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The Vintage PC thread: Because MS-DOS gaming still rules

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Posts

  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Back in the day, it actually used to be pretty simple. Just pop in floppy #1 and type install, and bam you're good to go.

    Unreliable media and obfuscation via time erosion has made this task much more difficult. Also, back in the day, when I'd get stuck, I could talk to my dad or friends and we'd figure it all out. Asking people for help on this sort of stuff now nets contorted faces as people strain to remember 20 year old technology.

    EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about it, does "installing" dos actually do anything beyond copying files from the floppy? Looking around, it seems that DOS is simply 7 or so files existing on the booting harddrive. Anybody remember if there is more to dos than those files simply being there? Because, if that is all it takes to have dos "installed," then the simple solution would be to grab those files directly off of my Windows 98 upgrade CD, format the CF kit as FAT 16, and copy them to the drive via dosbox.

    TheSonicRetard on
  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    For DOS I would just go with FreeDOS, it's finally to a point where if it runs on MS-DOS it will run on FreeDOS, at least I haven't run across anything that give me any problems. And then it also includes a lot of modern updates to things that just make sense and some nifty apps/utilities.

    and then just install a cd drive into the system temporarily just to install the OS, then you can remove it, or you should be able to get the disk image to boot off usb if your hardware has the ports.

    Foomy on
    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Well, back when I barely knew what "copy a:\wing c:\games\wing" could and would do, even installing DOS 6 over 4 (never 5, ever) was daunting. My dad still doesn't know how to hold a mouse, so that was not an option.
    Also.... FORMATTING. that was fucking scary. I had that one 127mb HDD and that was it, no money to splurge.

    I don't know enough about the inner workings of DOS to answer your question, I did know how to use command lines after a while, and muck around boot disks for games... But I don't know what files are needed for DOS to run the most basic operations. It'd be good to have a full set of command executables and mem managers.

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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Foomy wrote: »
    For DOS I would just go with FreeDOS, it's finally to a point where if it runs on MS-DOS it will run on FreeDOS, at least I haven't run across anything that give me any problems. And then it also includes a lot of modern updates to things that just make sense and some nifty apps/utilities.

    and then just install a cd drive into the system temporarily just to install the OS, then you can remove it, or you should be able to get the disk image to boot off usb if your hardware has the ports.

    This is a 486, USB is absolutely out of the question. And so is installing a CD drive without DOS, for that matter. Will FreeDOS even run on such old hardware?

  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Foomy wrote: »
    For DOS I would just go with FreeDOS, it's finally to a point where if it runs on MS-DOS it will run on FreeDOS, at least I haven't run across anything that give me any problems. And then it also includes a lot of modern updates to things that just make sense and some nifty apps/utilities.

    and then just install a cd drive into the system temporarily just to install the OS, then you can remove it, or you should be able to get the disk image to boot off usb if your hardware has the ports.

    This is a 486, USB is absolutely out of the question. And so is installing a CD drive without DOS, for that matter. Will FreeDOS even run on such old hardware?

    FreeDOS will run on a 386 or better, it's basically just a reverse engineered MS-DOS and then has some modern additions just to make things easier where it makes sense, but if it ran on ms-dos back in the day it runs on free-dos.

    and you don't need to "install" the cd drive as far as drivers or anything go, your just using it from the bios to get the OS installed, as even a 486 bios should see it as an ATA device and should boot from it, then once the OS is installed just unplug the cables and get rid of it.

    But there is also a bootable floppy version of 1.0 as well.

    Foomy on
    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Foomy wrote: »
    Foomy wrote: »
    For DOS I would just go with FreeDOS, it's finally to a point where if it runs on MS-DOS it will run on FreeDOS, at least I haven't run across anything that give me any problems. And then it also includes a lot of modern updates to things that just make sense and some nifty apps/utilities.

    and then just install a cd drive into the system temporarily just to install the OS, then you can remove it, or you should be able to get the disk image to boot off usb if your hardware has the ports.

    This is a 486, USB is absolutely out of the question. And so is installing a CD drive without DOS, for that matter. Will FreeDOS even run on such old hardware?

    FreeDOS will run on a 386 or better, it's basically just a reverse engineered MS-DOS and then has some modern additions just to make things easier where it makes sense, but if it ran on ms-dos back in the day it runs on free-dos.

    and you don't need to "install" the cd drive as far as drivers or anything go, your just using it from the bios to get the OS installed, as even a 486 bios should see it as an ATA device and should boot from it, then once the OS is installed just unplug the cables and get rid of it.

