Windows 3.1 stuff (and there isn't a lot of that).