I'm curious, how do (You) typically play old PC games? I'm supposing most people (like me) use DOSBox for, well, DOS games and perhaps some early Windows 3.1 stuff, but other methods for later Windows games. Still, I'd like to hear what you primarily use, especially for Windows games. Anyone mess around with PCem? VMs? Real retro machines? Or do you try to run everything natively on modern Windows with workarounds?

Game by game basis, some may have a specific W10 patch. Others may work with a compatibility tick in properties. No way would I get a Win XP VM just for old PC games

Just boot up one of your retro PCs

>>11804774 (OP)
I still have my old computer from when I was a kid and I've gotten more since then because I work in it. Every company I've ever worked at trashed computers by the pallet and I always made sure to grab a few each time. Messing around with the hardware is half the fun. Emulation can also be really fun. Like running doom on a printer or dosbox on a router over the network with vnc.

I own P120 (Voodoo 2/Banshee), PII 466 (a Toshiba laptop) and PII 1000 (Voodoo 3/TnT2 Ultra). Pondering over getting a 486DX4 machine (I've got the CPU, drives and an HDD). But I wouldn't advise anyone getting into real hardware nowadays without doing serious thinking, it's got too expensive (unless we talk about P4s and Gf4).

Also new stuff like 86Box is a bliss.
Personally, I use 86Box and VWware, and they are totally fine but mere loading a real machine per se brings a lot of memories.

RetroArch with DOSBox Pure lets you run DOS and Win98 games.

>>11804774 (OP)
I have a 98 machine set up. I have 3 more in the basement I pull out when I want to have a little starcraft/quake 3 skirmish with the bros when they come over. When I'm not gaming browsing the old net through protoweb is pretty fun, too

>>11804872
>le RatroArch coar
fuck off

>>11804882
I've tried running Windows 98 on various versions of DOSBox, but it feels janky, and it even softlocked on me once. I'm supposing it works well enough for simpler games, though.

>>11804872
I've tried running Windows 98 on various versions of DOSBox, but it feels jankier than on PCem or 86Box, and it even softlocked on me once trying to run software that worked fine on 86Box. I'm supposing it works well enough for simpler games, though.

>>11804872
>le RatroArch coar
Based

>>11804774 (OP)
DOSBox-X for DOS games and wine32 for Win3x/95/98 games.

>>11804774 (OP)
For me, it's Crystal Caves and SkyRoads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf0ovAZ4R2E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26y5PsEJiLA

I've been using dgVoodoo ever since someone made a thread recommending it a couple months back. It's worked better than other solutions with little hassle and fixed a lot of problems with games that either ran shoddily or not at all. In the process I learned that some games like Diablo 2 or Unreal had specific visual effects that only worked on the Glide API.
Due to autism I will look for redump images of the retail CDs rather than repackaged GOG releases or something. Some games apparently had 16bit installers that won't run at all on modern Windows but I generally get around that by installing them on a VM then snatching the installed folder back into my computer (e.g. Quake 2 or Unreal again).
I have the impression that any game for Windows can be made to work on W10/11 if you try hard enough.

I wish it was this convenient like 10-15 years ago. I'm too old these days, I boot the games up for 5 minutes then get tired.
I got a couple hours out of Crusader No Remorse, but I think that's all I can do

I use DOSBox-x but I've been learning my way around 86box

>>11804967
Not sure if you're trying to go for an authentic look or not, but if so, know that monochrome screens didn't have a slot mask.

>>11804897
Yeah, DOSBox Pure seems to struggle with 3D games like SHOGO and I couldn't configure Oni to run without heavy stuttering. I've played a couple of rts and sprite based fps games using it and I only had an issue with crashes whenever it loaded the results screen in StarCraft and WarCraft 2, otherwise it worked fine.
I'd say at the moment anything 3D after 1998 won't run without problems.

>>11804992
Yeah, it just seems like trying to run Windows 9x is biting off more than DOSBox can chew. It doesn't emulate a lot of stuff accurately, just what's necessary to make DOS games run properly, and at a pretty high level at that.

>>11804872
>le RetroArch coar

i use this and say this and my setup looks like this

I just use old computers i had or find.

For everything that works in DOS I use Dosbox-Staging where 90% of the actual cool development happens like proper auto-resolution adjusting CRT shaders and cool stuff like CLAP plugins so you can run SC55 nuked emulation that was made from decapping and tracing the SC55 chips.

>>11804774 (OP)
>I'm curious, how do (You) typically play old PC games?
On an old PC. I collect them and old sound/video cards.
Other than that I've used the cores on a MiSTer to play games like Theme Hospital and Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Which worked surprisingly well.

>>11804829
your retro pc is sick or something. The words are all messed up. I think you might have to finally let it go

>>11805329
>Schneider
It's a German computer, so it runs a German OS.

>>11805334
>Schneider
Huh... I don't have any foreign IBM/PC computers. I have an Atari 1040STe and a Spectrum+2B from the UK. I could not for the life of me find an Atari STe in the united states for a good price. I think that was about ten years ago.

>>11805334
Is Rob Schneider German?

>>11805346
To be fair, it's mostly just a standard 286 clone with onboard IDE and an useless EGA card. The only weird thing is the DB9 bus mouse/joystick portt

>>11805363
Somehow I feel like EGA is what fits a 286 best anyway, though of course you'd need a matching monitor, and that's a very tall order nowadays.

>>11804774 (OP)
I have an 86Box machine with Windows 95 installed that I use for very early Windows 3.x and 9x games (I've shared it here before). I've also started using it for DOS games, and it works quite well for that, too. I know many of those games can be made to run on modern Windows natively, but for me, there's just something nice about being able to load an authentic Windows 9x installation with a collection of games ready to play, not to mention there's little to no need of fiddling with compatibility settings or layers to get them to run.

>>11805694
Do the piece of shit Tandy VGA monitors that have 9-Pin cables do EGA?

>>11804774 (OP)
Dosbox for the most part, but I hope to finish some time machines once I have the room. It is just so difficult to find anyone able to fix CRT monitors, but once I can tempt one to help me out once I save up enough. Been trying for years, but the cost keeps going up while my pay is not enough.

>>11804774 (OP)
I played Quake and Quake 2 back in the day so I don’t try to go for accuracy, I try to go for the best I can get out of current hardware and engines with whatever engine ports I can get running on my machine
t. Macfag who was a PC gamer back in the day

>>11805986
I am not very familiar with Tandy stuff, but I would think no, because VGA monitors are analog whereas both CGA and EGA monitors were digital. VGA did of course have backward compatibility with CGA and EGA, but that was on the video hardware side. On the monitor side, however, outside of a few rare tri-sync monitors, there was no compatibility between CGA/EGA and VGA. Again, though, I could be wildly mistaken regarding Tandy here.

currently playing through jazz jack rabbit 1 with exodus

>>11806085
>Macfag
>I don’t try to go for accuracy, I try to go for the best I can get out of current hardware
You don't say?

>>11806110
It's a really weird monitor. It's 9 Pin so you'd think CGA/EGA, right? No it's VGA and the dot pitch is terrible. There are some great Tandy monitors our there. I have a Magnavox CGA equivalent to their good one.

>>11804774 (OP)
I've been thinking about getting an old Gateway or something and recasing one of my freebee HP shitboxes and running Mint Cinnamon and making it look like XP. Problem is I can't find a CRT monitor around me, which is the only reason I haven't done it. I already have an Intellimouse and a Model M which gets me close enough for feel. It's just missing the sovl.

