First post, by captain_koloth
As I've been pondering building a new DOS-era PC, I'm struggling with the inclusion of two things:
a) 5 1/4 floppy drives
b) a motherboard with ISA slots for period-approrpiate sound
Obviously from an era-correct hardware perspective you'd want both. But with regard to the floppy drive, hot diggity dog have those become expensive. I assume most everyone game that ever flopped on a floppy has been archived and there are lots of other ways to actually load them (Gotek, 3.5 floppy, etc.) And for ISA, it's just more of a crapshoot getting a good board with ISA slots, while I have PCI-only boards up to my wars that I could run DOS PC on.
So my question is this: I assert that, functionally, between the ability to get games on 5.25 floppies and with regard to sound, through something like a YMF744 or even DOSBox sound card emulation run out of Windows 98 (which I do on one PC connected to my SC-55 mk ii) that I probably don't need either of these things, though I sure do like them purely for authenticity. Thoughts? Do you include these in your retro builds for the DOS era? Any reason other than just that authentic era-coreect feel to do it? Any other functionality I'd be missing?