PCEngineFans.com - The PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 Community Forum
Non-NEC Console Related Discussion => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: esadajr on April 08, 2014, 03:54:17 AM
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Just curious, how many of you still use good ol' Win98 on real hardware? at least from time to time.
What do you use it for?
I use the old PC mostly to slowly burn stuff with the Liteon burner. I found the old lpt scanner which still works nicely and found an office xp disc, so it can be used for some productivity too O:)
Sometimes I like to relieve the good old times with 4x4 Evo, Monter Truck Madness, Flight Simulator 98, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, etc using my Gravis gamepad pro (remember those?)
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I keep a dedicated pentium 2 with windows 98 on it. Seems like there were a few games that just wont work right on newer OSs.
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I had a win98 rig to write 5.25" FDDs using xfloppy but I upgrade it to XP and omniflop
Pentium III with 16meg of ram! lol its painful but I can copy files over the network to it to write.
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My old Pentium 150MMX has 98 on it, but it's not been turned on for years.
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you guys are making me want an old pc for some gaming i havent touched in over 15 years.
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I had a fujitsu with p75 and 8mb ram win 95 now that was a machine
One game for sure that doesn't run right in dos box is theme hospital. Most others i have do
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I keep a dedicated pentium 2 with windows 98 on it. Seems like there were a few games that just wont work right on newer OSs.
what do you have for a vid card in it?
i just started looking at some PIII socket 370 cpu/mb to build around.
but im not 100% sure this is a good route to go.
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If it has an agp port my 5950 ultra never let me down
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I used to have a badass rig that I shall booted real DOS and Win 98, but since most of the games I'd want to play are on gog now I tossed it during the move.
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I have an old Pentium II circa 1998-99 with Win98. I haven't used it in years, though (since moving back to NJ in 2006).
Don't worry, my current desktop PC is running WinXP.
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My desktop is running XP, and today is its end-of-life.
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Well it's a must, both for running games and original hardware/software on the correct computer from the correct timeline.
I have this setup with a switch that can switch between them with the same screen, mouse and keyboard at the same time.
Win95, Pentium 90, 16MB EDO, DOS 6.22/Win3.1, EMU APS, SB16 (ISA), 300MB HD, Diskette.
Win98, Pentium II 300MMX, 256MB SDRAM PC133, EMU APS, SBAWE64 Gold (ISA),
GeForce2 MX200 32MB SDRAM, 3DFX Voodoo2 SLI 2x12MB, SCSI 3GB, IDE 12GB,
CD 24X SCSI, CDR 4X IDE, Zip250, Diskette.
WinME, Athlon 1200, 512MB SDRAM PC133, EMU APS, ESI Waveterminal 192L,
40GB E-IDE, GeForceFX 5200 128MB SDRAM, DVDR 18x IDE, CDR 52x IDE, Diskette.
WinXP, Pentium III 1GHZ, 512MB SDRAM PC133, EMU APS, EMU 1212M, EMU 1820M, 80GB
E-IDE, 250GB E-IDE, DVDR 18x, Diskette.
WinXP (Portable but as stationary) Pentium III 1GHZ, 512MB SDRAM PC133, Audigy2ZS Notebook,
160GB E-IDE 2.5", DVDR 18x.
WinXP (Portable EEE, Outside the Switch) Atom 1.6GHZ, 2GB DDR2 667MHZ, 160GB E-IDE, 10.1",
Diskette via USB, Zip750 via USB.
Win7/64, Core2Duo 3GHZ, 4GB DDR2, SSD 40GB SATA2, 500GB SATA2, 250GB E-IDE, Audigy SB1394,
EMU 0404USB White, DVDR 18x, GeForce GTS250 1GB GDDR3.
Stacked away, portable 1991-92, Win95,Win3.1,DOS6.22, SiemensNixdorf 15" (screen like 6-7")
486DX 33 or 50MHZ, 24MB RAM!!!!! 300MB HD!!!!!!!, had a desktop case to go with it that
you could insert the computer in it making it stationary!!!!
inserted the whole portable like a VHS tape in a VCR, the case had two 5.25" slots for
diskett drives, HD, CD-ROM, specially made for high executive bank officials, said to cost
around 18.000$ at the time, runs Quake at bad framerate.