>>11806132
That sounds quite interesting. I'd really like to see it, if you don't mind taking a few pics of it.

>>11806139
Hmmm.... let me see if it's in a place I can take a picture of it.

>>11806143
No worries if you can't, anon. I've just never heard of a VGA monitor that uses a 9-pin connector, so it sounds like something exceedingly rare. As for the dot pitch, how does it look on low-res games? It's been a very long time since I've used anything besides very high dot pitch CRT monitors that rival BVMs in sharpness (the last one I used was a Mitsubishi Diamondtron, and it had very pronounced scanline gaps at line-doubled 320x200), so I can't say if it's true or not, but supposedly the low dot pitch ones are quite nice for older games.

>>11806152
I got a picture of it. Give me a lil bit.

>>11806152
Here you go. It would take me a bit of time to dig it out to show you the back of it.

>>11806182
Interesting! Some forum posts do corroborate this model having a 9-pin connector, which apparently other early VGA monitors also had. However, this one isn't just VGA - according to this manual, it can display 800x600, and even 1024x768 (interlaced only, though), which makes it SVGA:
http://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/faxback/06116.pdf

>>11806152
Here's a pic of my Magnavox CGA monitor. It's really nice. I had it hooked up with my Tandy 1000HX.

>>11806196
Wow, I forgot the pic.

>>11806197
Groovy. Would love to see it in action.

>>11806195
>0.39mm dot pitch
Yeah, that's not great, but it's not the worst either. As it happens, Tandy also came out with a 0.52mm dot pitch monitor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m79HxULt3O8

>>11804774 (OP)
If I can run a game natively without any problem, I will
Will use decent sourceports when available
Worst case scenario I'll use DOSbox or 86Box

>>11804990
Is this better

>>11806273
86Box with a shader?

>>11806273
Much better, yes. Bonus points if you adjusted the shader to have extra phosphor image retention.

>>11804774 (OP)
eXoDoS with a CRT VGA monitor. All the games are there and it just works, and at their native resolutions and refreshrates. I don't really care about running old games on period correct hardware but the monitor really makes a difference.

>>11804774 (OP)
Depends on the game.
I have a Super Socket 7 machine with a Pentium 1, Sound Blaster 16 and a Voodoo 1 for any DOS or Windows 95 games that don't play nice with modern solutions like DOSBox or any of the quadrillion graphics API wrappers and compatibility layers out there. A lot of FMV titles refuse to work on anything newer than 95 or in some cases even 3.1.
In addition I've got a couple Windows XP machines for any games that have shit like StarForce or other issues that prevent me from installing them on a modern Windows box due to technical reasons.
If a game would work but has some issue with the installer like a 16-bit setup binary, I just boot up VMWare with XP and drag-n-drop the installed files over from that.
I prefer to play everything that does work nicely on modern Windows on my main rig. DOSBox, dgVoodoo, nGlide, ddwrapper, game specific fixes like the NOLF fan patch, alternate clients like Yamagi Quake II and so on.

>>11806279
I'm using mega bezel with Shaderglass, it's kind of a pain to make it work without Shaderglass going haywire, and the emulator has to cooperate too, but the results are great

I am now attempting a similar setup for DOSbox.

>>11806294
>image retention
That's the one thing I haven't figured out how to do with MegaBezel.

>>11806347
Never used Shaderglass, but in RetroArch's MegaBezel it's these parameters

>>11806017
>X16
Just emulate it with nuked SC55, it's actually accurate. Or just get a real SC55.

>>11805694
>EGA is what fits a 286 best anyway,
Depends, late (1990 and newer) 286 had VGA and most interesting stuff requires it.

>>11806829
Yeah, but just about anything "interesting" that requires VGA will most definitely want something better than a 286. With a 286, you can still play some early 90's games like Commander Keen just fine, but those tend to only need EGA. That's why I say EGA is most befitting of a 286.

>>11807525
386 was such an improvement. It actually had good colours and Warcraft and all that jazz

>>11806197
Looks like it has same power button + switch as Amiga 1081 and Philips 15/31khz monitors

>>11807525
There's lots of early games which run surprisingly well on a 286
Late 12 or 16MHz 286 are about 2 to 3 times fast as the early PC AT with its wait states, similar to some 386SX. The lack of EMM386 is the big issue

>>11808890
Kinda tempted to try setting up an 8088 with VGA on 86Box (if that even works), just to test those games that support both out of curiosity

>>11808934
It should work AFAIK. A bit silly, but you could do it.

>>11804872
What shader?

>>11804774 (OP)
Right now its Dosbox-X but I always wanted to get an straight to 86Box linux machine setup sometime. Maybe have it boot up Win98.

>>11809463
It's pretty comfy once you get it all up and running. Only issue is, you have to tamper down your expectations in regards to performance. 86Box is very demanding past early Pentium systems, so unless you have a very powerful CPU, realistically you're likely not gonna be using it to play advanced 3D games. Of course, most of those can be made to work natively on modern Windows with wrappers and other workarounds, so really, 86Box's niche is basically early Windows 95 games that are a pain in the ass to get working otherwise.

>>11804774 (OP)
DOSBox and modern Windows with workarounds. I have found that any other solution is either not worth the time and money (old PC), or too flawed (VMs)

>>11809829
86box does a really good job. Forcing windowed mode with DXWND usually fixes most issues I have.

>>11804857
Super old laptops are cheap, but usually have a ton of problems, including age- and oxygen-embrittled plastic which flakes away.

I got an old Compaq laptop for something like $15, and it's basically slowly self-disassembling itself. It has a P2 266, a 4 MB S3 Virge GX (slightly improved mobile version of that notorious GPU), and two ESS soundchips. Unfortunately, it uses that extremely rare 4-pin adapter, and I can't seem to find a reliable source for one.
It would otherwise be a good starting point for a Win 98/DOS 7 machine. Amusingly, when I pulled out the hard drive to check whether it's functional, I've found out one of its previous owners had installed an old version of MAME on it.

>>11806827
Is there really a difference between the X16 and bespoke external midi modules, at least in terms of sound? The Llama does have pins to connect a pi for midi as well, so once I save up enough, I hope to get a few Pi devices as they tend to be at the core of a lot of modern retro PC projects.

>>11806302
I used to hate dosbox due to the stutters until my stupid brain understood that it wasn't a dosbox problem, my monitor was 60hz. A year ago I got a VRR monitor and have dosbox sync to the exact original refresh rate. The difference in smoothness is insane, I can finally play Pinball Fantasies without bleeding through my eyes.

>>11810278
>Is there really a difference between the X16 and bespoke external midi modules, at least in terms of sound?
The X16 uses licensed Roland sound canvas samples, but that's about it. I'm not sure if it even supports the sound effects of the Roland GS.
Almost all modules have an unique sound to them. Even the SC88 won't ever sound exactly like the SC55 because of "upgraded" samples. And modules from other manufacturers have similar but different samples for each sound, for gaming the Yamaha MU series are pretty good since they tried to sound similar to Roland.
Try out Nuked SC55 on your modern PC and you'll get the true SC55 sound.
And MT-32 is a different beast with its own sound mapping and synth technology, but can now be emulated on raspberry pi or a modern PC

>>11810185
oh really? I haven't tried 86box, so I shouldn't say anything. Is it difficult to configure?

