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 Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 10:59 Post subject: |
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Well I do have a few dos machines, but they need to be put together.
Aside from the CRT monitor (which are far superior compared to todays full hd displays) there is little to no reason to play on these computers.
(putting aside the true nostalgia factor of course)
Windows 95/98/xp games are a completley different case of course.
Not to mention the games that rely on hw based clocks, instead of software ones (commandos, trophy bass etc...)
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| Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 12:27 Post subject: |
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| Ampee wrote: | Well I do have a few dos machines, but they need to be put together.
Aside from the CRT monitor (which are far superior compared to todays full hd displays) there is little to no reason to play on these computers.
(putting aside the true nostalgia factor of course)
Windows 95/98/xp games are a completley different case of course.
Not to mention the games that rely on hw based clocks, instead of software ones (commandos, trophy bass etc...) |
I agree that DOSBox has made the urge to use my old DOS PCs a lot lower over the years - I used to work with the DOSBox crew, testing games and maintaining the compatibility database on their website which got me to build a huge list of DOS games using DBGL so any time I wanted to play a game, I just had to pick it from the list which is a huge convenience.
On the other hand ... not everything is emulated all that well. PC speaker sound is way better on a real PC and Soundblaster music is not quite the same in DOSBox. On top of that, like you said, CRT monitors are very different and FEEL different. The pixels are softer, fuzzier and the entire image just seems more inviting than the cold hard edge of LCD pixels.
But, that machine is also for early Windows games and those are a bitch to play on modern PCs. There's hundreds of games that no longer run on modern Windows. Anything 16 bit, anything relying on early DirectX versions, Glide games (you can emulate in theory but it's a hit & miss thing), etc.
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Ankh
Posts: 23251
Location: Trelleborg
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| Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 12:36 Post subject: |
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I threw away 10+ complete computers some 2 years ago..they were just collecting dust and took up loads of space
shitloads of new stuff in my pc. Cant keep track of it all.
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Ankh
Posts: 23251
Location: Trelleborg
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| Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 16:38 Post subject: |
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| red_avatar wrote: | | Ampee wrote: | Well I do have a few dos machines, but they need to be put together.
Aside from the CRT monitor (which are far superior compared to todays full hd displays) there is little to no reason to play on these computers.
(putting aside the true nostalgia factor of course)
Windows 95/98/xp games are a completley different case of course.
Not to mention the games that rely on hw based clocks, instead of software ones (commandos, trophy bass etc...) |
I agree that DOSBox has made the urge to use my old DOS PCs a lot lower over the years - I used to work with the DOSBox crew, testing games and maintaining the compatibility database on their website which got me to build a huge list of DOS games using DBGL so any time I wanted to play a game, I just had to pick it from the list which is a huge convenience.
On the other hand ... not everything is emulated all that well. PC speaker sound is way better on a real PC and Soundblaster music is not quite the same in DOSBox. On top of that, like you said, CRT monitors are very different and FEEL different. The pixels are softer, fuzzier and the entire image just seems more inviting than the cold hard edge of LCD pixels.
But, that machine is also for early Windows games and those are a bitch to play on modern PCs. There's hundreds of games that no longer run on modern Windows. Anything 16 bit, anything relying on early DirectX versions, Glide games (you can emulate in theory but it's a hit & miss thing), etc. |
For me its only the CRT that is a big "+".
No more waiting on cdrom drives, game frozen no need to reset the computer etc....
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| Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 16:52 Post subject: |
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| Ampee wrote: |
For me its only the CRT that is a big "+".
No more waiting on cdrom drives, game frozen no need to reset the computer etc.... |
Well all that has its charm - it doesn't quite feel "right" for everything to happen so fast and smoothly on an emulated platform. Hearing the CD/DVD drive come alive with a slight pauze in the game is part of how these old games worked.
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| Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 17:59 Post subject: |
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| red_avatar wrote: | | Ampee wrote: |
For me its only the CRT that is a big "+".
No more waiting on cdrom drives, game frozen no need to reset the computer etc.... |
Well all that has its charm - it doesn't quite feel "right" for everything to happen so fast and smoothly on an emulated platform. Hearing the CD/DVD drive come alive with a slight pauze in the game is part of how these old games worked. |
Also considering the trade-off: nearly minimal difference in gameplay versus precious space in the room.
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| Posted: Sun, 30th Jul 2017 20:10 Post subject: |
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| Ampee wrote: | | red_avatar wrote: | | Ampee wrote: |
For me its only the CRT that is a big "+".
No more waiting on cdrom drives, game frozen no need to reset the computer etc.... |
Well all that has its charm - it doesn't quite feel "right" for everything to happen so fast and smoothly on an emulated platform. Hearing the CD/DVD drive come alive with a slight pauze in the game is part of how these old games worked. |
Also considering the trade-off: nearly minimal difference in gameplay versus precious space in the room. |
Yeah I get what you mean - but the same can be said about many things when it comes to digital vs physical.
