Dumb 486 era PC question...

[dafivehole]

Before I take the plunge and get one of these for gaming, can you use them with present day LCD monitors? If I'm not mistaken, the cable/connector is the same

 

Thanks,

Roger

[jaybird3rd]

If the PC uses a standard VGA video card, then in principle it should be compatible with LCD monitors which offer an analog VGA input (most of them do). It probably won't look as nice as a CRT, since the LCD monitor will be running at less than its native resolution, but unless you're running an old DOS game which uses a nonstandard resolution that isn't compatible with the new monitor, it should work fine otherwise. I haven't encountered any such incompatible resolutions with my LCD monitors yet, but I haven't tested very many games with them, so I don't know how much of an issue that is.

[+DamonicFury]

Hope you're aware of what a pain those old machines are to configure for gaming. I remember constantly having to tweak the autoexec.bat and config.sys files for such things as memory usage, mouse and CD-ROM drivers, SoundBlaster settings, IRQ settings, etc. And it seemed like every game required different settings! Can't say I miss that era at all, especially since DosBox makes it far easier to play those games than what it used to be.

[20ohm20]

I use a 486SX-25 (ran my BBS for a couple years, don't have the heart to get rid of it) with an 1MB VLB video card and a 17 inch *non-widescreen* LCD monitor. It works fine for "retro" gaming in DOS and Windows 3.11.

[Hatta]

Yes, if you have a VGA card in it, and a VGA port on the LCD it should work just fine.

 

If you can find a nice 486 for a good price, jump on it. DOSBOX is amazing, but games are always more compelling on the real thing. I've been looking for a 486 to play with myself (anyone have one of these in Omaha?).

 

BTW, DOS isn't as hard to configure as you remember. There have been a lot of drivers written that make things a lot easier. For instance, I was using Himem.sys and EMM386. Doom wouldn't launch with EMM386 running, Krondor wouldn't launch without it. Replaced both of them with JemmEX, one command, no flags, now both work perfectly.

[+DamonicFury]

BTW, DOS isn't as hard to configure as you remember. There have been a lot of drivers written that make things a lot easier. For instance, I was using Himem.sys and EMM386. Doom wouldn't launch with EMM386 running, Krondor wouldn't launch without it. Replaced both of them with JemmEX, one command, no flags, now both work perfectly.

 

That's very cool... would have saved me lots of pain back in the day!

[jaybird3rd]

I agree with Hatta: the games are always better on real hardware than in emulation, and the hardware isn't as difficult to set up as you've heard. The nice thing about DOS is that, once you get past the hardware configuration and the software installation, you don't ever have to touch it again outside of a hard drive crash or some other catastrophic hardware failure. Just be sure to thoroughly check your RAM and your hard drive for errors before you begin. The biggest headache with DOS machines is memory allocation, but a good memory manager will help you with this; I've always used QEMM with good results, and there's also the MEMMAKER utility included with MS-DOS 6. JemmEX sounds interesting, so I'll definitely have to look into it.

 

By the way, this reminds me: if anyone here is interested in having a "vintage" DOS gaming PC but doesn't want to go to the trouble of building it themselves, I have one that I originally put together for another AtariAge member who never claimed it. It's a 233MHz Pentium MMX computer which I set up with some nice mid-90s PC hardware (a Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card, a fast PCI video card that is well-supported by Display Doctor, etc.), along with a boot menu which will allow you to select the various memory configurations that old DOS games required (EMS/XMS, maximum conventional memory, etc.) I don't have any plans for it and would be willing to let it go for $50 (shipping extra), and I'll throw in a keyboard/mouse if you need them. If anyone's interested, PM me.

[Keatah]

As much as I think the original hardware is cool, I much much prefer the convenience of DosBox. The configurability of DosBox is simply outstanding, and you can customize each and every game quickly. The installation and testing of games goes incredibly quick since you can open and close sessions in a wink!

 

DosBox is really a practical way to run hundreds of the oldies, because each game can have its own config file if necessary.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/179386-jamming-with-dosbox/

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/179773-windows-31-and-office-compatibility/page__p__2253439__hl__dosbox__fromsearch__1#entry2253439

[Algus]

Heck the main reason I'm a fan of DOSBox is that I can have all my games on a single machine...I've got a lot of old games and I couldn't fit them all on an actual 486.

