Looking to get into OLD PC gaming (DOS)

Hi all,

I'm currently looking to et into old school PC gaming mainly big box dos stuff. Especially Doom and Wolfenstein.

I just want to know what sort of spec's I'll need to run any DOS game I throw at it. Also Should I go MS DOS 8.0, Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.

I like the super neato look of DOS over windows but can I run most if not all games from that era through DOS?

Thanks in advance

PS: What are some awesome games?

 

The classic problem with Old PC gaming with real hardware is there is not perfect do it all machine. There is always a compromise.
This can be a problem, but It is also part of what makes it interesting

Some games scale terribly with CPU, so you need to have the right processor or some other mean to slow it down.
There is also the matter of the sound card.

For Games like DooM and Wolf, you could probably do with something up to Pentium 2. Those games scale well with CPU and P2 are cheap and have ISA slots, which you would need for sound cards.

As for the OS, I use Dos 6.22 for the classic feel. But Dos 7 supposedly is great as you have Fat32 support.

Personnally I have a Celeron 400 for my Fast dos Machine.

A 486 DX/2 for medium speed.

an am386-20 for when the 486 is too fast.

and a Tandy 1000TX for those really old PC games and to enjoy Tandy 3 voice sound goodness

 

what about an mmx200 pentium? found one for $200 on fleabay

Seems to have an audio card and gpu. I'm guessing it will be ISA?

 

Did you really offer him 1$ ? lol, for sure 200$ is way too much I think.
I used to find those in the trash all the time.
Dunno, getting old computers is a funny business. Price on ebay are high, meanwhile other people just send them to the landfill. Dunno how it is where you live but I would check on craiglist or something.

 

Yeah I did

I might hit up some old pc repair shop tomorrow

 

A 200mmx would do for plenty of things to start but I would leave it at that price.
Honestly I would start by getting the cheapest crap PC I could find, likely a Pentium 2, and see how you like messing around DOS and its games.

Why a pentium 2 ?

1. It will run the two games you specified so far.
2. Has ISA slots so compatible with old dos era hardware ( most p2 boards have an even mix of ISA and PCI, I recommend 2-3 ISA slots). Isa slots started to get very rare with PentiumIII then pretty much disappeared with Pentium 4 except on some rare specialty boards.
3. Tons of em have been made so they usually are pretty cheap and easy to find.
4. Most Fit ATX cases. Before Pentium 2 ( not 100% sure about mmx ) Motherboard Used AT cases. Which are now very rare and annoying to find. So If you buy an P2 board off ebay or something you can just drop it into any common case and use any common PSU. There are still AT Pentium 2 so beware but they are less common.
5. Will actually run a healthy lot of DOS games to your satisfaction.

 

here is a pretty nice and cheap barebone p2 kit. You still need a case and PSU though.
Maybe you can find those for free? I used to junkyard dive for computers. I have lots of retro parts now. ( Edit,This one fits both AT and ATX PSU, you might have move problem with the case though, looks like its a AT case board, sry about that.)

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Bxpro-Intel-...US_Motherboard_CPU_Combos&hash=item3cda34a75a

 

I'd grab yourself a Pentium 2 on a board that supports ISA and AGP. Kit it out with a Soundblaster Awe 64 and a TNT2 card of some description (My recommendation is a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra) stick Windows 95 on it. This gives you a good chance of experiencing around 10 years worth of gaming from DOS right up to 98-99.

 

Ok so pentium 2 it is is there a difference between a slot1 cpu and a proper socketeddddd one?

 

I didn't even know P2s were available in other packages than Slot 1? Wikipedia lists some socketed ones, but those are for laptops... so, are there even mainboards for those? Anyways, I'd recommend a normal, Slot-1 one.

 

oh okies, I swear I remember having a socket pII?? Hmm any way

 

No not really, I've only ever come across the slotted CPUs back in the day.

I bought myself a machine from fleabay not so long ago for this purpose:

P1 166mmx (overclockable to 200) (£10)
32MB ram
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (£10)
3DFX Voodoo 3 (£15) (went with this because...3DFX - and it's the last of the fan-less cards they did, also anything more would be bottlenecked in this machine anyway!)
120GB HDD (free)
Windows 98 / Dos 7
CD/DVD Drive (from other old machines I had)
Both types of floppy drive installed (3.25" & 5.25")

Runs 90% of DOS games I've thrown at it perfectly, only problematic games were the really old ones which scale in speed with your CPU, meaning they were meant for a 16Mhz CPU not 166Mhz so they run MUCH too fast. Though for games like that you can install a resident program that slows the computer down. Another trick to slowing it down is to disable the CPU cache in the BIOS.

Having windows 98 and a voodoo card means I can run a shit load of 3DFX games on there as well. Though it struggles with games from around 98/99 onwards understandably, for those I use my old Pentium 4 machine.

