If you yourself value your own creation so little then yes, you don't need copyright. You'd best either pass it into the public domain so others can build upon it or not publish it at all. Your call.
I've also lost a ton of stuff and if somebody had gotten hold of it and improved on it then more power to him.
Creations belong to the public domain by default. Copyright is a priviledge. Not the other way round.
I could be wrong(it has happened before) but EULAs have never been tested in court in the European Union. Typically you only get to see the EULA AFTER you have entered a binding contract. And naming the terms of a contract after you have entered it is simply bad faith. When was the last time you got automatically fully refunded when you clicked "I don't agree."
Also if you can demonstrate you didn't understand the terms of a contract it also gets voided. That shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.
Nobody seems too keen to test EULAs in court because they move on dodgy legal terrain.
Since copyright is only a temporary protection before a work goes into the public domain we need to take steps for preservation.
A copyright holder should have the duty to take sufficient measures that the work is still existant when it is ready to enter the public domain. And that means backups.
We have lost quite a lot of movies and semi-lost a lost of books, TV shows, radio recordings and whatnot to fire, negligence and not interest to publish it.
Just a couple of weeks ago I wanted to get recordings of a radio show I was quite fond of as a kid. It had 44 episodes. The publisher who currently hold the publishing rights sell it on CD or digital download for 10€ a pop. And they only sell the first 4 episodes. So not only was I facing extortionate pricing but also unavailability. As per my scheme this should void their copyright.
I say if the copyright holder doesn't want to sell his stuff or make it otherwise available he should be denied copyright protection. which would also finish off the Disney vault.
This kind of protection needs some strings attached. Basically every cultural achievement of the last hundred years is for sale and owned by whoever. We don't own our own culture anymore.
...since Valve is mum about Steam sales and Amazon also isn't very forthcoming about electronic sales figures thare is no way for us to tell.
Publishers/devs also don't disclose their production cost, marketing cost and so forth. Which is why all of this is guesswork. Boxed sales figures still are not enough to represent if a game actually made money or not.
That's why you need to be able to have a reasonable way to extend the local storage. And that means you need to be able to insert full-sized SD cards(they can hold up to 128 gigs ATM) and USB thumb drives.
64gigs are a joke if you are not able to mount removable media. Which is why I think a tablet/portable device without SD card slot or USB connector is not fit for purpose.
For Joe Schmoe couchsurfer 64gigs are enough. If you carry around lots of data then it isn't. But then you are not a standard user.
You don't know how much money they need to make to break even. Darksiders 2 sold a million and reputedly didn't break even, adding to the financial woes of THQ to the point where they humble-bundled their back-catalogue. Orks must die 2 sold nowhere near that much but made Robot Entertainment a nice profit. And that's before DLC.
Or take for instance the original Nintendo Wii. That thing sold like hotcakes. And yet a huge part for Nintendo's business model didn't happen. the console had an attachment rate of 1.8 games per unit. Nintendo gets money per game even if it is developed by 3rd parties. So if only 1.8 games were sold per console profits were nowhere near what they could have been even if the console itsself wasn't sold at a loss.
Also we are at the end of 2012. Yet sales figures still are based on sold boxed copies. Digital download isn't counted. Which makes the figures a bit crap to begin with.
Sales figures measure popularity and little more. You need to look at the big picture.
I also have a Prime. They use the T33 in the Ouya which is what is used in the Infinity. Although I guess it shouldn't make that much of a difference.
The Ouya uses a hacked Android(they just switched to 4.2) without the status navigation bar thing on the bottom and severely limited multitasking since that isn't needed And they will hopefully use faster components since IO is the Achilles heel of the Tegra3 Transformers.
I expect more agressive Tegra3 optimization for Ouya games so perhaps better visual effects than what we see on our Primes. Have you tried "Puddle"? PhysX on a tablet. Tegra3 may not be quite on par with current gen consoles but when I take a look at the Tegra roadmap the Cortex A15s might very well be. Those will be released over the course of the next year and they WILL give current gen consoles a run for their money. Especially A15 based tablets will have more RAM than the piddling amounts the 360s and PS3s have. And that's what held those machines back for quite some time.