Seems to be the only pic I can find of one like it
http://notebookblog.cz/blog/wp-content/uploads/stare-obrazky/pcd4nd_dock.jpg
the computer always went with banks boss, working at home, inserting it in the office,
robbery at night would mean no info to be found... crazy times, the computer is still here
but I threw the desktop casing some time ago, it took enourmous space and was kinda
empty inside... but made it alot easier installing from cd.
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I keep a dedicated pentium 2 with windows 98 on it. Seems like there were a few games that just wont work right on newer OSs.
what do you have for a vid card in it?
i just started looking at some PIII socket 370 cpu/mb to build around.
but im not 100% sure this is a good route to go.
Ive got an ATI Rage Fury 32mb card in it. Interestingly one of the few programs I do use it for is the Rage Dawning demo that has to have that cards chipset to run properly hehe.
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I used to have that vid card, it was badass iirc.
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I have an old laptop that I won in a science fair that I use just for this! I use it to play Oregon Trail and this game where you have to kill all the mice before they reproduce. I feel like a kid again on it.
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I have my Win 95 and 98 machines here. The 95 machine uses a S3 grafx card, AWE 64 sound and a Pentium 100 or whatever. The 98 machine uses a Slot A Athlon 900, Geforce FX 5950, and Aureal Vortex 2. The 98 machine is currently connected to my tv via svideo. Running everything that way just looks awesome for the Dos stuff. A lot of Dos and Win 98 games that were ports of console titles just really benefit from a SDTV, and the Vortex 2 has excellent SB Pro compatibility even in pure Dos mode.
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I don't, but I'd love to. So many good games from that era. I really loved the space exploration games like Frontier/Elite & Nomad and the pixel-hunt adventures such as Monkey Islands... Also, like you, I have productivity software licenses that are idle for lack of supported OS on any of my current systems. I know DOS Box could probably help with the games at least, but I've just not had time to mess with it.
If you want to run old point-and-click adventure games on a modern computer without fiddling around in DosBox, I highly recommend that you look into ScummVM. It's an amazing piece of software that emulates adventure game engines, and is very easy to use. :)
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If you want to run old point-and-click adventure games on a modern computer without fiddling around in DosBox, I highly recommend that you look into ScummVM. It's an amazing piece of software that emulates adventure game engines, and is very easy to use. :)
Scummvm is awesome, couple of years ago on my (then) W7 laptop I had a blast replaying Full Throttle, that's how a point and click make is done
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Scummvm is great on pc. Bit patchy on psp
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Oh, and by the way, Nullity, it's not just for LucasArts SCUMM games anymore! It runs lots of games from many different companies, including LucasArts' competitor, Sierra.
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You guys are making this more difficult than it should be. Just fire up a vm and install windows 98 on it and viola! Windows 98 machine on modern hardware!
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Will such a VM setup be compatible with graphics hardware acceleration, sound drivers and memory management of DOS games and Win95/98/ME games?
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You guys are making this more difficult than it should be. Just fire up a vm and install windows 98 on it and viola! Windows 98 machine on modern hardware!
I don't care to fake it.
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I still have a dual boot windows 98/windows nt 4.0 rig. It's a dual pentium II 400 mhz machine with 512 megs ram and a 32 meg Oxygen VX1 vid card. I had win98 for the emulators and games at the time and winnt for all my 3D software.
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You guys are making this more difficult than it should be. Just fire up a vm and install windows 98 on it and viola! Windows 98 machine on modern hardware!
I don't care to fake it.
Its not emulating it, its the real deal.
Will such a VM setup be compatible with graphics hardware acceleration, sound drivers and memory management of DOS games and Win95/98/ME games?
As far as I know yes. I spun up a Windows 3.11 vm relatively easy through VMware at work. Windows 98 was a sinch as well. All you really need to do is have a pc that has multiple cores and you can dedicate that core for a VM. Much easier than dragging out a 486 setup and watch it eat up your electricity.
