mehguy Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 I'm looking into a DOS laptop (don't have room for a full PC). I'm looking at the Pentium 2 and 3 machines because of how abundant they are and the sound capabilities. To my knowledge, 486 and Pentium laptops don't have sound cards at all where as Pentium 2 and 3 do. Also, I've been told most Pentium 4 laptops have Realtek sound chips which will not work under dos. So, will a Pentium 2 or 3 laptop be suffice for some early to mid 90s PC games? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 A Pentium III may be too fast for many DOS games. You might have to resort to some slowdown programs in some cases but I never had a lot of luck with those. Pentium 2 might be the same case, though it depends on the speed of the CPU. Another option is to invest in a cheap laptop from a few years ago and just run DOS Box on it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mehguy Posted May 31, 2016 Author Share Posted May 31, 2016 A Pentium III may be too fast for many DOS games. You might have to resort to some slowdown programs in some cases but I never had a lot of luck with those. Pentium 2 might be the same case, though it depends on the speed of the CPU. Another option is to invest in a cheap laptop from a few years ago and just run DOS Box on it. I've heard disabling the L1 and L2 caches will bring it down to 486 speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+splendidnut Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 A Pentium III may be too fast for many DOS games. You might have to resort to some slowdown programs in some cases but I never had a lot of luck with those. Pentium 2 might be the same case, though it depends on the speed of the CPU. Another option is to invest in a cheap laptop from a few years ago and just run DOS Box on it. I second this suggestion. If you don't have room for another computer, using DOS Box is probably your best option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 A lot of 486 DX (2 and 4) lappies will have sound, and most pentium lappies will as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebulon Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 A lot of 486 DX (2 and 4) lappies will have sound, and most pentium lappies will as well This is a case of trying to run DOS games natively, so depending on the audio circuitry DOS driver support could be an issue. Ultimately a P2/P3 class of machine is like asking an original XBOX to play DOS games. The architecture of the PPro/P2/P3 is radically different than the P1 and earlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mehguy Posted May 31, 2016 Author Share Posted May 31, 2016 A lot of 486 DX (2 and 4) lappies will have sound, and most pentium lappies will as well Really? Because from this video I learned that they don't have it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2v7k-wAm2E Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted May 31, 2016 Share Posted May 31, 2016 (edited) true, all 3 of my lappies (a 486DX4 100, pentium 90, and pentium mmx 150) all have ess audio drives which is pretty standard fare for most makers of the time (even in desktops) and only until the super late models had superb dos support edit: ah the 8 bit guy, Ill spare you my opinions on his advice, but a laptop with a high speed 486 is possible to have a sound card, though a bit on the rare side, and by pentium MMX era its pretty much standard equipment Edited May 31, 2016 by Osgeld Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mehguy Posted May 31, 2016 Author Share Posted May 31, 2016 I second this suggestion. If you don't have room for another computer, using DOS Box is probably your best option. The whole idea of getting a dedicated machine for DOS stuff was to not go to the emulation route. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Shame you don't have space for a desktop rig. I have a P1, 166mhz machine I use for DOS (and Win 95) stuff and it's great. SB AWE 32 as well for a wide variety of sound options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 The whole idea of getting a dedicated machine for DOS stuff was to not go to the emulation route. Interesting what you say about the built in sound cards being supported in DOS. For the Pentium 1 / 2 models that had sound cards built in, they likely required some sort of DOS drivers that had to be loaded in order for it to work. Not all sound cards required drivers to be loaded, some just required you to set the environment variables. I'd say a Pentium 2 would be "ideal" for most of the later DOS games. If you're talking stuff that's from the mid 80s though... it's going to run ridiculously fast. But, for that... you can always run MoSlow. By the way, I'm a much bigger fan of natively running games, rather than doing DOS BOX. The only limitation you'll have is that you likely won't ever get any kind of good MIDI support, and a lot of the older games had excellent MIDI support from General Midi or MT-32. Post some pictures when you get it all together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+splendidnut Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 