Anyone using real DOS on contemporary hardware for gaming?
 

I love DosBox very much and I am also aware of VMDsound and such. But some games didn't run well or sound was flickering.

So I decided to create dual booting on my Pentium 3 - FreeDOS and XP.

Fortunately my PCI soundcard has still DOS drivers including SB16 emulation.

My little experiment works better then I thought. It's funny... If I decide just to play a short DOS game then DOS will boot in like 5 seconds.

Some games are working better then under DosBox, but not all. Some games behave pretty strange. Perhaps just a question of configuration and perhaps impossible.

Anyone interested in this? We could share some experiences.

Define "strange".

By the way, FreeDos is not quite perfect yet - if you're aiming for the best compatibility, use DOS 6.22 (downside = no FAT-32 support). The hacked DOS 7.1 that can be found floating around in various places has got FAT-32 support, but suffers from slight compatibility issues as a trade-off.

Aladdin starts and runs for a short time with great sound. But after a while it seams like a key in the keyboard is pressed all the time, but it isn't.

Other games hang at random time or don't even start because "to less ram", but in fact it's to much. Even others have messed up graphic.

You mean in compatibility?

I am not sure anymore why I changed from 6.22 to FreeDOS. But if I remember right it was because FreeDOS was more compatible on contemporary hardware. To bad I don't remember and can't tell you the exact reason.

Perhaps I should try it again.

Yes.

Yes, only FAT16 maximum 2 GB partition size.

I had 7/8 first but changed to 6.22 because of compatibility issues.

I had the exact same setup you describe, except DOS 6.x instead of FreeDOS--a Pentium III with a Sound Blaster PCI 128 with SB16 emulation support. So yes a Pentium III is a perfectly fine DOS platform. However you surely realize that a Pentium III is not "contemporary" hardware any longer, nor a sound card with SB16 support. If you tried this with a slightly newer machine you may have got less satisfactory results.

Don't hold me on this, but the Pentium III may be the latest architecture with good DOS backwards compatibility. I haven't tried on a real setup, but VPC 2007 is appalling at running DOS games, and it appears to emulate a Pentium IV. I've heard that VPC 2004 was better for emulating DOS, and maybe it was because it emulated a previous processor architecture; but I don't really know since I've never installed it.

Anyway I don't really see the point in a real setup if a virtual one does the job. Right now I simply know of no DOS game that DOSBox 0.72 can't run perfectly--granted I don't have so many. But if you think, as apparently many other people, that a real setup will be 100 per cent compatible, or more compatible than DOSBox, just because it's "real", you may be in for surprises. It seems to me that DOSBox is *way* more compatible than a real DOS machine, at least if that's not a very standarized Compaq or HP or etc.

Eh? Really? Thought 486 DX with ISA soundcard is best.

Well, it's 3 GHZ. Enough for any purpose as a private user (ok, except vista dx10 games).

It's not the hottest with 64 bit and dual/quad/whatever core. But "contemporary" in sense of "made long time after producers cared about dos compatibility".

I have a SoundBlaster Live Digital. Some time ago it was really expensive and it was the card professionals made games, music and films. I don't think it's worse now, it has a great 5.1 sound.

Imho soundcards haven't developed much since. (compared with harddisks, cpu and ram) Maybe it's old now and no longer produced but I see no point in a new one.

You sure? Only because of 4 GHZ, 64 bit and quad core? Is it really a difference?

The real mode must be still supported because the producers are forced by XP which is still supported and which still needs BIOS / real mode bootstrapping for booting.

Well, an virtualizer as reference for pentium 4? I don't think this is a good reference.

In this case I also wouldn't see the point.

I have some where I've already searched a lot and where sound is still flickering.

Yes, I think this is because of support for disney soundsource and gravis ultrasound and ega.

No I don't think buying 1 legacy computer for retro gaming would solve all problems at all. Perhaps if you would want to play everything perfect you would need 4-6 different real computers. For each game fulfilling the on the box recommend requirements.

Well, for some games the sound is better. Maybe because it's "nearly real" soundblaster by creative and not emulated soundblaster. Also the speed and look/feel is better.

I can't help the impression that you felt my post tried to contradict something you said and then wrote such a long post to disprove what I didn't say. I didn't say a P3 is "best", I said it's "perfectly fine"--in my experience. And "contemporary" does not mean "made long time after producers cared about dos compatibility".

When I talked about compatibility I didn't mean Disney nor Gravis nor any other device I haven't used in my life. I mean that DOSBox runs games that I didn't manage to run neither in my P3 nor in my previous DOS machines of yore, for whatever reason that I don't know.

I see, misunderstanding on my side.

Ok, got it. And agreed, DosBox is more easy without much configuration and driver fiddling.

Multicore and x64 architecture are both quite major changes IMO.

Yes, but it has still all old features. So it shouldn't matter?

Well that's still not quite the best system for older Ms-Dos and Windows95/98 games.
First of all Pentium III is mostly ok, but 3 Ghz is way too fast, hence the keyboard problem with Aladdin. Lowering the keyboard repeat rate and raising it's repeat delay in Dos (mode con: rate=5 delay=20 or similar, don't quite remember anymore) might help for some longer time, but not forever. 450 Mhz is an absolute maximum on Pentium III for Dos games, faster brings problems. More than 128 MB RAM is also not recommended, 64 is even better and safer.
Windows 95 and Ms-Dos 7 it uses is also perfect for all old Dos and Windows games, I didn't encounter any problems with it compared to Ms-Dos 6.22 whatsoever. Windows 98SE is also good. But Freedos might be worse in terms of compatibility.
And drop Windows XP, you're much better off to use a better computer only for Windows XP and internet and that Pentium III for old Windows95 / Dos games only. That Pentium III is not optimal for it anyway, and you also are forced to have more RAM than old games support without a problem.

Overall a relatively perfect system would be:
Pentium II 400 MHZ or Pentium III 450 MHZ
64 MB RAM, 128 does too
Soundblaster 16 (NOT Vibra, that one is a crap, and not Soundblaster AWE32, it's drivers take up too much conventional memory) with the 16 Bit ISA connection (NOT PCI, that will cause problems with Dos)
A Cirrus Logic graphics card with 2-4MB memory, or other card with same memory like S3 (not Tseng Labs, crap).
An older Ati RAGE with 8MB (not more) or similar 3D accelerator graphics card would do for some Windows 95/98 games too, as long as you have Dos drivers for it or UniVBE 5.1 supports it for VESA-support (often it doesn't though). You can download UniVBE 5.1 for Dos here.
Windows 95 / Windows 98 SE (98 is worse than 98 SE)