13 replies to this topic

[dougy76]

I've been trying to play some of my old PC games on my computer, and it seems like some of these games don't work on the modern computers. For example, I have this one game called "Castles 2" that I can't even install onto the computer. For some reason, it doesn't recognize my hard drive. This computer uses Windows 2000. I don't know much about any of this stuff, but after doing some research, I'm thinking that my hard drive configured in NTFS is causing the problems. Looks like older OS's used FAT configurations and that makes a difference somehow. Can anyone confirm this? Anyone know a way to get around this?

Also, I have another game, Eye of the Beholder, which I can install and play, but I cannot get the sound to work properly. Do I need to install an old Sound Blaster card to get this to work properly, or should the current cards work fine?

Any help appreciated to a confused, clueless PC user.

[Raijin Z]

FAT will work with FAT32, but not NTFS or the new Longhorn format. Just seek out an old 486 to play your old DOS games on. The cost isn't prohibitive, and the effort required is minimal.

[Vectrex-Atari]

dougy76 said:

This computer uses Windows 2000.

Theres most of your problem. Windows 2000 uses the NT kernal which is different from the Windows 9X series. Unless the game was design for NT use, it wont work.

[ElephantStyle]

You could do what I do, have a separate old pc just for old games. You can get an old pentium 133 for nothing (I've rescued several old pentiums from people that no longer see the value in them). Format, install DOS and go.
Its kinda nice to go back to the old DOS prompt and play a game of kings quest 5, or wolfenstein 3d. Dust of the autoexec.bat and config.sys editing skills!

[Ze_ro]

Instead of fiddling around trying to get Dos games to work under Windows (broken) Dos modes, you're probably better off trying to run the games under Dosbox instead.

--Zero

[cimerians]

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but I cannot get the sound to work properly.

Sound will never work in 2000 or XP without an emulation program like VDMsound. I also have a seperate PC for old PC games.

The only thing is you have to deal with conventional memory, config.sys and autoexec.bat once again.

[dougy76]

Ze_ro said:

Instead of fiddling around trying to get Dos games to work under Windows (broken) Dos modes, you're probably better off trying to run the games under Dosbox instead.

--Zero

Zero,

Have you used this before? Is it easy to use? I've never heard of it. It looks pretty cool. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the tip.

[Ze_ro]

Yeah, it was pretty easy actually. It ran King's Quest 5 (as well as many other games, check their compatability list) without any configuration or anything. It takes a pretty powerful computer to do things full-speed though (My old 400MHz system makes things almost unplayable), and don't expect to run really new stuff.

Give it a try though, it's pretty impressive.

--Zero

[rpmxxipt]

Until there's a shell that runs all old DOS games reliably, I'm still under the notion that there needs to be "best standards" for systems running with an 80xxx processor with DOS version x.x, and regarded strictly as best gaming machines for software released between 19xx and 19xx.

The idea that the PC evolution is a continuum is wrong.. as recent history, just consider where 3DFX based polygon games went in the toilet bowl of history.

In my humble opinion, I don't think there will ever be a shell that incorporates all of the sound and graphics standards for all DOS and Win9x+ systems out there. I'm with everyone that having a separate computer system for each "era" of games is the best way to go.

Retro PC's ought to be designated and categorized in the same way as say the Nintendo hardware. Even though there was never the strong delineation point with PC's, there is definitely the same software evolution.

[Mindfield]

There are a number of solutions.

Built In
Right-click on the main program and select "Properties." Go to the "Compatibility" tab and choose a compability mode appropriate to the title you're running -- usually Win98 is sufficient. This has worked for a few games I've tried. Also, try manually assigning the maximum amount of conventional memory and heap space.

DOSbox
A freeware shell called DOSbox aims to emulate the 286/386 processors, along with SoundBlaster emulation, SVGA and DPMI support. It's still in progress (current version 0.60) and not everything works, but its compatibility list is impressive even at its current stage.

Device Emulators and Loaders
Programs such as VDMSound (an SB audio emulator), GUSemu (a Gravis Ultrasound emulator). AbandonLoader is a Windows shell that may also assist in getting old titles to work.

Virtual Machines
Microsoft VirtualPC (formerly by Connectix) is a commercial solution, but it emulates an entire PC from top to bottom. I've had it work for the vast majority of titles I've tried, though you'll need a half decent PC to get good speed out of it.

[Ze_ro]

Mindfield said:

Microsoft VirtualPC (formerly by Connectix) is a commercial solution, but it emulates an entire PC from top to bottom.

Bochs is a nice free alternative. I doubt it'll work as well though, since it's only really developed by volunteers.

There's another program called VMware, which lets you run another operating system simultaneously, so you can run Dos 5.x from within Windows (or more exotic things, like running Plan 9 or OS/2 from within Linux). VMware doesn't emulate anything, so you have to run it on x86 hardware (which obviously isn't a problem for you), but it should run faster than Bochs.

(I think VMware was recently bought out, so I have no idea what it's name is anymore, or what kind of liscence it has or whatever).

--Zero

[Mindfield]

The only problem with VMWare is that its compatibility isn't as good as VirtualPC. VMWare's emulated devices are purely proprietary and thus go undetected by any DOS apps that look for specific hardware. VMWare's only advantage is that it's faster -- which doesn't count for much if you can't play much on it. :-)

VirtualPC emulates an actual SoundBlaster 16 for audio and a VESA 2.0-compatible S3 Trio32/64 (732/764) for video, so for playing old DOS games it's a better choice. Plus, you can install a neat little patch that allows complete drag-and-drop from the host OS to the emulated OS, making installing old games a snap. :-)

However, you should have at least a 2.4GHz P4 or 2GHz Athlon to get something approaching proper speed without glitchy sound. I've played a few Build-engine games (Duke3D, Redneck Rampage, etc.) on my 1.53Ghz Athlon XP under VirtualPC 5.1 (the last Connectix version) and the speed isn't the greatest and the sound stutters pretty seriously. I've yet to get Microsoft's updated version, but from what I read of their changes, they haven't really done much for compatibility or speed optimisation yet. (Wait ... "speed optimisation" and "microsoft" don't belong in the same sentence anyway...) Then again, VirtualPC was and still is partially developed by Aaron Giles (of MAME fame), so maybe in this case, they do. :-)

As for Bochs -- isn't that only for Linux?

[Ze_ro]

Mindfield said:

(Wait ... "speed optimisation" and "microsoft" don't belong in the same sentence anyway...)  Then again, VirtualPC was and still is partially developed by Aaron Giles (of MAME fame), so maybe in this case, they do.  :-)

Well, I don't know about that... Aaron Giles latest additions to MAME are generally known for being some of the slowest games yet Of course, the fact that he has them running at all is pretty impressive.

Quote

As for Bochs -- isn't that only for Linux?

Well, it's open source, so you could theoretically compile it on whatever operating system or architecture you want. I'm pretty sure Windows and OS X binaries are available, but I'm having trouble accessing their download site, so I can't verify.

--Zero

[Mindfield]

Vegas hardware is pretty high tech to be emulating -- that Aaron got it working at all, even slowly, is impressive. Plus, it's still very much alpha; one generally doesn't worry about optimisation until it's working properly. No sense in optimising code that may end up being changed or rewritten.

As for Bochs -- well, sure, you could compile it on other systems, but not many people have the tools or knowhow to do that. I didn't see any Win32 bins on the download page, though.