 

It would be fun to have one to tinker around with, something with Windows 3.1 for old times sake. My first computer was a Packard Bell that came installed with Packard Bell Navigator. I'd probably pay to have that whole original setup. It was slick. The machine, monitor, speakers, and a whole suite of software including some pretty fun games.

[Austin]

A Pentium-based machine loaded with Windows '95 is a good choice. A large number of DOS games work fine in it without any tweaks, not to mention you have access to a wide range of decent '95 titles as well. You will also be able to run some later DOS games without any kind of slowdown, whereas you may have performance issues on a 486.

[Keatah]

Heck the main reason I'm a fan of DOSBox is that I can have all my games on a single machine...I've got a lot of old games and I couldn't fit them all on an actual 486.

 

It would be fun to have one to tinker around with, something with Windows 3.1 for old times sake. My first computer was a Packard Bell that came installed with Packard Bell Navigator. I'd probably pay to have that whole original setup. It was slick. The machine, monitor, speakers, and a whole suite of software including some pretty fun games.

 

First time ever I've heard something good about Packard Bell. I believe most folks bought those machines because of the cost and the name, the name sounds Noble, Governmental, Constitutional, Heritage-y & Historical. Almost Mythical in those terms!

 

The only reason why I almost *need* to use DosBox is for reliability and transportability between machines, not to mention the amount of space I save. I couldn't imagine having 10 different PC's cluttering up the area anymore and having to maintain them.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Keatah

[Keatah]

A Pentium-based machine loaded with Windows '95 is a good choice. A large number of DOS games work fine in it without any tweaks, not to mention you have access to a wide range of decent '95 titles as well. You will also be able to run some later DOS games without any kind of slowdown, whereas you may have performance issues on a 486.

 

Well it all depends how retro you wanna go. To some purists, nothing greater than the PC, XT, or AT will do. And that is certainly limited in gaming capacity no doubt.

 

What is nice, is, me and my buddy put together a Core i7 with a 590 and 8TB into the standard 5150 XT-style case, took quite a bit of maneuvering but talk about a smoke'n classic! We also dis-assembled a monitor and mounted a 1600x1200 LCD in the old CRT housing. We kept one of the floppies, and the other bay has the hard disks, with the original XT-looking hard drive coverplate. It has all the modern connectivity as well as the old-school stuff. Yes it has a 2nd parallel port for a zip-disk.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Keatah

[kool kitty89]

A Pentium-based machine loaded with Windows '95 is a good choice. A large number of DOS games work fine in it without any tweaks, not to mention you have access to a wide range of decent '95 titles as well. You will also be able to run some later DOS games without any kind of slowdown, whereas you may have performance issues on a 486.

Actually a Pentium I will tend to be too weak for some really heavy late DOS games (ie mid 90s). That's the main lot of games that I want to build a dedicated DOS/win9x machine for (probably win98SE whenever I can find our old install disc for that . . .), those really heavy hitting DOS games are not well suited to DOSBox (too intensive). The exception would be those supporting hardware acceleration since there's some high-level acceleration support through DOSBox as well. (or at least patches to allow such, I know there's one for 3DFX support, not sure about early directX/direct3D stuff or more proprietary APIs -Rage and S3's ViRGE were supported before the VooDoo was released, but RAGE mostly used Direct3D early on iirc, so as long as there's a direct3D patch as well as 3DFX, most of those games should be covered)

 

There's a good chunk of 1993-95 games with no hardware acceleration and no windows specific versions, or expensive/hard to find windoes versions. (like wing commander III and IV)

IV might have hardware acceleration in DOS, I should check that. (I doubt III does given the 1994 release)

Edited May 14, 2011 by kool kitty89

[Austin]

Actually a Pentium I will tend to be too weak for some really heavy late DOS games (ie mid 90s). That's the main lot of games that I want to build a dedicated DOS/win9x machine for (probably win98SE whenever I can find our old install disc for that . . .), those really heavy hitting DOS games are not well suited to DOSBox (too intensive).

 

Nah, a Pentium I, 166mhz CPU with a decent amount of memory should do the trick. At least, it did for me (I spent a lot of time on this setup! ). The later DOS games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Stargunner, and more, ran great, at least in the stock video modes (usually 320X240). It handled Quake well, too, at about 24fps (That was with a no-name, 2MB 2D video card). Quake II, not so much, but anything around that time is getting into strictly-Windows territory anyway where a 3D accelerator card, the next grade in CPU class (Pentium 2), and Windows '98 would be the better way to go.