The whole idea of getting a dedicated machine for DOS stuff was to not go to the emulation route. Yes, I understand that... I was only "seconding" the suggestion mainly to get around your issue of not having the room for a full desktop. For games of the early to mid 90s, a 486/Pentium desktop with Soundblaster would probably be ideal (most supported configuration), and I don't really know of any laptops from that era that had Soundblaster support. The Pentium 2/3 era ones might work out alright, but you still might run into either sound configuration issues (off brand sound cards which need to "emulate" soundblaster support thru windows drivers) or speed issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mehguy Posted June 1, 2016 Author Share Posted June 1, 2016 Yes, I understand that... I was only "seconding" the suggestion mainly to get around your issue of not having the room for a full desktop. For games of the early to mid 90s, a 486/Pentium desktop with Soundblaster would probably be ideal (most supported configuration), and I don't really know of any laptops from that era that had Soundblaster support. The Pentium 2/3 era ones might work out alright, but you still might run into either sound configuration issues (off brand sound cards which need to "emulate" soundblaster support thru windows drivers) or speed issues. Well even if sound blaster doesn't work, shouldn't general midi work regardless? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+splendidnut Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Well even if sound blaster doesn't work, shouldn't general midi work regardless? I'm unsure of general midi support in DOS games... Most DOS games from that era that I know of (Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein, Doom, Jazz Jackrabbit, etc...) really only supported SoundBlaster (or any card that was compatible). Sound effects and music were usually played thru either the Yamaha FM chip on the SoundBlaster or the one/two audio output channels (depending on the version of SoundBlaster). Many other brands of soundcards from that era basically copied or emulated the behavior of the SoundBlaster. Also, part of selecting a soundcard all depends on whether you care if you have to be running in windows or not. I remember having a soundcard (Aureal Vortex I believe) which required you to be running in Windows (Command Prompt in Win9x) if you wanted SoundBlaster support in DOS games. It seemed to me Windows games were the ones which were more likely to utilize General Midi for playing music (Chip's Challenge comes to mind). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Lots of DOS games supported GM. Doom, most of the Sierra games, etc. You can ask over on Vogons forum for more info on that (I just got a run down when I was asking about my MT-32 unit). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+splendidnut Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 @Tempest Huh... now that you say it, I do remember seeing general midi listed in some game setup screens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Lots of DOS games supported GM. Doom, most of the Sierra games, etc. You can ask over on Vogons forum for more info on that (I just got a run down when I was asking about my MT-32 unit). Agreed... if anyone reading this has no idea what we're talking about... using the General Midi option really puts games in a whole new playing field. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+splendidnut Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 (edited) Agreed... if anyone reading this has no idea what we're talking about... using the General Midi option really puts games in a whole new playing field. But don't you need special hardware to really utilize it? Edited June 1, 2016 by splendidnut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 But don't you need special hardware to really utilize it? You do... you definitely do. I'm not sure what you would do with a laptop... HOWEVER, if you do it on a PC with ISA card slots, there are a number of General Midi compatible sound cards that you can use to get General Midi or MT-32 compatible sound. Just take a look at a simple game like Space Quest IV from 1991: Standard South Blaster / Adlib (Yamaha OPL2) ...and here it is with a VERY basic Microsoft Wavetable Synth (IE... NOT a quality sound system) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 (edited) Here's a really good example: Wing Commander 2 - Yamaha OPL2 vs Roland MT-32 and... It has all the sound cards you could imagine: 00:00 - Dosbox OPL Emulation (SB16, auto)01:40 - Soundblaster 16 ASP (Yamaha OPL3)03:18 - Soundblaster AWE64 FM (3D off, Reverb and Chorus off)04:56 - Soundblaster AWE64 (native GM, 3D off)06:34 - EMU 4MB GS (bundled with many Soundblaster cards, dry)08:12 - MS Synth (based on Roland GS without effects)09:50 - Roland SC-55 (Roland SC-88 in SC-55 mode)11:28 - Roland SC-88 ()13:06 - Yamaha MU80 (TG300 mode, GS emulation, very similar to DB50XG) Edited June 1, 2016 by 82-T/A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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