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You guys are making this more difficult than it should be. Just fire up a vm and install windows 98 on it and viola! Windows 98 machine on modern hardware!
I don't care to fake it.
Its not emulating it, its the real deal.
Will such a VM setup be compatible with graphics hardware acceleration, sound drivers and memory management of DOS games and Win95/98/ME games?
As far as I know yes. I spun up a Windows 3.11 vm relatively easy through VMware at work. Windows 98 was a sinch as well. All you really need to do is have a pc that has multiple cores and you can dedicate that core for a VM. Much easier than dragging out a 486 setup and watch it eat up your electricity.
It's not the real deal. You are not using real OPL, Gravis, or AWE related hardware, or hardware related to Aureal, let alone 3DFX or other hardware from that time period that games were made specifically for. Saying it's the real deal is like saying Magic Engine or Fusion is. It's clearly not. The only thing you are getting that is the same is the OS. Thats it. Nothing else.
Also, a 486, let alone any machine from the 90's, will have way less an impact on your utility bill then a modern system. The modern gaming graphics cards and cpus use way way more wattage then anything from back then....
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Ah well, that's too bad.
On another side note, I saw DOS-Box struggling with some hardware acceleration intense DOS games on modern computers. Even the sound support and some XMS/EMS ram management dependant effects weren't trivial to achieve.
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You guys are making this more difficult than it should be. Just fire up a vm and install windows 98 on it and viola! Windows 98 machine on modern hardware!
I don't care to fake it.
Its not emulating it, its the real deal.
Will such a VM setup be compatible with graphics hardware acceleration, sound drivers and memory management of DOS games and Win95/98/ME games?
As far as I know yes. I spun up a Windows 3.11 vm relatively easy through VMware at work. Windows 98 was a sinch as well. All you really need to do is have a pc that has multiple cores and you can dedicate that core for a VM. Much easier than dragging out a 486 setup and watch it eat up your electricity.
It's not the real deal. You are not using real OPL, Gravis, or AWE related hardware, or hardware related to Aureal, let alone 3DFX or other hardware from that time period that games were made specifically for. Saying it's the real deal is like saying Magic Engine or Fusion is. It's clearly not. The only thing you are getting that is the same is the OS. Thats it. Nothing else.
Also, a 486, let alone any machine from the 90's, will have way less an impact on your utility bill then a modern system. The modern gaming graphics cards and cpus use way way more wattage then anything from back then....
CRT monitors. Enough said. Vms and emulation are completely different. It's easier and less of a hassle to setup a vm than getting the actual hardware. Although you would be hard pressed to find the difference between a vm and a old 486 at least functionality wise. Btw windows xp mode doesn't count lol...
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You can use old computers on Lcd, don't need a CRT for that. I use them on my Toshiba all the time. Per telling the difference, I can right away when I hear the games audio. This is a problem anyone running VM, Dosbox, or even GOG re-releases face when trying to play the classics on Xp-Win 7 machines, etc, who grew up with and know by heart how the original stuff sounded on the old soundcards.
This is even a problem for many people who prefer SB16/Pro for some games and something like the Gravis Ultrasound for other specific titles, so they run multiple sound cards in their classic machine. I guess this is the difference though between someone who knows and expects higher quality (a classic pc gaming enthusiast with hundreds of titles in their library), versus someone who doesn't care and is just happy being able to, on a whim, run whatever specific game they just downloaded on a whim, at totally minimal effort (f*ck all if it actually looks or sounds right, let alone plays at the right speed).
This just sounds lazy and stupid to me. Thanks, but no thanks. You're basically making the same argument the emulator die hards make. All I can do is say meh, to each their own. But no one leaning on the lazy side can damn well sit there and try to say it looks and sounds perfect, because it damn well doesn't and never will. And to me, if you are going to be this lazy, if there are any available, you might as well just buy or steal the GOG releases at that point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hPVwjZ6bNM
And to note, it is all downhill from there.
Also, where did XP come into the discussion?
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I currently own an Amd k6-3 450 on a dfi super socket motherboard, 256mb of ram, awe32 sound card, voodoo3 3000 agp, and 8gb disk on module ssd.