[kool kitty89]

Actually a Pentium I will tend to be too weak for some really heavy late DOS games (ie mid 90s). That's the main lot of games that I want to build a dedicated DOS/win9x machine for (probably win98SE whenever I can find our old install disc for that . . .), those really heavy hitting DOS games are not well suited to DOSBox (too intensive).

 

Nah, a Pentium I, 166mhz CPU with a decent amount of memory should do the trick. At least, it did for me (I spent a lot of time on this setup! ). The later DOS games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Stargunner, and more, ran great, at least in the stock video modes (usually 320X240). It handled Quake well, too, at about 24fps (That was with a no-name, 2MB 2D video card). Quake II, not so much, but anything around that time is getting into strictly-Windows territory anyway where a 3D accelerator card, the next grade in CPU class (Pentium 2), and Windows '98 would be the better way to go.

I was thinking more like running Tie Fighter at max detail at 640x480 60 FPS and zero slowdown . . . which a 166 Pentium probably would probably not have much trouble with. (assuming there's not RAM/video bus bandwidth issues screwing things up -so assuming you've got a PCI SVGA card at least)

Quake, Tomb Raider, and most other games from 1996 onward tended to have hardware acceleration support, so that can further address high performance with a Pentium anyway. (finding a good card compatible with all such games could be a problem though . . . and then there's the issue of some games having different releases catering to different cards/APIs -both windows and DOS had that problem early on- and that would be especially problematic for games targeting more obscure APIs that didn't persist -so not glide, direct3D, or openGL -glide died off too, but lasted a long time)

 

Then again, there's also a lot of games that had/have patches to support different cards/APIs, so there's a lot of workarounds there too. (more so fro windows than DOS)

 

The really tough ones would be the last few unaccelerated DOS games that really pushed resources for the time, and I think that's the case for Wing Commander III and possible IV. (I think the windows version of III may have had accelerator support, and I know IV does, but I can't seem to find much info on acceleration in DOS for IV)

 

 

You could almost certainly run either of those games (and Quake, possible Tomb Raider) at OK speeds at low detail/resolution settings, but I'd rather be able to max things out where possible.

 

 

 

There's a lot of different low-cost options for building a decent DOS/9x compatible machine, but it depends on what you have available and what you can find cheap . . . and exactly what you want to do. (personally, I'd like to build a flexible DOS/9x gaming box capable of playing most games from the late 80s to a few early 2000s games -namely those that have problems on some newer systems; any of the timing sensitive games would fall under the DOSBox category . . . except a few stupidly CPU speed sensitive games from the mid/late 90s -mostly windows games and some only with problems in windowed mode -but I know wipeout XL only runs right in the 256 color software rendering mode on fast systems -highcolor software and accelerated renderers are way fast)

There should be a lot of options for used/cheap/free/"junk" computers to pick through locally (depending where you live), or perhaps a used computer parts warehouse type store. The trick would be finding parts that are old enough to have good overall compatibility for DOS/9x stuff. (and that's something I'm not really sure about overall; I know win98/SE has gotten a lot of homebrew/aftermarket support extending to some newer hardware, and that may mean it being workable on the DOS end as well, but I'm not sure on the specifics . . . I do know some people running Pentium III/Celeron and Athlon XP based systems in win95/98 with good DOS compatibility -the biggest issues I've heard are tied to trying to get certain sound cards to work properly with certain games -especially int he context of trying to find a really good sounding SB-16 compatible -there's so many with crappy amps that give really poor quality FM synth output, and some with other problems on the FM end; apparently most PCI cards are troublesome on the FM compatibility front, but I seem to remember rather good results from one of our late 90s creative cards -I'll have to try that once I actually get around to building that old gaming PC )

 

