DOS Games Discussion

Full Tower 300 watt case, 486 DX4-133, 64mb, 2 x 540mb drives (no compression), Adaptec SCSI 1540 card w/2 x 2gb SCSI FH drives in external storage, 4mb S3 video card, 4x CDROM, Turtle Beach Tropez+ sound (12mb samples) hooked to 1979 Yamaha 810 sterio amp w/4 speakers (2 x 3-way mains, 2 x 2-way ambience), 21" NEC monitor, Gravis gamepad or Flightstick joystick. Comfy chair. 2 dozen DOS manuals, some not cracked in 4 years. All was bought at auction cheap or handed down to me free over past 5 years. TA-DA!!

I've got a cool idea: give it to me!

johpower wrote:Full Tower 300 watt case, 486 DX4-133, 64mb, 2 x 540mb drives (no compression), Adaptec SCSI 1540 card w/2 x 2gb SCSI FH drives in external storage, 4mb S3 video card, 4x CDROM, Turtle Beach Tropez+ sound (12mb samples) hooked to 1979 Yamaha 810 sterio amp w/4 speakers (2 x 3-way mains, 2 x 2-way ambience), 21" NEC monitor, Gravis gamepad or Flightstick joystick. Comfy chair. 2 dozen DOS manuals, some not cracked in 4 years. All was bought at auction cheap or handed down to me free over past 5 years. TA-DA!!

How does that rig play the real old dos games or the later era games?

I think you really need 2 dos game rigs anymore. A 286/s86sx for the real old games and the p233mmx for last generation dos games. Anything in the middle can be too slow for some games and too fast for others.

Da_Goat wrote:I've got a cool idea: give it to me!

Sorry to be gone a week. So.... what's the cool word dude?

Unknown_K wrote:

johpower wrote:Full Tower 300 watt case, 486 DX4-133, 64mb, 2 x 540mb drives (no compression), Adaptec SCSI 1540 card w/2 x 2gb SCSI FH drives in external storage, 4mb S3 video card, 4x CDROM, Turtle Beach Tropez+ sound (12mb samples) hooked to 1979 Yamaha 810 sterio amp w/4 speakers (2 x 3-way mains, 2 x 2-way ambience), 21" NEC monitor, Gravis gamepad or Flightstick joystick. Comfy chair. 2 dozen DOS manuals, some not cracked in 4 years. All was bought at auction cheap or handed down to me free over past 5 years. TA-DA!!

How does that rig play the real old dos games or the later era games?

I think you really need 2 dos game rigs anymore. A 286/s86sx for the real old games and the p233mmx for last generation dos games. Anything in the middle can be too slow for some games and too fast for others.

Well, it runs Reach For The Stars (RFTS), Empire, Great Naval Battles, Warloards I/II/III and Civilization I pretty well. I have two 386DX-40 (AMD) w/math co boards and a Radio Shack 1100 (8088-8mhz) doorstop I could still use if there was a real problem. So far none.

I kept the 386's when I discovered NASA uses up to 386 level machines for sats because they have big fat traces that withstand radiation and micrometiorite damage pretty well and still have some speed. Supposedly the only powerful CPU's in space are in laptops some astronauts bring up for use in better shielded areas. Maybe we need to send the next STS mission some Space Invaders or RFTS to relax with!

Do any of those 386 boards have a ps2 mouse header by chance? I need to find a motherboard that has one for my KVM. sucks having so many mice on my desk.


Might be buying a gateway 386sx because it has the needed ps2 ports but I really just need a motherboard with ps2 ability.

Unknown_K wrote:Do any of those 386 boards have a ps2 mouse header by chance? I need to find a motherboard that has one for my KVM. sucks having so many mice on my desk.


Might be buying a gateway 386sx because it has the needed ps2 ports but I really just need a motherboard with ps2 ability.

Unfortunately, I don't think so. I'll diggem up soon and have a closer look. If they surprise me I'll give a ring. Any reason you have to get that Gateway beyond the mouse? There are plenty of serial-ps2 converters in the world.

I liked the look of the Gateway designed cases.

Converters dont work, cant feed a ps2 signal from a kvm to a serial port.

johpower wrote:Full Tower 300 watt case, 486 DX4-133, 64mb, 2 x 540mb drives (no compression), Adaptec SCSI 1540 card w/2 x 2gb SCSI FH drives in external storage, 4mb S3 video card, 4x CDROM, Turtle Beach Tropez+ sound (12mb samples) hooked to 1979 Yamaha 810 sterio amp w/4 speakers (2 x 3-way mains, 2 x 2-way ambience), 21" NEC monitor, Gravis gamepad or Flightstick joystick. Comfy chair. 2 dozen DOS manuals, some not cracked in 4 years. All was bought at auction cheap or handed down to me free over past 5 years. TA-DA!!

That's cool! I wish I could buy that. Would work better than my crappy computer.

Are you the guy on the old forum who we made fun of for naming his computer?

John The Ax wrote:Are you the guy on the old forum who we made fun of for naming his computer?

The "old forum"? Nope, not me. Actually I name my hard drives (by label) which makes them easy to sort out, even when they've not been used for some time. This PC alone has 2 IDE and 4 SCSI drives (currently IDE: Herman, George. SCSI: Amy, Mabel, Ida and Zelda), so you can see it's handy.

(Trace by trace, server by server, the ghost of 8088 Herman came looking for the one called The Ax. Over his shoulder the clicking of ancient Seagate 225's would be sometimes be heard, ever just beyond the last site, just about to come upon him in a dark URL. Quickly The Ax would move on, but never quite far enough, never to rest, never to rest... )

I still end up having to use CPU killers and RAMDisks to hobble my DOS Box enough to play my favorite oldskool games...

Don't even ask what hoops I had to jump through to get Pirates! Gold to run...

Thank God for MS-DOS v6.x and the DOS Configuration Menu. No more stupid Boot Floppies cluttering up my desk...

Any luck with simply turning off the "turbo" switch? If you have no external switch you can make one. Nearly all mobos your age have turbo pins on them. A spare single throw switch and two insulated wire leads to the pins will cover the parts list. (You can canibalize a switch and wire set from a junker PC case as an easier solution). Some machines allowed a key combo to set turbo speed at boot or on the fly.

My old 386/40 can be turned to run at 8mhz via turbo switch. Thats slow enough to run about anything.