I know that "building a console from stock components with an already established architecture and a huge library of games" sounds a bit like the Phantom but the Ouya seems to have hit a sweet spot. Even if you just use it to smarten up your TV. At 100€ a pop I won't have to think twice wether to get one or not. It's rootable and seems to be nice for putzing around with it.
64GB is bare minimum. What is important is that they need to support 128GB SDHC cards. Those cost 120€ a pop. got one for my tablet and I'm happy to report that this baby will hold Babylon 5, Farscape AND Galactica. 42MB/s read rate isn't too shabby, too.
Now all you need to do is get Windows to mount an SD card as user directory and Bob is your uncle. That's where the majority of storage will get wasted. Unless you are mad enough to think you want to use such a thing to run the latest and greatest AAA 30GB+ disk hogging games on such a thing. Integrated graphics are bound to suck. For productivity stuff 64GB + external user directory propably is enough. Just keep your pr0n collection on an USB come Fleshlight drive like the rest of us.
The one thing the Transformers have got for themselves is that portable keyboard/docking station/clamshell cover. It's got an awful lot of ports and connectors on it and is actually a decent keyboard. but more crucially it has an additional battery in it.
That thing charges the tablet and can be charged separately while detached. It's a clever little thing and much more than that floppy rubber thing of the Surface while not being much fatter.
The thought of running stock wintel stuff on a tablet is intriguing. But I don't think MS has the experience to design such a thing. Now ASUS and Lenovo with all their Ultrabook experience propably will be able to pull this off.
I find the thought of an i7(ok, let's be honest, i3 propably is sufficient and wiser) tablet in that form factor intriguing. Also it scares me a bit. Time got get one at company expenses. Now all I need is a reason for them to get me one. Reading my Batman comics on a 13" tablet propably isn't good use of company resources. Just guessing.
Then again I got them to buy me a Transformer Prime...
The problem is some games spend so much on production that 1m or 2m in sales at full price are considered a failure. That's basically what AAA means. going full retard.
A prime example for this would be Assassin's Creed 3. They had to justify the steep price somehow so they added shit on top of shit. Naval battles, board games, a surprisingly competent multiplayer component(yes, I'm shocked too), deer hunting, single player capture the flag and farmville. In fact that game is so unfocussed that you really don't know what it is supposed to be. I sure don't. But what it isn't is a competent parcours stabby game since they still haven't fixed the controls. Expect to jump up walls when you want to run around them. Expect counters to fail despite you having pressed X for victory. Expect no stealth whatsoever unless you are on a mission where detection arbitrarily kills you(without telling you that beforehand). Expect to spend half of your time in loading screens or cut-scenes.
Take the 16 minutes it takes to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLdMgIhpD9s
That's all you have to know what makes AssCreed 3 such a mediocre game.
And yet they need to shift millions for that thing. The end credits roll for 20 minutes and all of those people in it need to be fed.
AAA is going full retard.
Ummm. You know we stopped believing those numbers years ago? They do not include digital distribution and only very few games get shelf space.
Also there is a lot of money to be made in the long tail when you cut out the middle man. Which in this case would be publishers and retailers. So you don't need to be #1. Or even in the top 20 to make back your money. Unless of course you had a production cost rivaling the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Which Braben doesn't need.
Ummm. We PC types bought flightsticks, HOTAS systems, steering wheels and other input peripherals when console games were just Mortal Sonic Mario Kombat with all analogue thumb twisting blocky controllers.
I really don't understand why some of the current PC gamer generation don't like controllers. For some games they are great. I can see them working in a space sim. Just don't forget to also have mouse support for menus and such. No Skyrim inventory shenanigans plx:(
Also port it to Android/Ouya. No publisher needed there. And you can easily get it on Steam/GOG without publisher backing.
Braben raises money by his name alone and Elite is still fresh in memory. Publishers wouldn't add anything in his case anyway. So why did he even bother? It's not the only way to get funding. Hell, he should even be able to get venture capital. Kids playing Elite grew up to be all sorts of things. Accountants, mass murderers, heads of state, blue-collar workers and...heaven forbid... venture capitalists.