I would definitely prefer a machine that worked well up through a few early 2000s games (which would mean a fast PIII/Athlon/Duron class CPU and a Radeon or Geforce, possibly with DDR), and I know we have the parts for that scattered around in storage (including a SDRAM based PIII/celeron socket 370 IWill board with PCI and at least 1 ISA port, plus some newer AGP+PCI Athlon XP/sempron boards), but I might settle for less if it ends up being easier to put together. (I know we have an old K6-II machine already assembled and our old Rage Pro -not sure if it was the older Rage pro or the 128, but it's PCI for sure . . . and my dad managed to hack a beta driver together with a media player to get it to play DVDs in spite of only AGP models being officially supported for DVD )

Actually, I'm not sure what good PCI based video cards we have in general beyond that old Rage Pro (maybe a later model 3DFX card), so that would definitely be a factor for that IWill board too. (of course, acceleration won't mean much for most DOS games . . . or Outcast but that may work fine on newer PCs anyway -that's still on my list of PC games to get along with the 2 Freespace games . . . and some others that merit higher prices -I need to check again, but I seem to recall the system shock games being a bit pricey)

 

 

 

And after all that rambling, again, it really depends on what you have on-hand and what you want to do. For someone with an old Pentium machine already (or a mostly complete one), that's one option, but for someone with some late 90s (or maybe early 2000s) parts to work with, there's options there too. (and someone without any useful parts laying around might find an easier time of getting cheap/free newer parts than really old ones -just not too new as there are eventual problems with drivers not being supported -not sure where Pentium 4 boards would stand for that side of things, and you're probably going to see a lot of P4 systems for cheap/free/junk, but possibly a fair amount of older stuff too)

Having old OS discs would be handy too, especially better win9x editions (98SE is probably the best overall -iirc 98 has better DOS compatibility than 95 in general, not sure if 98SE is that any more so than 98), granted you could go the "download" route if you don't have problems with that. (DOS is truly free now anyway, but nothing windows is AFIK -95 install discs seem to sell pretty cheap too, but 98 and especially SE seems to actually drive a fair amount of money still -last time I looked, 98SE installation packages were going in the $30-40 range on ebay -in my case I know we have 98 and 98SE around somewhere and several copies of 95 -some of which we threw away, and some of which were OEM packs iirc)

[+wood_jl]

We also dis-assembled a monitor and mounted a 1600x1200 LCD in the old CRT housing.

 

Where on earth did you find a classic CRT monitor able to accommodate a 1600x1200 LCD panel? I've never seen one less than 20.1 inches diagonal.

[kool kitty89]

We also dis-assembled a monitor and mounted a 1600x1200 LCD in the old CRT housing.

 

Where on earth did you find a classic CRT monitor able to accommodate a 1600x1200 LCD panel? I've never seen one less than 20.1 inches diagonal.

More importantly, why the hell would you want to turn an awesome CRT monitor (especially a big one) into a fixed resolution LCD??? (even current high-end LCD screens are barely matching the contrast quality of older high-end CRTs, plus the gap in quality of scaling -even with the better scalers on some LCDs- vs a good multi-sync monitor . . . let alone the flexibility of manual scan adjustment for different aspect ratios and screen sizes)

 

Unless that old CRT monitor was broken, of course.

 

 

We've got an old (possibly late 90s, maybe early 2000s, so not that old) 20" VGA monitor that was originally from a Mac workstation iirc (got it at a used computer parts warehouse/store around 6-7 years ago). There's no way I'm getting rid of that thing unless it totally breaks down. (or the 19" monitor from my dad's former workstation/office PC for that matter -though that's still currently in use)

 

 

 

A good CRT monitor is definitely one area to push for with retro PC stuff . . . or modern PC stuff too if you don't have a machine that can run games optimally at the native resolution on an LCD. (or you don't have a really good LCD monitor) Of course, the space taken up by most CRTs can be a bit prohibitive, some poorer made models are rather power-hungry too. (good CRTs should be competitive with anything but an LED backlit LCD monitor or possibly some newer model florescent lit models, but I understand that some cheaper/lower quality CRTs have the voltage boosted to improve image quality at the expensive of considerably increased power usage -and heat for that matter)

 

There's also a few other trade-offs with certain CRT monitors, like some that don't scan double and thus leave rather noticeable gaps between scanlines at lower resolutions. (albeit the main problem with that is the dark look of the screen, and messing with the contrast/brightness can generally address that)

