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Old 25-08-2013, 10:31 AM   #1
SGP
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Default Dos Gaming PCs! (eBay, UK)

Hi there,

If anyone in the UK is interested, I'm selling two very nice dos gaming computer builds on eBay at the moment.

The builds are pretty expensive (so if you can easily make your own, you'd be better doing that), but the pricing is a reflection of what they cost me to build mainly as I have to get all my components off ebay (and I'm particularly picky about the P3 builds). plus when I build them, I try to think of everything.

They have brand new cases, brand new PSU:
  • One is purely for dos (by far the cheaper of the two builds - much cheaper to make and much cheaper to buy) & on best offer - this one is suitable for anyone really.
  • One is a Pentium 3 computer which is capable of running dos and XP side by side, with internet (I've now actually set the internet up in dos as well on the P3 one. Has a lovely, beige steel case, and runs without the need for a cpu fan. Would recommend this one is for someone at least a little more technical knowledge though! As it's the buyer that has to install XP.

DOS is ideally set up with all your soundcard drivers, mouse drivers, cd rom drivers, etc. set up. Conventional memory has been maximised (I use lightweight mouse and cdrom drivers, not the standard dos ones)
and EMS and XMS are set up for the games that also use them.

In addition, Certain motherboards can throttle (slow down) the computer for any picky games, and a lot can't. But if you know which ones to look for, you get twice as many speed (slow-down) options to choose from, and those are what I use - think of it as the equivalent to "Cycles" in Dosbox.

I only ever get motherboards with ISA slots, because I consider hardware Soundblaster and MIDI essential

I always try to make them fanless if I can, and _always_ use quiet hard drives - so you can enjoy your dos games in peace and quiet.

I include a boot disc which I made to give you a menu allowing the buyer to boot with or WITHOUT a memory manager - because some games have an in-built memory manager and so they won't work with one loaded.

They have a small selection of abandonware DOS games. (I'm working on improving this, as it really is a bit of a poor selection, but it does have Project Nomad on, one of my all-time favourites :P)

For the pure DOS one go here:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...STRK:MEBIDX:IT

For the Pentium 3 based one for dual booting DOS and XP:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3211927632...84.m1555.l2649

*When I asked about writing this post to Lulu Jane, I told her it wouldn't be as scatterbrain as me talking about it to her in the private message. oh dear, I think I was wrong.

Last edited by SGP; 26-08-2013 at 06:52 PM. Reason: clarification
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Old 25-08-2013, 12:01 PM   #2
SGP
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Damn, now I'm going off topic on my own post.

Speaking of Project Nomad, I also did some fan-art for Project Nomad, years ago.

This was a re-imagined box art for the big box version:
http://www.sgp.tolon.co.uk/images/art/Nomad-SF-S6.jpg

And this was a picture of the Nomad intro screen where the ship crash lands on earth, but jazzed up a bit.
http://www.sgp.tolon.co.uk/images/ar...C_1_over_2.jpg

you have to remember I was very young when I made them :P - and didn't have 'much' knowledge of photoshop! hehe

Last edited by SGP; 25-08-2013 at 12:37 PM. Reason: c
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Old 25-08-2013, 12:52 PM   #3
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All good with me, good luck and I hope they find a great home
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Old 25-08-2013, 04:15 PM   #4
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Just a note - wouldn't a S3 Virge 3D graphics card be far too modern and overpowered for pure Dos games? Unless there's specifical drivers already set to loading on bootup for it, which provide support for Vesa 1.2 / 2.0 specifications, or the BIOS has the options to enable Vesa support, I doubt programs for Dos like UniVBE 5.1 (which enable Vesa software support) would recognize the card. Most, if not all, Ms-Dos games which run in resolutions of 640x480x256 colors and higher though, require either a hardware supported compatible card, or Vesa support active for it - and this card might be too modern to be hardware supported for Dos games. Also some games might have problems with the AGP 2x...
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Old 25-08-2013, 04:49 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Scatty View Post
Just a note - wouldn't a S3 Virge 3D graphics card be far too modern and overpowered for pure Dos games? Unless there's specifical drivers already set to loading on bootup for it, which provide support for Vesa 1.2 / 2.0 specifications, or the BIOS has the options to enable Vesa support, I doubt programs for Dos like UniVBE 5.1 (which enable Vesa software support) would recognize the card. Most, if not all, Ms-Dos games which run in resolutions of 640x480x256 colors and higher though, require either a hardware supported compatible card, or Vesa support active for it - and this card might be too modern to be hardware supported for Dos games. Also some games might have problems with the AGP 2x...
Technically, the Celeron 333MHz on that rig, is faaar too modern for dos games. - I mean, it's got 128K of on-die L2 cache baby!

But in using a Socket 370 mainboard we enable a lot of advanced features like very thorough cpu throttling, so you can play games like Fantasy World Dizzy, even on a Pentium 3 while you can't even play it on a Pentium 1, 100MHz because that's too fast and it gives an overflow error. A lot of games work at normal speed, or have speed settings. But for the picky ones which don't run the right speed and have no speed options - there's the throttle software.

I always thoroughly test them and I've never ever encountered such problems to be honest. Bearing in mind my own dos-box is one of the P3-based WinXP / DOS boxes which are much more powerful, but they work brilliantly with DOS, and I've played a *lot* of DOS games on that one . A lot of people build similar dos rigs / dual boot rigs to this at Vogons.org.

The Pentium 3 Dos Boxes also have GeForce 2 MX's (AGP 4x) graphics cards - an insanely powerful card with respect to the DOS era - but again, work absolutely fine. The reason we use a GF2 MX is, when you're dual booting both DOS and WinXP you really need a card that can handle both, not just one.

If you watch the video of me playing games on the auction site, that's with my own dos gaming computer (a Pentium 3 with a GF2 MX which dual boots dos, and xp), and as you can see, it works pretty well - I also have a video of me surfing the internet in DOS on the Pentium 3 based Dos box I'm selling, and it's Geforce card seems to do Vesa modes just fine with Arachne web browser @ 1024x768 in high colour.

The next "dos-only" one I build however, does have a somewhat weaker 8MB SiS 6326 graphics card, which was AGP 1x. (although still an 8MB card, the performance is drastically less than the S3 card - but by far still good enough to play our favourite DOS games on.

Last edited by SGP; 25-08-2013 at 10:45 PM. Reason: clarification
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