Would it be possible to get a computer from the mid-late 90s that could play games all the way from that point in time backwards to the earliest computer games, with little to no emulation involved?
I think I'd actually like to, as a hobby, have an old-ass PC and play old Windows and DOS games without having to emulate DOS or run anything in compatibility mode.
Is this doable? How cheaply could it be done? Do you think the novelty would wear off quickly or could it be a genuinely rewarding hobby?
uh, yes. People do it all the time. search youtube for "win98 build"
>>2995437
Cool. Thanks. I have about $100 to throw around, so I guess I can get cracking next weekend.
>>2995353
no, it is impossible. trying to use old computers is against nature and the sweaty astral projection of Steve Ballmer will haunt you screaming "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" if you even try.
>>2995519
I was curious whether a PC from 1998 or so could run the earliest DOS games without trouble (hence "that could play games all the way from that point in time backwards...), and whether the parts were cheaply available.
>>2995523
No, they will be too fast
>>2995353
>computers
impossible, see c64, amiga, atari st etc. etc. too,many formats. not too mention super early stuff from the 70s that'd run on PDPs and other minicomputers.
>IBM PC
doable for all but the earliest stuff.
>>2995530
There were emulators for most systems in the 90s, we even had PSX emulation whilst the system was still on sale. Early versions of most emulator systems work on Windows 98 (Project 64 v1.5 for example, I used it to complete Mario 64 on an 800 MHz PIIIm)
Then you can also install Windows XP on very low end hardware (I've personally done it on PII-266MHz & 128 MB RAM), so then you could access later emulation software.
Ergo, I'm pretty sure that a <= 1GHz machine could play 99% of everything that predated it.
>>2995624
There were "hog" programs at the time that would slow your machine down. If your motherboard allows it you can underclock the CPU/FSB and disable L2/L3 cache to really slow the CPU down, and lastly an old version of DOSBox would emulate the really early stuff.
However, this all comes with massive caveats; running even older software on already old machines was complicated and compatibility was a pain.
>>2995745
>http://www.sierrahelp.com/Utilities/SlowdownUtilities.html
Sierra has a list of progs.
And the original MoSlo's jewing website.
>http://www.hpaa.com/moslo/utils.asp
>>2995353
No that isnt fucking doable. First of all there is much more than just MSDOS and Windows 98 in computing. You have Amiga series, X86k, FM Towns, NEC pcs, etfuckingc, and not only that but some games required specific parts that could not ALL be on the same machine. So you would be able to play a good chunk of games but not all. Just emulate, there is actually zero difference as old games were all software rendered anyways
Honestly, you'll have a better gaming experience using dosbox than actually trying to run these games on DOS
>>2995789
This
>>2995353
I don't really get the fascination of old PCs. Like if it's been your hobby for years then that's awesome. But getting into it now is a bit dumb. Nothing is cheap and most the NOS is dried up by now except for pata HDDs surprisingly. Even then you're better off using CF though.
You really need to be committed and have some basic electronic knowledge.
>>2995592
> later emulation software.
>Windows XP on PII-266MHz
but if youre going emulation, faster isnt an issue
if you meant a single computer to run natively early DOS, and also some 4th 5th gen emulation, well, tough.
but chances are even the computer in your pocket right now is faster than a x86 233MHz, so its a moot point, just focus on the early DOS.
>>2995798
What if I just happen to have an old packard bell w/ Win3.11 lying around for no reason anyone knows of?
>>2995814
Lots of people have old tech laying around. The truth is 99% of it is worthless.
Gaming PCs didn't really kick off till the very ass end of the 90s and mostly in the early 2000s. So you're stuck with compromises usually when you're shopping for an old PC. If you actually want something that would had been top of the line back then you'll need to buy multiple lots usually.
>>2995648
>>2995648
>an old version of DOSBox would emulate the really early stuff.
WUT
are you saying latest more compatible dosbox cant play earliest stuff?
how come? isnt dosbox basically just translation of open sets of instructions instead of guessing from proprietary platforms, and is therefore 100% perfect?