>Forcing windowed mode with DXWND usually fixes most issues I have.
same for me

>>11810519
Not him but you basically have to choose every component as you're emulating specific hardware (which is why it's demanding)
When setting up an 86Box machine you're basically building a retro PC. You have to choose your motherboard, CPU, video card, sound card, etc
With older motherboards you even have to choose a hard drive controller
It can be intimidating at first but it's also very educational as you learn a lot about retro PCs and if you're autistic, testing different hardware configurations and seeing what can run what can be fun
Compared to VMs and DOSBox it's much more accurate to the real thing because again, you're emulating actual hardware

>>11804830
my dad always said he wished he'd saved some of the Apple IIs his customers were chucking out by the hundreds

>>11810364
X16 sounds a bit like the SC55 of the SC88. Totally accurate sound no, but at least it has capital tone fallback, drumkit fallback and 256 polyphony vs 24/28 of the original. Makes a difference in Heretic, Dark Forces, WarCraft II etc.

>>11804774 (OP)
Alright *smacks and rubs hands together

This is what you do:

Get yourself a local autist who knows Windows 98 and XP like the back of his hand. Make friends with him.

Build a Core 2 Duo era machine with an equivalent Nvidia Quadro card that has drivers for both Windows XP and 98.

Install Windows 98 FIRST and THEN XP.

Learn how to modify the driver ini files to force it to install properly depending on the OS (98 will hate you for some reason).

Spend a few weeks going back and forth with tweaking it with R.Lowe patches to be able to handle 3 Gigs of RAM for both XP and Windows 98.

Use a local Samba share to distribute games between the computer and a modern computer using the Ethernet cable, or even figure out RetroNAS on a Raspberry Pi to make your life easier with getting games on the machine. Samba share on a spare mini PC worked for me though.

Complete.

If you want true easy mode, join the 86Box Discord, and look on the configs channel for pre installed setups that work out of the box.

You're welcome Anon.

Signed,

Based Motherfucker

>>11810732
>Get yourself a local autist who knows Windows 98 and XP like the back of his hand. Make friends with him.

You lost me.

>>11806138
*Near me

You can do one of the gay things I did and flat out ask on a subreddit of the city near you. That or a CRT group on Facebook. Or literally drive 2 hours to get it and back.

Lots of options imo.

I personally got lucky with the subreddit idea and am not ashamed because it was a glorious free Compaq CRT monitor that matched the one I had as a kid.

Use the Internet to your advantage anon. It's kind of like those retards that say they can't find a CRT TV for sub $50. You're not looking hard enough or you're not haggling enough.

>>11810747
I found one through the local retro computer group in my area. Dude is the funniest fucking dude on earth, slight pothead too but goddamn he knows Windows 98 and is the biggest Vogons user on earth.

It's either this or move to an area that is more active with those kind of people.

Or unfortunately, look for a Discord. I hate Discord more than the rest of them but some of these retro PC types live on there so there's one source of help.

Unless you wanna be yelled at on Vogons lol

scummvm or dosbox
I've honestly lost most of my old PC game troubleshooting skills from atrophy because dosbox is easy. I also don't have any desire to play anything from the dark ages of "after DOS, before XP" that doesn't have some easy patch on the internet.

>>11810732
Biggest advice on earth is also this: when you get everything setup the way you want it, chuck that hard drive into another PC running Linux Mint via the Live DVD image with a USB stick and make a backup '.img' file with the 'dd' command of the hard drive.

Reason being is that if you buy an equivalent harddrive with the same exact storage space later, you can restore all your work in setting up 98 and XP easily.

I say this because I just backed mine up for peace of mind since this shit took a ton of time to setup and I might be moving this year to not be near my friend who helped me set this up.

I also forgot to mention that installing video card drivers, using R lowe patches and installing Joestar patches is a bit of a challenge.

Hence why, find a friend who can help you do this. Otherwise I find it interesting but my ADHD kicks in and it's not that easy to follow along as it's very involved.

Otherwise I really would try your best to find a system that has everything installed already otherwise it's a bit tedious if you have never done it before aka installing Windows 98 from scratch and setting things up.

It can be done, sure, but I think there are easier ways to do it, especially since your main goal is to get games working.

It's not like you're trying to create old coding projects with trying to figure out how era specific compilers work etc. Your goal is just to run a program and have fun.

>dude, setting up retro machine is HARD
>insists on doing a dual OS setup despite all the config and compatibility issues it causes
Why do people do this to themselves?
A solid Win9x machine is a P3-P4 with 512MBs of RAM and a GeForce 5200FX, with a Voodoo and an Audigy if you really want to get fancy. A solid WinXP machine is a Core2Duo at 3GHz or better with 4GBs of RAM and a GeForce 9xx or Radeon R9 2xx. Win9x has issues with RAM above 512MBs, WinXP works best with 3.5GBs of RAM available. The GeForce 5200FX is a crap card for WinXP, the GeForce 9xx series doesn't have Win9x drivers.
Instead of creating a single franken-system where you constantly need to fuck around with the config and special snowflake patches to try and get things working, just focus on making a solid system for a specific OS. It's a hell of a lot less hassle, and it minimizes the amount of troubleshooting you need to do.

>>11810814
It's true. I will agree with you. To be fair, it was that autist dude's idea that insisted to do it to just have an all in one box.

In your scenario, you have two machines dedicated to each OS, which is fine too.

I respect your opinion. However I did mention true easy mode is 86Box or PcEM.

There are even good PcEM configs on Archive.org that work with modern Windows and have actual installs. It's easier than it ever has been along with ExoDOS to just play these older games without much hassle.

>>11810820
To add to this lol, I'm getting a separate Windows 95 machine for early edutainment games and to run DOS and Win 3.1 games on it so that I don't have to switch to 256 colors mode all the time for games like Lego Island or other edutainment stuff or even Sonic CD that will yell at you otherwise.

Just wanted to let you know that you're right, but there's no real wrong way to do it.

Overall, it's basically the "Are you having fun, son" meme but in reality

>>11810814
Is a WinXP machine even needed for games? I feel like practically all XP era games can be played natively on modern Windows

>>11810829
Depends. Do you want a machine that can run WinXP games with no configuration needed, or do you want to check pcgamingwiki and mess with compatibility settings and patches to make each game work?

>>11810848
>pcgamingwiki and mess with compatibility settings and patches to make each game work
Those patches are often only needed for modern features like widescreen resolutions
If you install Silent Hill 3 for example it'll run out of the box, just not with modern features
Even if you'd need patches for most early 00s game, I'd rather deal with that than set up an additional computer I need to use when I want to play certain games
Being able to do everything on one machine is also why I even emulate the consoles I own

>>11804774 (OP)
I recently tried some of the Dosbox versions included with RetroPie. The documentation says a 3rd gen Pi can emulate a DX2, but this is only true for the non-libretro Dosbox port, the libretro one is slower. Not ideal because the standalone port lacks picture scale/position settings and other things. But that only matters when using the composite output. I ran Doom and Another World. What surprised me is that Doom not only was fully configured for a gamepad from the start, it even had some kind of a weapon wheel thing mapped to R1 or L1. I guess Dosbox comes configured for some games, or the Doom version I got from the Internet Archive was modified. I'm planning to play Quarantine now.