Publishers used to be needed for funding and access to the sales&distribution channel. Sales&distribution has become trivial if you don't need to get boxed games to WallMart. A lot of games are digital distribution only and are doing fine.
And funding comes your way when you pitch it to the right people.
The classical publisher is going the way of the dodo.
Great. Sounds reasonable and ultimately feasible. And now plug it wherever you go. Burn some Karma on it./. runs a story every two days where you can mention it without being too off topic.
There also are other nerdling hangouts.
It's only astroturfing when you are a payed shill. I rave about the wonderful idea that is the Ouya wherever I go and I haven't even backed them(but I have preordered).
Also, the Ouya is a quite clever idea. Stock components and an already alive ecosystem.
Basically yes, they are.
But these have the Tegra3 T33 SoC. Which are 4 core + "companion core" A9 Cortexes. Which is a top shelf SoC with a capable GPU. Judging by what I get on my tablet I would say you can get HD games with graphics comparable to a PS2. Propably even better if optimized.
Has anyone bothered yet to compare it to a Wii U? It doesn't have the Wii U's party trick but I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar when it comes to performance. Also Android is a plattform that doesn't require any Sonyesque programming tricks...
Also I wouldn't be surprised if GoG would offer some of their DOS Games + DosBox for that thing. Wohoo! Master of Magic!
Also Amiga Emulators and MAME.
What a clever little thing.
We've thought about something similar. It's cheap, obviously doesn't need any fans or other BS and could be the last system standing.
With any luck it could be a nice monitoring/xterm achinelet to stick into the server room.
Personally I'll try to get a development machine to dick around with. It's got nice hardware and they chose to stay away from those nasty background services that bog down most Android devices.
If they get those things into Walmart and other cheapsters then they could sell like hotcakes. The Tegra T33 is a very capable SoC which has only the problem of not having an UMTS/LTE module. Which isn't actually needed in a game console anyway. That's the famous 4 core + companion core that got built into the Transformer Prime Infinity.
And since all games for it are required to also have some sort of freemium model we could be in for a treat. Expect humble Ouya bundles galore. And there are a crapton of really premium Android games out there. Should be cheap to port. If porting is needed then that'd mostly be adding controller support that half of the older games don't have. I'm looking at you, Samurai II: Vengeance and Galaxy on Fire.
The idea that gets shouted out is the one that will make it.
From what we know you might be calling for funding for a fish controlled Bill O'Reilly stimulator. You filthy pervert.
Nope. THQ. And this might be an act of desparation since they are in dire straits.
This news blurb has to be the worst/. has ever posted. Devoid of information, leaving out the interesting bits and absolutely inflammatory. Also correct. In a tunnel-vision way that's akin to a nanotube.
I never had much hassle with their stuff. Whereas in the olden days I had to fiddle with boot disks and memory optimization so mscdex left some memory for the game.
My DOS gaming under OS/2 was much better. Over 620k free with all my hardware fully functional. MS-DOS was a POS. Windows was a graphical DOS extender.
How did this computing platform survive? Do we still have the A20 gate?
Ugh. Forgot about that. Seems ike we'd need to either go full retard and emulate the whole PC...which is a bit bad. Or wait for x86 compatible tablets that run Win8. Ummm.
Nope. You will still need to use the installer. But that's a Windows problem.
Snarkyness aside: here's what I use them for.
Their DOS games run in DOSBox. Which comes with a very nice instaler that does the fiddly DOSBox bits for you. That is very nice.
So now that you have that old DOS game living in it's shiny new NTFS folder happily unconfused about the past 20 years.
GRAB THE BUGGER BY THE SHORT&CURLIES AND DROP IT ONTO YOUR TABLET OR SMARTPHONE.