>>2995762
>there is actually zero difference as old games were all software rendered anyways
i understood OP meant earliest IBM-PC x86, but anyways, i tried emulation Crusader No Regret before the modern port on GOG a couple years ago in a 2GHz cpu, and fuck, the flow wasnt smoth and constant, sometimes even the music would accelerate for a second and choke on another, nothing game breaking but mood killing, and just proceeded to turn my pentium 100 on
>>2995592
2000 would have been a better pick, due to xp running additional processes and no unique benefit for such an underpowered configuration
>>2995798
>and most the NOS is dried up
>better off using CF though.
CompactFlash?
NOS ?
>>2995353
>active desktop
This is why Windows will forever be associated with security vulnerability. The more things change...
>>2995859
NOS stands for new old stock, champ. Maybe you're foreign though and not a kid.
Compact Flash doesn't have much compatibility issue as an ide drive replacement.
>>2995824
>>2995798
old PCs ist immediatelly useful hardware like old VG consoles, so even the ppl who didint throw them away will just pass them along for a symbolic price.
luck
>>2995353
OP be sure to prioritize a motherboard with two PCI slots
my pentium 100 intel board has 1 PCI (for vga) and finding a ISA sound card was a bitch, while PCI sound and video there still plenty avaiable, as old coputers went to trash ppl tend to keep the smaller expansion boards in forgotten boxes, but ISA was already old in mid 90s so...
>>2995869
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_old_stock
humm ok
no need for NOS though, pata HDDs are freely given, and used parts for PCI will do just fine
i would have guessed the hardest part would be finding an old enough hdd for the motherboard to even recognize, remember those 2GB 32GB, 127GB marks along the evoluton of storage
luckily i still my 10GB hdd jumpable to 2GB
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash
>CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.[4]
my pentium 100 f bought in 1996 doesnt have CF on the motherboard, and my K6 from 2000s didnt also, didnt know it was ever a common slot on MBs..
>>2995908
Do you use wiki as your final answer for everything?
There are adapters for the CF. Sorry I should had said they weren't plug n play.
>>2995917
hah, i just typed the expression on google to be sure i understood what it was, and for old open technical standards wikipedia would be just a thorough as any other source
>>2995908
>didnt know it was ever a common slot on MBs..
It wasn't. Since CF uses IDE as its interface, all you need is a simple adapter and connect it with the same ribbon cable you use for hard drives.
That said, Win98 is extremely finicky about running on CF. It actually checks if the CF card is flagged as removable and will fail to work properly if so.
To make matters worse, virtually all affordable modern CF cards have dropped support for being toggled to report as a fixed drive. That's now a premium feature for industrial applications.
DOS/Win3.x gives no fucks and happily works with pretty much any CF card though.
>>2995937
Never use Kingston CF cards for retro setups. The Win98SE installer will fail partway through copying files and will actually render the card permanently inoperable. We went through three 8GB Kingston Ultimate cards before realizing they were actually getting destroyed. No other machine or reader could recognize them after that.
>>2995592
>very low end hardware
>later emulation software
I know someone already replied to this, but the whole point of emulation is having high end PCs to bruteforce every incompatibility, while having low end hardware is the straight answer to incompatibility issues, so you shouldn't use an OS that goes against what you're trying to achieve.
>>2995353
>Would it be possible to get a computer from the mid-late 90s that could play games all the way from that point in time backwards to the earliest computer games, with little to no emulation involved?
Nope. Anything earlier than 386 era is going to be timed against CPU clock rather than RTC and will fly hilariously out of control on a Pentium or later. Even some 486 era software asks you to select your CPU from a contemporary list on startup so it can set timings.
Then you have bugs like the one in Borland Tubro Pascal (used on many of Epic MegaGames' titles) that causes those programs to crash while initializing video if the CPU clock runs at over 200MHz.
>>2995353
Is it dumb to install Win98 over the 512MB RAM machine?
OP here. Basically, I'm 28, I'm currently working on a master's degree, I think I can do it but it's overwhelming as fuck, and I just want an old-ass computer to play games on like when I was a kid as a comfort thing. It was somewhere I felt competent, and something I could lose myself in.
I realize I could just emulate old games, but there's something about the environment, both physical and on the computer, that I find comforting.
