Post up your DOS gaming machine!

[lauraleebm]

I'm in love with your computer Soviet Conscript!

[NayusDante]

I'd put mine in a retro case like that, but they're usually pretty heavy. My ultimate goal is to rebuild my DOS rig with a micro-ATX board and find a small desktop-style mATX case for it. Right now, my DOS rig is in my old Antec Super Lan Boy, and the door broke off years ago. Good airflow and very light, but it's still bigger than I'd like my retro rig to be.

I know there's some mATX boards that meet my requirements (AGP and ISA). but they're kinda expensive.

Edit: I like this one.

[beigemore]

I first started my PC experience with a 386dx33 that I had from 92 to 95, then went straight to a P75, then a couple years later going to a P2 266, etc. One big gaming moment I remember is getting my P75 upgraded from 8mb ram to 16mb and getting to see Primal Rage run at max settings (it has an 8mb ram option and 16mb ram option).

Anyhow, I don't have those machines anymore, so I bought this P75 off ebay several years back. My old P75 had a nice Diamond Stealth 64 with, I think, a 1 or 2mb ram upgrade on it, but this one has a Diamond Stealth S3 Trio32. I've also got my original Sound Blaster 16 installed that I purchased back in my 386 days. I paid about $500 for a kit in like 1993/94 that Creative made that came with a Sound Blaster 16, a 2x CD drive, and a bunch of crappy kids games and educational-type software. The third card installed is a Roland MPU-IPC card, and attached to that is a Roland MT-32. I've got 64mb ram installed in this beast, but the motherboard can only see up to like 48/50mb.

[Ze_ro]

• Pentium 133
• 64 MB RAM
• ATI Mach 64 + Voodoo 2
• Soundblaster 16 + Roland MT-32
• Two 1GB Fujitsu Hard Drives
• 3.5" A drive, 5.25" B drive, and of course a CD-ROM
• MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows for Workgroups 3.11

I have a boot menu set up so I can choose between different memory configurations and driver setups. Using QEMM, I have 634k free conventional memory... for things that don't work with QEMM, I have an EMM386 setup that gives me 602k free. Honestly, pretty much anything will work with 602k free, but I've always felt a bit of pride at getting the most free conventional memory possible.

I have an AWE64 and a Gravis Ultrasound sitting around... I've always wanted to put one of those in and see how it goes (Keeping the SB16 for compatibility). The GUS requires 2 IRQ's though, which is a bit difficult to accommodate.

There are also a few other odd cards in there, like a huge ISA card for my Atari Portfolio card reader, a USB card, and an ethernet card. I still haven't gotten networking going properly in DOS, but it's never been a big priority. I had USB working enough to read mass storage devices, but the drivers eat up a ton of memory.

--Zero

[Jorpho]

The GUS requires 2 IRQ's though, which is a bit difficult to accommodate.

Disable the onboard serial and parallel ports and it would become substantially easier, if you haven't considered that. (Unless you're dead set on printing on this ancient machine along with everything else.)

[beigemore]

Instead of this P75 I've got, I'd really like to get something like a 485dx4/120 for dedicated DOS gaming, and then like a P3 800 running Win98SE for older Win9x games.

[Jorpho]

Um, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_DX4 says the DX4 topped out at 100 MHz.

And I really can't fathom what advantages a DX4 would have over a P75.

[Ze_ro]

Disable the onboard serial and parallel ports and it would become substantially easier, if you haven't considered that. (Unless you're dead set on printing on this ancient machine along with everything else.)

I use the serial port for my mouse, and I use the parallel port for a C-64 drive interface cable... so disabling those is out of the question (I use the 1541 far more often than I'd use the GUS).

--Zero

[c2000]

Pentium 200MMX with 96MB of RAM and a Voodoo card. It's kinda awesome for games like Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, Carmageddon, Quake 1/2, Rollercoaster Tycoon etc.

[jwmollman]

This thread is great!

My DOS computer is an old PowerSpec PC my dad used to use as a really basic shop computer where he would enter data when working on cars. I cleaned it up really well and replaced some parts in it. It originally had a bare install of Windows 98, but I reformatted it and installed FreeDOS. I think this computer was a budget model from about 1998.

Monitor:
- An old 15in Packard Bell monitor

Computer:
- PowerSpec PC (old yellow/white coloring)
- Intel Celeron @ 366MHz
- 64MB of SDRAM
- 8MB onboard SIS graphics chip
- a standard internal PC-speaker that outputs on the front of the case
- 3GB IDE hard drive
- a 52X CDROM drive
- 3.5in floppy disk drive
- one empty PCI slot
- one empty ISA slot
- some tiny, crappy ethernet card (the size of a quarter) that hooks up in the back near the PCI slot and then connects to the motherboard with some four-pin connector
- one basic case fan on the front that glows green

I just leave the cover off. It's such a small computer and not much is going on. The system doesn't even get hot anyway.

My friend gave me an old Compaq ProLinea II (I think that's what it was called). It had a 486DX processor I think, with about 32MB of RAM (possibly less). It had a 150MB hard drive (not sure on that). I remember trying to get the hard drive to work and I was messing with the jumpers. Once I plugged it in and turned the system on, the hard drive sparked and smoked a bit. Now I don't even have a hard drive for that computer anymore. I think it used older connections than IDE.