In some cases it's better to use a mouse for strategy games since pointy finger touchscreen stuff lacks the precision of a proper mouse for reasons that are beyond me. And you will need a right mouse button. And some games will be suggish on tablet DOSBox. Dungeon Keeper 1 for instance runs at about 5fps on my Transformer Prime. Master of Magic OTOH works fine. As a rule of thumb I'd say any DOS game that ran on a high end 386 will run nicely in DOSBox on a sufficiently beefy tablet.
Sadly tho I don't see a HoMM3 or DK2 or anything like that running on a current gen tablet. They would have to be properly ported as WINE running on tablets stil is 2-3 years off.
Turning off sound and music might also speed things up.
Don't expect to use your PS3 controller too much. In the olden days PC joystick support was wonky at best.
I had one of those SB16s that still had a physical volume control at the back of the card. Yeah, one of those mile-long beasts. And I loved it to bits. And due to the ragged edges of computer cases back then I fed it with a couple of pints of my lovingy crafted own blood.
And here's how they sold me one of those AWE32s(or was it 64?): It actualy goes into your new motherboard. Only reason to repace it.
That SB16 was used briefly under DOS. Hugely under OS/2(yeah!). And then for a long time happily chugged on under Linux when OSS still was a thing. It was supported by basically everything even tho the Gravis punters tirelessly pointed out that their stuff was better.
The SB16 was the thing that always worked. I think I got 10 years of service out of that thing.
Next week, boys and girls, I will tell you when I had to let go the Great Cat Confuser otherwise known as a Star LC10 which of course was the only thing that could tatoo a blue whale. It connected to anything from a NCR DMV(that's Decision Mate V) to a Pentium II.
Memory, mainboard and CPU need to be bought with each other in mind. You are flirting with desaster otherwise. The process of chosing those three involves long and boring sessions with Google and in some extreme cases you might find yourself traversing the nethers of Tom's Hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
If you yourself value your own creation so little then yes, you don't need copyright. You'd best either pass it into the public domain so others can build upon it or not publish it at all. Your call.
I've also lost a ton of stuff and if somebody had gotten hold of it and improved on it then more power to him.
Creations belong to the public domain by default. Copyright is a priviledge. Not the other way round.
I could be wrong(it has happened before) but EULAs have never been tested in court in the European Union. Typically you only get to see the EULA AFTER you have entered a binding contract. And naming the terms of a contract after you have entered it is simply bad faith. When was the last time you got automatically fully refunded when you clicked "I don't agree."
Also if you can demonstrate you didn't understand the terms of a contract it also gets voided. That shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.
Nobody seems too keen to test EULAs in court because they move on dodgy legal terrain.
Since copyright is only a temporary protection before a work goes into the public domain we need to take steps for preservation.
A copyright holder should have the duty to take sufficient measures that the work is still existant when it is ready to enter the public domain. And that means backups.
We have lost quite a lot of movies and semi-lost a lost of books, TV shows, radio recordings and whatnot to fire, negligence and not interest to publish it.
Just a couple of weeks ago I wanted to get recordings of a radio show I was quite fond of as a kid. It had 44 episodes. The publisher who currently hold the publishing rights sell it on CD or digital download for 10€ a pop. And they only sell the first 4 episodes. So not only was I facing extortionate pricing but also unavailability. As per my scheme this should void their copyright.
I say if the copyright holder doesn't want to sell his stuff or make it otherwise available he should be denied copyright protection. which would also finish off the Disney vault.
This kind of protection needs some strings attached. Basically every cultural achievement of the last hundred years is for sale and owned by whoever. We don't own our own culture anymore.
...since Valve is mum about Steam sales and Amazon also isn't very forthcoming about electronic sales figures thare is no way for us to tell.
Publishers/devs also don't disclose their production cost, marketing cost and so forth. Which is why all of this is guesswork. Boxed sales figures still are not enough to represent if a game actually made money or not.
That's why you need to be able to have a reasonable way to extend the local storage. And that means you need to be able to insert full-sized SD cards(they can hold up to 128 gigs ATM) and USB thumb drives.
64gigs are a joke if you are not able to mount removable media. Which is why I think a tablet/portable device without SD card slot or USB connector is not fit for purpose.
