I'd say that any machine b/w a 286 16Mhz and a 486 33Mhz would be the thing. For sound, just about any Sound Blaster compatible would do the trick but I'd recommend that you get one with a real Yamaha OPL3 on it. 4MB's of RAM would be fine.

Buying a whole system would be easiest - something like this Compaq 486 would rock all of those games:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Vintage-COMPAQ-Pro … =item2ee6fbcc94

I don't think you're gonna get 80hz for DOS games though, regardless of the monitor.

I already have a 286 16 MHz, so if it suffices, I'm happy. It's devoid of RAM and graphics card tho. The barrel battery also spilled over parts of the MoBo, not sure if it works.

Could you please elaborate on the 80 Hz? Is it actually controlled by the game itself and not a monitor setting? I used to be plagued by headaches and eye strain before LCDs came, because I used cheap CRTs with sub 60 Hz refresh rate. Using a good monitor with 80+ Hz refresh rate actually helped a lot.

386dx40 or 486sx25 would be just fine for most of the games on the list.
One of my old time favorites are Dynablaster, and I am using a Pentium-133 with cache disabled to get a 486dx50 class machine.
We played this on 16mhz or 33mhz 386's back in 1992/93 in the school.

EDIT:
Actually. Half of those games that are on you'r list, I am playing those on this P-133 machine.
It's an "FrankenPC" computer, wich are made from the following type of parts.

Pentium-133 (non-mmx)
Super Socket 7 MVP-3 based motherboard.
64mb of PC-Something SD-Ram
And a 16gb HDD with a 2gb partition.
Cirrus Logic CL-5446 PCI 2mb GFX-Card.

I am constantly switching between an AWE64-Gold, GUS-ACE and an SB16.
The reason is, that I want some games to use one sound-standard and other games another standard.

by the way, I see locally sold parts, sometimes really cheap. 486DX 2 66 mhz for 4 euro, for instance.

Is that too fast for some games, or should it be OK?

Kaiketsu wrote:

by the way, I see locally sold parts, sometimes really cheap. 486DX 2 66 mhz for 4 euro, for instance.

Is that too fast for some games, or should it be OK?

I think having a 286-16 and a 486-DX2-66 would be a great combination, if you can get the DX-2 for 4 euro buy it at once! 😀

The games that run too fast on the DX2 will probably work fine on the 286-16. There are some games that wants a 386-DX33/40 or 486 SX/DX 16/20/25 but I think the DX2-66 will handle those OKish with the turbo setting in slow mode.

The DX2-66 will handle almost every demanding DOS game except Quake and a few other very late ones, a slower 486 would struggle with many games released 1994 and 1995.

Kaiketsu wrote:

anything under 80 hz causes headaches

VGA has 70 Hz. In case you want more refresh, you may to use DOSBox. DOSBox works so good for most games that I doubt you'll notice any difference with using CRT and correct settings, - you should try it. 386 33 MHz is enough for your games, maybe even lower. Pentium is generally better and may be ok too, while 486 is more compatible with pre-1995 games.

What is the bare minimum that I need to run those games at full speed?

You need maximum where games you want work ok, not minimum. Besides easier use, prices for minimum are not significant lower, may to be even higher.

286, 16 mhz will probably choke on Aladdin or Indiana Jones games

286 for 1994 year games like Aladdin may appear a bad idea.

how much ram do I need? I can buy a couple of working 4MB simms

For late 386 4 Mb were common, 486 - 8 Mb, Pentium - 16-32 Mb.

Another option is to look for Pentium 60/66mhz and disable the caches to get less speed if necessary.

This needs concrete info how much speed will be reduced. PII 300 by this method reduced speed somewhere to 386 20 MHz, if I remember correctly.

Is SB16 optimal? or was it Adlib?

For DOS SB Pro hardware compatible would be enough. There were many such cards.

Tertz wrote:

For DOS SB Pro hardware compatible would be enough. There were many such cards.

True....
Most people I knew back then, that were gaming or just those who had a computer. All did eighter have SB-Pro cards or SB16 cards.
Only a really select few had something like GUS and only the educational institues had MT32/Midi stuff. (Highschools and alike)

Kaiketsu wrote:

anything under 80 hz causes headaches for me

This is a common misconception. How much a display appears to flicker is dependent on two factors, not just one:
1) The speed at which the screen refreshes
2) The speed at which the glow of the phosphorous coating dies out after being hit by the beam

Now, the thing is that as monitors were designed for higher refresh rates, the afterglow-time was reduced, to avoid ghosting. So, in general, a monitor designed for high refreshrates will look very flickery when running at lower refreshrates, because the pixels die out very quickly.

However, older monitors tend to have slower phosphor, and were actually designed to operate at 50/60/70 Hz. Most of them aren't very flickery. They just suffer more from ghosting.

Anyway, when you're running DOS software, you don't get a choice. Refreshrates are hardwired to the CGA/EGA/VGA standard videomodes. So you can get a monitor that's capable of more than 70 Hz, but you'd never actually use it. Most games run in 320x200, and that's hardwired to 70 Hz on VGA.

Aladdin - was playing that in a 486DX4-75 and in a Pentium 90.
Prehistorik 2 - was playing that it in a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40
Xenon 2 Megablast - never played
Dyna Blaster - never played
Monkey Island series - was playing that in a 386DX-40
Indiana Jones series - was playing that in a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40
The Incredible Machine - was playing that in a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40
Lost Vikings - was playing that in a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40
Another World - was playing that in a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40
Prince of Persia - was playing that in a 8088 XT, a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40
Cannon Fodder 1&2 - was playing that in a 386SX-16 and a 386DX-40

Above are my real experiences from the past (1992-94). 386SX and DX had 5 and 4MB RAM respectively, 486DX4 75 and Pentium 90 had 8 and 16MB RAM respectively. And the 8088 had.. well, 640KB.

brostenen wrote:

Only a really select few had something like GUS

At DOS era end ~1995 Creative ISA cards were not common too, in Europe at least. Among my familiars almost anyone bought cheap ~$20-30 SB Pro clone from Taiwan. Not much DOS games had significant advantage from SB16 anyway, and not many people wanted to pay for wavetable. More to say, I prefer FM in many games, like Dune 2 for example and where FX are made by FM.

Scali wrote:

This is a common misconception. How much a display appears to flicker is dependent on two factors, not just one:
1) The speed at which the screen refreshes
2) The speed at which the glow of the phosphorous coating dies out after being hit by the beam

I'd add 3rd factor - subjective perception. It depends on how big is the angle by wich you see sides of the display. On small 14" monitor you have less flickering problems than with same Hz on 17" as side vision is more sensitive to movement. Other things: how much the brightness is (for example, white color of background is worse), how small ellements are - small elements on high resolutions need more eyes tension.

There were plenty of people in DE, NL and IT who had SB, GUS and Roland in the mid 90s.

Well, the support for GUS in games wasn't that good in general. A lot of games only support Adlib/SB/MT-32, so you'd have to use either SBOS or MegaEM emulation on the GUS.
And some of the games that do have GUS support, don't sound all that great. For Doom I actually prefer to use MegaEM for music over the built-in GUS support.

GUS was mainly popular in the demoscene I guess. Most PC sceners had a GUS, and quite a few demos don't even run at all if you don't have a GUS (there is a special MS-DOS/GUS category for it on pouet.net).