For you, what is THE quintessential DOS PC? A fast 386 capable of running Wolfenstein 3D and Wing Commander? Perhaps a mid to high-end 486 so as to run the likes of Doom at good framerates? Or would you opt for a Pentium able to play the highest end games such as Quake and Descent 2? How would you kit it up? What parts would go into it?
I would go Pentium and Windows 98. You can play more shit and still have a real DOS.
Objectively? The uber (and authentic) DOS machine would be a Pentium 120, 16 MB of RAM and some S3 Virge/TL Et6000. I mean, they say that all DOS games are fine with the 486 family, but then you run into something like vanilla MW2, which demonstrates nothing but utter disdain for your 486SX.Personally, the best DOS machine for me is a 486DX2-66 with SB16, 8 MB of RAM and S3 Trio. But it’s just that it was my very first own PC. Figures.
>>12722696>THE quintessential DOS PC?a 386. 486 you start getting into windows territory
>>12722704This but a Pentium 2 or 3 and Windows 98 SE.But if we're only doing DOS then I'd go with a 486 DX2 since it seems the most typical of the period and you don't need a loud ass fan like you do for the later chips. You can get away with just a heatsink iirc. RAM could be 8 or 16 MB but 8 would be fine.
>>12722814True but 386s are so much slower than any 486 it's not really worth it, especially if you actually plan on playing games.
>>12722696DOS is a wide era of rapid technological advancement. You'll probably want to aim for the later era rather than the start.>S3 video card, PCI or AGPFor DOS, just about any of them will do. They've got the best compatibility for things like the Commander Keen stuttering issue.Cards with Tseng Labs chips are also good, but they're much more expensive.>3DFX Voodoo 1Check a list for what games ran best with 3DFX Glide under DOS. If you wanna play any of them, grab a Voodoo 1. Many of the DOS Glide games require a V1 and aren't fully compatible with Voodoo 2 at least without unofficial patches.>Pentium or a 486, 120mhz or belowMany games depend on CPU frequency to run at the right speed. For those games, you can not build a single machine.If a game needs a 286 to run at the correct slow speed, then you can't get around that easily in hardware. You need a 286. Some games don't mind but basically anything released before the 386 is gonna freak the fuck out on a 386 or faster.A nice Pentium is required for later games at nice speeds like Carmageddon, Dreams to Reality, and Jazz JackrabbitIf you don't plan on graphics intensive 3D games, then a 468DX 66mhz provides the best middle ground between compatibility and performance. However bear in mind that most 468 motherboards are AT, not ATX.>at least 16MB of RAMMemory management under DOS is a nightmare. You'll want at least 16mb to make it all a bit easier.What you can get, both min and max RAM, depends on your CPU and platform. No point going above 32mb for DOS-only.>PS/2 mouseDon't bother with serial mice.>PC CRT monitorMany DOS games are hardcoded to run at certain resolutions and framerates, which an LCD or a scaler might not like.>a sound cardThe sky's the limit here. You could spend a fortune on a nice stack of Roland stuff, or a GUS. But you'll probably be fine with anything that has decent Sound Blaster support.
>>12722914>Many games depend on CPU frequency to run at the right speed. For those games, you can not build a single machine.I remember one of the D&D collections released around 2000 coming with a program to throttle CPU speed for the older games in the collection. Just guessing there are ways to do that for other games.
>>12722816A fast 386 more than suffices for most things up to around 1992, including Wolfenstein 3D. After that, though, yeah, you want a 486 or better for sure. The stickler is, as >>12722914 points out, all those damn speed sensitive games, though I will say in my testing, a good chunk will run just fine even on a mid-range Pentium. You miss out on the likes of Wing Commander 1/2, most of the Ultima games, and others, but well, it's up to you whether those are worth upkeeping a whole other machine.
>>12722696I had a great time with my 386DX40. That is the ideal for the era to me, but I'm happier with a fast 486. Those high-end games like Quake and Descent 2 was sort of in a time I consider past the "DOS PC". The time machine which is specifically aimed at that time is probably going to utilize the Pentium MMX 233 or AMD K6-III+3D Now! as they seem to be the most compatible with most of the titles of the time.