    This motherboard is ancient, it doesn't even detect a harddrive's CHS. It can't boot from a CD Rom, and it certainly has no legacy support for USB drives or anything.

    If you go back a few pages, one reason I'm going with a CF Kit is to avoid having to deal with getting a CD Rom drive to work with this PC :-\

    EDIT: Checking the compatibility, FreeDOS can't run Windows 3.1 or compatible apps because it has no EMM386 support.

    so that there is an instant no-go.

    EDIT AGAIN: It seems it does include some EMM386 support and has an EMM386.exe replacement, but it still cannot run Windows 3.1, which prevents me from playing games like Dare to Dream. So it's looking like it's not an option.

    TheSonicRetard on
  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Foomy wrote: »
    Foomy wrote: »
    For DOS I would just go with FreeDOS, it's finally to a point where if it runs on MS-DOS it will run on FreeDOS, at least I haven't run across anything that give me any problems. And then it also includes a lot of modern updates to things that just make sense and some nifty apps/utilities.

    and then just install a cd drive into the system temporarily just to install the OS, then you can remove it, or you should be able to get the disk image to boot off usb if your hardware has the ports.

    This is a 486, USB is absolutely out of the question. And so is installing a CD drive without DOS, for that matter. Will FreeDOS even run on such old hardware?

    FreeDOS will run on a 386 or better, it's basically just a reverse engineered MS-DOS and then has some modern additions just to make things easier where it makes sense, but if it ran on ms-dos back in the day it runs on free-dos.

    and you don't need to "install" the cd drive as far as drivers or anything go, your just using it from the bios to get the OS installed, as even a 486 bios should see it as an ATA device and should boot from it, then once the OS is installed just unplug the cables and get rid of it.

    This motherboard is ancient, it doesn't even detect a harddrive's CHS. It can't boot from a CD Rom, and it certainly has no legacy support for USB drives or anything.

    If you go back a few pages, one reason I'm going with a CF Kit is to avoid having to deal with getting a CD Rom drive to work with this PC :-\

    hmm, well that does make things a little harder.

    What if you took the CF kit out of your 486, stuck it on a more modern motherboard and use that to get DOS installed?

    As from what I remember it's more then just copying files to get it to boot from a HDD, there is also some changes to the MBR that need to be done, and some lower level system file header on the partition.

    Foomy on
    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Foomy wrote: »
    Foomy wrote: »
    Foomy wrote: »
    For DOS I would just go with FreeDOS, it's finally to a point where if it runs on MS-DOS it will run on FreeDOS, at least I haven't run across anything that give me any problems. And then it also includes a lot of modern updates to things that just make sense and some nifty apps/utilities.

    and then just install a cd drive into the system temporarily just to install the OS, then you can remove it, or you should be able to get the disk image to boot off usb if your hardware has the ports.

    This is a 486, USB is absolutely out of the question. And so is installing a CD drive without DOS, for that matter. Will FreeDOS even run on such old hardware?

    FreeDOS will run on a 386 or better, it's basically just a reverse engineered MS-DOS and then has some modern additions just to make things easier where it makes sense, but if it ran on ms-dos back in the day it runs on free-dos.

    and you don't need to "install" the cd drive as far as drivers or anything go, your just using it from the bios to get the OS installed, as even a 486 bios should see it as an ATA device and should boot from it, then once the OS is installed just unplug the cables and get rid of it.

    This motherboard is ancient, it doesn't even detect a harddrive's CHS. It can't boot from a CD Rom, and it certainly has no legacy support for USB drives or anything.

    If you go back a few pages, one reason I'm going with a CF Kit is to avoid having to deal with getting a CD Rom drive to work with this PC :-\

    hmm, well that does make things a little harder.

    What if you took the CF kit out of your 486, stuck it on a more modern motherboard and use that to get DOS installed?

    As from what I remember it's more then just copying files to get it to boot from a HDD, there is also some changes to the MBR that need to be done.

    That's the route I'm considering going down, actually. I'm mainly trying to see if there is a no-stress alternative to doing this without resorting to any sort of physical medium, like floppies or a CD-Rom. Which sounds like I'm asking the impossible when I phrase it like that, haha.

