Hatta

Crimson Skies?

Linux on the PS3 was pretty useful to a lot of people. Including the USAF.

I haven't been excited about any system since the Dreamcast.

Can you run Basilisk II on an ipad?

I'd recommend holding off on a RAM card until you have a specific use for it.

There are a few software incompatibilities between the IIe and IIgs. Here's an example: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/191905-questron-on-the-apple-iigs/ It is still fun to use and worth the trouble of switching, but keep the IIe around for those rare cases. The 16 bit side is surprisingly nice, and fun to play with in its own right. Especially if you have a 16 bit Mac too. The IIgs is highly recommended if you have a CFFA3000, the bundled Desktop Accessory even works in IIe mode.

No XvT means no multiplayer. Boo. I have these on my 486 already anyway.

If there are PDFs, your duty to history is done. Keep em, sell em, give em away, or trash em. It doesn't really matter. Those who object to trashing them should offer to take them off your hands.

Yes, I have extra catalogs. I think I even have the green one you want. Would you be interested in a small box full of assorted documentation? It might take me a couple days before I actually get a chance to look at what's in there, but I'm sure I have more than several catalogs.

Hi Freeweed! I remember you from Slashdot. I don't remember why I remember you, but hello anyway.

Jazz Jackrabbit is a great reason to get real hardware. That fast and smooth scrolling cannot be replicated by an emulator.

Sound cards are a pretty big topic. A lot of Creative cards had pretty noisy output, and many have MIDI bugs. But then a lot of clone cards have terrible FM synthesis. IMO, the perfect DOS soundcard is a Yamaha YMF718 or similar. It has a real OPL3 and cleaner digital sound than Sound Blasters. Another good option is an ESS1688. They have an OPL3 clone, but it's a very good clone, and the digital audio is also very clean.

I like 95 on my MMX. It's snappy, plays more games than 3.1 does, and having DOS7 is a great thing. 98 is likely to be a bit sluggish, especially if you haven't maxed out the RAM. Edit: You especially want 95 for that big hard drive. FAT32 support is a lot nicerthan juggling partitions.

Why? Because Microsoft is terrible. And no, running DOS games under 95 is no easier than plain DOS. But you should install 95 anyway, and use the included DOS(with the aforementioned BootGUI=0), since it supports FAT32 and long file names. There's no benefit to using 6.22 over 7.

90% of the time you won't have any problems. 9% of the time you'll have to do a little bit of fiddling. 1% of the time you'll spend a whole evening getting a game to work. In that 1% are some amazing games, e.g. Ultima VII, X-Wing.

The usual problem with later era DOS games is not enough free "conventional" memory (below 640K). The simple fix is a boot disk that doesn't load unneeded drivers. The better solution is a carefully crafted config.sys and autoexec.bat that loads drivers in an efficient way. Generally, you use msdiag.exe to inspect the memory, find free regions and pass those as parameters to emm386.exe, and using the loadhigh directive in config.sys. You can also save memory by using more modern memory managers and device drivers that are more efficient, but some have compatibility problems. It's a pretty large topic, as you can see from how long it took to vaguely sketch out the process. You have to think of it as part of the fun.

Depends on what smoothly is. DOOM gives me 25 FPS on my DX2/66. That was smooth back in the day, but it's a lot more fun on my pentium.

Last week I used a spectrophotometer from 1990. It had one of those terrible low contrast LCD screens, an RS232 port, and the manual had BASIC code for controlling it from an NEC 98 series. No computer with it, but the spec itself works perfectly after all these years.

In all seriousness, Monkey Island.

Don't forget you can hit the turbo button to slow down your 486 to play those early games. On some boards it halves the clock speed, on others it just disables the cache.

1996 is pushing it. I tried playing Albion on my DX2/66, it was unbearable.

Both sorta. Windows 95 is self contained, it's installed over whatever DOS you were using before. It contains it's own DOS, 7.0. You *can* still run DOS 6.22 on another partition, if you really want to. But it takes some sysadmin gymnastics and there's little benefit to it. DOS 7 is perfectly compatible with 6.22 and supports FAT32 and long file names. There's no performance hit or memory penalty worth mentioning. Save bare DOS for your 386. Even if you never intend to use the GUI, you're better off installing Win 95 than DOS 6.22 on a 486.

Cycle accuracy.

To be honest, you need one of each. An 8088, 286, 386, 486, and Pentium. You can probably skip a PII and go for a PIII though.

Good choice.