I have to thank the professor for helping me on this one. I have setup plenty of dos and early windows machines, but there is always something to learn. the voodoo 3 is one of the few cards i have used that will render damn near every dos game correctly. The DFi motherboard he provided me has been rock solid as well, no problems so far.
I chose the awe32 due to is hardware processing. It may not be as good as the awe64 or vortex, but on older machines it needs less cpu power.
Some of you might laugh at the idea of using such a small hard drive. Honestly, I have windows 98se and about 40 games installed with plenty of room to spare. The DOM is pricey, but extremely fast, and very reliable as there is not much to break down on it.
Having the right hardware means everything, way to many variables in games to half ass it. I tried that to many times with generic sound cards, or good enough vid cards. always came back to bite me.
wanna thank the Professor for the help on my system, it would not be what it is today otherwise.
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You can use old computers on Lcd, don't need a CRT for that. I use them on my Toshiba all the time. Per telling the difference, I can right away when I hear the games audio. This is a problem anyone running VM, Dosbox, or even GOG re-releases face when trying to play the classics on Xp-Win 7 machines, etc, who grew up with and know by heart how the original stuff sounded on the old soundcards.
This is even a problem for many people who prefer SB16/Pro for some games and something like the Gravis Ultrasound for other specific titles, so they run multiple sound cards in their classic machine. I guess this is the difference though between someone who knows and expects higher quality (a classic pc gaming enthusiast with hundreds of titles in their library), versus someone who doesn't care and is just happy being able to, on a whim, run whatever specific game they just downloaded on a whim, at totally minimal effort (f*ck all if it actually looks or sounds right, let alone plays at the right speed).
This just sounds lazy and stupid to me. Thanks, but no thanks. You're basically making the same argument the emulator die hards make. All I can do is say meh, to each their own. But no one leaning on the lazy side can damn well sit there and try to say it looks and sounds perfect, because it damn well doesn't and never will. And to me, if you are going to be this lazy, if there are any available, you might as well just buy or steal the GOG releases at that point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hPVwjZ6bNM
And to note, it is all downhill from there.
Also, where did XP come into the discussion?
Have you even tried vmware or are you just basing it on the fact its no better than emulation? Seriously.
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Yes, I have. Its worse sounding then Dosbox emulation, and Dosbox already doesn't sound that hot to begin with. Given I've been doing this for 12 years now, you really want to question my knowledge on the subject?
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I was trying to help a friend of mine get into dos gaming. He saw my project computer and wanted the same thing, but without having to build the machine himself. I suggested vmware, not because i thought it was better, because he did not have a dos machine. So we set it up. It did not take long for him to realize that alot of games i could run, he could not. The games that did run, did not sound good at all. I'm not trying to discredit anyone. I can only tell you, I have a windows 98 dos machine, and I have used vmware. Is it true you can play games on vmware yes, do they compete with proper hardware, NO!
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Sim farm sounds better on a real soundblaster vs dos box that much i can say so does a train.
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I loved A-Train, even if I totally sucked at it and preferred Sim City 2000 instead. SC2K is still my favorite city sim.
My first own PC was a 486DX2 running at awesome 66MHz. But the 4MB RAM made it very slow on some Win3.11 applications like Corel Photopaint, and IBM OS/2 would liked to have more RAM, too. Thankfully the graphics adaptor came with a driver disk to support up to 65k of simultaneous colors under both OS.
But for DOS gaming, this was a fine machine. Even if I had a half assed non-soundblaster card, I was able to get good sound out of many games, but the real thing would have been better I think.
I'd love to get into the good old times again with Rex Nebular, Leisure Suit Larry, Doom, Duke3D and so on. But the machine died one day, and I wasn't able to revive it. Oh well, some of the old games haven't aged that well anyway.
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I grew up running a sb16/awe32 for most games so that is the sound I always get nostalgic for. Recently I started trying some of the Roland MIDI modules on my DOS machine. Some games sound great (Master of Orion and Hyperspeed) others not so much (Dune2)
I agree original hardware is best but it may not be an option for everyone. GoG is good for the most part and I appreciate what they offer for purchase.
