Getting one, maybe two retro PCs to play old PC games, what should I get?

[IkusaTakuma]

Alright, so, my uncle just gave me his collection of over 200 PC games, one problem, they're all DOS, MS-DOS, and old disc games like Battlefield 1942. And that'd be fine and all, except my GTX 1060 Core i7-6700k rig runs off Windows 10 Pro... And they cut off support for disc-run games, and also Windows 10 doesn't have support for MS-DOS. So, obviously, I need a retro gaming PC to run these!

So, for disc games, like a physical copy of Half-Life Classic or Battlefield 1942, what will I need?

Also, any good MS-DOS PC's out there I should consider getting?

[CursedPanther]

Maybe consider a DOS emulator instead?

[RGX12]

No need for an old PC; DOSBox is your friend: https://www.dosbox.com/

Or you could run Windows 98 in a virtual machine, if you have a copy. (Great version of Windows for playing old games, because it still had the 16-bit MS-DOS subsystem, but really, DOS Box is the easiest route)

[xSOSxHawkens]

If you want two seperate era-specific machines run something along the lines of

Pentium (one) 233Mhz MMX, with a decent 2-8MB graphics card, sound blaster and DOS/95 or DOS/98 dual boot.

For the second run a good non-HT P4 or Athlon 64 single core with good AGP card, and dual boot Windows 98SE/XP


If you want a single system to do it all, cut some corners and get a decent, bur early P4 machine running an older SD-RAM chipset. Alternaticly go for a high end P3 system.

This will be a machine from right after the introduction of the P4 line and end of P3 line/

A comparable machine on AMD would be an Athlon XP build (early P4 competitor), or an Athlon Thunderbird Core build (late P3 competitor).

With the single system dual boot 98SE which *should* play your DOS games, and XP for more modern, but still old, titles. Again try to pair it with a good AGP card.

Whatever AGp card you get make sure you can get 98SE or 95 drivers for it...




If you run into problems or want help drop a friends request and let me know. I have a 98SE/XP 233Mhz MMX machine up and running still to this day...

[Flika1999]

Like one of the above comments, dosbox. Great program, I play Rogue on it.

[Anhkrehg]

Get a 486 for the DOS stuff, an Athlon XP-M rig is really fun too for the "newer" stuff. All of it is kind of expensive so you might have to settle for what you can get your hands on. PII/PIII's are nice too. Athlon 64 is definitely too new for a retro rig IMO though :p

I have a lot of nice retro cards from ISA to Voodoo up to 9800Pros/XT I'm always up for trading for cards I'm missing or interesting bits of hardware if you really get into it.

[Talby]

+1 for dosbox, absolutely the way to go. Only thing you may need to buy is a CD/DVD drive if you don't have one laying around - have not used one of those in years, even ancient PCs support PXE boot lol.

[FluffyPinkDecoyBunny]

Not sure about Win 10 and old games, but I can say from a handful I've installed (Lords of the Realm II, for example) on Windows 7 from disc, I haven't had issues playing them. You just need a CD/DVD ROM and you should be golden.

As for games that are strictly DOS based, if you don't mind all the headaches/hassle that DOS based games can bring on an actual build that'll run DOS (IRQ issues, matching sound/GPU cards, memory issues and so on) then by all means find out what you need and build it. Otherwise, to keep you from pulling hair out, I'd suggsted DOSBox.

[Viper]

DOSBox and your present PC would probably run them better than an old MS -DOS 386 or older PC even being an emulator. I imagine it has your MS DOS config files ( config.sys and autoexec.bat ) already set up. Running MS DOS games actually has a learning curve. For example setting up those files. DOSBox makes it easy I believe. If you want to actually use DOS I recommend version 6.22. And you will have a lot of learning to do. It is a command line OS.

[DonJuanDoja]

I use disk run games in windows 10.

Haven't tried DOS but it can emulate. I'm sure you could figure it out.

[Viper]

Originally posted by DonJuanDoja:

I use disk run games in windows 10.

Haven't tried DOS but it can emulate. I'm sure you could figure it out.

True Windows 10 does infact still have a command line and an MS Dos shell. Don't think it will run Dos games however. For one thing if your running 64 bit WIndows . DOS was 16 bit. Another thing is sound. Dos games used sound cards like the Soundblaster. Plus the fact is WIndows 10 is not built on top of DOS like previous version of WIndows. It still has the command line but it no longer has a compatiblity layer. Doubtful a DOS game will function from the DOS prompt in WIndows.

[IkusaTakuma]

Originally posted by CursedPanther:

Maybe consider a DOS emulator instead?

well, that wouldn't be a problem at all, just need to get a floppydrive on my computer :D Luckily cause floppy drives are ancient by now, I can probably find one for very cheap.

Originally posted by RGX12:

No need for an old PC; DOSBox is your friend: https://www.dosbox.com/

Or you could run Windows 98 in a virtual machine, if you have a copy. (Great version of Windows for playing old games, because it still had the 16-bit MS-DOS subsystem, but really, DOS Box is the easiest route)

and wouldn't playing games inside a Windows 95/98 VM be extremely intensive? I've tried it before on Windows 7 and my computer got crippled, and I'm not sure a mere upgrade from 8gb to 16gb and 750 ti to 1060 3gb will help.

[rotNdude]

The old media those games are stored on may not even be good anymore. Floppy disks were notorious for the magnetic media failing over time and even optical disks don't last forever. I wouldn't even consider spending money to play the games if the media isn't good anymore.

[IkusaTakuma]

Originally posted by rotNdude:

The old media those games are stored on may not even be good anymore. Floppy disks were notorious for the magnetic media failing over time and even optical disks don't last forever. I wouldn't even consider spending money to play the games if the media isn't good anymore.

what about the discs? such as the physical copy of Half-Life and Battlefielf 1942, which by the way, is only two of several. those ones are like the discs for Xbox or PS2.

[Viper]

Originally posted by IkusaTakuma:

Originally posted by rotNdude:

The old media those games are stored on may not even be good anymore. Floppy disks were notorious for the magnetic media failing over time and even optical disks don't last forever. I wouldn't even consider spending money to play the games if the media isn't good anymore.

what about the discs? such as the physical copy of Half-Life and Battlefielf 1942, which by the way, is only two of several. those ones are like the discs for Xbox or PS2.

Those 2 games are not MS -DOS games. Battlefield 1942 was released in 2002. Half Life in 1998.

[rotNdude]

Originally posted by IkusaTakuma:

Originally posted by rotNdude:

The old media those games are stored on may not even be good anymore. Floppy disks were notorious for the magnetic media failing over time and even optical disks don't last forever. I wouldn't even consider spending money to play the games if the media isn't good anymore.

what about the discs? such as the physical copy of Half-Life and Battlefielf 1942, which by the way, is only two of several. those ones are like the discs for Xbox or PS2.

The disks/discs your uncle gave you are exactly what I'm talking about. The physical copies of the games that he purchased and gave to you.