>>12722696For me it's a Am5x86 clocked to 150mhz running on a 50mhz fsb with optimal setting - I have built quite many such systems and seeing it cut through DoomII like a hot knife through butter was a hoot.If ones into older software maybe a 386DX40 or the all time classic Dx2/66. Dx2/80 also a damn cool chip. I really loved the 486/586 era... so many great memories.
>>12722696personally it's either a 486 Gateway 2000 4DX2-66V with win 3.1/95 or a Dell Dimension 4100 with windows 98 and a P3though anything with a 7 segment display and a front facing keylock is a win in my book
On a related note, I was messing around with 86Box to see if I could get Wing Commander running at the correct speed, and I first tried a 386DX running at 33 MHz since that's what everyone seems to say is the optimal CPU for that game specifically, but it turns out the video card also matters quite a bit. A VLB card of any kind appears to be a no go, making it run too fast, and even some ISA16 cards are too much for it. A Trident card does the trick here. I then tried something even more ridiculous, namely running the fastest AMD 5x86 available, then bottlenecking it with the most basic ISA VGA card, and that actually worked pretty well, too. I know on real hardware the trick to getting that game running at normal speed is through disabling cache, but that doesn't seem to work on 86Box.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos
Thinkpad T22, has all the ports, built in AC '97 codec AND Sound Blaster, good screen for the time which is likely to still work fine, supports Dock II which has a PCI port, it's based.
OK so settle this thing for me someone30 years ago I had a relatively similar setup to my friend, but he had a 486DX2-100 and I had a Pentium 60Whose CPU was better in terms of performance? He would always say his was better due to clock speed and i coped with muh instructions but who was REALLY right?
>>12724069Pentium was better, had faster internal architecture and floating point unit. But that's just CPU, a lot depended on HDD controller card, graphics card, sound card, and of course the monitor mattered a lot in those days too.
>>12722696Pentium 2 or a super socket k6-2 depending on what you want to play. Pentium 2 is easily 2-3x faster than anything AMD made south of an Athlon. I remember playing back around 2000, a Celeron 333 (p2 based) was 3x as fast for emulation than my K6-2 500. It got stolid 60fps in stuff I could only run at 20fps.But the super socket 7 may have better ISA support for sound cards and such, this however I have no real clue about because I never tried ISA soundcards on anything else, I just remember reading that some late systems had issues with them. I could be remember wrong or maybe confusing it with early PCI soundcards not working at all for DOS games.
>>12722696Pentium 100 (or higher, can always slow it down) / 32mb ram / S3 Trio64 / SB AWE32I wouldn't go for anything lower like a 486 unless you're a giga purist or something
>>12722696The IBM PC, model 5150. No bloody 286, 386, or 486.
>>12724330mac
>>12724330Would an original Tandy 1000 suffice?
bump
Post 'em if you got 'emMy 386dx 40
>>12725415Nice. What do you run on it, and what cards?
>>12722815Faster Pentium II and III systems struggle a lot with older 9x and DOS games, and most slowdown utilities are insufficient at making them run correctly. I've even had to resort to DOSbox (running from said Win98 Pentium III) for some Origin Systems games and Alone in the Dark.
>>12725594video is picrelsound is OPTi Mad 16 Pro with a Serdaco wavetable module512MB CF card as a hard drive, DOS 6.22+WIN 3.1
>>12725883the sound card
>>12725887I couldn't find a loud enough pc speaker so i bought this and soldered the cables
>>12725650Supposedly you can make those faster systems run slow enough for DOS games wanting 386 speeds by disabling the cache, or so I've heard, I never tried it.
>>12726630Might work okay for some games but I've never had much luck with it on my Pentium III.
>>12725883Nice. My first PC was a 386, though I was too young to know what was on it other than it was running Windows 3.1. My dad had initially bought it for his business, though supposedly he could have opted for a 486 instead, but he was clueless about computers and he had been recommended a 386, so he just went with that lol.
There's always freedos if you can't get exactly the right hardware
I'd like a 486 or pentium PC but I don't know if I want to deal with a system that depends on AT PSUs given how old they are now.
>>12728484I believe there's adapters for modern power supplies now.
>>12728484It's a PSU anon, not complicated hardware, just use an ATX to AT converter with a modern PSU. Just try to find one with a dummy load on the 3.3V rail. The dummy load is required since AT didn't use 3.3V and some modern PSU's will not function right if 3.3V isn't connected to anything.