For Joe Schmoe couchsurfer 64gigs are enough. If you carry around lots of data then it isn't. But then you are not a standard user.
You don't know how much money they need to make to break even. Darksiders 2 sold a million and reputedly didn't break even, adding to the financial woes of THQ to the point where they humble-bundled their back-catalogue. Orks must die 2 sold nowhere near that much but made Robot Entertainment a nice profit. And that's before DLC.
Or take for instance the original Nintendo Wii. That thing sold like hotcakes. And yet a huge part for Nintendo's business model didn't happen. the console had an attachment rate of 1.8 games per unit. Nintendo gets money per game even if it is developed by 3rd parties. So if only 1.8 games were sold per console profits were nowhere near what they could have been even if the console itsself wasn't sold at a loss.
Also we are at the end of 2012. Yet sales figures still are based on sold boxed copies. Digital download isn't counted. Which makes the figures a bit crap to begin with.
Sales figures measure popularity and little more. You need to look at the big picture.
I also have a Prime. They use the T33 in the Ouya which is what is used in the Infinity. Although I guess it shouldn't make that much of a difference.
The Ouya uses a hacked Android(they just switched to 4.2) without the status navigation bar thing on the bottom and severely limited multitasking since that isn't needed And they will hopefully use faster components since IO is the Achilles heel of the Tegra3 Transformers.
I expect more agressive Tegra3 optimization for Ouya games so perhaps better visual effects than what we see on our Primes. Have you tried "Puddle"? PhysX on a tablet. Tegra3 may not be quite on par with current gen consoles but when I take a look at the Tegra roadmap the Cortex A15s might very well be. Those will be released over the course of the next year and they WILL give current gen consoles a run for their money. Especially A15 based tablets will have more RAM than the piddling amounts the 360s and PS3s have. And that's what held those machines back for quite some time.
I know that "building a console from stock components with an already established architecture and a huge library of games" sounds a bit like the Phantom but the Ouya seems to have hit a sweet spot. Even if you just use it to smarten up your TV. At 100€ a pop I won't have to think twice wether to get one or not. It's rootable and seems to be nice for putzing around with it.
64GB is bare minimum. What is important is that they need to support 128GB SDHC cards. Those cost 120€ a pop. got one for my tablet and I'm happy to report that this baby will hold Babylon 5, Farscape AND Galactica. 42MB/s read rate isn't too shabby, too.
Now all you need to do is get Windows to mount an SD card as user directory and Bob is your uncle. That's where the majority of storage will get wasted. Unless you are mad enough to think you want to use such a thing to run the latest and greatest AAA 30GB+ disk hogging games on such a thing. Integrated graphics are bound to suck. For productivity stuff 64GB + external user directory propably is enough.
Just keep your pr0n collection on an USB come Fleshlight drive like the rest of us.
The one thing the Transformers have got for themselves is that portable keyboard/docking station/clamshell cover. It's got an awful lot of ports and connectors on it and is actually a decent keyboard. but more crucially it has an additional battery in it.
That thing charges the tablet and can be charged separately while detached. It's a clever little thing and much more than that floppy rubber thing of the Surface while not being much fatter.
The thought of running stock wintel stuff on a tablet is intriguing. But I don't think MS has the experience to design such a thing. Now ASUS and Lenovo with all their Ultrabook experience propably will be able to pull this off.
I find the thought of an i7(ok, let's be honest, i3 propably is sufficient and wiser) tablet in that form factor intriguing. Also it scares me a bit. Time got get one at company expenses. Now all I need is a reason for them to get me one. Reading my Batman comics on a 13" tablet propably isn't good use of company resources. Just guessing.
Then again I got them to buy me a Transformer Prime...
The problem is some games spend so much on production that 1m or 2m in sales at full price are considered a failure. That's basically what AAA means. going full retard.
