soup /vr/. i've been wanting a little dos gaming rig for a while now. when i was only 9 or 10 my fondest gaming memories were playing zork, the early ultima games. doom, duke nukem 3d, redneck rampage, day of the tentacle and just so many old awesome games that were actually pretty out dated when i was playing them. dosbox is great but playing it on hardware from that era has its charm.
i recently got an old ibm thinkpad 750e for free and it supports booting into dos mode with a great looking screen in the proper resolutions and a cool little ergonomic keyboard slant that picks up in levers with the little nipple in the middle of the mechanical keyboard. it just sets my nostalgia boner off. im not great with hardware from this era so i had just a few questions for some people with more experiance than me with systems from this era.
should i get an sd to floppy adaptor or a usb floppy drive and a box of cards? i know the adapters hold way more info but with the way dos runs games wouldn't i have to dump and reload the data every time i ran a new game? i havent had a chance to play with one yet. with 98 how difficult is it to load dos games onto the harddrive to be ran from the gui? i have seen the hard drive adaptors where i could run an sd drive as my main hard drive and have all the storage in the world but i'm not familiar enough with dos to know if that's a simple thing to do.
i am also just looking for any general tips and tricks for dos and 98 based machines in particular laptops.
>>3357608
You should just download the shit on your regular computer and then get it via FTP. What you'll want is a bigger hard drive in it. The complete ExoDOS collection is like 2tb+
>>3357623
i have no idea how i could manage to network this thing. no ethernet connectivity and none of my hardware is compatible with basically any kind of connection on this laptop. and i'm pretty sure the highest capacity these machines can register is like 60gig. i could be corrected on that but its not a lot.
>>3357652
Am I not looking right at an ethernet port right there on the side under the headphone and microphone jacks?
>>3357664
Pretty sure that's a modem jack.
You could probably get ethernet through an expansion card though.
>>3357608
Do a bit of research and at least get yourself to the level where you can use words other people will understand to describe what you want. I don't even know what a "sd to floppy adaptor" is. Maybe a floppy emulator? Learn what PCMCIA is and what types of devices were available. This is the easiest way to add features to old laptops. You can add a network card and CD with this.
>>3357664
It's a telephone line jack son. Long ago we had phones that plugged into the wall and didn't fit in your pocket. Crazy, I know.
>>3357765
>implying they didn't have ethernet in 1993
My retro PC certainly has it but it's not a laptop. Get yourself a PCMCIA adapter I guess
>>3357815
no its not. this plugs right in. http://www.ebay.com/itm/100Mbps-Ethernet-Network-PCMCIA-Cardbus-RJ45-RJ-45-Laptop-Expansion-Adapter-Card-/120590626288?hash=item1c13c2edf0:g:6YMAAOSwDNdV1YMU
>>3357765
im working on it but unfortunately its just a generation of hardware i have only played on not built or worked on and learning about a dozen different hardware connectors and plug ins im unfamiliar with is taking a bit of time.
>>3357815
>Too dumb for /g/
>Too smug for /vr/
I don't know what to tell you
>>3357805
>implying
Didn't imply anything sport. Just told the guy what it was. Is some /v/illage missing it's idiot?
>>3357815
>they make floppy disk you plug sd cards into
You sure about that?
>>3357831
You might try going through the spec and then look up each feature there you aren't familiar with. Good place to start at least.
OP aside, I too am interested in having a cheap little DOS/95 machine to mess with. A lot of the old games that I try to get running on my current setup either don't run at all or the workarounds make me sacrifice certain things like broken textures. I thought about just putting up a dual boot on my main computer but I'm worried that doing so would still introduce compatibility issues due to modern hardware, Crimson Skies in particular is forcing me to play in stretched widescreen with broken/white-flashing loading screens even with csfix.
The thing is that I have very limited knowledge on old computers before Vista came out so I'm not sure what to look for. I'd feel ripped off if I ended up getting a machine that can't run these kind of games at full speed or if the owner tricked me into paying for garbage parts.
>>3358665
A "machine" is easy. Any desktop a few years younger than your target games will play them slick as snot or be easily upgradeable to do. A laptop on the other hand...They just weren't made for gaming or upgrading to bank then.
![sdcardfloppyemulator[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3Bx98RA.jpg "sdcardfloppyemulator[1].jpg")
>>3358291
>Also too dumb for /g/ and too smug for /vr/
>>3359057
Projecting pretty hard there sport. That's a floppy emulator not a "floppy disk you plug sd cards into"
But thanks for basically namefagging with your "too dumb for..." shit. Now OP knows what advice to ignore.
>>3360165
You probably would get your ass kicked a lot if you actually interacted with human beings.
>>3360308
>implying gen z are the same species as x
Still projecting champ
>>3357608
Fucking hell OP. I was looking for similar Thinkpad models just now, and they're pretty rare and/or expensive to get these days. And now I see this thread and am filled to the brim with jelly.
>>3361596
>Fucking hell OP. I'm an eBayby
>>336016
Sony used to make them. They have been out of production for a while though.
>>3358665
>The thing is that I have very limited knowledge on old computers before Vista came out so I'm not sure what to look for
Since you are obviously under the age of 18 and came here after watching an e-celeb, just use DOSBox. That's more up your alley.
>>3363101
>can't spell properly
>can't into caps and punctuation
>hasn't used anything older than Vista
16 and that's being generous.
>>3357831
>and learning about a dozen different hardware connectors and plug ins im unfamiliar with is taking a bit of time
Dude, that laptop just has the regular old ordinary parallel/serial/PS/2 ports like any 90s iron. There's no weird or unusual shit on there.
>>3363137
It is if you were born in 2003 like OP was. I wonder what he'd ever do if he saw a Commodore 64?
>>3361928
>damn... this guys family doesnt live in a junkyard like mine?
>>3361596
>I was looking for similar Thinkpad models just now, and they're pretty rare and/or expensive to get these day
I have a 380D and no I'm not selling it and you can't have it.
>>3357765
This guy seems like a real cunt
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-6-VINTAGE-IBM-THINKPAD-600E-A20m-A22m-380D-380DX-LAPTOPS-FOR-PARTS-REPAIR-/331773990631?hash=item4d3f4556e7:g:oOwAAOSwx-9WubCH
Only 90s Thinkpads that came up when I searched it.
OP is too stupid to live imo.
While it can be neat to run games natively on old hardware, it's also the same pain in the ass it was back then. Even worse, you can't just run out and buy a replacement part if something burns out in many cases. Emulation is really the best solution unless you have dosh to blow.
Dosbox is your main solution, and will work for many games. I recommend using a frontend like D-Fend Reloaded so you don't have to do much command-line work to mess with options, plus it can auto-config many games. But it doesn't work for everything.
The best emulation available is PCem. You will need to google around for a BIOS pack for it so you can actually use it, and you do NEED to understand how to install, configure, and use DOS to put DOS on there. Still, being a much better emulator than dosbox, it can run many games dosbox can't. You can also install and run Win3.1 and Win3.1 games.
>>3363193
>While it can be neat to run games natively on old hardware, it's also the same pain in the ass it was back then
Especially for some 14 year old who admits he's never even used XP.
If you ever tried actually running DOS games on real hardware, you'd pretty much be like this.
>>3363337
go back to /v/, kid
>>3363340
>calling someone who played DOS games when they were current a kid
The only kid here is you, you kid.
>spend hours rearranging your CONFIG.SYS and rebooting your computer
Yeah fuck that.
>>3363349
There's an ass load of kids here. You may or may not be one of them. But you sure sound like one.
>>3365542
wait, how can he be underage if played DOS games back then