What would be really cool to find is an old late 80s VGA/SVGA monitor (maybe some very early 90s ones do this too) that has native support for 15.7 kHz sync rates (for non scan-doubled EGA/CGA resolution modes), that would thus support a variety of consoles/computers with RGB output. (ST, Amiga, Master System, Genesis, SNES, etc, etc, up through modern consoles with RGB support -albeit most of which have VGA resolution support too . . . though some Game Cube games don't and some Wiiware stuff doesn't either iirc)

 

Or, rather than seeking out an old/obscure VGA monitor, you could go with a modern high-end multimedia/PVM monitor. (albeit, it's not especially easy to find those at affordable prices -a lot of options for cheap/free CRT VGA monitors on local listings last time I checked, though there's some patience involved in finding something really good that way too)

Edited May 17, 2011 by kool kitty89

[Petran79]

I remember when my friends brother upgraded from a monochrome xt to a 486/dx2 66 mhz. Some older games (eg Savage, Golden Axe) became unplayable due to high speed

It had a turbo button for that case but it did not always work.

 

Later when cdrom was upgraded from a 2x speed, some video sequences would skip 1-2 second in the start due to faster cache.

 

When later dos games were also directx compatible i prefered the windows version that supported also hardware acceleration (eg dungeon keeper and flying corps had direct 3d patches). But games were smoother on windows too and supported higher refresh rates.

 

I prefer dosbox because it has also nice filters, not possible with the original dos.

 

Dos games were the best but configuring them (especially the ems and high conventional memory ones) was a torture. What a relief windows 95 had. Though later other problems arose which even surpassed dos in difficulty.

[gdement]

Before I take the plunge and get one of these for gaming, can you use them with present day LCD monitors? If I'm not mistaken, the cable/connector is the same

 

Yes, if the video card actually works properly. This isn't as much of a given as you'd think.

 

Some old video cards don't adhere to standards very well, and LCDs don't get along with them. I've had this problem with multiple Diamond cards, and a Hercules Geforce2 MX card.

The Diamond cards (S3 Virge and Trio64 cards) would cause the LCD to randomly blink to black every few seconds. CRT worked fine, and all (2 or 3) of the similar-era Diamond cards I had did the same thing.

 

The Hercules Geforce2 MX didn't output the correct refresh rate. My CRT had an on-screen display showing the refresh. When I set my video mode to 85Hz, it would output 90Hz instead. At 60Hz, it would generate 64Hz. This was mildly annoying on the CRT, but just plain broken for an LCD.

On an LCD, this caused the screen to be vertically misaligned. The manual adjustments weren't enough to fix it, so I couldn't see the bottom of the screen.

[kool kitty89]

When later dos games were also directx compatible i prefered the windows version that supported also hardware acceleration (eg dungeon keeper and flying corps had direct 3d patches). But games were smoother on windows too and supported higher refresh rates.

Didn't a lot of those late-gen DOS games have accelerator support under DOS as well (and not just for the Windows version). I know Tomb Raider had accelerator support.

 

Often it wasn't DirectX/Direct3D either, but Glide or more specific APIs to a few other early cards. (S3 had their own API and Matrox as well iirc -I think ATi may have as well, but their RAGE also supported DirectX from the start, though no OpenGL drivers until later on)

[mbd30]

We also dis-assembled a monitor and mounted a 1600x1200 LCD in the old CRT housing.

 

Where on earth did you find a classic CRT monitor able to accommodate a 1600x1200 LCD panel? I've never seen one less than 20.1 inches diagonal.

More importantly, why the hell would you want to turn an awesome CRT monitor (especially a big one) into a fixed resolution LCD??? (even current high-end LCD screens are barely matching the contrast quality of older high-end CRTs, plus the gap in quality of scaling -even with the better scalers on some LCDs- vs a good multi-sync monitor . . . let alone the flexibility of manual scan adjustment for different aspect ratios and screen sizes)

 

Agreed. LCD isn't bad, but CRT technology has much better contrast, colors, etc. unless you pay top dollar for a good IPS panel. And then IPS panels are supposed to have worse response time than TN. The main draw with LCD is convenience... large screens and high resolutions without the weight and bulk of a CRT.

[kool kitty89]

We also dis-assembled a monitor and mounted a 1600x1200 LCD in the old CRT housing.

 

Where on earth did you find a classic CRT monitor able to accommodate a 1600x1200 LCD panel? I've never seen one less than 20.1 inches diagonal.

