TeamRocketReviews
Experienced Member
I'm wondering what would be an inexpensive classic XT/AT computer for DOS gaming. What would be the base price for an XT class machine and a CGA/EGA monitor?
- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
Good PC to start off with?
- Thread starter TeamRocketReviews
- Start date
Stone
10k Member
I've got a Forefront MTS-9600 multisync that you can have for $125. It does CGA, EGA and VGA just like it's NEC counterpart only a little better.
DOS lives on!!
Veteran Member
I'd suggest starting off with an AT clone.
commodorejohn
Veteran Member
I've got a Packard-Bell AT clone (10MHz 286) you could have, with EGA and IBM monitor, for $200 + S/H.
Maverick1978
Veteran Member
No one's asked the obvious question: what type of games are you looking to play? Games leading up to about 1987? Doom? Quake?
The types of games that you want to play will determine what is your "best" system.
Personally, a 486sx25 or 33 is a great choice. Beef it up with a nice graphics card and 4mb of RAM, and you can handle Doom nicely. Turn the Turbo Switch to low (if available), go into the BIOS and disable the cache, and maybe use one of the old DOS slowdown utilities, and you're at a fair approximation of 286/AT speed levels, normally good enough for most mono/CGA-era games that don't typically play nice on faster machines.
The types of games that you want to play will determine what is your "best" system.
Personally, a 486sx25 or 33 is a great choice. Beef it up with a nice graphics card and 4mb of RAM, and you can handle Doom nicely. Turn the Turbo Switch to low (if available), go into the BIOS and disable the cache, and maybe use one of the old DOS slowdown utilities, and you're at a fair approximation of 286/AT speed levels, normally good enough for most mono/CGA-era games that don't typically play nice on faster machines.
TeamRocketReviews
Experienced Member
Commodorejohn, can you post a picture? When is it from? I'm looking for something from 1987-1990, to play stuff like King's Quest, Space Quest, Maniac Mansion, SimCity, Test Drive, Commander Keen, etc.
commodorejohn
Veteran Member
There's a sticker on the back that says it was manufactured in 1988. It's a 10-12MHz machine (10, I think) with a 2MB EMS/XMS card in addition to 640KB onboard and a 32MB hard drive. (It doesn't have a sound card at present but I might be able to get back the one I had in it from a coworker.) I'm not an expert on requirements, but it should handle SCI0 Sierra games just fine, and it runs Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion without any trouble, if that tells you anything.
As for a picture, you'll have to excuse the abysmal quality of my phone camera, but here you go:
k2x4b524[
Veteran Member
486sx for doom? Runs really slowly, i had a 486slc2/50 in an AT clone that wouldn't handle doom at all. even with a 25mhz co proc, you need a DX-33 at least to run it comfortable, or a 386-40 cache mb. Man i want a 386 board again..
Mark2000
Experienced Member
I'd say get a 486. Not pentium level of cost and sophistication yet, but still a 32 bit machine so that if you need the extra oomph you can have it. Its nice to be able to run anything from DOS 3 to Win 98.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
I second the 486.
creepingnet
Veteran Member
I'll also cast the vote on the 486, particularly a DX/2 66 or DX4-100 with 16-32MB of RAM. I'll chime in with some of my experiences/thoughts here.....
I heard someone here mention DOOM, that's 486 territory, the best experience given what I've done with vintage hardware over the last 10 years would be something with a VLB or PCI bus, a 1+ MB SVGA Card for either of those busses, a DX2 or DX4 Processor at least, and Windows 95 OSR2 or 98SE installed with some of the extra garbage peeled out of it for performance. With this setup I found I could run anything anywhere between 1984 and 1997 on it, this includes some "Pentium Only" titles like Diablo (1995), and Postal (1997), and the early GTA titles.
In my case, being a hardware-a-holic myself, I own multiple machines - 2 8088's (a PC class with an XT board, and a Tandy 1000), a 286, and a 486 DX4, between those three, I"ve got everything from 1981 to 1999 covered, the rest is all handled by my Dual Core box and a Touch Screen laptop. The 8088's can stretch pretty far, but once you get to games like Monkey Island or Ultima VI, it's like Guybrush and the Avatar are geriactrics with bad pacemaker batteries.