Plus I think it'd make a fun conversation piece.
>>2996312
You should have said this sooner. I guess it'd be cheap enough since there is no market for this stuff and you can look for people just giving away their hardware.
>>2996075
Eh, your call
If you're planning on using it a bunch, yes.
Going over the 512MB soft limit will not make it unstable at startup, but it will get progressively more unstable the longer the up time is.
But no one can deny the usefulness of more RAM.
Really depends on how much you value uptime over stableness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfSukXqGZ1c
This dude did it for £60. That's about $90. So shouldn't OP be able to do it for around $100?
Absolutely not. You'd need several PCs to cover the entire gamut of games since the IBM PC came out in 1981.
OP is under the age of 20 and >>2996312 like shit he's 28 and working on a master's degree.
I'm amazed no one in this thread has mentioned PCEM
A x86 emulator that is able to emulate proper cycle speeds of various diffrent CPUs.
So games like the original version of Lesure Suit Larry which did not operate off of a timer are sure to run at their proper speed.
It emulates various chips from the 4.77 Mhz 8086 up to a 586 Pentium 1 w/MMX
Nice solution to running applications and games correctly if you're not able to get such specific hardware. Runs Windows 98 se with no issues either.
>>2996345
You do realize that if OP is 28 then 1981 is still several years before he was born? You would have to make a concerted effort to know all about computers from before your birth and early in your childhood.
>>2996362
Probably because this thread is about original hardware.
>>2996378
True, but acquiring such working hardware (especially the 8086-286 eras) can be difficult and expensive.
If hardware is a must and you're aiming for 90s dos/windows games, get a early Pentium 4 system with a AGP port, these are recent enough that they're dirt cheep if not free, and easy to get. Added bonus is that you can also find some eirly P4s with 1 16-bit ISA slot for whatever legacy video shit you want, and a floppy disk drive connector, otherwise I'd just go with a VooDoo2 or a Nvidia TNT2. Sound wise, a Sound Blaster 16 PCI card will do almost everything ever for DOS sound, and everything for Windows 95/98, basically the most compatible card out there.
Part of the reason I'm recommending a "later" era system is also for the fact that the motherboards are going to be more compatible with modern storage. Plenty of dirt cheep 20-500GB PATA drives out there that still work.
Granted such a fast CPU can cause some issues like what >>2996016 mentions. Its a very inexpensive solution that covers /most/ ground.
>>2996374
I'd hope nobody that age would ask such an amazingly dumb question without doing a lick of any research as OP did which is why I suggested he's under 20.
>>2996419
>Sound wise, a Sound Blaster 16 PCI card will do almost everything ever for DOS sound, and everything for Windows 95/98, basically the most compatible card out there.
You need to be careful with your motherboard selection when using PCI sound cards. If the board doesn't support NMI/DDMA then absolutely none of your DOS games expecting direct access to the interrupts or DMA on the bus are going to have working sound.
>Part of the reason I'm recommending a "later" era system is also for the fact that the motherboards are going to be more compatible with modern storage.
You can get SATA to IDE adapters that will allow you to run a modern SATA drive in an old IDE system, and at this point I'd avoid mechanical storage entirely and run an SSD through such an adapter, or a CF card via CF-IDE adapter.
But avoid incompatible cards like >>2995960
Oddly enough it's largely the no-name Chinese shit you can find on ebay that works properly most of the time.
>>2995624
>There's no way to slow them down?
It's more than that. Slowdown programs don't tend to get everything cycle exact, besides they can't fix incompatibilities with newer chipsets. The earliest stuff from the 80s generally will not work properly at all unless you had a real IBM XT.
>>2996419
>If hardware is a must and you're aiming for 90s dos/windows games, get a early Pentium 4 system with a AGP port, these are recent enough that they're dirt cheep if not free, and easy to get. Added bonus is that you can also find some early P4s with 1 16-bit ISA slot for whatever legacy video shit you want, and a floppy disk drive connector, otherwise I'd just go with a VooDoo2 or a Nvidia TNT2.
You do know that they phased out real hardware ISA by this point; the ISA slots on those boards just piggyback on the PCI bus. They can't do DMA or anything like that anymore which means that you can't use cards like an SB16.
