Looking for 1992 era Dos gaming pc

[SpeedBall]

1st PC:

Looking to buy a classic dos gaming pc, all parts dating from from 1992, running on a 486.(nothing yellowed or discolored) :

Monitor
Mouse
3.5, 5.25 and Cd drive
Keyboard
Speakers
Cover
Mousepad (optional)
Early Gravis Gamepad (optional)
Enough space, durability and life left is important



Suggested Info:

April 92 was DOS5.0 / Windows 3.1 (not WFW), i486dx2/50 or Am386-40, ISA/VLB SVGA (likely up to 2M in the case of VLB)/ATi Mach8, SBPro or SB2.0, 72pin RAM was available at this stage.


To play games from 1987-early 1993 (classic pc era). Adventure games, arcade ports, platformers, notable sims, apogee games before the boom of first person shooters, full motion video (FMV), tricky advanced sound/video cards, and early and pseudo 3-d graphics.

Examples of games: Commander Keen series, The Simpsons Arcade Game, Sid Meier's Civilization, Airbourne Ranger, Rastan, Bubble Bobble, Duke Nukem I & II, Catacombs Abyss, Wolfenstein 3-d, Mario's Time Machine, Dune, Wing Commander, Space Quest series, etc.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

If you go with a 486DX series CPU based setup you will have speed issues with the older games such as Airborne Ranger and Wing Commander. It would require use of the turbo to disable higher clock speeds and possibly going into the bios when you want to play games effected by this, and disabling some of the cache or using additional programs to keep the CPU busy and slow it down.

 

Just FYI...

 

In fact of the games you have listed, I played all of these at excellent performance levels with a high end 286 that I had back then until I replaced it completely with a 486sx-25 in 1994.

[Metal Jesus]

If you live anywhere near the Seattle area...all you need to do is go to Re-PC. They literally have all of this and more and would even build it for you, like they did for me.

 

http://www.repc.com

[SpeedBall]

On 4/19/2019 at 6:12 PM, Metal Jesus said:

If you live anywhere near the Seattle area...all you need to do is go to Re-PC. They literally have all of this and more and would even build it for you, like they did for me.

 

http://www.repc.com

 

Hey,

 

I've already contacted them. They can't get super specific. However, I'm sure they are useful if you want a windows 98 pc in a system unit and monitor from late 90s. I don't think this the optimal solution to run all dos games or to capture the ideal setup for the second wave dos era (1987-1992/3)

 

I want a full old school setup from A-Z restricted to 1992ish and with items that aren't yellowed running on a 486 and a dos 5.0 and optimized to run on tricky to run games.

 

Would you suggest anywhere else?

 

Edited August 3, 2020 by SpeedBall

[Metal Jesus]

Would you suggest anywhere else?

 

Also would you consider selling any amiga or dos games or perhaps doubles? (Yep watched those vids) Just curious!

 

 

1) Trust me: RE-PC has the parts...so if you live in the area, just stop into one of their two locations. Unfortunately they do not yet do a lot of selling online..

2) I don't have a lot of doubles...or at least I try not to cuz I don't have the room Maybe one of these days I'll dig through my collection and see which ones I am willing to part with... Thanks for asking!

[boxpressed]

Good luck with your search. I agree that late-80s games may run too fast on a 486, although killing caches may help you to get close to 286 performance.

 

I built a machine for the following era, and between switching the FSB speed with a button and using SETMUL to change the multiplier/kill cache, I can run from 486-33 speed all the way to 550MHz without opening the case.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/268122-is-a-vintage-pc-worth-it-these-days/?p=3819663

[SpeedBall]

On 4/19/2019 at 7:40 PM, Metal Jesus said:

 

 

1) Trust me: RE-PC has the parts...so if you live in the area, just stop into one of their two locations. Unfortunately they do not yet do a lot of selling online..

2) I don't have a lot of doubles...or at least I try not to cuz I don't have the room Maybe one of these days I'll dig through my collection and see which ones I am willing to part with... Thanks for asking!

 

Hey thanks for letting me know. I spoke with the guy who did yours like 3 months back. I got the impression after numerous phone calls that they can't get super specific, after my requests and kept on suggesting they can work with what they have.They were willing to ship out of state to my state.

 

But after a few follow ups seemed like they were super busy, weren't following up and didn't have exactly what I was looking for.

 

I was asking about games because it seems like the physical game collectors willing to trade/sell boxed games especially for NTSC amiga and earlier dos games seems to be diminishing coupled with a lot of third rate resellers, who sell untested games/hardware for wacky prices on ebay.

