Looking for a good dos box

Oz · Post by Oz » Fri May 02, 2003 3:23 pm

i wanna get a dos box, something to run old games for me, that don't work for me in ME/XP, like privateer, daggerfall, etc. i currently have spare:

a 4x cd rom drive(creative labs)

a 56k ISA modem(generic)

an old soundblaster, 16-bit

a 2 gigabyte scsi hard drive

{933 MHz P3 from my pc before the upgrade
/
{motherboard for the P3 chip
\
{128 megs of ram, DDR, can't remember specifics.

i need:

486 processor, DX pref, 66/100MHz a must.

some good old sound card, perhaps a gravis ultrasound. hey wait, i can use my SB...

an old 5 gig or so harddrive.

keyboard, mouse and low-level joystick. by low-level, i mean i want something that has 2 buttons and an autofire, not 16 buttons, force feedback, an 8-way hat switch, etc.

15 - inch screen. colour would be nice.

some games, maybe...?

could you guys and girls help me?

Unknown_K · Post by **Unknown_K** » Fri May 02, 2003 3:32 pm

For later dos games a p233mmx is better along with a soundblaster 16 and wavetable addon card. Get a Nvidia Riva 4mb PCI card for this system.

For very early dos games a 386/40 is preferred with a sound blaster pro 2 and a gravis ultrasound. Get a Et4000 ISA video card for this system.

Best bet is put together 2 systems and get a KVM to switch between them so you only need 1 monitor/keyboard/mouse.

Amro · Post by **Amro** » Mon May 12, 2003 11:23 am

I have an 8 gig harddrive.

johpower · Post by **johpower** » Fri May 30, 2003 6:43 am

Rather unfortunate you are in the UK, old boy. Otherwise I'd see if you are close by. You can find lots of that stuff at yard or disposal sales. Find out when and where your local government, school, university auctions it's surplus gear. You'll pick it up for pennies... er, pence on the crown.

Look for DOS manuals and help books. Command line savy is very important if you are running a DOS only PC and helpful in any case.

Also, remember MS-DOS can't handle a partition bigger than 528 mb all by it self. Your >528mb drive will need to be cut into smaller <528mb partitions. The last vers of PC-DOS or DR-DOS may be able to do better.

Further, assuming your new/old mobo BIOS won't see it all either, look up the mobo's maker site and hope you can flash update the BIOS to see bigger drives. You'll need to check up on the board's specs anyway. If there are any dates you can read on the BIOS chip sticker, look for post-1992. This will improve your odds somewhat of getting a PC compatable with your cards and drives. CD-ROM booting is a good thing.

Hope that helps enough to get you on the right road.

(PS- I like Eastenders!

)

Unknown_K · Post by **Unknown_K** » Fri May 30, 2003 8:16 am

MSDOS can use 2gb partitions just fine on its own, at least 6.22 which is what I use can. The bios of older systems might not be able to use more then 528mb hard drives.

johpower · Post by **johpower** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 3:43 am

Really? I'll have a look into that. Let's see: 16-bit partitions max out at 2gb, true. But DOS can't see more than 65535 files per partition, right? A 32k sector size X 65535 = ~2.1gb, so far so good. In big partitions your sector size will be huge and "waste" lotsa space in sub-used sectors (called "drive slack"). It may've been that I was restricting myself to 4k secs (X 65535 = 262mb) or 8k secs (X 65535 = 524mb) to reduce this "slack" space. "Big" 1-2gb hard drives used to be expensive!!!! We hoarded every spare kb before 2000.

Oh yes, and my old 486's never had a BIOS that could see a drive bigger than 540mb. Definately flash update any BIOS you can in those old boys, as they might get you to 1, 2, or 4gb.