A prime example for this would be Assassin's Creed 3. They had to justify the steep price somehow so they added shit on top of shit. Naval battles, board games, a surprisingly competent multiplayer component(yes, I'm shocked too), deer hunting, single player capture the flag and farmville. In fact that game is so unfocussed that you really don't know what it is supposed to be. I sure don't. But what it isn't is a competent parcours stabby game since they still haven't fixed the controls. Expect to jump up walls when you want to run around them. Expect counters to fail despite you having pressed X for victory. Expect no stealth whatsoever unless you are on a mission where detection arbitrarily kills you(without telling you that beforehand). Expect to spend half of your time in loading screens or cut-scenes.
Take the 16 minutes it takes to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLdMgIhpD9s
That's all you have to know what makes AssCreed 3 such a mediocre game.
And yet they need to shift millions for that thing. The end credits roll for 20 minutes and all of those people in it need to be fed.
AAA is going full retard.
We simply number them.
So there is codblops2, codmowa4 and codandchips.
You need to be an enthusiast to tell them apart simply by watching. Since I'm not a fish-fancier I only see guns going boom.
RETURN TO COMBAT ZONE!
PRESS X FOR VICTORY!
KILL THE STREAKER!
Ummm. You know we stopped believing those numbers years ago? They do not include digital distribution and only very few games get shelf space.
Also there is a lot of money to be made in the long tail when you cut out the middle man. Which in this case would be publishers and retailers. So you don't need to be #1. Or even in the top 20 to make back your money. Unless of course you had a production cost rivaling the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Which Braben doesn't need.
Sales figures alone are meaningless.
Ummm. We PC types bought flightsticks, HOTAS systems, steering wheels and other input peripherals when console games were just Mortal Sonic Mario Kombat with all analogue thumb twisting blocky controllers. :(
...heaven forbid... venture capitalists.
I really don't understand why some of the current PC gamer generation don't like controllers. For some games they are great. I can see them working in a space sim. Just don't forget to also have mouse support for menus and such. No Skyrim inventory shenanigans plx
Also port it to Android/Ouya. No publisher needed there. And you can easily get it on Steam/GOG without publisher backing.
Braben raises money by his name alone and Elite is still fresh in memory. Publishers wouldn't add anything in his case anyway. So why did he even bother? It's not the only way to get funding. Hell, he should even be able to get venture capital. Kids playing Elite grew up to be all sorts of things. Accountants, mass murderers, heads of state, blue-collar workers and
Publishers used to be needed for funding and access to the sales&distribution channel. Sales&distribution has become trivial if you don't need to get boxed games to WallMart. A lot of games are digital distribution only and are doing fine.
And funding comes your way when you pitch it to the right people.
The classical publisher is going the way of the dodo.
Great. Sounds reasonable and ultimately feasible. /. runs a story every two days where you can mention it without being too off topic.
And now plug it wherever you go. Burn some Karma on it.
There also are other nerdling hangouts.
It's only astroturfing when you are a payed shill. I rave about the wonderful idea that is the Ouya wherever I go and I haven't even backed them(but I have preordered).
Also, the Ouya is a quite clever idea. Stock components and an already alive ecosystem.
Basically yes, they are.
But these have the Tegra3 T33 SoC. Which are 4 core + "companion core" A9 Cortexes. Which is a top shelf SoC with a capable GPU. Judging by what I get on my tablet I would say you can get HD games with graphics comparable to a PS2. Propably even better if optimized.
Has anyone bothered yet to compare it to a Wii U? It doesn't have the Wii U's party trick but I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar when it comes to performance.
Also Android is a plattform that doesn't require any Sonyesque programming tricks...
Also I wouldn't be surprised if GoG would offer some of their DOS Games + DosBox for that thing. Wohoo! Master of Magic!
Also Amiga Emulators and MAME.
What a clever little thing.
We've thought about something similar. It's cheap, obviously doesn't need any fans or other BS and could be the last system standing.
With any luck it could be a nice monitoring/xterm achinelet to stick into the server room.
Personally I'll try to get a development machine to dick around with. It's got nice hardware and they chose to stay away from those nasty background services that bog down most Android devices.