 

Seems vintage pc gaming using original/hardware software was kind of easier to get into and collect just 5-15 years ago and now is increasingly becoming difficult.

Edited August 3, 2020 by SpeedBall

[Metal Jesus]

 

Seems vintage pc gaming using original/hardware software was kind of easier to get into and collect just 5-15 years ago and now is increasingly becoming difficult.

 

 

It absolutely is much, much tougher. You used to find big box PC all day long at places like Half-Priced books... A friend of mine has a retro gaming store, and she won't even take old PC games cuz they are impossible for her to support and get running for her customers AND sometimes there are activation codes that no longer work.

 

The best place to get them today is at retro gaming expos. That's where I get almost everything these days.

[scotty]

 

 

It absolutely is much, much tougher. You used to find big box PC all day long at places like Half-Priced books... A friend of mine has a retro gaming store, and she won't even take old PC games cuz they are impossible for her to support and get running for her customers AND sometimes there are activation codes that no longer work.

 

The best place to get them today is at retro gaming expos. That's where I get almost everything these days.

I still have the games, some manuals, but sadly most, if not all the boxes are gone. I live in a small 750 sq foot condo, so I do not have the room I would like.

 

Huge fan btw. I had no idea you were on Atari Age.

[youxia]

I was just looking at retro PCs and it's true that the pre-Pentium models sport ridiculous price tags now, ditto some components.

 

What I wonder is it really necessary to buy a period-accurate PC just for games? I had my first one in the late 90s, starting with P60 then Celeron 333. I remember playing heaps of old DOS games on them anyway, mostly with no problems and using Mo'Slo in some cases. And old Pentium units seem relatively cheap compared to the other ones nowadays.

[CaptainBreakout]

I swear by my Pentium II 400mhz with 100mhz fsb setup. Slot 1 cpu, and 256mb of sdram. Microstar motherboard with 3 ISA slots and an AGP 2x for the vid card.

 

It's the best of both worlds. All the (pre-Windows) Ultimas run, and so do things like Descent 2, Command and Conquer, and Quake. Also most stuff from the CGA/EGA days works well enough.

 

Many games from in and around the 386 era have their own built-in throttling routines, so going too fast isn't as much of a problem as I expected to encounter. If I really need to slow things down, good old Moslo usually does the trick.

 

Anyway, I recommend this route. Other bonuses include using MSDOS 7 (aka Win98Se with GUI=0 in the config) which can use 60gig FAT32 partitions on a solid state drive with a PATA adaptor (my BIOS supports up to 120gigs). This gives you an immense amount of HD space. An Nvidia (TNT thru GeForce4) or ATI Radeon (or even a Matrox g450) with native VESA 3 compatibility will handle a wide spectrum of graphics modes hassle-free. An ISA sound blaster (an AWE64 is my fav) to round it all out... also able to provide audio in nearly all circumstances.

 

Anyway, I guess where I'm going here is I find more power and speed, up to a point, in pure DOS is something that is usually an advantage rather than otherwise. I also take advantage of the CPU to handle dos-based emulators, video/music players and demoscene stuff.

 

Just to see how far I could take this, I once built a Pentium 4 2.8gig DOS machine. I honestly couldn't really see any appreciable difference in performance from the P2 rig I mentioned above, in DOS anyway. Also it was hard as hell finding a motherboard that supported a P4 and multiple ISA slots, so for that reason alone I don't see any reason to go past a Pentium 2.

[Keatah]

One of my DOS rigs is the standard 486 from the early 1990's it's even pre-VL Bus. 8-ISA slots. Full of legacy goodness.

 

The other is built around an Abit BX6-R2, 2 ISA slots, some PCI and AGP slots, and standard legacy connectors and ports. It's slot one so I have several choices of CPU ranging from a 233 PII or Celeron all the way to a Coppermine 1.4GHz. It also has the ability shut down the L1 or L2 caches, and that makes those chips running faster than like 800MHz slow to a snail's pace of around 50 - 100 MHz. And there's MoSlo, too. So lots of options to get the right speeds.

 

I also have an AWE64 Gold, gives me good audio in most every configuration. I do keep on-hand other legacy cards like a real 56.6 not-win-modem, an SB16, couple of ISA, PCI, and AGP graphics boards, but I mostly use a GeForce 4600Ti. The rig has 1GB of RAM.

 

Between those two machines, and DosBox, I'm fairly well covered for doing legacy software.