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Question for PC Gamers


Lord Helmet

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I’ve been a Mac guy for the last 25 years or so, but the content available on Steam and GoG is really starting to appeal to me. I’m thinking about snagging a used or refurb PC that is capable of playing stuff from the 1990’s through 2010. Mostly classic PC stuff and the occasional PS3 era game.

 

Thoughts on minimum system requirements? I feel like it should be pretty cheap to get in to. I already have a mouse, keyboard, and monitor.

 

 

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Here's a good place to start:  https://www.dealnews.com/c48/Computers/Desktops/?sort=time

 

If you want to play 10 year old stuff then anything on that page should be fine.  Just avoid an "integrated" graphics card.  The absolute minimum you'd probably want to go on the graphics card would be a DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT, nVidia 8600.  Those are ancient now.  To do a little better, anything that supports Direct X 11 will probably be fine . . . something like a AMD Radeon HD 5870, nVidia GTX 480 or higher.

 

I like this site for comparing graphics cards:  https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-480.110140.0.html

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People have had good luck snagging a refurbished Dell OptiPlex from sites similar to what wongojack posted above and slapping in a cheap SSD and graphics card inside. In some cases, it's cheaper than building one. I would go for something that isn't super low profile because it would limit you to low profile graphics and non ATX power supplies in some instances. Get a thick one if you can. They take up more room, but they tend to have better air flow and less headache if you ever need to do something inside. You could also just install Windows on one of your Macs too, the one with the most advanced graphics card would be a start. Are there any specific games that piqued your interest? If so, I'd see if your current system would be able to handle it. If not, you know what to build around.

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Whatever you get, it's ok to get two systems. One for DOS and Windows 95/98 games. And one for Windows7 & higher games. PC speeds and graphics API's have advanced a lot for the timeframe you're interested in.

 

There's also virtualization and emulation to take you back if you just get a state-of-the-art i9 10900K. And that's how old GoG games work - through a semi-custom version of DOSbox. Don't worry, they set it all up for you.

 

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A few years ago, I went on a personal mission to prove that Wine was better than a post Windows XP operating system for old PC games because it's more configurable.  I used Linux Mint 17.2 on an old PC rig with 4GB RAM, an AMD dual core processor (2.4 GHz) and a Radeon HD5450 graphics card.  I ran the vast majority of what I wanted on either bare-bones Wine or through PlayOnLinux and the games that didn't work usually posed the same problems on Windows anyway.  The ones I'm most proud of are Need for Speed 2: SE and the original retail version of POD - the most tricky part was figuring out how to provide CPU affinity to games that would only work with a single core processor.

 

I've also been able to run a lot of supposedly Windows only games from GOG (Steam is also doable but it is a bit more tricky) and if you throw in DOSBox as well there are plenty of old school PC games to go around.  Wine is available for Mac so you may want to hold fire on a Windows PC - you may be pleasantly surprised by what your Mac can come up with.

 

I also repurposed an early XP era system with Windows 98 but it's not really that much more compatible than my Linux rig (especially with the support from GOG, Steam and DOSBox thrown in).

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This may be worth your while.  I use this on a PC, but there is this unofficial port of the program for MacOS.  It's called PCem.

https://github.com/kyr0/PCemV14MacOSX

 

The short of it, it's a virtual machine.  You pick your PC processor/speed you want, RAM setup, size of your hard drive etc.  It simulates all sorts of PC environments right down to using original BIOS's as well.  I've got it on my computer for a few games that can't stand 64bit windows at all or have stupidly never been coded to limit the FPS for faster PCs.  I created this Pentium1 environment at 100mhz, with a good bit of ram and a decent sized HDD and installed originally DOS 6.22, then Win98se to it, and it's excellent.  It runs from my own memory of owning said speed computer long ago, just right.

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I would recommend Dosbox over PCEM if you just want to play games.   You don't need to find BIOS files, you don't need to install a copy of MS-DOS, it has built-in drivers for a lot of common hardware so you don't to install TSRs or deal with the memory management issues they cause.   It's the easiest to get up and running, especially if you've never used DOS. 