>>2996312
>and I just want an old-ass computer to play games on like when I was a kid as a comfort thing. It was somewhere I felt competent, and something I could lose myself in
So you're a braindead nostalgiafaggot who wants to pretend it was a time when you weren't a fat unemployed turbovirgin.
Go drink toilet bowl cleaner.
In all seriousness, you'd need all of the following to run everything since 1981. It's completely silly to think one computer could do everything.
>IBM XT w/ real CGA card
>PCjr
>Tandy 1000
>486-era PC
>Pentium II/III
>Pentium IV
>current generation rig
>>2995937
>DOS/Win3.x gives no fucks and happily works with pretty much any CF card though.
That's more because DOS uses FAT16 instead of FAT32. The latter apparently induces some kind of incompatibility.
OP would just be better using DOSBox.
>>2996457
Are you implying he wasn't a virgin back then?
That his turbovirginity grew back?
Makes no sense man.
>>2996473
Not really. You can have frankenstein DOS 7.1/Win3.x or freedos/Win3x setups on FAT32, and even run DOS 6.22/Win3.x on a FAT32 partition without issue.
Win3.x still won't be able to use FAT32 features like lone filenames but there's no compatibility problems. It doesn't even care if the card is flagged removable or fixed. And it certainly doesn't irreparably fuck the CF card like Win9x can.
>>2995814
>Packard Hell
I seriously hope you guys don't do this.
>>2996539
>>2995814
Still werks, this thread made me dig it out of its box and hook it up. Intel 80486 with a tad over 3MB of RAM. If anyone needs me I'll be playing Rodent's Revenge and Laser Light. Too bad I don't have a USB floppy disk drive, so I can't copy any new games onto it. I'll need to get one of those.
>>2996551
>3MB
You ain't gonna do nothing with that. Needs 8-16MB, but then...
>P-B
>upgrades
>implying
>>2996461
Why would you need both Tandy and PCjr?
Why not an Athlon instead of the crappy P4?
>>2996608
>Why would you need both Tandy and PCjr?
PCjr has stuff that only runs on it and nothing else.
>Why not an Athlon instead of the crappy P4?
I meant it more as a general term of P4-class PCs.
>>2996551
>Intel 80486 with a tad over 3MB of RAM
That sounds too low
>>2996616
It's P-B. That's what they did. Non-upgradeable pieces of shit with half the RAM soldered to the motherboard.
>>2996620
You should take a look inside, it probably uses standard ram
>>2996620
"In 1986, Beny Alagem and a group of Israeli investors bought the Packard Bell name from Teledyne[5] and resurrected it as a manufacturer of low-cost personal computers. Their computers were among the first IBM PC compatibles sold in retail chains such as Sears.[6]"
They also did bullshit like a combo modem/sound card. The quality of the motherboards was poor and they had a high failure rate. Basically a junk computer sold at Wal-Mart to tech illiterates.
PB 486 boards also omitted the CPU cache which made them much slower than normal.
>>2996334
>Now the influx of hipsters think old PCs are cool so that doesn't help
I've never heard of such a thing. I've heard of that happening with consoles, but not PCs.
I guess there's no stupid Youtube celebrity like AVGN to promote Commodore 64 games to the sheeple, so...
>>2996374
He claims to have played the stuff as a kid yet has an apparent complete cluelessness as to how the hardware works.
jesus this genuinely sounds horrible
>>2996795
Go on Google Groups archive and search for anything related to Packard-Bell. That was one lousy brand of computer.
>>2996640
And finally, Packard Bell's OEM edition of Windows 3.1 was equipped with a really braindead OS overlay known as Navigator.
>>2996813
why won't he draw older women, then?
>>2996816
Post was meant for another board. Sorry about that.
>>2996446
Eg. Atarisoft ports of Dig Dug, Ms. Pac-Man, etc need a real 4.77Mhz 8088 and CGA card to run correctly.
>>2996837
>not just playing the arcade stuff on MAME
costanza.jpg
The very oldest stuff up to 1985 usually won't work except on 8088 CGA boxes. Stuff from 87 to 95 can be taken care of with a 486 or Pentium.
