Re: Building a box for old games

Tim O wrote:

> Are there any good forums for retro game PC's?
> I have a P3/933 along with a closet full of old hardware. I was
> thinking about building a Win98 machine with the combo of a TNT2 and
> Voodoo 2 for some old stuff like Mechwarrior Titanium, Crusader and
> early 3D DOS games. I have a ton of old games and hardware, but all
> the info I seem to find is about getting the abandonware games, not
> actually finding a resource for old drivers, etc.

DOS almost doesn't have drivers cause in those days
you "talked" directly to the hardware so no drivers
were used... so besides the DOS operating system files
and the memory manager device drivers you need to load
the only other drivers you need to play DOS games are:
MOUSE.COM (microsoft driver for a mouse in DOS)
OAKCDROM.SYS (generic CD-ROM/DVD-ROM IDE DOS driver)

Video does not need device drivers for normal resolutions
But Sound is the most problematic
If you are using a ISA Legacy Sound Blaster you don't need
drivers but you need to set the right enviroment variables
If you are using a ISA PnP card or a PCI card then you need
drivers.
So by far the most difficult thing to make it work under
DOS is the sound.

And what about if you used new hardware instead of old?
I would say everything would work under DOS except for the
sound card, cause Creative stoped supporting their own DOS
proprietary standard in the their new cards.
Yes, only a very few minority will use a Audigy or a X-Fi
in DOS to play games but Creative should maintain at least
some level of support even if not official, but no their
own proprietary standard is no longer supported by them.
I guess we should have trusted other company with the
standard for sound in DOS games.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Building a box for old games
    ... >> I have a P3/933 along with a closet full of old hardware. ... >> early 3D DOS games. ... I have a ton of old games and hardware, ... >> actually finding a resource for old drivers, ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action)
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  • Re: Oblivion Delayed
    ... >>>decently well on ALL the PC hardware it might be run on. ... Since Dos games had their own drivers for video and sound you dodged ... A video card was a video card - did it follow the vga/MCGA/SVGA spec? ...
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  • Re: Games freezing
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