If they get those things into Walmart and other cheapsters then they could sell like hotcakes. The Tegra T33 is a very capable SoC which has only the problem of not having an UMTS/LTE module. Which isn't actually needed in a game console anyway. That's the famous 4 core + companion core that got built into the Transformer Prime Infinity.
And since all games for it are required to also have some sort of freemium model we could be in for a treat. Expect humble Ouya bundles galore. And there are a crapton of really premium Android games out there. Should be cheap to port. If porting is needed then that'd mostly be adding controller support that half of the older games don't have. I'm looking at you, Samurai II: Vengeance and Galaxy on Fire.
Name it. Describe it. Don't be so shy.
The idea that gets shouted out is the one that will make it.
From what we know you might be calling for funding for a fish controlled Bill O'Reilly stimulator. You filthy pervert.
Nope. THQ. And this might be an act of desparation since they are in dire straits.
/. has ever posted. Devoid of information, leaving out the interesting bits and absolutely inflammatory. Also correct. In a tunnel-vision way that's akin to a nanotube.
This news blurb has to be the worst
I never had much hassle with their stuff. Whereas in the olden days I had to fiddle with boot disks and memory optimization so mscdex left some memory for the game.
My DOS gaming under OS/2 was much better. Over 620k free with all my hardware fully functional. MS-DOS was a POS. Windows was a graphical DOS extender.
How did this computing platform survive? Do we still have the A20 gate?
Ugh. Forgot about that. Seems ike we'd need to either go full retard and emulate the whole PC...which is a bit bad. Or wait for x86 compatible tablets that run Win8. Ummm.
Nice.
Nope. You will still need to use the installer. But that's a Windows problem.
Snarkyness aside: here's what I use them for.
Their DOS games run in DOSBox. Which comes with a very nice instaler that does the fiddly DOSBox bits for you. That is very nice.
So now that you have that old DOS game living in it's shiny new NTFS folder happily unconfused about the past 20 years.
GRAB THE BUGGER BY THE SHORT&CURLIES AND DROP IT ONTO YOUR TABLET OR SMARTPHONE.
In some cases it's better to use a mouse for strategy games since pointy finger touchscreen stuff lacks the precision of a proper mouse for reasons that are beyond me. And you will need a right mouse button. And some games will be suggish on tablet DOSBox. Dungeon Keeper 1 for instance runs at about 5fps on my Transformer Prime. Master of Magic OTOH works fine. As a rule of thumb I'd say any DOS game that ran on a high end 386 will run nicely in DOSBox on a sufficiently beefy tablet.
Sadly tho I don't see a HoMM3 or DK2 or anything like that running on a current gen tablet. They would have to be properly ported as WINE running on tablets stil is 2-3 years off.
Turning off sound and music might also speed things up.
Don't expect to use your PS3 controller too much. In the olden days PC joystick support was wonky at best.
I had one of those SB16s that still had a physical volume control at the back of the card. Yeah, one of those mile-long beasts. And I loved it to bits. And due to the ragged edges of computer cases back then I fed it with a couple of pints of my lovingy crafted own blood.
And here's how they sold me one of those AWE32s(or was it 64?): It actualy goes into your new motherboard. Only reason to repace it.
That SB16 was used briefly under DOS. Hugely under OS/2(yeah!). And then for a long time happily chugged on under Linux when OSS still was a thing. It was supported by basically everything even tho the Gravis punters tirelessly pointed out that their stuff was better.
The SB16 was the thing that always worked. I think I got 10 years of service out of that thing.
Next week, boys and girls, I will tell you when I had to let go the Great Cat Confuser otherwise known as a Star LC10 which of course was the only thing that could tatoo a blue whale. It connected to anything from a NCR DMV(that's Decision Mate V) to a Pentium II.
Please don't mention that one. I once had a Cerry keyboard that was quite similar. You could beat a whale to death with it.
It got lost by moving/mom/divine intervention. I'm still in mourning.
Memory, mainboard and CPU need to be bought with each other in mind. You are flirting with desaster otherwise. The process of chosing those three involves long and boring sessions with Google and in some extreme cases you might find yourself traversing the nethers of Tom's Hardware.