Should I get a 286, 386, or 486 computer?

[Zap!]

On 12/28/2019 at 3:53 PM, DragonGrafx-16 said:

XT system then a AMD K6...

 

I have a 200MHz K6 DOS PC and I love it. You can scratch out the 286 and 386 systems for anything later than around 1993. You need at least 486 to even play late 90s DOS games but 200Mhz is about the golden CPU clock rate for late 90s DOS games.

 

The AMD K6 is the biggest deal in DOS gaming. I paid only $20 for the system opposed to $100-200 for 486 machines. 

Hopefully it's not too fast, but I have a beautiful K6-2 on the way. It's listed as 475MHz (95MHz FSB and 5x multiplier), Super Socket 7 motherboard, 320MB of RAM,  AGP ATI 3D RAGE Pro card with 4MB of RAM, and Windows 98 SE. I wanted something less powerful to go along with my 386, but I couldn't pass this deal up.

[Asaki]

On 1/17/2020 at 3:37 PM, Zap! said:

Stuff I can't figure out: When formatted with EZ-Drive, it can not detect both the A and C drives together. When I boot to the HD and I insert a disk in A, it lights up for several seconds, but doesn't make any noise and I get that abort, retry, fail message. The A drive works fine however. On a boot disk, it boots right up in A. However, then I can not see the C drive. What's odd is that the B drive always works when either the A or C drives boot up. It's the same story when formatted in Disk Manager. But when I format it in MSDOS, all drives work together just fine. But I can't do that, because it only formats in 120mb or so. Very weird. Any suggestions?

I think that was the same program I was using...I was having so many problems, I just gave up and bought a 512MB CF.

[boxpressed]

I don't use EZ-Drive, but check out this thread over at Vogons: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=42113

 

Phil also has a YT video on EZ-Drive.

[DragonGrafx-16]

16 hours ago, Zap! said:

Hopefully it's not too fast, but I have a beautiful K6-2 on the way. It's listed as 475MHz (95MHz FSB and 5x multiplier), Super Socket 7 motherboard, 320MB of RAM,  AGP ATI 3D RAGE Pro card with 4MB of RAM, and Windows 98 SE. I wanted something less powerful to go along with my 386, but I couldn't pass this deal up.

Some games might not run... Tyrian (and Tyrian 2000) for example have problems running at 400+ MHz. You might be able to downclock the CPU otherwise you'd need to use Moslow.

 

Edited January 27, 2020 by DragonGrafx-16

[boxpressed]

To slow down your K6-2, you can use SETMUL.

[Asaki]

I forget exactly, but I think ctrl+alt+num-plus/minus will enable/disable turbo mode...and I want to say shift+ctrl+alt+num-plus/minus will enable/disable cache. But it depends on the system. And certain programs might try to override these settings.

 

On my 486, I can get things pretty slow...especially if I disable a lot of video RAM in the BIOS.

[Zap!]

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, I've been having too much fun with the K6-2 lol. It's a Windows 98 Plus! machine that's 475MHz (95MHz FSB and 5x multiplier) with 320MB of RAM. It has two hard drives (16 and 32-bit), a CD-ROM, my Sound Blaster 64 AWE, an Ethernet card, three USB ports, a SNES USB joystick, and USB mass storage. I have an AT keyboard and VGA switch box (see pics), meaning that I only need one keyboard and monitor to simultaneously hook up both the K6-2 and the 386. Also have a Y adapter for the speakers. I have a Lightscribe DVD-ROM coming from eBay. I'd like to get a 128gb CF card, maybe next week.

 

So far, I haven't really played any really old games, but it runs Duke Nukem 3D, One Must Fall: 2097, Doom, and even Wolfenstein 3D just fine. No need to slow down any of them. Heck, it even runs early 2000's games like Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds perfectly. Will try the Tyrian games later today and let you know how they run. It has a turbo button, but not sure if it's functional. Will try.

 

Anyway, a couple of pics:

 

 

Edited February 4, 2020 by Zap!