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I always will want to game on real hardware rather than emulation, but something like VMWare is virtualizaion, not emulation. Yeah it's using generic virtual drivers for some things, but it's more than enough to run anyting DOS related. I don't need two desktops anymore. I just run Win7 then VMWare for anything below XP. Currently I have it for Windows 2k and a DOS partition. All this is while I'm still running windows 7. I switch between them with the touch of a button. Makes life so much easier.
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My only beef with VM for classic gaming is that some games use the CPU clock rather than system timer, so a game that plays correctly @ 25 MHz will have a teensy weensy bit of extra challenge @ 4,000 MHz.
:clap: So true. Its bad enough i have to use a cpu throttle program on my k6-3 450 as it is. Warcraft 2 is just one of the games that runs to fast.
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Yeah the cpu thing affects a lot of games, both Dos and Windows 95/98 related. Both Twisted Metal titles, Toshenden, Resident Evil 1, Wipeout XL etc. List goes on and on.
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I always will want to game on real hardware rather than emulation, but something like VMWare is virtualizaion, not emulation. Yeah it's using generic virtual drivers for some things, but it's more than enough to run anyting DOS related. I don't need two desktops anymore. I just run Win7 then VMWare for anything below XP. Currently I have it for Windows 2k and a DOS partition. All this is while I'm still running windows 7. I switch between them with the touch of a button. Makes life so much easier.
Thank you. Now I know I don't sound crazy. ;) When all else fails just create another vm for XP as XP mode sucks for classic gaming.
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I always will want to game on real hardware rather than emulation, but something like VMWare is virtualizaion, not emulation. Yeah it's using generic virtual drivers for some things, but it's more than enough to run anyting DOS related. I don't need two desktops anymore. I just run Win7 then VMWare for anything below XP. Currently I have it for Windows 2k and a DOS partition. All this is while I'm still running windows 7. I switch between them with the touch of a button. Makes life so much easier.
Thank you. Now I know I don't sound crazy. ;) When all else fails just create another vm for XP as XP mode sucks for classic gaming.
You may be running the older operating system in "virtualizaion" inside a modern OS, but Virtual PC and VMware are both emulating Creative Soundblaster technology along with other hardware, similar to Dosbox. That's how they achieve audio and other abilities. Concerning OPL/SB16 emulation, Dosbox just does it better.
At any rate, you cant just make that Realtek HD chips and the like do things they were not designed to do and make them do it 100 percent correctly and sound 100 percent correct, let alone do it without emulation involved. I'm not sure why you'd think your current sound chip was doing all the work, let alone why you'd think it sounded legit....
Realtek themselves no longer support anything legacy Soundblaster wise, and has not in quite some time (and back when they did during the AC97 days they didn't do it very well). And this holds true for most any other modern sound chip maker since the DirectX9 era came to be. That's life.
If you really need a developer from Vmware themselves to confirm they are emulating legacy Soundblaster hardware, here, go read this stuff:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/469388
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/448544
https://communities.vmware.com/message/481419
Also, for Virtual Pc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Virtual_PC#Emulated_environment
If this is great for you, or you are in a position where you have no choice and this is all you can do, cool, whatever. But please don't be telling people it looks and sounds as good as the real thing, because it does not and is not, and probably never will be for that matter.
And for that matter, there is tons, and I mean tons of Socket 7 micro atx motherboards out there. If space really is a issue you can put one of them in a micro atx case with a DOM, a cd drive, a Awe64, and a S3 Trio, Matrox Mystique, pci Voodoo 3 or Banshee and be done with it. You could even run a Micro AtX Socket 370 Celeron board with a Intel 810 onboard gpu and just pair the thing with a Aureal Vortex, SB Live, or Ensoniq AudioPci if you want more cpu speed. This would hardly take up any space at all and run less then 130-150 watts peak on average depending on what cpu you use. You don't need a giant Pentium 3 or Athlon tower to do legacy pc gaming.
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Yes, you are right though. When it comes to certain games (especially ones that need 3dfx) there is no substitute but real hardware.
I just run a lot of games that don't require any 3d acceleration, so I am fine with the generic display driver in VMWare.