 

PCem is more true to the full experience of running an early PC,  but a lot of that is nostalgia, if you aren't nostalgic for 386/486 systems and their quirks, you won't get much more out of it.

Edited by zzip
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13 hours ago, Keatah said:

I like PCEM because it also simulates a slower hard disk. This lets you see and enjoy the blue disk icon in Doom. And you also have time to read the text startup screen, in Doom and other games as well. DosBox just blasts on through that stuff.

 

I suffered through trying to set it up on my own and configure it to get into having an OS on my machine, but damn it was worth it.  I recreated my third PC I ever owned a Pentium 100mhz.  I gave it the max memory, hdd storage, and other limitations that Win98SE would allow.  I did this because I own some games that will not run, or they run like they're on speedballs in DOSBox such as Hi-Octane which is fantastic.  The encapsulation of an entire PC within a PC is a totality of it all.  From the moment you hit the menus power on button you're taken right back to flipping the old switch/button on a PC with the BIOS screen, the system checks, and then the OS etc loading up as it would at the same speed and limitations of that specific era of parts.  It's just fantastic as it opened a good many doors.  Between the detachable USB A: I have and my optical, it's a total experience there without the hell of buying an old PC and nursing it to life and continued existence with 30 year old parts.

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Yeah that one, I've got a boxed up copy of it I bought earlier this year.  I tried to put up with the PS1 release and it's terrible so I put the effort into PCEm for it and a few others and it was worth it.  I took notes how to set it up again if it ever fails or can't be transferred I typed into a notepad file to save the head ache again.  I agree entirely, DOSBox is #1, but when it fails on like a percentage of the games out there, a small 1GB corner set away on your HDD for a vintage 1995~ era abouts PC with 98se running on it in PCem gets the job done.  By the time you hit XP those games still will work today so it's fine, but you go back into the 90s with those weird quirks of DOS or earlier windows or the lame 16bit exe/installers you get screwed.

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A major benefit of PCEm is that you are emulating a certain configuration of a PC, as @Tanooki mentioned above.  There are a lot of DOS games that will only run correctly at or under a specific speed (in MHz)—some well-known examples include Wing Commander (which only runs correctly on a 386-33 MHz CPU or lower) and Ultima VII (which is best played on a 486-33 MHz CPU).

 

DOSBOX is great, but you have to fool around with increasing/decreasing CPU cycles and will never know 100% for sure that a game is running at the correct speed.  With PCEm, you can easily (once you learn how to configure it) set up separate 386-33, 486-33, and P133 configurations and that will ensure that you can play the vast majority of DOS games at their intended speeds.  It takes a bit of work to learn PCEm and get it all set up, but once you do it's fantastic.

Edited by newtmonkey
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I can attest to that with @newtmonkey on Wing Commander.  My first play was a 386sx16 but when I went to a 486DX33 and later a P100, I was forced to really learn my tricks playing around with stuff like MOSLO which came out back in the early 90s.  Even then various games still had issues, WC1 ran great, but the mouths on the cinema bits was like watching the micro machine man go at it.  Thankfully the speed did limit for combat or it would have been a disaster.  I tried using MOSLO on Hi Octane after originally screwing around with the cycles settings etc and it just never was nice at all.  It was like a reverse of Wing Commander actually, the menus were nice, but the driving was light speed.  Even a 1/2 second tap on the keyboard would send you flying at least 45 degrees into the nearest wall.

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On 11/14/2020 at 12:39 AM, newtmonkey said:

DOSBOX is great, but you have to fool around with increasing/decreasing CPU cycles and will never know 100% for sure that a game is running at the correct speed.

That doesn't seem to be as much of an issue as it used to be.   I'm also using Dosbox-X these days rather than vanilla.   Most of the games I try on Dosbox work well.  A small minority run too fast.

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