The 286 is the closest to the 486, and the Turbo Switch takes me all the way back to 1981 as needed, and I've found some early-mid 90's titles (mostly shareware and 93 on back era commercial games) that run on it. I'm also running under 6MB of RAM on that thing with a little RAM alchemy to make the machine happy to oblodige on the WWW. It won't run DOOM, but it WILL run Wolfenstein 3D if you want an FPS that'll run on a 286. It actually runs rather well on mine.
I heard someone here mention DOOM, that's 486 territory, the best experience given what I've done with vintage hardware over the last 10 years would be something with a VLB or PCI bus, a 1+ MB SVGA Card for either of those busses, a DX2 or DX4 Processor at least, and Windows 95 OSR2 or 98SE installed with some of the extra garbage peeled out of it for performance. With this setup I found I could run anything anywhere between 1984 and 1997 on it, this includes some "Pentium Only" titles like Diablo (1995), and Postal (1997), and the early GTA titles.
In my case, being a hardware-a-holic myself, I own multiple machines - 2 8088's (a PC class with an XT board, and a Tandy 1000), a 286, and a 486 DX4, between those three, I"ve got everything from 1981 to 1999 covered, the rest is all handled by my Dual Core box and a Touch Screen laptop. The 8088's can stretch pretty far, but once you get to games like Monkey Island or Ultima VI, it's like Guybrush and the Avatar are geriactrics with bad pacemaker batteries.
The 286 is the closest to the 486, and the Turbo Switch takes me all the way back to 1981 as needed, and I've found some early-mid 90's titles (mostly shareware and 93 on back era commercial games) that run on it. I'm also running under 6MB of RAM on that thing with a little RAM alchemy to make the machine happy to oblodige on the WWW. It won't run DOOM, but it WILL run Wolfenstein 3D if you want an FPS that'll run on a 286. It actually runs rather well on mine.
SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
486DX or DX2 model would be my pick as well (preferably 50Mhz or higher). Covers you for most of the CGA/EGA titles right up to VGA titles like Doom and Doom II, plus it gives you the modern luxuries we are accustomed to - such as IDE and a BIOS with features like Auto Detect. Preferably one with a turbo switch fitted, incase you need to slow the bad boy down.
(Edit: not saying a 286/386 can't have IDE and a good BIOS, just if you go 486 the chances of it having some issue to overcome are lower)
(Edit: not saying a 286/386 can't have IDE and a good BIOS, just if you go 486 the chances of it having some issue to overcome are lower)
Chuck(G)
25k Member
What do folks have against P1, K6, etc.? Just curious.
creepingnet
Veteran Member
For me, the Pentium is not as easily downgradeable to get good performance for older un-throttled titles, nor is the K6. The Pentium marked the end of the era when we had items like Turbo Switches, and also was a great performance increase over the 486 in a lot of ways - these improvements are what had me against it for a first. My first pentium Box meant a lot of tinkering around with settings. Also, some of those, while capable of running the newer engines created for older games, it tends to change the experience.
On a more personal level, Pentium onward is when computers became fairly close to what they are today to me. A 486 can do a LOT of the things a modern computer can do on it's naitive O/S, but some Pentium Systems can nearly touch 100% modern capability, and due to the lack of certain features like Turbo Switches, and the updating of others (such as 3-D AGP video in the K6 machines and such), plus higher clock speeds, a lot of older stuff is unable to be run without a slowdown utility, special new-age engine, and when running it through forms of emulation, it's not always accurate to what you remember.
commodorejohn
Veteran Member
Nothing much, it just feels like once you hit the Pentium era you might as well just boost it up as far as you can go. You can get at least Pentium III-era machines capable of serving as DOS/Win9x systems, with more and faster RAM and better video cards, so why bother with the lesser stuff? That's obviously an issue of viewpoint, but it's just how it feels to me.
SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
Because as soon as I get a Pentium, I can't help myself but put Windows 98 on it, and it's just not the same damn it.
Plus too fast can crash some programs, and Pentium and higher you lose the TURBO feature.
Plus too fast can crash some programs, and Pentium and higher you lose the TURBO feature.
TeamRocketReviews
Experienced Member
I honestly like the idea of a fast 8-10 Mhz 8088, or a 286 of similar speed.