>>2996784
I played SNES as a kid. All I knew about it was you stick the cartridge in and push the power thing. My parents set it up and everything. Same with the computer.
>>2996858
youdon'tbelonghere.jpg
>>2996858
My god, man. I knew the DOS command set by the age of 8.
For shame...
>>2996898
Obviously I'm retarded somehow, because according to windows I have more than that in just free memory alone.
>>2996898
Forgot the picture of the BIOS starting up.
>>2996342
How much time it could work before it will go unstable?Over 0 hours of workWill 6 hours be good enough?
>>2996804
Not finding anything labeled navigator. Just looks like Windows 3.1 stuff besides the folder labeled Packard Bell and the entertainment pack that's open here.
Internet Explorer 3.0
Going to try and find some free dialup service that isn't dead yet.
>>2996920
The original owner probably disabled/deleted it.
>>2996925
If you have one more modem, try to connect it to your more powerful machine, make a gate.
>>2996938
I do have a modem lying around I think. Not sure if it's still working, or even if it would work with linux even if the card itself still works.
Just to be clear, you mean something like this? https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Transferring_Data_between_Standard_Dial-Up_Modems
>>2996964
You can't deny the truth, kike.
>>2995353
For all that time/money/effort you can use DOSBox for free.
>>2996975
The most hilarious thing is that, well, it's fucking true they really were Jews.
Why are you so assblasted over that?
>>2996975
>Ever since Israeli-born entrepreneur Beny Alagem bought the name of a highly respected but defunct consumer electronics company in 1985--to give his new personal computer business instant cachet--people have been perplexed by Packard Bell.
> In 1983 he teamed up with fellow Israeli immigrants Alex Sandel, 52, and Jason Barzilay, 42--Alagem says he met them "at schools in the area"--to form Cal-Abco, a wholesaler of memory chips and other computer components. Then, in 1986, the trio formed Packard Bell, with Alagem at the helm and Barzilay and Sandel as more or less passive investors.
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1995/06/12/203837/index.htm
http://www.jewishjournal.com/cover_story/article/the_israeli_americans_who_they_are_what_they_want_where_theyre_headed_why_t
http://forward.com/news/israel/190625/israeli-immigrants-play-growing-role-in-american-j/
Meme magic is real.
This thread went off in all the wrong directions.
>>2996981
For all the time spent getting dosbox to run everything well you can get a job and buy all the old PCs you want
>>2997027
7/10 for trolling effort. I at least cracked a smile.
>>2997034
He's under 20. Leave him alone.
>>2996950
Yes, I mean this.
>>2996905
Windows is counting virtual memory, which by default is going to mirror the base memory.
>>2996908
You have 4MB of RAM. It's just split up with conventional and BIOS shadow memory.
You probably don't need your BIOS ROM shadowed in RAM, so you can disable that option to free up some memory. Assuming the Packardshit BIOS even allows it.
>>2997046
>I played one game under dosbox and it worked fine
>don't ruin my fantasy
I gave up on dosbox a long time ago. You might not remember. You were a child at the time. I mean more of a child than now.
>>2995835
>i understood OP meant earliest IBM-PC x86
Even then, "earliest" isn't totally synonymous with "DOS".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PC_booter_games
>Many early IBM PC compatible games between 1981 and 1988 were known as PC booters. These games were distributed on 5¼" or, later, 3½", floppy disks that booted directly, meaning once they were inserted in the drive and the computer was turned on, a custom operating system on the diskette took over and ran the program. This was commonly used as a form of copy protection until it became obsolete as games grew larger. Due to bit rot, original working versions of these floppy disks are rare, and many have largely been abandoned by their publishers, although working copies of some have been ported to DOS and may be found on the internet.
>>2995353
why not install win98 in PCem?
this is actually more fun
>>2995745
This. I had a 486 in mid 90's and used that to slow down some old games (when the "turbo" button toggle wasn't good enough).