A Pentium 2 is a good choice, I went with a 166 because that's what I had back in the day. Though if you're looking to play games like Duke Nukem, Blood, Quake ect at SVGA 800x600 or higher you'll need a Pentium 3 really (which can be found with motherboards with ISA slots on). The more power you have for those games the better as they render in software and depend largely on the CPU not the graphics cards as modern games do. Though you'll struggle to slow a P3 down enough for the older games.

Ideally you'd be best with more than one machine if you have the space, similar to how MaxWar stated. There's just too wide a spread of requirements for games from the 80s through the 90s to be able to play them all on one machine. Have a think about which era you'd like to play them from and buy a top end machine from that era.

 

It was probably some variant of AMD K6.

In any case, VOGONS is the place to go to talk vintage PC gaming: http://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=25

 

I also throw in my vote in favor of the Awe64 as a starter sound card. Its a good all-rounder that wont break your wallet.

-Its has good audio and good Windows9x/Dos compatibility.
-Good backward compatibility with previous SB.
-It has good Wavetable music and can be used to control a General Midi module/mt-32

Where it fall shorts is with the FM sound. It just does not sound as good as what you can get with a good dedicated FM card.
But if you really find yourself diggin Dos gaming and FM music, nothing prevents your from getting a second (older) machine that you could equip with a good SB 16 to fill that hole.

 

That's not true. ISA was still common for modems and less so for sound cards for some time. Intel, VIA, SiS and ALi all made chipsets for Socket 370 boards that implemented ISA. AMD and VIA made chipsets for Socket A.

Oh, and ATX boards can be problematic, too - lots of early ATX boards won't work with modern ATX PSUs (ATX 1.3 and later), which don't have -5V. If it has a 24 pin connector, there's no -5V.

As for socketed Pentium II, er no. Well, there was the Pentium II Overdrive, which was an upgrade for Pentium Pro. You're probably thinking of either a Super Socket 7 (AMD K6-2) or Socket 370 (Celeron / Pentium III).

Of course, you don't HAVE to use an ISA sound card. Sure, some are desirable, but you could get away with a PCI SoundBlaster. Other than that, the only thing you might possibly want in ISA is a game card - although they were often combined on sound cards, anyway.

 

Yup ISA was definitely still going strong during the P3 era, I remember going to buy my P3 motherboard back in the day and looking through the selection, I don't remember seeing a single board which didn't still have at least 1 ISA slot on there.

 

Well, I guess ISA was less rare than I had in mind but it still seems a Majority of slot 1 boards have ISA slots while only a minority of 370 boards have ISA. I guess my point was that it was on the decline by then.

As for the PSU, admitedly I did not know. I thought modern ATX were all backward compatible.

 

Thanks for all the helps guys

The PSU isn't a problem as I have a 20pin atx psu here with a -5v rail, that I was going to use for a supergun

 

Small followup to this: Apparently there was a variant called "Pentium II OverDrive", which was the only one to ever use the "Socket 8". So socketed P2s do indeed exist, but aren't really common.


Xeauron: What drivers are you using for your V3? I'm setting up a new old box of my own right now, and besides the official 3dfx labs drivers, I've also come across "Amigamerlin" and "3Dhq" ones - any recommendations for one over the other? (If in doubt I'd prefer compatibility over speed.)

 

I'm currently using official 3DFX drivers, latest ones - or rather V1.07.00

From here:
http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo3.htm

I believe the Amigamerlin drivers are for Voodoo 4/5 only, so they don't apply to this card. Also I've not looked into the 3DHQ drivers as the card runs everything I want it to at optimal speed (as fast as this rig will allow anyway) and with the official drivers, full compatibility. I also flashed the card with the latest BIOS as well, not sure what was improved so it was probably a useless exercise...

I did install an overclocker so that I can underclock it to 100mhz when needed (ironically). At ultra low DOS resolutions the chip on there seems to produce a lot of noise on an LCD screen evidenced by artifacting on screen which looks like VHS tracking issues (only digital). Down-clocking the card eradicates most of this problem I've found and doesn't affect game play, I don't think this is as much of an issue on a CRT screen. There are also a few DOS titles which have problems with like Commander Keen 2 through 4 playing in purple screen (this may happen with a couple of other games also), however again this can be avoided by using a CRT screen.

Overall advise would be to use the official drivers and acquire/use a CRT with this card! If I had the room I'd have a CRT in the corner, and I probably will squeeze one in at some point. Games of this era (mid to late 80s and 90s) all look far better on a good CRT anyway. Nobody seems to know what causes the purple screen issue in some DOS games on LCD screens with a Voodoo 3.

Other than that it's a fantastic all rounder, very happy with it. I did have a Voodoo Banshee in my rig back in the day which I loved to death, and that's basically a hamstrung pre-release Voodoo 3.