Building a computer just for DOS games?
 

I consider myself a computer nerd but am by no means a programmer. Current computer stats:

Pentium 4 , 3.19 GHz
2.98 GB RAM
And I'll have 1000 gig of memory as soon as I install this new drive..

Is there a relatively easy way to partition my computer to give me the option to load DOS or the current os (XP) ?

My skill level is much higher than the general populace, but at the same time.. not as good as many people on this board. I just spent 2 hours trying to get Warhammer Shadow Of The Horned Rat to work and I simply couldn't even after downloading a PS1 version of the game and trying (and failing) to run an emulator.

Would a better solution be to build my own computer or acquire a cheapo off ebay from 10+ years ago? In my ideal world I would do this on a newer laptop so I could carry it on trips.

May I suggest using DOSBox for your venture instead?

Point 1

Numerous games no amount of tweaking will fix the lack of sound. Ravenloft Strahd's Possession is one I could not make all the sound work on (I did get music going). Another is Master of Magic. To its credit some games do work awesome on it. Darksun Shattered Lands is one such game.

Point 2

Some games don't work in it. Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat is one.

Either of those. Trying to run DOS on a modern computer is unlikely to work, seeing how many things have changed. The size of your hard drives alone may be an issue.

How strange, works perfect here, music, sound effects, voices ......

If you do wanna go ahead with a dedicated DOS computer, Ebay is your best bet. Try looking around thrift shops as well.

hd
 

Hardrives are inexpensive now.
Just swap another one in with dos 7.10 when you want to play dos games.
The biggest issue is getting the soundcard to work.
I had to use a pc that still had an isa slot and I used a sb awe64 for sound.
An 80gig or so drive holds a lot of dos games.

I don't understand why you would go through all that trouble just to play Dos games in real Dos. Dosbox does the job fine, and you dont have to play around with your hardware. If you want an old computer have a look around and buy one of Ebay or at a meet and swap event....but you are going to have trouble getting parts to replace anything that breaks.

I don't know people around here are nuts I reckon.

infinity
 

I use infinity machine with dos games,which must be run in true dos.

What is this infinity machine and what does it do for you......

infinity machine
 

As an example I use it in the commercial version of wolfenstein,which had the
no clipping function removed.You search memory for the god mode location and
when you find it the no clipping address is 2 bytes lower.You make the address
location =1 instead of the usual 0 to turn no clipping on.
Another instance is redneck rampage,there is no godmode in the killbilly mode,
so you can turn it on and off by playing with memory.
You can also freeze games at a certain level,like playing super tetris at level 4 for a more relaxing game.

So you are willing to go through switching HDD and making sure you have the right sound card (and all the other fun crud that came with getting Dos games to work in real Dos) just to cheat at games.

:whistling: I will stick with Dosbox.

absolutely
 

I have a stack of hardrives in front of me now and none of my computers have their covers on.
I can even use usb thumb drives and external drives in dos.
I just had to repair my 5.25" floppy drive so I could start going thru my archives of floppy disks
from the 1980's
I found the original digger and packman games I had on floppy.

You can do the same thing with those games running in DOSBox, using Cheat Engine.

tedious
 

With infinity machine you can do a deep scan then check for values that increase,decrease,or remain the same.
Or you can do a hex search like with cheat engine.
I just tried the cheat engine with wolf3d,and it does work for no clipping but
I already knew the values had to be either 0 or 1 from previous experience.
If I didn't know what hex values they were using I would never find it with cheat engine.

Cheat Engine offers the exact same ability. :)

Have you tried Virtual PC?
 

I haven't tried it with Dos games, since DosBox has worked with everything I've used so far, but have you tried MS Virtual PC? I know it works for older versions of windows but I'm not sure if you can install a dos or linux OS.

As far as I can tell it is free to download and try.

Cheers,
Vaul

Edit... shame I didn't see this a few weeks ago. I just threw out my old soundblaster 16 & AWE sound cards. Personally all the headaches with trying to configure xms vs EMS memory and manually specifying all the i/o ports is not worth the trouble for me :D

himem
 

I only use himem.sys in the config.sys
I don't bother with emm memory managers.

That is wise, that is as long as your game doesn't need it. There are millions that do and millions that don't.

PS: You can set up multiple configurations to choose at boot:

http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/sho...3&postcount=33

startup disk
 

A win98 startup disk (floppy) has a menu system as part of the config.sys and autoexec.bat files.
If you still have one of those you can use those files and edit to suit,instead of starting from scratch.