7-8 years ago I got rid of all my physical media (books, CDs, DVDs, games, movies, comic books, etc.) because I wanted to go digital. I built up massive digital libraries of music, movies (Plex Media), tens of thousands of roms for all sorts of systems, thousands of PC games on top of buying thousands on Steam combined with subscriptions for Netflix and Spotify. I'll never get bored BUT ... I find that, after 7-8 years, I miss the feeling of OWNING something. As efficient as it is to go digital, in the end, I feel I got too much stuff without actually having anything and because of this, I decided to resume collecting physical PC games of the 80's & 90's (and early 2000's) again.
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| Posted: Mon, 31st Jul 2017 08:21 Post subject: |
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| red_avatar wrote: | | Ampee wrote: | | red_avatar wrote: |
Well all that has its charm - it doesn't quite feel "right" for everything to happen so fast and smoothly on an emulated platform. Hearing the CD/DVD drive come alive with a slight pauze in the game is part of how these old games worked. |
Also considering the trade-off: nearly minimal difference in gameplay versus precious space in the room. |
Yeah I get what you mean - but the same can be said about many things when it comes to digital vs physical.
7-8 years ago I got rid of all my physical media (books, CDs, DVDs, games, movies, comic books, etc.) because I wanted to go digital. I built up massive digital libraries of music, movies (Plex Media), tens of thousands of roms for all sorts of systems, thousands of PC games on top of buying thousands on Steam combined with subscriptions for Netflix and Spotify. I'll never get bored BUT ... I find that, after 7-8 years, I miss the feeling of OWNING something. As efficient as it is to go digital, in the end, I feel I got too much stuff without actually having anything and because of this, I decided to resume collecting physical PC games of the 80's & 90's (and early 2000's) again. |
I can relate to that. I also "collect" some old games. Or at least the ones I liked the most.
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| Posted: Tue, 26th Jun 2018 23:37 Post subject: |
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Well, slight update now. At work, we got rid of the older hardware and I still had my old HD 4870 ATI card lying around so a while back I decided to make a Windows XP machine that would run every game from the late 90's to 2008/2009.
The hardware:
CPU: i5 2500
4GB DDR2 (XP doesn't see more than that anyway)
ASUS P8H67-M EVO motherboard
GPU: ATI HD 4870
1 TB WD green drive
Screen: Philips 19" Brilliance 109P - bought it for next to nothing but it used to cost €1400 new as it was a top end monitor used at TV stations and for professional purposes. Resolutions go up to a ridiculous 1920 x 1440. This was a monitor from 2000!
For anyone interested in building a Windows XP PC, I highly recommend it. For around €100 you can get most of the parts since and a good CRT just feels so much better for these games than seeing them get stretched on an LCD screen at a resolution it wasn't made for ...
Game compatibility is pretty darn high - I installed over 130 games so far of which only 2 are unplayable due to mouse issues (Ground Control) or ATI drivers being crap (Battle Realms) both of which run on my main rig without a problem.
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jackbomb
Posts: 2512
Location: Tortilla de patatas
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jackbomb
Posts: 2512
Location: Tortilla de patatas
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| Posted: Fri, 29th Jun 2018 20:57 Post subject: |
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| Posted: Tue, 5th Feb 2019 12:43 Post subject: |
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A little update: the past month, I've been steadily upgrading my oldest PCs:
My IBM Aptiva had its CD drive (dual speed) replaced with an identical model that is twice as fast but in much better shape. The hard drive has been replaced by a Flash-Card-to-IDE adapter which is just as fast, can be swapped out (it has a bracket to access it at the back), and it's completely silent. The Sound Blaster 16 Value has been swapped out for a full Sound Blaster 16 with waveblaster support. I just received the 486DX2 66 Overdrive CPU to replace the 486SX 33 CPU with so it should run over twice and maybe even three times as fast (co-processor makes a huge difference).
My Pentium 166 I turned into a Pentium 233 MMX, now waiting on a SD-to-IDE card to replace the 60GB drive with a 64GB SD card (tests on Youtube show it's faster than drives of that time period). I also ordered a brand new Philips CD drive - new old stock - to replace my rather slow and noisy drive. I also ordered an "SLI" cable for my Voodoo 2 card so I can add my second Voodoo 2 card.
It's very fun to push every drop out of these PCs and pretty cheap too. An old CPU costs like €10 and these hard drive adapters are like €2 a piece.
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The current IBM I'm working on as mentioned above was given away for free - it was an office PC before that - and it's such a great piece of hardware. In time these computers will be worth fortunes in working conditions and even though I had so little space in my apartment in the past, I still kept 5 old PCs stored just for this reason. The monitors were especially annoying to keep.
Unreal 2 looked amazOMG compared to what it looks like in my main 1080p LCD now.