I think you'll face more memory-related problems. Some games wanted basically all the base 640K to run, so you had to make custom boot menu options (with config.sys and autoexec.bat). I guess that's the same as making a cutom boot floppy, for old versions of DOS that didn't support the boot menu stuff. Another thing you could try is DR-DOS (by Digital Research, later released for free use by Caldera) because they had a simple option at install time to optimize the OS for gaming and free up as much memory as possible. I ran that DOS for a while when I was dual booting to Linux and it was really nice for gaming.
Anyway yeah, memory management was a PITA in DOS, to the point where one company made lots of money selling tools just to deal with that aspect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qemm
Programming was kinda hairy too. I made some games in Turbo Pascal, and had some troubles after my code exceeded 64K. Had to jump through some hoops and shit to make it work (can't remember all the details, that was 20 years ago).
>>2995824
Allegedly, Doom made more people upgrade their PC than any software before, and this was 1993/94. But even before that, games sold high-end PCs, typically for flight sims and such (including stuff like pic). It was just on a smaller scale, but "gaming rigs" were a thing.
>>2996059
In eastern Europe, those systems were still common during the 90's. Russians even made their own modified and expanded computers based on Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
I grew up with Amstrad CPC, then Amiga, before finally getting 486 in mid 90's. If Commodore hadn't gone belly-up, I'd have stuck with it much longer. They were much better designed machines.
>>2996846
You could also just play another DOS version of those games. There were a lot made. Who care if it's not offical Atari version.
>>2995624
I believe if you had certain AMD K6 chips you could underclock them in the BIOS and disable caches to get the machine close to a high end 386. Anything older and you will have to use slowdown utilities.
>>2995745
You may be able to get this to run well on a Pentium 3, but anything less and it will be unplayable for later DOS games.
>>2998135
No one here was old enough to use a computer in the 90s
>>2998112
Wing Commander is probably a bad example of games pushing hardware upgrades. It actually had a very graceful method of reducing effects to fit the hardware it was running on. Hell, I've even seen it running on a NEC V20, which is essentially an 8088 clone.
>>2998379
I started using an 80286 IBM clone with an amber screen to play Hack in the 90s. Come at me bruv.
>>2997027
But where do you get the time to get the games running? Money can't buy you conventional memory.
>>2998578
>my accountant dad gave me his 80's PC when i was tall enough to sit in a chair without a booster see in the 90's
If you have another explanation I'd love to hear it.
>>2998589
I honestly don't understand any of what you said. Old PCs are free and I seriously don't know WTF "conventional memory" is
>>2998578
Yeah the 70's to early 90's containment thread is a testatment to that. I started with an Osborne 1 in early 80's (it was my parent's computer) and various other 8-bit stuff soon followed.
The guy you're replying to is a butthurt millenial who just realized his safe zone has been invaded by old farts, much like Europe is being invaded by arabs. Well buck up, sonny! We ain't going back. Ficki ficki, bitch!
>>2999067
t. I was 5 years old in 1998 and my dad gave me his old Osbourne from the closet to play with
>>2998992
>and I seriously don't know WTF "conventional memory" is
facepalm.jpg
>>2997027
>>2997449
Not him but what game has DOSBox failed you?
>I gave up on dosbox a long time ago.
Yeah, that's because it actually sucked back then, lots of improvements came from the years.
>>2998992
>and I seriously don't know WTF "conventional memory" is
The thing of nightmares.
>>2999067
Top kek kid. My daughters a millenial so i asked her for the millenial take on your post. She said you sound like a cunt. First thing we've agreed on in while.
>>2999194
Believe it or not no one used that term back when it was a thing. I looked it up and now understand what you're referring to. If you could learn me the emoji for it my kidspeak on the subject might be complete.
>>2999218
There are many games dosbox has problems with and most are documented on the dosbox wiki. Search for slow/lag. Giving up on dosbox for gaming doesn't mean I don't use it for things it's actually good for. I have current versions. It still has lots of issues, as documented on the dosbox website.