>>11810880
Like I said, it entirely depends on if you want a WinXP machine that will run WinXP games without issue or if you want to deal with older games on current OS one by one. If you prefer the latter option, then that works too outside of some odd-ball issues like the original CD release of Shandalar not working on WinXP SP2 or newer without crashing constantly. If you are using the modern fan-patched version like Shadalar2015 then this isn't a problem. GOG releases are usually pre-setup to work on modern OS's as well.
I guess you might hit some issues if you get into JP Win9x/XP games, I have no idea, I haven't gone that deep yet.

>>11810829
games with Starforce DRM doesnt work

>>11810220
Had a chance to tinker with five old notebooks in last 2-3 years and came to the conclusion that old notebooks (up to PII and almost all PIIIs) can be pretty ok for DOS games (assuming the sound card supports DOS) but almost all of them terribly suck in Win95/98 games due to graphic chips.
IMO the best thing for Win98 gaming if we talk about notebooks is something from early/mid 00s. Those GeForce 4 Pro and stuff like ATI Mobility Radeon 9-series had WIn98 support which made all games released up to 2003 work great.

People often overlook notebooks from the mid 00s because they aren't as vintage and so on. But truth be told they are absolutely great for retro Windows gaming if one doesn't have that lot of free money or which is even more important if one doesn't have free space for a proper retro PC.

>>11810543
thx dude, I might check it out if I have time as that does sound interesting

>>11804872
What's the purpose of running DOSBox through Retroarch?

>>11805304
>stuff like CLAP plugins so you can run SC55 nuked emulation that was made from decapping and tracing the SC55 chips
It's great that we're finally at this point no more having to cope that the various soundfonts were "good enough"

>>11810762
I don't blame the Vogons guys for yelling at this point given their moderators allow retards to post there with zero gatekeeping.

>>11811342
Gimme some notebook model numbers

>>11810829
Strictly no but I like the hardware of the mid 00s personally so I have a few of them.

>>11811357
Its DOSBox-Pure core is significantly modified from regular DOSBox. It simplifies the process of loading games, making it almost as easy as loading console games.

>>11811363
MIDI passthrough needs to be mandatory for every computer emulator at this point.

I have an old PIII running Win98 that I used to use, but I don't really have a place to hook it up at the moment.

>>11811393
You can already set up DOSBox to easily start games from shortcuts, but it requires knowing what to type in the cfg. I guess Retroarch makes it a lot easier

>>11804774 (OP)
I have a win XP machine from the early 2000s, but really the important part is the CRT monitor. All good games run on modern PCs

>>11811419
I wish Zeus+Poseidon ran well on modern hardware. The animations are fucked up. There's some fan patch but they were only able to fix some, the rest are just permabugged.

Fugg, I was gonna link my 86Box Windows 95 pack that I shared here a while ago, but it looks like it got deleted due to inactivity. I could just upload it again, but I've been working on an optional DOS "expansion pack" for it, and I think I'll reupload it once that's finished. So far I have many of the usual classics, but I want to add some more variety before I deem it ready.

this may be off-topic but >>>/g/105648122

>>11811387
Stuff like HP Compaq nx6xxx should be comparably cheap, even the top variants. It had P4, up to 512 Mb of RAM and ATI Radeon 9600 capable of running Windows 98. I tried several games on it, and stuff like Serious Sam and Morrowind worked just fine.

If P4 is too modern (some people are pretty picky and don't want anything newer than PIII), search for Compaq n600/610, they had late PIIIs and ATI 7600 chips with 16/32 Mb of RAM (I checked out one with 16 Mb and Q3 gave me no trouble at all).

>>11812194
Does it have to be virtualbox or vmware? Pretty sure I've done it in DOSBox, PCem and 86box at various times, but I'd need to look into it again. I won't bother if you really want to use those VMs you mentioned instead.

>>11812236
well i'm gonna try 86box

>>11812278
Great choice, if you can't get it to work there you probably have been trying to install some fucked up drivers or something

>>11812278
nvm fuck this

>>11812194
>>11812278
>>11812401
Try Dosbox-X, I've used it to run 95 and Me.

DOSBox-X with a directory holding the config file, link and custom link icon which can launch the game directly from the Windows start menu. Links contain commands to fast launch and hide the menu. Presets created for the 286 up to the Pentium MMX. Openglnb output for an efficient pixellated display.

>>11812047
damn, bro, that looks sick, any chance you could share your pack?

>>11812047
>"inactivity"
hahaha get fucked i hope you infest your own computer with your malware by accident too

>>11812278
it worked

did try doing it on virtualbox but it fucked up

I think i've played less than 200ish? maybe DOS games in 38 years let alone Atari things outside of 7800.. How does one break into these things? I still barely touched Amiga stuff heard there was still homebrewers around|also c64

>>11812735
(you) sound upset

>>11812910
For Amiga, try the Amiga Game Selector download. It's super easy to use, and there's a Retroarch pack if you prefer that route or you can use WinUAE too.

>>11810829
>I feel like practically all XP era games can be played natively on modern Windows
Tends to be the thing about PC gaming in general. With fiddling you can get almost anything to run. But correctly? That's a different matter entirely. Many games run differently on modern windows, not the kind of thing you might notice in casual play, but if it's your childhood game you'll notice that it's "off." /v/ makes fun of jap devs for making framerate dependent games while not realising that all those 20-35fps variable 95-2010 games actually have framerate dependent physics and cpu bound input shenanigans.
If you just want to play a game and not get into the weeds, get it running on win11 with some fan patches. But if you're concerned about it being "right" then getting a mostly period correct machine removes (most) doubt.

>>11812401
>>11812812
What did you fuck up the first time around, and how did you fix it?

>>11812638
Sure, I decided to just reupload for now. The DOS part can wait:
https://gofile.io/d/6JK8pA
If performance is an issue, I also included PCem, which runs a bit better.

>>11812047
>Those old Maxis games
holy based
though I personally prefer to play the Mac versions on something like Basilisk II since they looked/sounded the best, still great to see people playing their games besides SimCity and The Sims

>>11808803
Probably. I think that style of power button was pretty common. I have more Commodore monitors at my parents house I got from a CraigsList ad years ago. One them was pretty nice but the power button is broke and has to be wedged in with some paper. I'm sure it's not a big deal to fix if I took the time to open it up and service it.

I don't understand why anyone would buy modern chinese parts to play around with Win98/XP era games and software.

>>11812047
Can you post the exact specs of your 86box machine? Did you use BIOS defaults or changed anything? How much memory are you able to get on DOS? If you can link to the drivers you used, it would be great too.

>>11813470
I should explain in better detail.
I don't understand why someone would buy modern motherboards and graphics cards made in china. Why not go out and find real hardware from the era if you're interested. It just doesn't make any sense to buy modern parts that are made very cheaply to replicate what can easily be found and reused.