More importantly, why the hell would you want to turn an awesome CRT monitor (especially a big one) into a fixed resolution LCD??? (even current high-end LCD screens are barely matching the contrast quality of older high-end CRTs, plus the gap in quality of scaling -even with the better scalers on some LCDs- vs a good multi-sync monitor . . . let alone the flexibility of manual scan adjustment for different aspect ratios and screen sizes)

 

Agreed. LCD isn't bad, but CRT technology has much better contrast, colors, etc. unless you pay top dollar for a good IPS panel. And then IPS panels are supposed to have worse response time than TN. The main draw with LCD is convenience... large screens and high resolutions without the weight and bulk of a CRT.

Current higher-end LCDs (especially LED lit ones with dynamic brightness) are pretty close to good CRT quality now (though expensive), but the multi-sync and variable aspect ratio (via overscan adjustment) still makes LCDs more flexible.

 

Albeit, some people like the filtered look that antialiased scaling gives (ie with better scalers, not the horribly artifacted ones), but I'd rather have sharp pixels for most things. (the other downside to CRTs is the scanline gaps that some have in lower resolutions -they skip every other line, though some have internal line doubles, others require the video card to handle that or just stick with the gaps -that sort of has a nostalgic feel too in some respects, though I don't really remember gaps in the old games I played -some newer monitors have gaps even at 480 lines, and that definitely wasn't the case for some older monitors -I think we still have my original ~1994 SVGA monitor around, so that might not be a bad option -it's around 14" and not much deeper than that iirc, so a pretty decent size for computer games and not too bulky either)

 

And aside from scaling, there's still the lack of manual aspect ratio flexibility. (if they did have that, it would be great though )

[gdement]

When later dos games were also directx compatible i prefered the windows version that supported also hardware acceleration (eg dungeon keeper and flying corps had direct 3d patches). But games were smoother on windows too and supported higher refresh rates.

Didn't a lot of those late-gen DOS games have accelerator support under DOS as well (and not just for the Windows version). I know Tomb Raider had accelerator support.

 

Often it wasn't DirectX/Direct3D either, but Glide or more specific APIs to a few other early cards. (S3 had their own API and Matrox as well iirc -I think ATi may have as well, but their RAGE also supported DirectX from the start, though no OpenGL drivers until later on)

 

Some did, I'm not sure it was very common though. Since there wasn't a singular API like DirectX involved, they didn't have good support for a wide number of cards. Just whatever card the particular game decided to support. Since all the fancy chips had much better support under Windows, it was no contest getting people to start gaming under Windows.

 

I remember the version of "Descent" that came with my Virge card back then had S3 acceleration under DOS. That was the only DOS game I had that supported that chip.

I think Quake might have had an accelerated executable for some cards (official, not GLQuake)

Not sure about Duke Nukem 3D, I feel like it had 3D support for some cards but not sure.

I do remember that NASCAR added 3D acceleration for some cards in an update. I think Rendition only. I really wished I had one of those.

 

I suppose an OpenGL/DirectX type API could have been developed for DOS and licensed to game publishers. It could have also doubled as a memory extender, taking the place of Watcom's DOS/4GL that everybody was using at the time. But I guess nobody with the resources to pull it together was interested. Moving to Windows was the big thing.

 

===

The downside with this move to a universal Windows API, is that hardware manufacturers became much more secretive about their programming specs. For example, anybody could go online and download programming specs for the traditional Creative Sound Blaster or Gravis Ultrasound cards. You can run them on any environment, however nonstandard, because the specs are out in the open. Manufacturers had to be open about this stuff in order to get software support under DOS.

But when I wanted to program the Emu8000 wavetable chip on my AWE32 card, that was a dead-end. By that time, Windows was taking over, and they didn't want to publish specs on how to interface with that chip. I wrote an email to the company that made the Emu chip (don't remember their name), and the reply was that it was a closed spec, I'd have to sign an NDA, etc. Most newer hardware has been that way, including 3D accelerators, winmodems, printers, everything.

[kool kitty89]

When later dos games were also directx compatible i prefered the windows version that supported also hardware acceleration (eg dungeon keeper and flying corps had direct 3d patches). But games were smoother on windows too and supported higher refresh rates.

Didn't a lot of those late-gen DOS games have accelerator support under DOS as well (and not just for the Windows version). I know Tomb Raider had accelerator support.