>>2996334
retro PCs hipsters? are you sure about that, i dont think a cabinet fits in those ikea kallax, hehe
a pc isnt much portable like a nes, isnt readily plug and play forever
>>2996334
>Businesses have a lot of demand everything old
i guess you mean medical equipment or banks?
for both i would imagine it is much less hassle to use modern adapters, like some non critical equipment on top hospitals still use diskettes, but they simply have a floppy-to-usb adapter, a custom hardware that attachs to isa, they can simply contract for an emulation enviroment (open arch after all) and use isa-to-pcix or isa-to-usb as well...
other than that only some really niche biz like military, agencies, ancient research backups.
>>2999263
>Believe it or not no one used that term back when it was a thing.
That's absolutely untrue, the amount of conventional memory needed was in the readme as part of either troubleshooting or in the system requirements section.
Tell us another one.
ITT: The stupidest people to ever invade /vr/
>>2998992
>and I seriously don't know WTF "conventional memory" is
I could explain it, but it's complicated and technical and I don't want to bore you.
>>2996461
>>486-era PC
>>Pentium II/III
>>Pentium IV
huh isnt p3 p4 recent enough that his laptop should be able to play these things, probably a glide wrapper for p3 games with vodoo/rivaTNT or whatwasitcalled would suffice
and a pentium 1 underclockable from 66mhz to over 133mhz would play a wider range, anything that would use cycles from 286/386 would be broken in 486 66/100 anyway.
>>2999313
>and a pentium 1 underclockable from 66mhz to over 133mhz would play a wider range, anything that would use cycles from 286/386 would be broken in 486 66/100 anyway.
286/386 era would encompass 1987-92 or thereabouts. Most of these games should work on a 486 or Pentium unless you're talking LSL II requiring Larry to do 450 pushups.
>>2998992
The first 640k-1MB of RAM and the only thing that can be accessed in real mode DOS without l33t hax0r tricks.
>>2998039
> you had to make custom boot menu options (with config.sys and autoexec.bat).
That's the way bruv'nor. People who used boot disks over this smarter option were daft.
>>2995592
>predated
I don't think this is the word you intended to use. Predated means killed and eaten.
>>2999497
I had a boot disk with options.
>>2996343
thats still expensive as fuck for a PC like that
you can get good old PCs for 30-50€ just remember to change the thermal paste if its too old
not that anon, but
>>2999503
are you brit, merica or aus?
im not native, and the living language argument aside,and taking into consideration that the webster's site took the godawful choice to literally include the misuse of "literally" as figure of speech in their definition
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predated
the facebook plugin shows the location of some commentators, the native speakers are saying the opposite as you, acting surprised that the act of predation is also used as verb, and that the use of predate in a temporal context predates predate used in a predatorial contexthuehuehue, btw spare the unnecessary comment about this not being evidence
>>2995865
Now we have loonix "ricers" using non-free software(adware and spyware included) just to make their desktop more "rice", with a zillion meters and fancy dynamic effects.
>>2999220
>Muh daughteru
Have you taught her how to call FBI when you butthurt her at night?
>>2996994
I like jews andd Log Horizon and Nisekoi. So what?
>>2995353
I still boot up my 486 from time to time to play old games and I have to say its much better than emulating. Also your going to have a hard time getting one in working order poeple tend to hold on to things that cost them a couple thousand dollars.
>>3000805
It's only in early 90's that 486 systems were expensive. By 1996 they were pretty cheap, even the faster ones like DX4 @120 MHz.
I bought such a machine for dirt cheap, to use as a firewall/router (Linux-based) and teach myself basic networking stuff with LAN cards. Didn't have a hub though, since those were actually expensive back then, and instead got a couple 10base2 (coax) NE2000 cards, since that was the cheapest option. My desktop at the time was a p120, and the 486 systems were really just "budget" computers at that point (not much different than how in early 90's they sold a lot of low-end 386SX machines).
>>2997082
It doesn't. I can disable my cache if I want to though. Never know when that'll come in handy, right?
