Tempest 2000 dos version

[sirlynxalot]

I recently restored a 386 pc from 1991 that I had in storage for decades.  Its on the weak end as far as performance for mid 90s dos games are concerned. For instance, stuff like Doom and Descent run like slideshows. In fact, most 3D games run very poorly on it, which is not a huge surprise.  Its specs really limit it to early 2D gaming for the most part, Commander Keen and Duke Nukem 1 and the like, and even some of those early 2d games have some slowdown here and there. 

 

As I'm testing things out on it I decided to try out Tempest 2000 dos version.  Surprisingly, this game runs extremely well. It has some slowdown here and there as the action gets going, but its similar to the slowdown on the jaguar version and doesn't feel too obtrusive. Sure enough, I'm googling the system requirements on the box and it suggests the minimum system requirements are a 386dx40.

 

I think the game is outstanding on the Jag, and its probably one of the best looking games that runs well on this old pc as well.  I don't know if that means the game is actually not as taxing as its visuals would lead you to believe, or if both the Jag and the dos versions are coded very efficiently... but nonetheless, given the rudimentary stuff that this old pc runs, and its age (1991) its almost hilarious to see it running T2K so well.  I heartily recommend getting a copy if you have any old PCs kicking around and are wondering what to do with them!

 

Btw, I've tried out the dos port of Raiden as well. Graphics are on par with the jaguar version but it has some quite terrible aspects that make it way less fun to play. For instance, you may choose to play either sound effects or music, but not both simultaneously.  Additionally, the game slingshots between being quite a bit faster than the arcade or jaguar version, and then slowing down substantially when many enemies are on the screen simultaneously.  Slowdown is ok sometimes in shmups but the slingshotting between very fast to very slow to very fast again just makes it an absurd proposition to play the game.  Imagine 10 fireballs coming towards you at faster than normal speed, and then one second later they are crawling toward you, and one second after that they are coming at you again faster than normal!  It's not very fun to play this version of the game!

Edited April 20 by sirlynxalot

[82-T/A]

8 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

I recently restored a 386 pc from 1991 that I had in storage for decades.  Its on the weak end as far as performance for mid 90s dos games are concerned. For instance, stuff like Doom and Descent run like slideshows. In fact, most 3D games run very poorly on it, which is not a huge surprise.  Its specs really limit it to early 2D gaming for the most part, Commander Keen and Duke Nukem 1 and the like, and even some of those early 2d games have some slowdown here and there. 

 

As I'm testing things out on it I decided to try out Tempest 2000 dos version.  Surprisingly, this game runs extremely well. It has some slowdown here and there as the action gets going, but its similar to the slowdown on the jaguar version and doesn't feel too obtrusive. Sure enough, I'm googling the system requirements on the box and it suggests the minimum system requirements are a 386dx40.

 

What are the system specs? Is it a 386 SX? We had a 386 SX-16 back in the day, and you'd be surprised how much quicker you can make it if you upgrade some of the things in it. The same principles apply then as they do today.

 

- Upgrade the graphics card... I don't know what kind you have in there now. Maybe some generic VGA card like a TSeng Labs or an Oak Technologies or something. If you go with a high-end ATI with like 1mb of memory (minimum), you'll probably get much better graphics performance. Believe it or not, this still does have a direct affect on the frame rate for games like DOOM. When the graphics "skips" then it's the monitor. If the whole thing moves really, really slow... then it's the processor. This is good: https://www.ebay.com/itm/326019278032, and this is better: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266758711367, $50 or $150.

 

- Memory... my guess is you have 1mb of memory in there, maybe four 256k SIMMs? Look on the SIMMs and see what the "speed" is for those. Generally, you want at least 70ns RAM chips, but 60ns was the bomb back then (that means good in 90s speak). Most of the time, you're going to have 80ns CHIPs. The lower number the better (I'm sure you know this already, but just saying it anyway). You generally will want 4mbs. You can go up to 8, but 4 is really all you'll ever use at that speed. You can get exactly this here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155045342274  (4, 1mb 60ns RAM chips). $24.99

 

- Hard Drive... if you are still using an IDE magnetic disk, you can purchase what's called a DISK ON MODULE, or DOM. It plugs directly into your normal IDE slot, and even uses the normal MOLEX power cable. It replaces the hard drive, and gives you the maximum allowed (under your current BIOS / OS) of 512mb storage. They are lightning fast, and limited only by the throughput of standard IDE. Basically... loading times will be half of what they are now: https://www.ebay.com/itm/295101618394 $6.99

 

 

[+Sauron]

36 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

 

What are the system specs? Is it a 386 SX? We had a 386 SX-16 back in the day, and you'd be surprised how much quicker you can make it if you upgrade some of the things in it. The same principles apply then as they do today.

