Vintage gaming on Old Ass Computers

[17daysolderthannes]

DOSBox has me too spoiled to fool with ancient computers. DOS games with no DOS prompt is a godsend (DOSBox frontends, google it if you don't know what I'm talkin about, Boxer for Mac OS X rocks my world).

[Deo]

Yeah, so far this topic has been suspiciously little about old ass computers. 300 Mhz Pentiums? Feh, that's not old at all.

Back at my parent's house I've got a small collection of late 80's Macintosh computers, ranging from a 1986 Macintosh ED to a 1989 Macintosh IIci. All of them equipped with good ol' Motorola 68k processors. Black-and-white Lode Runner and Fool's Errand FTW!

Old 68K Mac games are so damn awesome, I've got my parents old Mac Classic and that thing is like a miniature bomb shelter!

[ApolloBoy]

I don't have any old PCs anymore (the oldest PC I have is a ThinkPad from 2004), but I do have a C64, TI-99/4A, VIC-20, and a few Atari 8-bits (800, 1200XL and XEGS).

[Devil N]

DOSBox has me too spoiled to fool with ancient computers. DOS games with no DOS prompt is a godsend (DOSBox frontends, google it if you don't know what I'm talkin about, Boxer for Mac OS X rocks my world).

For me, part of the charm of DOSBox is using the old DOS commands to start up those old games. It's not like it's that difficult.

c:
cd dosgames\keen4
keen4e

Fortunately you don't have to mess around anymore with SMARTDRV, loading DOS in high memory, getting EMM386 to work, freeing up enough conventional memory, and all that shit. DOSBox just works, which is awesome.

Old 68K Mac games are so damn awesome, I've got my parents old Mac Classic and that thing is like a miniature bomb shelter!

Yeah, I've got a Mac Classic too, which is basically a redesigned Macintosh Plus. Here's a pic of (part of) my collection:



From left to right, that's a '92 Macintosh Classic, an '89 Macintosh IIci and a '90 Macintosh SE/30. These three are all connected to the internet, either through an ethernet card or by bridging the network over Appletalk.

Besides those three, I've also got an '88 (unsure) Macintosh ED (basically a Mac 512Ke). At my father's house, there's also a '92 Macintosh LC II and an '86 Macintosh Plus.

All of these machines are still in working order, but many of them are in need of a capacitor refresh. That's something to do in the future, once my Macintosh fever gets stoked up again.

[nathanallan]

Devil_N that's a really cool setup of classic Apples! None of mine are set up at the moment, but I have a Classic, Mac Plus and one other (can't remember atm) all stashed right now that I want to have working over Appletalk one day.

Guys, I have discovered Halo finally, the first for the PC. Now to build a 900mhz machine to run it, maybe four of them so I can run a server

Classic gaming has never been more fun than lately.

[TmEE]

my setup is :

PentiumIII @ 1.4GHz
768MB of PC133
ATI Radeon 9200SE with 128MB of VRAM
250GB + 40GB HDDs
Yamaha YMF718 + ESS Maestro-1 sound cards
Realtek Gigabit LAN stuff

Running win98SE + 300MB of updates and stuff :3

[fatboy]

@ TmEE:
A 1.4Ghz PIII? You must have the almighty "Tualatin" processor!
I'm envious, You lucky bastard. What kind of Mobo do You have? The Asus P2B-F I have is nice, but it's a slot-1, so unless I get My hands on a slot kit, I'm stuck with the 800Mhz CPU

[Elusive]

Nothing screams 'this is an old computer' to me more than the hearing the 'tzzwip' and smelling the fusty, plasticy, slightly-toasted-dusty smell of a BBC Micro powering up. It's like hearing a 56k modem dialling out: instant, Pavlovian nostalgia rush and something only people of a certain age are likely to remember.

I think it was still in regular use in my classroom way into the mid-nineties - I think the few Micros left were only sold off after the turn of the millennium. Utterly, utterly indestructble machines

[edit] b3ta, I love you:

[Dant]

Been considering buying/building a computer for DOS and win 95/98 gaming, it's just that the good old sound cards (specifically ad-lib and Gravis Ultrasound) are both uncommon and severely overpriced.

I did however find a couple Pentium 1 66Mhz system in storage, as well as a Voodoo 1 card from 3DFX.

On top of that an old friend of mine who has been doing IT for a local school system for about the last 25 years was cleaning up his office and gave me a copies of win 98 SE, MS-DOS 6.22, and Windows (not for workgroups) 3.11 that he found

[TmEE]

@ TmEE:
A 1.4Ghz PIII? You must have the almighty "Tualatin" processor!
I'm envious, You lucky bastard. What kind of Mobo do You have? The Asus P2B-F I have is nice, but it's a slot-1, so unless I get My hands on a slot kit, I'm stuck with the 800Mhz CPU

Yes, indeed a Tualatin P3... I also got a 1.4GHz Tualeron and couple of 1.3GHz ones ^^

I got a DFI something mobo, don't remember... VIA chipset, so nothing stellar.

[fatboy]

@ TmEE:
Nice CPU stockpile You've got there! To be perfectly honest, I had never even heard of a Tualeron before, I had to Google that one!

@Dant:
I say go for it! DOSBOX is good, in some cases better then real DOS, but judging from the parts You have on hand, I think You could put together a pretty sweet DOS system, easily better then the one I'm running now.
You might want to visit: vogons.zetafleet.com/
The creator of DOSBOX is pretty active there, and plenty of old wizards there who work with real hardware, as well.

[Dant]

@Dant:
I say go for it! DOSBOX is good, in some cases better then real DOS, but judging from the parts You have on hand, I think You could put together a pretty sweet DOS system, easily better then the one I'm running now.
You might want to visit: vogons.zetafleet.com/
The creator of DOSBOX is pretty active there, and plenty of old wizards there who work with real hardware, as well.

Lol, just now (within the last hour) I found out they belonged to someone else and they want it back.

The computers and the voodoo card, not the os's I got

Also, I am well aware of DOSbox and use it pretty much every day (truth be told it's the only dos experience I've had aside from a win 98 instalation w/ multiple partitions, ugh.) and I've heard of Vogons before and will give them a closer look

[Rusty Venture]

Win98 in a virtual machine is hardly worth it...at least when I tried BUILD games.

I can run "Blood" at 800x600 on my actual computer, but under VitrualPC, it would run choppy on anything beyond the lowest resolution.

Funny that VirtualPC somehow gave me 1600x1200 for res options for Blood where my physical PC doesn't...

[Dant]

Win98 in a virtual machine is hardly worth it...at least when I tried BUILD games.

I can run "Blood" at 800x600 on my actual computer, but under VitrualPC, it would run choppy on anything beyond the lowest resolution.

Funny that VirtualPC somehow gave me 1600x1200 for res options for Blood where my physical PC doesn't...

Well I use Virtual PC myself and hearing a lot from my friends in the IT industry I might be able to help you.

Basically VPC emulates a P3 and an S3 ViRGE video card, in a game as old as blood the only problems I could see you having would be if your processor didn't have VM extentions

[Rusty Venture]

It does, I checked it for the XP mode in Win 7 Pro.

The wacky thing is, I had Vista running in a VM that was running Solidworks (a 3D intensive program) and it ran alright.

Maybe 7 just didn't like VirtualPC 2007.