>>11813470
>shoes on in the house
>resting on the computer desk no less
absolutely barbaric

>>11813478
on the mousepad, no less

>>11813470
Chad as fuck

>>11813472
>Can you post the exact specs of your 86box machine?
It's running a Socket 7 Mobile Pentium MMX running at 120 MHz, chosen purely out of performance considerations, though of course it can be brought up to 233 if you have a better PC than I do. I'm kicking myself a bit for not going with Super Socket 7 instead, though, since that has more potential. For memory, it has 64MB. For video, it's running an S3 Trio64V2+Voodoo combo, while for sound, I opted for the Sound Blaster AWE32 (initially chosen over the AWE64 because the latter is supposed to use the inferior CQM for FM synth, but it turns out 86Box doesn't emulate that and just uses OPL3 lol). I also added a dedicated MPU-401 because MIDI was having issues through the AWE32 for some reason, and I configured it to use FluidSynth with an SC-55-like soundfont (though you can use Nuked SC-55 instead - I've tested it, and it works, but it requires more setup).
>Did you use BIOS defaults or changed anything?
I did make some BIOS changes, namely disabling a bunch of unused ports (the COMs and Parallel port, for instance) and lowering the memory timings, though I can't say if that does anything of substance here. I also reserved some resources in the BIOS for the ISA cards.
>How much memory are you able to get on DOS?
It depends. For DOS mode, I installed based Phil's startup menu, which gives you various options for EMS, XMS, and conventional memory only, with or without CD-ROM or mouse support. So if conventional memory is a concern, there's options to help with that (Phil uses the qtmouse driver, which is very light, but the regular Microsoft CD driver, so that could be improved perhaps).
>If you can link to the drivers you used, it would be great too.
Almost all the drivers were acquired on Phil's site, with the exception of the Trio64V2, which I got from the VOGONS library. I also added Rain, a utility that lowers CPU usage while idling on the desktop, which helps with performance.

Oh, forgot to add, I also added ps2rate, which makes mouse movement feel a lot smoother on 86Box. I also installed a disk caching utility which is supposed to help with performance, but truthfully, after some testing, I didn't notice much of a gain if any, so it's probably placebo and ought to be uninstalled.

>>11813547
>I'm kicking myself a bit for not going with Super Socket 7 instead, though, since that has more potential.
What would happen if you made a Super Socket 7 machine as a separate profile and assigned the hard drive image to that?

>>11813569
Maybe nothing, maybe increased system instability. Some don't even recommend switching out single components of a Windows 9x system without reinstalling the OS afterward for fear of instability, let alone the whole motherboard. I'll try it sometime just to see what happens, I guess.

>>11813475
what are you even talking about?

retard here. i'm reliving my childhood with an old windows 98 pc, how do i go about installing DOS games? can i load a bunch up onto a burned CD or USB?

>>11813906
You can setup a local Samba 1.1 share between your modern PC and that machine if you plug both computers into a shared network switch.

Instead of a modern PC, you could also opt to use a Raspberry Pi 4 with RetroNAS installed, and enable Samba on that too to make it easier.

I do this to drag and drop stuff on my 98/XP computer all the time.

>>11813906
>>11814143
Forgot to mention, you can look up the Total DOS Collection on Archive.org or download eXoDOS to get all of the game rips you want since you can also just copy and paste the games from eXoDOS using the same Samba share method I mentioned earlier.

>>11804774 (OP)
Dosbox or my P2 computer. But mostly dosbox because it's easily accessible and I can just download new games quicly

>>11813791
>what are you even talking about?
see >>11806017

>>11806347
ShaderGlass is just pure sex. I think the only think that keeps tripping me up is getting everything to be nice and pixel perfect when it comes to the phosphor layout. I did manage to get something REALLY nice looking for PC-98 games however.

>>11811342
>almost all of them terribly suck in Win95/98 games due to graphic chips.
Win95/98 games can run decently, as long as they don't have 3D-accelerated graphics. But yes, if you want any semblance of adequate 3D performance, you need at least one of the later Rage Mobility 128 GPUs. Or, better yet, a Radeon Mobility 7500 (the first mobile GPU with a vertex shader).

>>11814387
And just to keep things a bit on track, here: a MS-DOS game. Same filter as before but with the pixel size adjusted.

>>11813569
>>11813669
Yeah lol I went and tried this out with an AMD K6-III+ at 100 MHz (to spare my poor shitty CPU more than anything), and it was a shitshow. Took numerous restarts before it finally installed enough drivers to take me to the desktop, and then I ended up with a resource conflict between the S3 card and some motherboard stuff AND the sound card, so I had only basic 640x480x16 graphics. I resolved that, only to see I needed drivers for the motherboard or else the CD-ROM doesn't work. Got those installed, and just when all seemed well, I tried running dxdiag, and got an immediate system freeze, not even a blue screen. Restarted, tried running Monster Truck Madness, and the same thing happened. Mind you, this is using a motherboard and CPU that would've probably liked Windows 98 SE better, but still.

>>11814387
I wish this shit was ported to Linux and not gay modern Windows.

>>11813070
apparently i got too confused so had to look at a video from 86box

>>11809229
sonkun #32

>>11811357
I'm just used to RetroArch and shaders are cool too.

>>11813547
Thanks for the detailed answer. I'll take a look at Phil's website. Relying on just my memory of DOS days it's proving to not be very productive, though installing DOS/Windows is very nostalgic.
>though you can use Nuked SC-55 instead - I've tested it, and it works, but it requires more setup
I think I was the one who pointed it out for you in that last thread. Original Doom with Nuked SC-55 just feels right. I recommend this fork: https://github.com/linoshkmalayil/Nuked-SC55-GUI-Float/

>>11814404
Computer CRT monitors have never looked blurry like your pic

>>11815190
Well, ones made after the mid 90s usually weren't, but prior to that they could be if they had a sufficiently high dot pitch.

>>11815201
I watched all those guys playing growing up. Damn I miss when Man U was good.

>>11814387
take care of that dithering

>>11814404
decrease the strength on those scanlines

>>11804774 (OP)
The vast majority of Windows games will run natively on Windows 11(it might take tweaking or mods, but the exe will be playable). Exceptions are 3.1 stuff, but Windows 3.1 games weren't THAT common outside of Sierra and Maxis. The former can be played in ScummVM, and the latter usually had DOS versions (DOSBox Staging) or I can boot my 98se VM in PCem.
DOS stuff can be handled with DOSBox Staging or Windows ports. I can't think of the last game I tried to run that I couldn't get working through the above means.

What's the difference between DOSBox Staging and DOSBox-X?

>>11815446
>The vast majority of Windows games will run natively on Windows 11(it might take tweaking or mods, but the exe will be playable). Exceptions are 3.1 stuff, but Windows 3.1 games weren't THAT common outside of Sierra and Maxis.
Lots of 16-bit Win95 games seem to have issues too, at least the ones I've looked into

>>11815467
At this point, DOSBox-X is more about ease-of-use and has more focus on things like being able to install Windows 95. Staging is more accurate and is focused primarily on DOS stuff but requires more manual tweaking of stuff in the cfg files (not difficult when you know the basics).

>>11815467
X is aiming for accuracy, so that you can ideally run and develop DOS apps in it, install various OS's etc, and not just games. Supposedly it even supports PC-98 but I haven't tried that. Still easier to use than regular dosbox.

Staging is going for out of the box CRT look and other QoL stuff i.e. same as normal Dosbox but better and easier, still focused on games.

>>11815190
I mean, your example isn't much better. You're playing a game that is way too low res for that monitor. All that dithering you see is going to waste.

I'm trying to strike a balance between sharpness and blending pixels. I'm using cry-hylian-ntsc as a base and I'm sure I can play around in the settings to get things looking a little sharper, but it isn't easy.

>>11815435
Oh believe me, the Yu-No title screen has so much fucking dithering. It's much worse without the shader. There's only so much that can be done. I will did take your advice on the dialing down the strength however.

>>11815502
>X is aiming for accuracy
It's actually less accurate for DOS games than Staging, at least as of now

>>11815435
And here is the raw title screen if you're curious.