 

If he's able to run Doom at all then I highly doubt it's a 386 SX with only 1 MB of RAM. The game required a 486 and 4 MB at minimum, IIRC. Outside of that, I'll second those recommendations. 

 

[82-T/A]

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If he's able to run Doom at all then I highly doubt it's a 386 SX with only 1 MB of RAM. The game required a 486 and 4 MB at minimum, IIRC. Outside of that, I'll second those recommendations. 

 

Doom played fine on a 386. That's the system that most people played it on originally. It came out in 1993, and most people still had 386s at the time. It didn't play all that great on a 386 SX, but played totally fine on a 386 DX. Remember that you could minimize the screen size as well to reduce the processing demands. Minimum system requirements was a 386 w/ 1mb of RAM, but recommended a 386 DX w/ 4mb of RAM.

 

 

[+Sauron]

1 minute ago, 82-T/A said:

 

Doom played fine on a 386. That's the system that most people played it on originally. It came out in 1993, and most people still had 386s at the time. It didn't play all that great on a 386 SX, but played totally fine on a 386 DX. Remember that you could minimize the screen size as well to reduce the processing demands. Minimum system requirements was a 386 w/ 1mb of RAM, but recommended a 386 DX w/ 4mb of RAM.

 

 

It'll play fine on a higher clocked 386DX, sure, but good luck getting it to load with 1 MB of RAM. The game would never load for me with anything less than 4MB, and no memory manager utilities or boot disks would change that. That said, Wolf3D is certainly playable on a 386SX with 1MB, provided you're freeing up enough RAM for it. 

 

[82-T/A]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

It'll play fine on a higher clocked 386DX, sure, but good luck getting it to load with 1 MB of RAM. The game would never load for me with anything less than 4MB, and no memory manager utilities or boot disks would change that. That said, Wolf3D is certainly playable on a 386SX with 1MB, provided you're freeing up enough RAM for it. 

 

 

The DOM should help a lot too. I'm nostalgic for the old hard drive sounds, but you just can't beat a 512mb storage capacity on a 386. You can basically load every game you'd possibly want to play on it... and have it load at the fastest speed possible by the processor. 

[+Sauron]

8 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

 

The DOM should help a lot too. I'm nostalgic for the old hard drive sounds, but you just can't beat a 512mb storage capacity on a 386. You can basically load every game you'd possibly want to play on it... and have it load at the fastest speed possible by the processor. 

Yup, you get the best performance and storage capacity with those. I certainly understand the nostalgia for the old HD sounds, but having such a modern convenience on older hardware makes you never want to go back to mechanical media ever again, on any platform. 

 

[82-T/A]

39 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Yup, you get the best performance and storage capacity with those. I certainly understand the nostalgia for the old HD sounds, but having such a modern convenience on older hardware makes you never want to go back to mechanical media ever again, on any platform. 

 

This is super lame... but I installed one in my 8088 KayPro PC-10. It has an NEC V20 8088 processor, and originally came with a Seagate ST-225 RLL hard drive. The "sound" was every bit what made the computer what I remember it. I saved my original one, but put in a non-working one (hardrive spins, but tons and tons of bad sectors). Removed the old RLL controller, and installed the PC-XT card with a 128mb DOM, and then I still plugged in the Seagate RLL drive... just with power, so it turns on with the power. You hear it running, it doesn't give the beep/boop sounds of loading files, but you still get that disk spinning sound, even though I'm using the DOM. hahah...

[+cubanismo]

While you're at it, throw a new motherboard in there with an NVME slot, PCIe slots for graphics, one of those 3D accelerators that came out in the 90s (though you can get even faster ones now), and a multi-threaded/multi-tasking OS to really get the most out of the hardware.

 

Oh wait...

[sirlynxalot]

6 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

 

What are the system specs? Is it a 386 SX?

 

 

Its actually very tricked out already. I think its a 386dx25 to start with, and then in the 90s my family put in a cyrix 486dxr2 clip on cpu, so if you have it initiated through the appropriate software drivers, you will get a clock doubler, 486 instruction set and 1kb of L1 cache from the cpu. That speeds up performance in dos games quite a bit compared to the stock cpu, but Doom and Descent and things like that are still not really at a fun playable level (unless you're running Fast Doom, a recent new build of doom for 386s and other slower cpus that has many more options to downgrade the graphics so you can get a smoother framerate. Greatly reducing the details will make the framerate pretty good on this machine but at a certain point its just like "what am I doing, this is not that fun to run doom in potato quality."  Anyways, I tested Tempest with and without fully utilizing the clock doubler and L1 cache and it ran just as well in slow cpu mode as it did with the fast settings, and that was quite a surprise to me.

