Old technology running on new equipment

[ranchhand]

I have an old, original box running Windows98, soundblaster AWE card, mostly for some of the old games that I just don't want to disappear in the dust of time. Especially the old Mechwarrior2, 3, Ghost Bear, Pirates Moon, etc. I have an old CRT 22" monitor to play them on. Setup works great. Interesting. Wonder if I installed a dedicated SATA drive, loaded DOS & Windows98 on it, if it would run the old games on my current machine (see my specs). Might be fun to try. Seems I tried that a long time ago, there were problems but I can't remember exactly. I think I was running XP Pro at the time. Seems I had a problem with the games running too fast, maybe the new ram, fast multi-core chips and BIOS technology won't recognize it. Maybe a 4:3AR game will only play in a "box" on a 16:9AR monitor? My old equipment won't last forever. Anyone done this?

[jman98]

I have a suggestion that might be useful. At work we had an old system running on an ancient PC and we had to preserve the system for the time being until a better solution was found. The hardware was so old that it scared us as we knew that any day the box might die and not come back to life. One of our PC support guys used VMware to basically suck the entire software system of the old PC into a VM running on new, fault tolerant (ie. disc mirroring, backups) hardware. I don't know how to do this, but it can be done. I have set up new VMs and I know that you could easily get your system working in a VM and you could dedicate just one core to the VM. There may be other tricks you can do to slow it down.

[jagabo]

You can play a lot of older games on virtual machines like DosBox, VirtualBox, and VMWare.

What shape the 4:3 display shows up on your monitor depends on the monitor and how it's connected, maybe its settings. Some stretch, some pillarbox.

Try this: extract the Doom folder, open it, double click on DoxBox.exe.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Virtual machines probably would be the way to go, however if you were to use a multi boot set-up you might find these tips somewhat helpful.

Firstly, with regards to the speed issue which you remember occurring before, there is a DOS program called "SlowDown" available at this website (last program in table). I haven't tried this myself though (I use a real 486 for this myself and never have problems running anything made in the day), and considering the last version is from 2002, there is a chance that it may have it's own compatibility problems on your machine. I remember there was a shareware program which was somewhat more developed, however that bookmark isn't with me right now.

I've also had problems using the EMM386 driver on my main machine (which is old enough itself) when booting from a floppy, I haven't looked into it but it may be a problem relating to memory compatibility. Of course games would be but a dream in conventional memory.

Sound may be another issue, you want the sound card on your machine to be as Sound Blaster compatible as possible and I doubt current sound card manufacturers give such things much thought nowadays. Of course if the card is PCI, you could just grab the one from your old PC.

As for the monitor, why not try 640x480 resolution while in windows (with the assumption this is possible, I know little about post XP Windows). With the variations between monitors, I would guess that easiest way to know how it works is to try it.

Interesting DOS Programs (where I came across SlowDown) also lists a number of utilities which may prove useful to you, and I can raid my bookmarks for a few more such sites if you wish.

Windows 98? I've no idea, my bet would be that it would work but I've only ever run it on 90s hardware.


I also keep old PCs for early software and my strange idea of fun. I find it generally useful to have a number of machines at the ready and most have individual functions. My attitude towards the possibility of them giving up the ghost is that I'll cross that bridge when I get to it; all but a couple of my machines (I have quite a few) have ways of being backed up. Be that to Zip drive, CF card even tape and if something goes wrong I feel that I can likely fix it anyway. Plus I do rarely have hardware failures (laptop batteries aside), although I know others who insist that they have different experience, my old machines just don't tend to pack up, even with regular use.

Now I bet I'll turn on my Pentium 1 and hear the HDD crash.

[jagabo]

By the way, DosBox has the ability to throttle the emulated CPU. So you can easily speed up or slow down the CPU. You can change the CPU speed in the DoxBox config file or from within the emulated machine.

[NJRoadfan]

Most 16:9 monitors let you manually set the aspect ratio. Don't underestimate the lifespan of hardware, some of it lasts a long time. The key is to keep it properly cooled. PCI SATA cards using the Silicon Image Si3x12 and VIA6421 series of chips have Windows 98 drivers.

Most VMs will have a hard time playing games from 1996-2000, particularly GLide/Direct3D enabled games. Most of them should run under a modern version of Windows (use a GLide wrapper for 3dfx only games). For the stuff that breaks, you will have to resort to older hardware running Windows 9x.

[ranchhand]

Thanks all, I will experiment with your suggestions after I get this set up. Nerdkev: yes, now I remember something about a program that slowed the older games down, thanks for the reminder. If it won't run standard, I will try Dosbox and Jagabo's suggestion. Thanks all!