New DOS machine..

EffBee

EffBee

EffBee

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I have nearly three hundred games in my collection going back to about 1988 - most untouched for years.

I am toying with the idea of trying to build a pure DOS machine from modern (ish) components to play the older games. I am not a great fan of the various compatibilty modes in windows.

Does anyone have experience of doing this?

I have legit copies of MS DOS v 6.2x already. The issues as I see them are:

1) Drivers. Does any new or relatively new hardware have DOS drivers anymore?

2) Speed - the processor will need to be slowed right down. There used to be programs available to do the job - is it possible to throttle back (way way back!) new (ish) processors.

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Perhaps I should just try to buy very old second hand?

I made what a now consider to be a mistake a few years ago when I dumped my old circa 1991 Compaq 386s in a skip.

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Is there such a thing as a really solid DOS machine emulator for windows?

A lot of those old games did clever stuff by-passing the DOS , and emulators, dos boxes, compatibility mode have problems with it.

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Thanks in advance from an old dinosaur :)

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Keep your memories as they are. Playing old games makes me cry as I realise they are not as good as remember.
 
DOSBox is the way forward, seriously.

Rhys said:
Keep your memories as they are. Playing old games makes me cry as I realise they are not as good as remember.
Click to expand...

Ignore this!

I still have fun playing (but not soley restricted to) the following:

Stunts
Zany Golf
Commander Keen (1-6 + Keen Dreams)
Duke Nukem 1 (Eps 1,2 & 3)
Duke Nukem 2 (Eps 1,2 & 3)
Jill of the Jungle
Loom
Indiana Jones Puzzle Games
Monkey Island 1 & 2
Xenon II Megablast
Transport Tycoon

etc etc etc
 
Last edited:
DoS VM is probably the way to go. DoS is a supported Guest OS and there are guest additions for it (drivers and such) on most free VM platforms. Unfortunately they don't have a way to limit the virtual CPU clock for my old skool run-off-a-CD games with no frame rate limiters, like Scorched earth 2 :D
 
Thanks, I'll look into DosBox and DOS in a VM.

I understand the point about games not being as good second time around many years later but nostalgia is calling :) I managed to get Masters of Magic running after a fashion a while back but the graphics were horrribly dated.
 
You may find it more fun to get a retro pentium or pentium pro and a nice old crt screen to play about on :)

(though dos box and scumm vm are the best ways around this)
 
paradigm said:
DOSBox is the way forward, seriously.



Ignore this!

I still have fun playing (but not soley restricted to) the following:

Stunts
Zany Golf
Commander Keen (1-6 + Keen Dreams)
Duke Nukem 1 (Eps 1,2 & 3)
Duke Nukem 2 (Eps 1,2 & 3)
Jill of the Jungle
Loom
Indiana Jones Puzzle Games
Monkey Island 1 & 2
Xenon II Megablast
Transport Tycoon

etc etc etc
Click to expand...

Have you tried OpenTTD if you like Transport Tycoon?
 
Possible to buy a dirt cheap old-skool machine that's compatible with mATX. You could give it a sexeh case too, better than a boring one (but less old skool)?

Maybe if you had a PC with MORE horsepower you could run an old O/S with DoSBOX and have a controller and hook the machine upto a TV? Some fancy nancy frontend stuff? Sounds more like a project though. :)
 
Vinni3 said:
If you play online in a coop server, it's more fun (until you get banned)
Click to expand...

Nah, zero point in that. Transport Tycoon (deluxe) was a great game for the fact that you can just play for short bursts and keep going back to it, building more and more as you go along.

Having to play in real time against someone real = lame.
 
VMWare would be the easies. You can installl DOS and still play in fullscreen with better compatibility and also you can keep copies of your install incase you mess it up by getting memmaker setup incorrectly!



M
 
I'd say agree, WMWare & DosBox. Considering the last machine running Dos were early pentiums you'll struggle with driver support on a modern PC. Plus DOS has a very low limitation on partitions.

Oh and Open TTD rocks. You can play it either on your own or over the net. The only major change is it's got much better signaling, something that wasn't great in the original.
 
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