>>11815509
Do you know of any specific cases where they perform differently?

>>11815467
DOSBox Staging is best for DOS gaming, DOSBox-X is best for anything else related to DOS

>>11815517
Sure. This video at this timestamp goes into demonstrations of what I'm talking about regarding gaming accuracies.
https://youtu.be/L2KbE0pJbnQ?si=c6bdJ8DXZhtSd17d&t=414

Staging has been really focusing hard on making sure games run, sound and look as accurately as possible, while X has shifted focus to the other aspects of DOS. These two forks have more or less become complementary in this regard. You use either one based on what exactly it is that you want to do with DOS.

>>11815526
I should add that I've run into similar issues that the guy mentions with jittery gameplay and the like with X, and they do seem to be random whether it'll happen or not, while Staging has always been smooth for me. Your mileage may vary.

>>11815526
that youtuber has an extremely punchable face

>>11815370
>could be if they had a sufficiently high dot pitch
NTA, but I never thought about that before. I'm trying to think what our old monitor was when we had the 386. I remember it looking pretty sharp. Of coarse that was coming from a C64 hooked up to a small consumer color television with RF.

>>11815008
OH MY GOD THANK YOU! I've been wanting an actual fucking volume control for a while now and this does the trick perfectly.

>>11815008
>>11815647
>volume control
Holy shit. Literally the only problem I had with Nuked was that the volume was a bit too low
I just tried it and it's perfect

>>11815647
>>11815751
Nice, I also had this issue. I'll try it out soon as I get home.

>>11815751
It's cool how you can even access the demo songs thanks to the hotkeys

bump

I vaguely remember asking in another retro computing thread, but can't really remember the answer(s):
I know there are a few differences between Windows 95 OSR 2.5 and Windows 98 SE. What are they? Stuff like native 256 color mode? (How) do they impact games? I suspect those mid-90s eroge ported from PC-98 prefer Win 95, but what other games were made with a particular OS in mind?

>>11817056
>know there are a few differences between Windows 95 OSR 2.5 and Windows 98 SE. What are they?
You do realize the wikipedia page for Windows 98 starts by listing all the upgrades from Win95, including OSR 2.5 with the USB add-on pack?

>>11817091
I'm not referring to random wiki shit. 99% of the things listed there have no direct impact on games.
I'm interested in some anon's hands-on experience with games who might prefer one OS over the other.

>>11817124
>99% of the things listed there have no direct impact on games.
Yes, I know you want someone else to do the research for you. Quit being lazy. The answers are right there. And if you can't figure out what to skip and what's important, then that's your problem.

>>11811091
pretty sure you just need a No-CD exe to get those games to work, they run fine otherwise

>>11817056
What I do remember is that Windows 98 just fixed Windows 95's issues (plug and play and drivers etc) but the experience with DOS games was exactly the same so you had DOS mode in both.
Windows 2000 changed this.

>>11818285
>Windows 2000 changed this
2000 didn't "change" anything, it was just part of the NT family which wasn't DOS based since the beginning. Consumer versions of Windows lost DOS compatibility starting with XP because that's when consumer versions also became Windows NT

>>11818326
>server 2003
I'm now reminded of that brief period in time when the real hardcore cutting-edge types were converting their home PC's over to Server 2003 because it was a 64-bit OS and the 64-bit version of XP hadn't been released yet.

>>11818417
I'm glad linux has come such a long ways since then.

So this is what I have so far for my 86Box DOS pack (there are some repeats, as I was trying out different versions of games, but this will get cleaned up later). I've set it up to use LaunchBox for DOS, which makes it much easier to load games AND their Setup executables in case you want to make any configuration changes (i.e. you'd rather have Sound Blaster music rather than General MIDI or you want to remap buttons). The Sierra folder contains King's Quest 4, if you're curious. I also included Norton Commander if you prefer to use that instead. There's a good bunch of games I'd love to include but want a 386 or slow 486 (Wing Commander or Ultima 6, for instance), so that's why those are not there. Maybe they can be made to run well with slowdown utilities, but in the spirit of ease of use, I'll be refraining from adding games like those. In any case, I'm open to suggestions.

Pic related is how the LaunchBox menu looks like once you add games to it. It works quite well for the purposes of this pack.

>>11818326
Windows 2000 was consumer windows.
People like you make this website so utterly useless and frustrating.
Basically just waste of electricity.

>>11818924
>Windows 2000 was consumer windows.
No. Millennium was supposed to be the private user Windows, but that one shat the bed, so part of the userbase moved to 2000 (including those lucky few who got the limited run of SMP Celerons), and another part stayed on 98SE until XP came out.

>>11818924
>Windows 2000 was consumer windows
It wasn't
Windows Me was the consumer counterpart

>>11810364
I've only recently become aware of Yamaha MU. For the longest all I ever had were SoundBlaster cards, and I liked the Yamaha sound from them but that Roland option was always there in game setups that built a mystique which only later I was able to discover its majesty. However, later SoundBlaster cards had a wavetable header, which I thought were replacements for the bespoke external modules, and I never got any of those until relatively recently. I understand that the samples may have changed, but aren't there specific soundfonts which could be loaded onto those boards like the X16 intended to match some of those legacy sounds? Maybe even that Yamaha sound too?

>>11814383
Cost is a big reason. If not for the exploitative prices from China, the prices are just too high for my pay grade. Secondly, there is a lack of skilled technicians around that can replace capacitors around my area. Even if there is someone with the knowledge, skillset, and expertise, it loops back around to the cost as it is tedious work which may take triple digits an hour for that sort of labor which is beyond my means. In theory, the solution is to combine the answers, but shipping the parts to China for some low cost labor to repair old computer parts will cost in addition to an added issue of an exceptionally high probability of getting scammed not only losing the parts, money, and personal information dealing with the Chinese.

>>11819110
>what else is recommended to complete it
a rope i believe

>>11818738
I just wanna say, I've been following your progress for a while and haven't had time to actually use your 86Box image because I got a 7 month old boy to take care of at times, but damn man, you did such a great job so far.

I personally had to lean on a friend of mine to figure out half of this shit on the Windows XP / 98 PC I have so the fact that you shared a config so easily means a lot to me.

It's awesome since normally the only way is that you have to go on the 86Box Discord to get shared configs. Everywhere else online is gay since they always are like "muh piracy" for a fuckin 30+ year old computer setup.

Anyways thanks my dude.

My suggestion: I think some of the launcher menus like QuickMenu stuff are so damn cool. Multiple options for stuff like that would be awesome. That and the Launchbox style Mister kinda menu idea is cool too.

Thank you my dude, keep being a real OG motherfucker.

>>11818952
>>11819059
I'd like to believe that anon was referring to the fact that Windows 2000 was more or less readily available to consumers and had enough features implemented that (unlike Windows NT4) it could be used for consumer purposes, but he sounds like he has a stick up his ass so I'm instead going to assume he's a dumbass.

>>11819696
In fairness, he would be right in that specific regard.
Win 2000 was different from the rest of the NT businessware in that it was actually usable as a general-purpose OS.

>>11819110
Change your own fucking capacitors.

>>11820047
Nah not the Anon but I get it. A friend of mine swapped capacitors for his motherboard which worked out for him but it depends on the unit we're talking about.

If you end up disassembling some old computer parts and have no idea what you're doing, you could fuck something up hardcore.