    I was afraid that it'd alter the MBR, hence why I asked if installing dos was more than just extracting a series of files to the HDD.

    I might have to forego EMM386 support and go with FreeDOS if I can't figure out an easier way to do all this. Does FreeDOS come pre-loaded with various generic drivers? Like, could I expect FreeDOS to already have some soundblaster-clone compatible drivers installed?

    EDIT: Nope, seems it doesn't come with drivers included: http://freedos.gds.tuwien.ac.at/news/games/

    man, I am absolutely dreading having to setup my soundcard on this thing. Prior to my last HDD dying, I spent so, so much time trying to get my CD-ROM driver loaded. Hopefully setting up soundblaster will be more straight forward.

    EDIT AGAIN: Thank you, both Stormwatcher and Foomy, btw, for trying to help me through this. Finding anybody still talking about ancient PC setups is difficult, much less finding real-time troubleshooting.

    TheSonicRetard on
  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    If you have the OS files for MS-DOS 6.22 then those plus some quick work in diskpart should be able to make your cf card bootable I think.

    Stick your CR card into a more modern pc, doesn't have to be through the adapter if you have a cf reader, just need to be able to access it.

    then load up a command prompt and do these commands
    diskpart
    list disk (find your cf card by looking at the list of disks, it should be easily seen by it's size)
    select disk # (replacing # with the disk number listed before)
    clean
    create partition primary
    select partition 1
    active
    format fs=fat
    assign
    exit

    then just copy over the dos files to the drive.

    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • HaukyHauky Registered User regular
    I actually just tried to do this exact same thing a month or two ago. I used a boot disk to get to where I could install DOS onto the CF card. The problem I ran into was that I couldn't find a way to make more than one partition on it, and that partition had to be less than something like 507 MB, lest my 486 refuse to recognize the partition as non-corrupt, making the whole exercise kinda pointless for me. It's possible that my DOS skills have eroded since I was 8 years old, but either way, I'm curious if you A) encounter that, and B) find a way around it.

    For what it's worth, getting my SB16 set up was a piece of cake, as far as 486-era hardware setup goes.

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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Foomy wrote: »
    If you have the OS files for MS-DOS 6.22 then those plus some quick work in diskpart should be able to make your cf card bootable I think.

    Stick your CR card into a more modern pc, doesn't have to be through the adapter if you have a cf reader, just need to be able to access it.

    then load up a command prompt and do these commands
    diskpart
    list disk (find your cf card by looking at the list of disks, it should be easily seen by it's size)
    select disk # (replacing # with the disk number listed before)
    clean
    create partition primary
    select partition 1
    active
    format fs=fat
    assign
    exit

    then just copy over the dos files to the drive.

    I have never seen this diskpart utility before! Wow, this is incredibly useful! Back in the day, I used to use fdisk, which hasn't been included in windows since the 9x series ended IIRC. Thanks so much for this tool, this is so helpful! I'm going to try this as soon as I get home.
    Hauky wrote: »
    I actually just tried to do this exact same thing a month or two ago. I used a boot disk to get to where I could install DOS onto the CF card. The problem I ran into was that I couldn't find a way to make more than one partition on it, and that partition had to be less than something like 507 MB, lest my 486 refuse to recognize the partition as non-corrupt, making the whole exercise kinda pointless for me. It's possible that my DOS skills have eroded since I was 8 years old, but either way, I'm curious if you A) encounter that, and B) find a way around it.

    For what it's worth, getting my SB16 set up was a piece of cake, as far as 486-era hardware setup goes.

    I actually have run across several guides to partioning your CF card, but I don't personally plan on partitioning mine. I bought a number of CF cards in bulk and my plan is to have each one have a complete, full dos installation with config.sys and command.com configured to 1 specific game per card. My CF kit is installed in the front of my 486 like a floppy drive, so the idea is I can swap out CF cards like little mini cartridges. Just pop in the appropriate card, turn on the PC, and it'll boot into the appropriate game, no mass config.sys switching from batch files needed. For that reason, it makes more sense to treat each CF card as 1 partition.

    I'm guessing your problem has to do with your particular bios, maybe? I dunno, but if you can get a bunch of CF cards at a reasonable price and swapping them out isn't a problem, maybe you could consider doing what I did?