 

Often it wasn't DirectX/Direct3D either, but Glide or more specific APIs to a few other early cards. (S3 had their own API and Matrox as well iirc -I think ATi may have as well, but their RAGE also supported DirectX from the start, though no OpenGL drivers until later on)

 

Some did, I'm not sure it was very common though. Since there wasn't a singular API like DirectX involved, they didn't have good support for a wide number of cards. Just whatever card the particular game decided to support. Since all the fancy chips had much better support under Windows, it was no contest getting people to start gaming under Windows.

 

I remember the version of "Descent" that came with my Virge card back then had S3 acceleration under DOS. That was the only DOS game I had that supported that chip.

I think Quake might have had an accelerated executable for some cards (official, not GLQuake)

Not sure about Duke Nukem 3D, I feel like it had 3D support for some cards but not sure.

I do remember that NASCAR added 3D acceleration for some cards in an update. I think Rendition only. I really wished I had one of those.

Many cards had specific in-house APIs, sometimes with support for DirectX, sometimes not (especially early-on -more so for lack of Open GL support).

 

I'm not sure if those accelerated DOS games catered to the APIs or if they went more low-level (if possible), or if it was a mix of both.

 

I do know that the vast majority of early accelerated releases (for DOS and Windows) has specific releases for each different accelerator format, though usually with patches available for other hardware/APIs. (at least later on)

 

Most 3D games from 1996 onward had acceleration support at launch, or very soon after. Quake had a 3DFX/glide version very early on iirc and I think supported several other formats too. (not sure if it was DirectX or mainly other early card-specific APIs -S3, Matrox, 3DFX, etc -not sure if RAGE had an ATi specific API, but I know the RAGE supported DirectX/Direct3D from day 1)

There were tons of games with different editions released for different accelerators early. (the 3DFX version, S3/ViRGE, RAGE, Matrox, etc) Some games only supported 1 or 2 cards, some with support for DirectX, and some initially with no support (or only 1 card), but adding more later on. (I think Quake may have only supported 3DFX, or at least early on, I know Mech Warrior 2 had a much of different versions released)

 

Also, most (DOS and win) games were still offering software renderer options into the late 90s. (Tomb Raider II and Wipeout XL both had that -the latter had a highcolor software renderer option too rather than just 256 colors as usual -Tomb Raider was 256 only and no dithering either, but supported very high resolutions -up to 1440x900, though so did Quake and Duke 3D prior to that )

 

 

I don't think Duke Nukem 3D had any accelerator support at all as it doesn't use conventional 3D rendering. (it's a Doom-like ray-casting engine, but with the added ability to look up/down at the expense of some texture distortion and also allowed linking of different maps to allow multi-level/floor buildings with rooms on top of eachother -the different floors were organized into separate 2D maps) It would be the same case with Dark Forces and Powerslave. (or other Build Engine games, of course)

However, maybe there was some acceleration support too given the state of the market still favoring low-level documents being released and potential for custom programming (be it a low-level engine or a custom API) that could use the 2D/3D drawing features more flexibly. (texture mapping could be used to draw the columns as lines and then rotate the fame 90 degrees to make the lines into properly oriented columns -then handle the rest of the line rendering for floor/ceiling and render the scaled 2D objects)

Aside from that, it would depend what functions the standard APIs allowed for 2D/3D drawing commands. (at very least, 2D drawing should be accelerated and offload some CPU overhead, and if the 3D-ish stuff -polygons, textures, scaling/rotation, etc- wasn't really well tuned to allowing what i mentioned above, they might still be able to tweak things to work using polygon drawing commands -perhaps treating each column as a separate polygon- . . . or re-doing the entire renderer to use polygons -like Duke 3D on the Saturn, PSX, and N64 -albeit all of those consoles could also have used their texture mapping hardware to accelerate the real build engine too, that's not what was done)

 

I suppose an OpenGL/DirectX type API could have been developed for DOS and licensed to game publishers. It could have also doubled as a memory extender, taking the place of Watcom's DOS/4GL that everybody was using at the time. But I guess nobody with the resources to pull it together was interested. Moving to Windows was the big thing.

