DOS PC for Stepdad.

Digital X

Digital X

Digital X

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I realize this may sound a bit odd, but my stepdad has wanted a PC for his old DOS/retro games.

I've found a Pentium 3 SL37D CPU, and know I will need a Socket 1 Motherboard. Will I have to find an ancient power supply? I'm not too sure what connection types that had.

Are there are incompatibilities or building struggles I should know?

More of a fun project really.

Edit: I think he also some some 2000/XP games, so I may need to rethink hardware.
 
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DOSBox on a modern computer :p less fun I know.
I've got that and a w2k VM for old games, more recent stuff runs in compatibility mode, covers basically all games.
 
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You don't need a P3, oldest really intel wise would be a P4 even on a socket 478.

You can buy plenty older computers from £10 onwards that will fit the bill.
 
Why not run Windows 98 in a VM rather than building a legit DOS machine? IIRC, Windows 98 will run all DOS stuff fine. It only became less reliable in 2000?

Do you really want to go down the hair-tearing route of sorting out config.sys/autoexec.bat and dealing with IRQs and optimising base memory in DOS again? That definitely wasn't "fun" as far as I remember! Saying that, I do seem to remember shouting a lot over IRQ conflict problems in Windows 9x. :p
 
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better of looking on the bay for a complete system, just seen a Pentium D system for £12.99 although I don't know if that's to new for DOS
 
Any x86 machine should run Dos, you only need a very basic one though for Dos.

I used a Dell laptop with 2GB DDR2 memory for my last one. I partitioned the hard drive for 500MB on the first primary partition. That is a lot of space for DOS, my first PC had 40MB. Note MB not GB.

You should have a floppy drive A: 3.5" 1MB from memory. So look for a board with the correct connections, my lappy had a floppy drive bay.

SATA will be an issue as drivers probably do not work.
 
DOSbox will do the job better than most old DOS machines.

The other problem with most more modern CPU and DOS is that they may run many of the old DOS games too quickly. The perfect speed would be around 33Mhz, good luck in finding one of those computers these days (I may have an old 486sx33 somewhere, but don't quote me on that!)
 
digitalx said:
I've found a Pentium 3 SL37D CPU, and know I will need a Socket 1 Motherboard. Will I have to find an ancient power supply? I'm not too sure what connection types that had.
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Pentium 3 SL37D is a Slot 1 Packaged processor - so you need a motherboard with a big slot rather than a socket :)

Power supply should still be ATX, although it will be 20pin rather than the more modern 24pin.


David Bisset said:
DOSBox on a modern computer :p.
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DOSBox and a front end such as DFend would be much easier for actual DOS games.


nkata said:
Any x86 machine should run Dos, you only need a very basic one though for Dos.
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Whilst this is true - it's the things like DOS Sound drivers that you will likely struggle to find/or get working on anything modern. Not even sure that modern UEFI boards can even run DOS - not sure anyone has tested it?

nkata said:
SATA will be an issue as drivers probably do not work.
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Not necessarily an issue, as normally you can force them into "IDE-Compatible" mode, but most versions of DOS will struggle with modern hard drive sizes anyway.



Unless you have a specific reason to build an old rig (e.g. you have a lot of Glide accelerated Win9x era games and want to run them on proper 3dfx hardware), then I would look into DOSBox, maybe running Windows 98 in a Virtual machine with Virtualbox or VMWare Player, and/or looking for updated/remade versions of specific games e.g. things like Doom/Quake/Duke3d all have updated engines that take advantage of modern hardware - just require the original files from the game disc.
 
I think the op just wants to build it for fun, and it doesnt matter whether dosbox would do it better etc. i often feel like doing the same thing. I was a massive fan of the dos era. If this guy sold some of these on the bay i'd buy it instantly! I know the 486 couldnt play the last batch of actual 3d dos games like quake and tomb raider but it'l play everything else!

 
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jamiehavok said:
I think the op just wants to build it for fun, and it doesnt matter whether dosbox would do it better etc. i often feel like doing the same thing. I was a massive fan of the dos era. If this guy sold some of these on the bay i'd buy it instantly! I know the 486 couldnt play the last batch of actual 3d dos games like quake and tomb raider but it'l play everything else!
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I think the skills needed to get one of these up and running properly are quite rare, now. It's old git's territory! :p

It's not like getting an Amiga and just playing games. I do understand the appeal of the hardware though. Will OP be getting a CRT monitor as well? :D

Hah.. I remember at school.... "Yeah, but I got a DX2 with a coprocessor so ner!"
 
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Sorry just seen this, not been up long. Thanks so far.

I know about DOSbox, I use it for Network Q RAC Rally lol.

@Jamie, Yeah it's a mix of fun and a project and something to do with my stepdad really.
 
Watching that video has just made me happy. I've been trying for ages to remember a game I absolutely loved in the 90's but could never remember it. Luckily it was in that video. It was Ecstatica and I'm off to look for it online now.
 
To sum it up then, what would be the best idea? I don't mind putting together a PC but not looking forward to forcing things to run.
 
digitalx said:
To sum it up then, what would be the best idea? I don't mind putting together a PC but not looking forward to forcing things to run.
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If you really want a Physical box rather than the virtual/DOSBox route, then I'd look for an old prebuilt PC (as in theory the components should already be compatible saving any headaches).

Searching "Retro PC" on ebay gives loads of results, so just a case of narrowing down what you want really?

If it's a pure DOS/Win3.1 machine, then aim for a 486DX66 or thereabouts.

If it's a Windows 98SE machine for 16 bit Windows games (whilst still supporting most dos games), then you can aim considerably higher - e.g. a Pentium 3 or Athlon XP, 256Mb-512MB RAM and should still have an ISA slot for a Sound Blaster AWE64 or similar sound card.
 
Old tech can still be pricey and in most cases a complete system is better value, hell im selling an old Packard bell media tower for £40 onwards, my r7 240 in it is worth half that and selling the rest separate I would better 40, mean I do run win 10 pro on it lol, FYI im not advertising I'm just implying better value to buy whole than parts unless you can find them really cheap.

Bay pcbitz they sell older tech from like £7 quid for cpu/ram/mobo combos, I got an old 1.5 pentium M desktop setup for £11 awhile back for a computer I sold.
 
Ive got an old pentium 2 laptop that I use for win95 and dos games :)

I will point at that some dos games will run too fast if you have a pc that is considerably overkill.
 
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