  • MadpandaMadpanda suburbs west of chicagoRegistered User regular
    to make a drive dos bootable you need to do sys c:\ if i remember right


    I went through this fight about a month ago, luckily my dos computer will actually boot from cd so freedos was fine with it. Before I found a working cd drive though I tried using vmware to get a dos setup on the cf card among other things and it didn't fly.

    If you can get the system started with a boot disk, Freedos had a line in its autoexec bat that if it sees an iso named a certain way, it will auto mount it to a virtual cd drive so you can set it up that way.

    Freedos comes with cd drivers and i think network stuff. For my sb16 clone I had to find a driver but it was easy to setup.


    The last fight I have with my dos computer is getting a working power button, the board uses a nonstandard pinout (thanks ibm). My last resort will be hooking the power button up to the green/black wires coming directly from the power supply (green is the power supply on/off switch, black is just a ground).

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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    You gotta love it when life does little things like this... I connect my IDE->CF kit to my desktop to get it formatted... the thing hangs when booting windows. I can either have the CF kit or my normal harddrive, but not both.

    ugh. I don't feel like figuring it out, so a quick trip to ol' ebay and a CF->USB dongle is on its way to my house. This gives me a few more days of procrastination before I work on my 486.

  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Madpanda wrote: »
    The last fight I have with my dos computer is getting a working power button, the board uses a nonstandard pinout (thanks ibm). My last resort will be hooking the power button up to the green/black wires coming directly from the power supply (green is the power supply on/off switch, black is just a ground).

    Why not just bridge the ground and the select pins on your power supply, then use the PSU's own on/off switch as a defacto on/off switch for your PC?

  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    I bought a number of CF cards in bulk and my plan is to have each one have a complete, full dos installation with config.sys and command.com configured to 1 specific game per card. My CF kit is installed in the front of my 486 like a floppy drive, so the idea is I can swap out CF cards like little mini cartridges. Just pop in the appropriate card, turn on the PC, and it'll boot into the appropriate game, no mass config.sys switching from batch files needed. For that reason, it makes more sense to treat each CF card as 1 partition.

    This is a really good idea.

  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    You gotta love it when life does little things like this... I connect my IDE->CF kit to my desktop to get it formatted... the thing hangs when booting windows. I can either have the CF kit or my normal harddrive, but not both.

    ugh. I don't feel like figuring it out, so a quick trip to ol' ebay and a CF->USB dongle is on its way to my house. This gives me a few more days of procrastination before I work on my 486.

    aah that's sad news, I was looking forward to seeing if diskpart would work.

    But I do like the idea of a small drive setup for specific games, though I would probably group them together a little bit if some games run on the same config settings.

    Or I would partition up the cards and sit a boot loader on it with a selection for each game.

    Foomy on
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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Foomy wrote: »
    You gotta love it when life does little things like this... I connect my IDE->CF kit to my desktop to get it formatted... the thing hangs when booting windows. I can either have the CF kit or my normal harddrive, but not both.

    ugh. I don't feel like figuring it out, so a quick trip to ol' ebay and a CF->USB dongle is on its way to my house. This gives me a few more days of procrastination before I work on my 486.

    aah that's sad news, I was looking forward to seeing if diskpart would work.

    But I do like the idea of a small drive setup for specific games, though I would probably group them together a little bit if some games run on the same config settings.

    Or I would partition up the cards and sit a boot loader on it with a selection for each game.

    Well once I get everything setup I'll probably lump games together. I was looking for a light DOS shell that I could use to launch batch files and I ran across this:

    z26.gif

    Its called Game Launcher and it launches batch files. It's specifically made to run on virtually any hardware and will run on a 486 with ease. It'll even support 256-color background images. I'll probably use that as a loader and group some games together, like Doom 1 and Doom 2 on the same card.

    This PC is hooked up to my old-ass CRT TV, btw. I'm treating this like a console. I want to be able to play this thing without ever touching a keyboard, although I have a keyboard available if necessary. I'm actually building myself a joystick that behaves like a keyboard with reprogrammable buttons, that connects via the keyboard port. I also have a few gravis gamepads and other old joypads to play with. I actually talk about it in this thread.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Nice bump.