Were any of the graphics cards makers producing versions of their APIs for DOS, or leaving support relatively low-level? (for more hardware direct programming -prior to the point where DOS support was totally dropped and hardware specs/docs were more "secret" as you mention below)

 

The downside with this move to a universal Windows API, is that hardware manufacturers became much more secretive about their programming specs. For example, anybody could go online and download programming specs for the traditional Creative Sound Blaster or Gravis Ultrasound cards. You can run them on any environment, however nonstandard, because the specs are out in the open. Manufacturers had to be open about this stuff in order to get software support under DOS.

But when I wanted to program the Emu8000 wavetable chip on my AWE32 card, that was a dead-end. By that time, Windows was taking over, and they didn't want to publish specs on how to interface with that chip. I wrote an email to the company that made the Emu chip (don't remember their name), and the reply was that it was a closed spec, I'd have to sign an NDA, etc. Most newer hardware has been that way, including 3D accelerators, winmodems, printers, everything.

Yeah, that lost a lot of flexibility for 3rd party developers/programmers (be it for custom APIs made for a specific accelerator/range or a few low-level optimized tweaks in addition to API level coding -or entire games coded "to the hardware" pushing the registers directly -something also more realistic when there were only a handful of accelerators on the market -in 1995 there was mainly just the RAGE, S3 ViRGE, and NVidia NV1 -and some related 2D cards, and then the Voodoo and Matrox Mystique in '96 -I think the RAGE 2 was in '96 too)

 

I think several developers managed to get spec/documentation for the chipset used in the original Xbox and made low-level tweaks/optimization and/or custom APIs. (especially useful since the chipset was fixed and games didn't have to account for variable hardware)

That's part of the problem they had with patched 360 compatibility I think. (that and perhaps low-level CPU programming -or custom compilers- that made games difficult to port to the 360 -and that's really all the "compatibility" is, extensive patches to replace the entire game engines and just use the discs for data -which makes up the vast majority of space anyway)

Edited June 5, 2011 by kool kitty89

[gdement]

Also, most (DOS and win) games were still offering software renderer options into the late 90s. (Tomb Raider II and Wipeout XL both had that -the latter had a highcolor software renderer option too rather than just 256 colors as usual -Tomb Raider was 256 only and no dithering either, but supported very high resolutions -up to 1440x900, though so did Quake and Duke 3D prior to that )

I remember reading a review for some RPG, not sure what it was, that actually had some better graphical effects in software mode. The accelerators back then couldn't produce the effects I guess.

 

I don't think Duke Nukem 3D had any accelerator support at all as it doesn't use conventional 3D rendering. (it's a Doom-like ray-casting engine)

[...] However, maybe there was some acceleration support too given the state of the market still favoring low-level documents being released and potential for custom programming (be it a low-level engine or a custom API) that could use the 2D/3D drawing features more flexibly.

I'm probably just remembering wrong.

 

 

Were any of the graphics cards makers producing versions of their APIs for DOS, or leaving support relatively low-level? (for more hardware direct programming -prior to the point where DOS support was totally dropped and hardware specs/docs were more "secret" as you mention below)

I don't know. Game publishers obviously had access, but I don't know if any opened themselves up to the general public. With all the competition in early 3D it seems like *somebody* would have felt the urge to do this.

I vaguely feel like I may have looked for docs or tools for the S3 Virge (because I had one of those things) but I don't remember if I found anything. Probably not, but if I did it was probably so far over my head I forgot about it.

 

 

I think several developers managed to get spec/documentation for the chipset used in the original Xbox and made low-level tweaks/optimization and/or custom APIs. (especially useful since the chipset was fixed and games didn't have to account for variable hardware)

That's part of the problem they had with patched 360 compatibility I think. (that and perhaps low-level CPU programming -or custom compilers- that made games difficult to port to the 360)

 

I think one of the coolest example of low level documentation on the PC platform was on the Cyrix 6x86 chips. That was one of the early generations of a "superscalar" RISC chip hidden inside an x86 wrapper. As I recall, Cyrix actually published specs on the internal RISC instructions, and had a feature to switch the CPU into native RISC mode. I don't know if anybody actually used it though, and I doubt the RISC core stayed compatible forever.

That could almost cause the same kind of future-compatibility issues as the XBox, but in the case of PC software it shouldn't be a problem as long as the code checks CPUID before running a CPU-optimized block. Nevertheless, the idea didn't catch on.