I don't see any point in trying to make him feel bad for buying Chinese shit. Everyone does it, so who cares.

No one wants to buy your shit off eBay either Anon.

I say this because I use my MisterPi for a ton of computers and consoles and realize some hardware is not worth saving --> ex: old Macs that have neckbeard faggots who overcharge for replacement logic boards on eBay.

>>11819110
>the prices are just too high for my pay grade.
So every picture you post is AI generated?

>>11804872
retroarch pure hates my stick, so no

>>11820047
He's clearly not smart enough. He should probably quit throwing money into the toilet buying scam chinese garbage and find a new hobby. It's just embarrassing how incompetent his views make him out to be.
-Doesn't understand capacitor plague
-Doesn't understand the hardware in general
-Probably can't even install Dos or Windows 95
Just has plastic boxes full of stuff he doesn't understand. Probably stored in plastic zip lock bags.

>>11814387
yeah, shaderglass is great, but screenshots on steam is ass

>>11820149
IS there any way to fix this, i want my t16000m working so i can play TFX

>>11820158
But enough about (you) anon, what about him?

>>11820145
You're starting to understand why no one wants to hear from marble-table-fag. It's always the same shit.
>Posts picture of a bunch of overpriced crap like clone consoles or that shitty llama86 thing
>I don't have money for a (real NES/real SNES/to hire a CRT repairman/to move out of his parents house)
He's an obsessive hoarder who appears to only hoard shit to post pictures of it on the internet. He's also autistic, so he'll spam his crap everywhere, despite no one asking.

>>11819110
>the prices are just too high for my pay grade
You buy multiple of the same consoles but somehow this is too expensive?

>>11820937
How is one intended to hold a Wonderswan? Vertically or horizontally?

>>11820978
Yes.

These are the start of dueling J-Win98SE time machines appropriate to the era. One will be named Fuwawa the other Mococo, which one is which I have not figured out yet. Which would you go with?

>>11819117
I do have some zip-ties in random colors from different sources. Should be useful in mounting uncommon sized fans to various heatsinks.

>>11820047
I'd prefer if someone with the technical abilities do it since some of these were from my past and it would be difficult to replace. I would be much more at ease if an expert were to handle such delicate operations.

>>11820145
Doesn't that require those Tensor cores from RTX lines of cards? Unfortunately, I have only GTX cards, but I'd probably waste it training for all sorts of loli images training instead.

>>11820937
I can explain that. One NGPC was a gift from a friend. Back when we all decided to jump in on the platform together, and it was given to me in remembrance of those good times. As for the Swancrystal, one was a junk item at $5USD intended as a replacement shell for my working Swancrystal, but all it had was some green stuff (battery acid?) that I chipped off the battery contacts and it worked just as well afterwards.

86Boxfag here. I'm thinking I may redo my pack from scratch. See, I made a new machine built around Super Socket 7 with a K6-III+ running at 100 MHz, installed Windows 98 Lite on it, and from what I can tell, it actually performs BETTER than the Pentium MMX Windows 95 OSR2 pack I shared here. As such, I feel like it's a no-brainer. Of course, there may be some odd software here and there that may run better on Windows 95 for whatever reason, but it does seem the benefits outweigh whatever potential drawbacks may exist. Loading every game I had on the previous pack will take a while, but I think it'll be for the best.

>>11820158
>stuff he doesn't understand
love posts like this when it's obvious some priced out coomlector from vogons is absolutely seething

>>11804774 (OP)

DOSBox works pretty well on Windows 10 for 95% of what I play literally through making a shortcut. I know some people prefer PCem or 86box though.

Windows it really depends; there's a surprising amount of stuff that does run natively - but I'm also very happy to let other people and the fan community do the work for games I want to play. It really is in my experience a game by game solution that you need. Searching out what fan fixes there are for games before 2008 is always a good start. I also am just happy to play it as it comes - I don't feel the need to do CRT filters or anything like that.

Be aware that there are some games where speed will be an issue, as in - either it's strangling one of your cores because it wasn't designed for multi-core processors, or the extra processing power means parts of the game run too fast to be playable - the original version of Grim Fandango had a game breaking bug on newer Windows machines for that reason for a while.

When in doubt though - some reliable methods are DGVoodoo for Glide games, and VMs. The tricky period in my experience is generally Windows 3.1 and the earlier period of Windows 95 - when games were often still running DOS, but occasionally ran on 'DOS in Windows'. You need a VM, but also a computer with a fair amount of processing power to basically run a VM in a VM. You should also (for some of those games) probably try and play the pure DOS versions if they exist - which they do in most cases but not all.

At some point, when I can be bothered and I buy a dedicated hard drive for it, I am going to give eXoDOS and eXoWin3x a go; theyseems like the best of all worlds, though I'm sure it's got its issues.

I avoid retro PCs for the most part - I put in my hours of messing around with drivers, hardware combinations that didn't quite work and DOS config files in the 90s. It's unlikely you'll be able to build a machine that runs everything well. I don't feel the need to do it again.

>>11821463
The guys at vogons have massive hoards of old pc hardware though. Like warehouse stacked to the top and insane shit like 100 boxed 3dfx cards. Yet many of them complain about prices

>>11821489
They hoarded it all before prices went crazy but can't quite understand that they're a significant contributor to that.

>>11804774 (OP)
For my desktop, I use ExoDOS. Thousands of games with manuals, boxart and magazines. It's all pre-configured to Just Werk. You click on the game, it installs, then you play.

On my Steam Deck, I use the DOSBox Pure core in Retroarch. I use Steam Rom Manager so that each DOS game shows up in my library with boxart.

>>11820149
>>11820298
You try hitting Scroll Lock on the keyboard to enable game focus mode?

>>11821554
>On my Steam Deck, I use the DOSBox Pure core in Retroarch.

Do you find that works smoothly without much messing around with settings, or do you have to do a lot to make things playable (control scheme aside - obviously)?

>>11821283
What do you think of these configs: https://betawiki.net/wiki/Draft:Recommended_VM_configurations/Windows

>>11821283
Can you still keep both? I luv me some 95 as well despite knowing that 98SE does have its advantages.

>>11821813
They seem fine, I guess, though the focus seems to be on general computing rather than gaming. What I find interesting is their note on not using RAM Disk for the hard drive, as it supposedly causes problems on some Windows builds, but they don't specify which ones.
>>11821940
I suppose, but know that I likely won't be making any more updates to the 95 pack. 98lite actually looks almost exactly like Windows 95, anyway, since it uses the older pre-IE Explorer shell, which is faster and more stable, even if a bit more spartan, while still having the bonuses of 98.

>>11804774 (OP)
I have a PC set up for DOS games.
The IRQ/DMA are configured to imitate DOSBox.
The C drive is removable, and the individual games are set up so I can swap the drive between the real DOS machine and a DOSBox session on a different PC.

Just tried Windows 98SE in DOSBOX-X
It works, but 86Box is definitely the superior option

>>11820598
That is the lamest attempt at a NO U I've ever seen.

>>11821112
There's a reason why they're not built and they're just parts being stored away in plastic boxes.
-You can still use up to date SD with a GTX1080ti. It takes more time but there's enough horsepower and vram to make it happen. Just don't try to generate video with it.