Here's my problem, /vr/. I can't figure out how to get files on and off this thing. I have a PCI modem card installed in a newer PC I have to try and transfer files over, but I can't get the 3.11 computer to recognize its own card. I took a look inside and it's not an ISA card, it's connected to the rest of the PC by a ribbon cable, it looks like maybe some Packard Bell-specific thing. Windows can hook up to the internet through it, but the File Sharing setup is having none of it. I tried taking the hard drive out and into another computer to rip an image of it off, but it can't read a single thing. The linux file command properly reports the image (and the device itself) as having a DOS/MBR boot sector, but running fdisk -l on it spits out a whole load of crap. 4 partitions with sizes from 18.3MB to 2TB. The old PC can still boot from it and read every bit of the hard drive, but as far as every other computer is concerned, what's written on the hard drive is garbage. I have another PATA drive lying around, I'm going to try to install DOS and 3.11 on that and see if it works, but there are some files on the old hard drive I'd like off if at all possible.
>>3001863
If you go on some place like the vintage-computer.com forums, you can probably get more useful answers than here.
>get gnu/linux
>run old games on wine
>run dos in dosbox
>stop buying shitty, slow old computers with shit oses
Jesus.
>>3001863
Pay careful attention to how the hard drive is defined in the BIOS. If it's laid out with CHS in Normal mode for instance, you'll need to set it up the same way if you hook it up to a different machine.
>>3001863
>Windows can hook up to the internet through it
Do you have a Win3 FTP application? Can you download one?
>>3001863
Sounds like a PB420 motherboard, and yes, the modem is proprietary.
My go-to solutions for data transfer on old systems involve a floppy emulator or small CF cards and an IDE adapter.
>>3002009
He could also use a null modem cable to transfer files via the serial port.
>>3002009
>Sounds like a PB420 motherboard, and yes, the modem is proprietary
If you have a Packard Hell PC, you deserve what you get.
>>3002025
If they couldn't get modem-to-modem working I wouldn't expect better luck with a null modem cable. The modern system may not even have the requisite port.
>>3002057
Desktop PC motherboards still have all the parallel/floppy/serial hardware on them, it's just not connected to anything.
>>3002061
It may still be on the Super-IO IC everyone still uses but they frequently don't even have the break-out headers anymore.
>>3002065
If not you can get a PCIe serial card.
>>3002067
If you're going to go that far you may as well do the CF card thing since it's a lot faster and less fiddly.
>>3002025
I have a null modem cable. And I also have an eMachines computer from around 2001-2002 that has a serial port on it. I'll see what I can do.
>>3001956
I don't think it has one, and transferring anything heavier than a gopher site takes way too long. I tried to download one and it was going on for half an hour and didn't make any significant progress. Or any progress.
>>3001889
Thanks, I'll give that a try.
>>3001952
You know what, I bet this is what I did wrong. I think I left it on auto when I put it in the newer computer. I'll give it another try this afternoon.
>>2997023
No kidding, this thread is a trainwreck.
>>3002556
no u
>>3001918
>stop buying shitty, slow old computers
Oh you telling loonix doesn't juest werkz? You don't even IBM thinkpad? Stallman hates you and rapes your mother.
>>2995437
>win98 for playing retro games
Mac Os 7 through 9 are GOAT for vintage games.
>>3001918
>gnu/linux
excuse me, what you are calling gnu/linux is actually X11+kde+gnu+mozilla+linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Ubuntu, gnucorelibs are not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning linuxkernel-based system made useful by the OOsuite, shell utilities and some retrovydia emulators comprising a full entertainment OS as defined by /vr/.
Many computer users run a modified version of the X11+kde+gnu+mozilla+linux system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of which is widely used today is often called “Linux” (or ubuntu), and both are acceptable, anything else is just unnecessary posturing.
>>3002658
low quality b8
>>3002878
Where else am I supposed to get my zoombinis fix?
>>3002951
>don't know what Zoombinis is
>Google it
>some crap kiddie eduware anon probably has a nostalgia wank over
Weak.
>>3002709
autism
>>3002709
> not running GNU/BSD
pleb!
>>3005309
ill explain, my /g/utless friend
its adapted from commentary from a webradio talk show, and changed to argument the opposite of the original who advocates for the "gnu/linux" name, and it goes as:
"if i may interject, what you are referring to as linux is actually gnu/linux..."
(btw, its NOT a quote from stallman, only the second part of the radio talker is a readout of paragraph from stallman's site)
>>3004945
Not him, but Zoombinis is a legitimately good video game and probably the best edutainment title of all time