 

RAM is upgraded to 16MB

 

Storage is a 2GB compact flash via an IDE to CF adapter.  I needed to get a bootrom with the xtide bios for the system to boot from the CF.

 

 

Edited April 20 by sirlynxalot

[82-T/A]

10 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said:

 

Its actually very tricked out already. I think its a 386dx25 to start with, and then in the 90s my family put in a cyrix 486dxr2 clip on cpu, so if you have it initiated through the appropriate software drivers, you will get a clock doubler, 486 instruction set and 1kb of L1 cache from the cpu.

 

If you're missing the .exe file that enables the cache for whatever reason, I have the latest version of it. I have a 386 SX-25 that was upgraded to a 486 DLC-25 Cyrix processor also. Just let me know and I can e-mail it to you.

[sirlynxalot]

9 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

 

If you're missing the .exe file that enables the cache for whatever reason, I have the latest version of it. I have a 386 SX-25 that was upgraded to a 486 DLC-25 Cyrix processor also. Just let me know and I can e-mail it to you.

Thanks, I've got everything for that. Performance in some benchmarks is basically tripled with the clock doubler and cache enabled.  3D bench gives me FPS of about 6.5 with stock settings and as high as 16.1 when I've got the clock doubler and cache enabled... This does help get many early 90s games into a playable state, but anything 3d and texture mapped is pretty rough and slow and most wouldn't consider it to be playable.  Hmm, now that I think of it, there's quite a few similarities between the capabilities of this PC and our favorite atari system  😅

[+Sauron]

59 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said:

 

Its actually very tricked out already. I think its a 386dx25 to start with, and then in the 90s my family put in a cyrix 486dxr2 clip on cpu, so if you have it initiated through the appropriate software drivers, you will get a clock doubler, 486 instruction set and 1kb of L1 cache from the cpu. That speeds up performance in dos games quite a bit compared to the stock cpu, but Doom and Descent and things like that are still not really at a fun playable level (unless you're running Fast Doom, a recent new build of doom for 386s and other slower cpus that has many more options to downgrade the graphics so you can get a smoother framerate. Greatly reducing the details will make the framerate pretty good on this machine but at a certain point its just like "what am I doing, this is not that fun to run doom in potato quality."  Anyways, I tested Tempest with and without fully utilizing the clock doubler and L1 cache and it ran just as well in slow cpu mode as it did with the fast settings, and that was quite a surprise to me.

 

RAM is upgraded to 16MB

 

Storage is a 2GB compact flash via an IDE to CF adapter.  I needed to get a bootrom with the xtide bios for the system to boot from the CF.

 

 

Doom should still be playable on that. What kind of VGA card do you have in it?

 

[82-T/A]

55 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said:

Thanks, I've got everything for that. Performance in some benchmarks is basically tripled with the clock doubler and cache enabled.  3D bench gives me FPS of about 6.5 with stock settings and as high as 16.1 when I've got the clock doubler and cache enabled... This does help get many early 90s games into a playable state, but anything 3d and texture mapped is pretty rough and slow and most wouldn't consider it to be playable.  Hmm, now that I think of it, there's quite a few similarities between the capabilities of this PC and our favorite atari system  😅

 

We used to take our graphics cards for granted back then. But like Sauron is implying, I think you should consider upgrading your graphics card. The link I posted above for the $50 dollar one uses one of the higher-end Cirrus Logic processors. It's literally one step down from the $150 one I also posted next to it. It really does make all the difference in the world. Like I mentioned, if you notice graphics "skipping," then it's the graphics card. If you notice graphics going incredibly slow, then it's the processor. 

 

But really, you should be busting out a came of Scorched Earth on that and call it a day! Haha...

[sirlynxalot]

8 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

This is super lame... but I installed one in my 8088 KayPro PC-10. It has an NEC V20 8088 processor, and originally came with a Seagate ST-225 RLL hard drive. The "sound" was every bit what made the computer what I remember it. I saved my original one, but put in a non-working one (hardrive spins, but tons and tons of bad sectors). Removed the old RLL controller, and installed the PC-XT card with a 128mb DOM, and then I still plugged in the Seagate RLL drive... just with power, so it turns on with the power. You hear it running, it doesn't give the beep/boop sounds of loading files, but you still get that disk spinning sound, even though I'm using the DOM. hahah...