>>11821554
doesnt work, Retroarch hates the t16000m but it has a hardon for shitty gamepads

>>11821813
Not that anon, but...
>Win3.11(WfW)
>33MHz 486
>64MBs of RAM
The flying fuck? Even later games that were mostly aimed at Win9x but still ran on Win3.x would require at most 8MBs of RAM. 16MBs is the limit for 3.0, so any devs not wanting to alienate 3.0 users would have to keep below that limit, or only sell to 3.1 and 3.11 users. Unless you are doing Win3.x CAD, I have no idea what good that much RAM will do you.
>Win98SE
>133MHz Pentium
>128MBs of RAM
Using a non-MMX Pentium? Lol, enjoy your long division errors. I also see no reason to be using less than 256MBs of RAM. I can't think of any 9x-specific games that need more than 128MBs, but having extra RAM is always a good idea. Just stay below 512MB and all is good.
>Windows XP(32-bit)
>256MBs of RAM
3.5GBs or don't bother. Stuff like SimCity 4 will want and use the entire 3.5GBs.
>Windows XP(64-bit)
>1.5GBs of RAM
For what purpose?

>>11823303
Those build setups aren't for playing games, they're just for fucking around with beta builds of Windows and nothing more.

>>11823252
>shitty gamepads
That's the whole point of DOSBox Pure (and Retroarch in general), it's to make it gaypad friendly for knuckle draggers. They don't give a fuck about making it work with joysticks.

>>11823303
>133MHz Pentium
>Long division errors
god you are fucking stupid

>>11823303
>Lol, enjoy your long division errors.
>3.5GBs or don't bother.
What the fuck are you talking about? Did you even have a computer in the 90's?
>>11823469
Not really. If you add a Voodoo add-on card to those RTM specs, it would be similar to computers that were available during that time.

>>11820741
Spot on, the guy is a complete narcissist. If only the cunt had a tripcode.

Retard here, do I pirate DOS games to use on my win98 pc? Do I just need an install.exe or something?

>>11826092
First thing you gotta do is find a folder called System32 and delete that, it's the windows copy protection. You had to do this on all PCs back in the day if you wanted to play pirated games.

>>11826092
I love being proven right about gatekeeping

>>11826118
This is correct.
>>11826751
You're retarded.
>>11826092
Find images of the game's discs or disks. OR... find the GOG release of the game. You can easily make the GOG releases run on original hardware. I do both.

>>11823476
had to check the shitty sdl list, there is no t16000 or even other sticks support

>>11826092
Look up how to setup a Samba 1.1 share between your Windows 10 or 11 computer and the retro PC.

Then, grab either the Total DOS Collection from Archive.org, or look up eXoDOS and grab everything from the full version torrent.

You can then find the games and copy and paste their folders into a Samba share, and then on the retro PC, copy and paste whatever specific games you wanna play onto a folder onto the C Drive.

Figure out how to restart to DOS, navigate to that games folder on the C Drive, and then go to each game you wanna install or play and just play them.

You'll have to install the games from the Total DOS Collection but the eXoDOS collection will have all the game files ready to go.

Worst case scenario just use eXoDOS from a modern Windows PC and you feel lazy.

>>11828768
*If you feel lazy

>>11811357
Bloat maximization.

>>11804774 (OP)
Just use linux for win98 games and call it a day.

>>11828768
It's been a while, but I recall having some trouble with getting games downloaded through eXoDOS to work outside of it. Is it really as simple as grabbing the game folder and drag&dropping it elsewhere to use on, say, 86Box?

>>11830667
compatibility is worse than just using windows and dgvoodoo

>>11831316
Worst case scenario you could also grab the same games from the Total DOS Collection on Internet Archive. Both are pretty good options imo.

I play on Linux. Early Windows titles work better on Linux through Wine than on Windows these days (more Windows failure than Linux's success if you ask me). If I want to play DOS games I can use DOSBox via the native installer or via Lutris which handles most of the configuration for me. Usually try via Lutris first and if it fails to work there I go though the setup manually.
My recent DOS game of choice is Lords of the Realm, and the early Windows title (earlyish Win 98) is The Wheel of Time.

>>11810732
most shit advice i ever read, hasnt got a fucking clue, reddit spacing should have been a dead give away, clearly just watched one of phils videos and decided to larp fuckin kek

>>11804774 (OP)
I like Socket 7 machines. Easy to set up. Just works.

>>11835140
I personally liked Socket 370. By the time they were out, shit was mostly standardized, so most components just werked. Many mobos had support for legacy ISA while also supporting AGP (not all, of course), which was good for general compatibility, and such systems were great for Windows 9x or Windows 2000, or even XP up to a point. Only Tualatin PIIIs needed a more specific motherboard.

>>11804774 (OP)
I haven't used windows 3.1 since most of the people on here weren't even sperm. I just assumed people emulated. I've got a nice roster of DOS games I mostly don't play with a dedicated launcher. Nobody talks about how fucking noisy those old machines were. Gotta be a masochist to listen to that *WHRRRRRDRRRDDDRRRDDDRRRDDDRRRDRRR*

>>11835220
I'm a bit conflicted on the noise. On one hand, I am nostalgic for it. Hearing the noise of the fans and hard drive platters ratchet up, the sound of the floppy drive initializing followed by a loud beep, and the clicking of the hard drive as it accesses data are all seared into my mind. I associate those sounds with anticipation for the fun times that are to follow. On the other hand, do I want my current PC to constantly produce that constant loud humming of the hard drive or the clicking sounds every time it wants to open a program? Probably not lol

>>11835220
What?? That sound is one of the most nostalgic things of that era: https://defrag98.com/

>>11823243
My time machines are incomplete since I've been trying to save up for the finishing touches. It's not easy to hire someone to recap old electronics. I've been trying to get a 1080ti for the last 6 or 7 years, but they've only gone up in price and ever further from me. That's why I'm stuck needing to complete my time machines for computer gaming.

>>11836661
I've seen your stupid bullshit too long. I agree with one of the other fuckers in this thread, and I am calling you out:

Recap them yourself.

Otherwise, just use 86Box and stop wasting money on actual hardware. Or just sell it to someone who will actually use it. It's such a fucking waste.

I get one or two things for like collectors purposes, but don't complain about shit if you don't want to get anything done.

Fucking do something about it then.

>>11835236
You can get sound devices that emulate harddrive access actions as well

https://www.serdashop.com/HDDClicker

>>11832619
If you only knew, I actually did this but you can seethe all day you stupid bitch.

Only thing I can add is that I think I agree with others to either go era specific hardware, or use 86Box outright.

The Frankenstein build is ok and I have a backup of that drive but would I do it again? Nope.

I would rather build a super machine that could max out any 86Box build I would ever want to use.

Signed,

Based Motherfucker

>>11832254
DOSBox as in the emulator itself? Or DOSBox straight from Windows 98 somehow ported to Linux?

If you're literally emulating with the DOSBox emulator, why not DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging instead?

>>11832619
Salty nigger spotted

>>11837108
DOSBox the emulator, MS-DOS prompt is basically a DOS VM in 98 no?

I heard DOSBox isn't that good with MIDI and sound card emulation on Linux.

>>11837092
I would prefer someone with more experience/skill help me out as most of the boards I have were from my past builds. I do use Dosbox at this time for playing as mentioned earlier, but I still do want to keep the classic hardware working. Unfortunately, the cost of living is rather high in my area and my wage makes it difficult to save up enough to do much more. I do hope to save up enough for a space to let the time machines really shine.