    My first PC ever was a 486SX-25, with DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 installed. It had 4 Mb of RAM and a 250 Mb HDD, if I recall correctly. I no longer have that machine - it actually became my work computer for a while, replacing an even more ancient box that my boss had - but I do have my second PC, a Pentium 100 put together by a friend who is no longer with us. That alone would be reason to hold onto it, but I also have the same desire as the OP. It's sitting behind me at the moment, not hooked up but I could fix that in five minutes. Original CRT, original Soundblaster 16, a CD and 3.5" floppy drive, and a Sidewinder joystick; it has Win98 installed on an HDD that I believe is in the neighborhood of 1 Gig. Games installed thereon include both Wing Commander (including Privateer) and the X-Wing series, the original X-COM (UFO), and emulators of even older hardware like the 2600 and Apple ][.

    Speaking of the Apple ][ - my first computer of any kind ever - I've got one of those too! It's in the closet at the moment, but I could get it up and running too if I wanted. My middle school had one back in 1982 or so, and so did one of my friends, the high school computer lab, the public library... I finally got one of my own a few years later, buying it from a church as I recall. Not only do I have the original 5 1/4" floppies (genuinely floppy!) that I used in those days, I also (thanks to someone out there I've now forgotten) have disk images of all of them, which I can plug into an emulator like AppleWin if I ever want to revisit the simple programs I wrote in high school, or the terrible fiction from college.

  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Am I the only person who kinda hates X-Wing for the extreme difficulty caused by stupid escort and/or defense missions?
    TIE-Fighter was just so much more fun.

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  • YoshuaYoshua Registered User regular
    I think that is why most people liked it so much. X Wing was about as complex as a flight simulator rather than being just an arcadey Star Wars themed shump.

  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    But that's not it at all. TIE-Fighter was just as "simulationy", if not more. Xwing just had crap mission design. That "defend the hospital frigate" mission was just fucking evil.

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  • VelmeranVelmeran Registered User regular
    If thats the X-wing mission I'm remembering, you actually could cheese it by telling the hospital frigate to warp away...

    Vechloran.png
  • GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Impossible. Ships in Star Wars don't warp.
    They jump. :D

    Gaslight on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Velmeran wrote: »
    If thats the X-wing mission I'm remembering, you actually could cheese it by telling the hospital frigate to warp away...
    Buh

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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Foomy wrote: »
    If you have the OS files for MS-DOS 6.22 then those plus some quick work in diskpart should be able to make your cf card bootable I think.

    Stick your CR card into a more modern pc, doesn't have to be through the adapter if you have a cf reader, just need to be able to access it.

    then load up a command prompt and do these commands
    diskpart
    list disk (find your cf card by looking at the list of disks, it should be easily seen by it's size)
    select disk # (replacing # with the disk number listed before)
    clean
    create partition primary
    select partition 1
    active
    format fs=fat
    assign
    exit

    then just copy over the dos files to the drive.

    Got a USB adapter in yesterday and I'm trying all this out as we speak. I'm on the last step of your guide and I'm about to try to install dos to this drive under dosbox. Cross your fingers!

  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    You shouldn't even need to install dos to it, just do a straight up copy of all the files from a dos disk to the root directory of the formatted CF card.

    Foomy on
    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Man, it's a no-go. The problem is the motherboard -- I thought I had it recognizing the CF card before, but it turns out I was misinterpreting an error message. I managed to install FreeDOS on a CF card and I can boot into it on another PC, but my 486 just can't recognize the thing. Oh well, fuck it.

    I've bought another 486, this time a 486-DX2 at 66 mhz. This one comes with a working HDD with windows already installed and soundblaster already configured. It was $100 with free shipping, so I picked it up. I figure I can mirror the HDD to the CF card and get it working, this machine sounds newer and more willing.

  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    Ah that sucks that first 486 you got wouldn't work right, but at least it sounds like the replacement is a slight upgrade.

    I sometimes think I should build a 486 machine myself, but if I did I would really want one with a Am5x86-P75 X5-133 ADZ. No real use for a 486 that runs at 160mhz, but you can do it so why not got all the way crazy.

    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Sometimes spending money and saving time actually saves money in the end.
    Also, let me know how Wing Commander 3 runs in that thing.

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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Ha, I've spent enough evenings that have stretched to 4 or 5 in the morning trying to get hardware to work. Sometimes I can get this old crap working, sometimes I can't. 486s are frequent and old enough that I can replace them at will. I've already spent a few weeks trying to get this to work, it's not worth slaving over it for weekends when it might never work in the first place. I'd rather just buy a new one and try my luck all over again.