I have thought about doing this! Likewise I have the original HDD I used with this machine in the 90s, though it's completely unusable right now. The machine still makes a bunch of noise without a HDD though, mainly through the floppy drives and the fan on the PSU... Although I can hear a whine that seems to come from the cyrix CPU, and depending on what settings I'm using it with, the whine changes pitch or gets a little quieter!

 

I do have scorched earth on it 😁

Edited April 20 by sirlynxalot

[Zerosquare]

9 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

it doesn't give the beep/boop sounds of loading files

You need this:

https://hackaday.com/2022/09/26/tiny-dongle-brings-the-hard-drives-song-back-to-updated-retrocomputers/

[82-T/A]

13 hours ago, Zerosquare said:

You need this:

https://hackaday.com/2022/09/26/tiny-dongle-brings-the-hard-drives-song-back-to-updated-retrocomputers/

 

Oh dude... I really do like this. It definitely doesn't have the RLL sound, but it does emulate well the later 486-era IDE drives.

[+cubanismo]

When the kids are complaining about capacitor/coil whine in their aluminum 1/2 inch thick fanless unibody laptop and you roll in with a hard drive that makes these sounds for a good 10 minutes straight just to load the Doom title screen and then unleashes the ungodly sounds of modem carrier negotiation to set up your deathmatch. Those were the days...

[Editorb]

My “silent” G3 iMac was noisiest machine I’ve owned despite fanless design. The hard drive cacophony was constant and could wake the dead. (Still works and I retain iSub.)

[Clint Thompson]

Have to wonder just how many DOS versions of Tempest 2000 does anyone really think Atari might have sold.

 

Atari Interactive didn’t make it very far. I know there were other PC games to be released under the division but was anything outside of Tempest actually released? 

[Editorb]

8 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Have to wonder just how many DOS versions of Tempest 2000 does anyone really think Atari might have sold.

I have friend who played T2K on roommate’s Jag in college and procured it for PC. He followed same path after being blown away by GTA3 on my PS2. 

[zzip]

On 4/19/2024 at 10:54 PM, sirlynxalot said:

As I'm testing things out on it I decided to try out Tempest 2000 dos version.  Surprisingly, this game runs extremely well. It has some slowdown here and there as the action gets going, but its similar to the slowdown on the jaguar version and doesn't feel too obtrusive. Sure enough, I'm googling the system requirements on the box and it suggests the minimum system requirements are a 386dx40.

Working in software development companies, I've learned first hand that minimum requirements aren't an exact science and sometimes pulled out of thin air

 

[sirlynxalot]

So I have to agree with this topic I just found when googling my issue. The game is picky with soundcards and I can't get SFX and adlib music to play simultaneously!

 

The configuration program seems to autodetect my isa soundcards correctly.  If I use my generic opti soundblaster, I can get music but no sound. If I use my gravis ultrasound pnp I can get sound but no music.  If I select both cards together, the music plays Ok but the sfx don't, and there is a loud repeating glitched sound that plays while the game runs. 

 

If I had the CD I would try the CD audio option, and I have a hunch that would work, but I don't understand why having both sound and music would be so tough to get working.

 

Edited April 23 by sirlynxalot

[82-T/A]

11 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

So I have to agree with this topic I just found when googling my issue. The game is picky with soundcards and I can't get SFX and adlib music to play simultaneously!

 

The configuration program seems to autodetect my isa soundcards correctly.  If I use my generic opti soundblaster, I can get music but no sound. If I use my gravis ultrasound pnp I can get sound but no music.  If I select both cards together, the music plays Ok but the sfx don't, and there is a loud repeating glitched sound that plays while the game runs. 

 

If I had the CD I would try the CD audio option, and I have a hunch that would work, but I don't understand why having both sound and music would be so tough to get working.

 

In a lot of the games I used to play in DOS, there were usually two drivers that needed to be loaded... one for the Adlib/MIDI/OPL music, and another for SFX. So I'd imagine that it's just a programming issue, more than it has anything to do with the cards. My guess... Atari (then) probably tried to rush it out at the time, and didn't put a whole lot of effort into little things like that.

[zzip]

11 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

autodetect my isa soundcards correctly.  If I use my generic opti soundblaster, I can get music but no sound. If I use my gravis ultrasound pnp I can get sound but no music.

The Gravis Ultrasound needs the patches installed on your harddrive to play music (usually under C:\ULTRASND)  and that works great if the game supports Gravis directly.   If not, the Gravis disks shipped with an emulator to emulate an Ad-Lib device.

 

Also this is for the non-pnp version of the Gravis cards, there's a chance things changed for the pnp versions.