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Ask Slashdot: DOSBox, or DOS Box?

Posted by timothy on from the mind-the-gap dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Are DOS game emulators like the highly-respectable DOSBox good enough now, or is there still no substitute for the real thing? Like a lot of Slashdotters I'm getting older and simplifying, which means tossing out old junk. Which means The Closet full of DOS era crap. And I'm hesitating — should I put aside things like the ISA SoundBlaster with gameport? Am I trashing things that some fellow geek somewhere truly needs to preserve the old games? Or can I now truck all this stuff down to recycling without a twinge of guilt? (Younger folk who didn't play DOOM at 320x200 should really resist commenting this time. Let the Mods keep them off our lawn.)"

2 of 585 comments (clear)

  1. Long term... by seifried · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We're better off with DOSbox, emulators tend to last a lot longer than physical hardware. Plus we can just keep layering emulators (DOSBox in Linux in VMware on top of whatever comes next).

  2. Re:no substitute for the real thing by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yeah, the games designed for Win98 just don't work well on anything after XP. Most don't work that well in XP, either.

    Here's a fantastic rig for Win98 games:

    1GHz P3 on an AOpen A34 motherboard
    256MB RAM
    GeForce 2 AGP video card
    Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card
    Intel Pro/100 Ethernet
    500GB HD

    Running Windows 98SE with the unofficial 2.1a service pack, DX9, MP9, IE6, and KernelEx to run more recent browsers.

    The nice thing about the above hardware combo is that it was supported until fairly recently - most of the kinks have been worked out in the supported games. The GeForce 2 has enough horsepower to play nearly every 98 era game at 1024x768 res as fast as your monitor can refresh.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.