    Besides, I have other projects I can work on - I'm consolizing a game gear, and hopefully my Oculus Rift dev kit arrives shortly - not to mention work and life to juggle.

    The only bummer is that this new PC has a hideous case. I actually was looking at this other 486-DX that was 66 mhz that came in a cool, beige tiny tower with an LED announcing the speed of the processor. It looked pretty cool for a 486, but it only came with 2 MB of RAM and I'm not going to even attempt to find the correct ram for these boards. This one came with 8 mb. Perhaps I can transplant this one into a different case, but if I can't it's not a big deal to me.

  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Well, you need to save some time to actually play a game or two...

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  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    New PC arrived yesterday, and I cracked it open this morning. Sweet, glorious recognition - CF HDD instantly recognized as a 2 gb HDD and now I have freedos installed on the thing and it's running just fine. I'm about to install the soundcard, so wish me luck!

  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    IRQ 5 or 7?

  • Xenogears of BoreXenogears of Bore Registered User regular
    Also it better be a Roland MT-32 or you're just wasting your time.

    Whatcha using for Gamepads and Joysticks?

    3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Getting a Roland MT-32 might not be very easy though.

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  • Xenogears of BoreXenogears of Bore Registered User regular
    Considering how much dough TSR has laid down on other projects this one is relatively expensive and indispensable. He's looking to create the perfect 486 machine and he absolutely needs this piece.

    3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    Also it better be a Roland MT-32 or you're just wasting your time.

    Whatcha using for Gamepads and Joysticks?

    I do not, and perhaps that is why the 486 gods are not smiling upon me.

    Litany of problems. For one, the SB-16 won't install correctly. Looking around, for this particular model, it's a common problem with FreeDOS.

    Additionally, trying to install windows 3.1 from non-floppy disk sources appears to be a wash, and even if I could get it installed, it sounds like it has serious problems with FreeDOS.

    Final insult to injury - the follow games have known problems with FreeDOS that prevents their install utilities from running: X-wing, Jazz Jackrabbit, Rise of the Triads, Duke Nukem 3D

    Extremely aggrevating. Looks like FreeDOS isn't a solution for me. Back to trying to figure out a way to get REAL dos on this thing.

    As for gamepads, I have an assortment of Gravis Gamepads, Capcom Fighter Pads 6, interact pads, and generic gameport gamepads at my disposal. Really, anything less than a Gravis Gamepad isn't worth mentioning.
    Considering how much dough TSR has laid down on other projects this one is relatively expensive and indispensable. He's looking to create the perfect 486 machine and he absolutely needs this piece.

    The problem isn't cost, as you correctly guessed, it's availability. These things are never for sale, it seems. I've kept a watch on ebay since beginning this thread... nothing. Posted ads on various retro hardware forums... nothing. Looked in specialty shops online and in person... nothing. They're outright difficult to find.

  • fearsomepiratefearsomepirate I ate a pickle once. Registered User regular
    I don't think installing MS-DOS is that hard if you actually find an install disk, which I'm guessing you're trying to do legally. I vaguely remember sticking the disk in the drive, booting to floppy, typing a few commands, and we were good to go. Never installed a digital sound card, though. I used a PC speaker until we got a Pentium with Win95.

    Nobody makes me bleed my own blood...nobody.
    PSN ID: fearsomepirate
  • Xenogears of BoreXenogears of Bore Registered User regular
    What about an appropriate era joystick TSR? Your machine is from the peak era of the combat flight sim.

    Also you might as well bite the bullet and get either an external or an internal 3.5" drive and use the disks for DOS and Windows. Most install discs work pretty well even today; I installed DOS 6 on a machine from the original disks only five years ago and if I still had them I'd send them to you.

    3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
  • TheSonicRetardTheSonicRetard Registered User regular
    I don't think installing MS-DOS is that hard if you actually find an install disk, which I'm guessing you're trying to do legally. I vaguely remember sticking the disk in the drive, booting to floppy, typing a few commands, and we were good to go. Never installed a digital sound card, though. I used a PC speaker until we got a Pentium with Win95.

    Installing dos isn't hard, no. Installing DOS without a working windows 98 CD, and with no access to a floppy drive, is much more difficult. it's not installing thats the problem, it's the logistics of installing that has me wracking my brain.

    I'm cooking dinner right now to take a break from this, I'll try again likely tomorrow.

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