DOS ain't dead

> Let try to specify the best PC configuration for DOS. "Best" means as fast
> as possible and as compatible as possible (working sound, VESA video,
> etc.)
>
> I know that DOS machines usually don't need some very fast PC, but imagine
> that you want to play let's say Domm Legacy in 1600x1200 resolution or
> something like that.
> Any ideas?

How fast do you really need it? My P166 is plenty fast enough unless I'm doing something really tedious like searching for tons of files, compiling something big via "-O2", or UPXing "--ultra-brute" on DJGPP stuff (72 passes, meh). So, there's always ways to speed it up without upgrading the processor (e.g. UDMA driver). In my mind, upgrading hardware is easy, but speeding up programs is hard (but more worthwhile).

BTW, don't forget that faster sometimes means more heat / energy use, so higher electricity bill, lower battery life, louder fan, etc. That's why some cpus (e.g. VIA) are low-power (and sorta "low" speed compared to today's behemoths). Heck, some cpus (Geode??) don't even need a fan!! But remember that lots of DOS programs run too fast on modern processors (e.g. TP7's runtime 200 timing bug). So, they have to be slowed down, which is a pain (MOSLO, Throttle, Slow_DOS, Slowdown) and doesn't always work.

Also, some people want ultra-portable, which would mean something like Atari Portfolio, Poquet DOS, or PocketDOS on modern handhelds. So, it depends on what you want it to do.

If it's a gaming machine, you have various things to consider: VESA 2 (required by Quake?) as well as a fast / pipelined FPU (also for Quake ... although I don't think most common apps use it). Then again, who tailors their cpu to one specific app? And you can always in theory recompile (thanks to DJGPP) or use UNIVBE TSR (or similar) to temporarily upgrade to VBE2. Of course, ideally, you'd have a fair amount of VRAM too (8 MB??). At least my AWE64 has drivers to allow sound to fully work (no MIDI otherwise but normal .WAV-ish sound output always works). So, obviously, we don't want something like SB Live! without very good drivers.

What is the biggest amount of space you'd recommend for a DOS partition? (Win2k and WinXP limit creation of FAT32 to 32 GB b/c it supposedly is unbearable doing file ops with larger sizes. I read that FAT32 is more space efficient than FAT16 but slower.) Obviously, FAT16 was very common (or unintentionally forced as standard, due to MS-DOS < 7 limitations) and well-supported, but that maxes out at 2 GB. I always hear plenty of people using FreeDOS' FAT32 on their ultra huge HDs, but I can't imagine needing tons and tons of space, personally. Then again, if you download tons and tons of stuff (everything you see), you could probably fill it up quite easily. But otherwise, just keep it .ZIP'd (or .7Z, preferably) until you need it. And you could always save archives of stuff to CD. BTW, I think 6-12x would be a good CD-ROM speed (just guessing since some games require a "fast" CD drive).

My P166 w/ 32 MB seems to be plenty good enough for 80% of stuff. There are exceptions, however (PAQ8o8 or GCC 4.2.3 using "-O2"). Swapping is nice in a pinch but too slow for real-world use. As mentioned before, my PAQ8o8z compile can use SSE2 (but MMX is just as fast, at least in this example). I don't know of anybody trying to write any "long mode" x86-64 stuff for DOS (yet??). Most DOS apps don't need anything beyond a Pentium 1 (although DUGL also uses MMX).

So, in short, I'd guess that a decent config would be at least a Pentium 2 (or similar) w/ 64 MB RAM, VBE2, 8 GB HD, etc. (Wow, sounds a lot like the original XBox. Yeah, that was/is a decent gaming machine running a stripped Win2k capable of only one task but max. three threads, I think.)

P.S. I would strongly recommend a floppy drive (cheap but useful, IMO) because USB just is never going to probably ever get done for DOS (although there are some hacks, but they sound unreliable, so I don't bother). I don't prefer a mouse, but some people like 'em (and some gamers are much better with them than keyboards). And CTmouse supports the wheel (at least in GVFM and Mpxplay), so having a wheeled one could be useful in the future.

> Let try to specify the best PC configuration for DOS. "Best" means as fast
> as possible and as compatible as possible (working sound, VESA video,
> etc.)
>
> I know that DOS machines usually don't need some very fast PC, but imagine
> that you want to play let's say Domm Legacy in 1600x1200 resolution or
> something like that.
> Any ideas?

Well, the videocard is easy. Afaik the earlier voodoo series are the only 3D cards that support dos. I've saved a 3DFX voodoo-1 mainly to play descent II.

The rest is as fast and as big as possible. Maybe compromise a bit to avoid noise/heat. OTOH I do like when a compile finishes fast.

> Let try to specify the best PC configuration for DOS. "Best" means as fast
> as possible and as compatible as possible (working sound, VESA video,
> etc.)

I think that my PC, before I upgraded to intel Core 2 Duo platform, was exactly you asked.

MB: Abit BX133 Raid - up to 768MB RAM, up to 1.4GHz CPU, 8*IDE, 2*USB, 1 ISA slot for snd card, AGP 2x.

CPU: intel Celeron Tualatin 1100@1466 (best you can get is PIII-S 1.4GHz). Some progs in BP has runtime error 200 on such fast CPU but it can be patched.

Sound: SB-Live 1024 PCI and SB-AWE64 ISA (i used ESS1868 with 1MB WT bank)

VGA: nVidia GeForce4 MX440 64MB - it's passive cooled, no excessive heat, full support of VBE 3.0 (including refresh rate CRTC pgm - this is problem on 5xxx and newer series) but you can put much powerfull GF4 4200 or 4600TI in that AGP slot.

I ran many of DOS games and demos on this machine without problems.

If you ask really for max. performance you need to get some industrial S478 mobo for P4 with ISA slot based on intel 8xx & ICH<=6 (very hard to buy in Czech Rep.). I saw such 845, 865 and 875 mobos. But any of them don't support C2D. But I don't like P4 arch because it's crippled. Several tests proved that PIII Tualatin CPUs can beat P4 at higher clock rates. And P4 Prescott dissipate a lot of heat... On some P4 mobos was possible to run Pentium-M in S479->S478 adapter.

Warning! Don't try to get some MB with later chipset than ICH6. It has ommited some necessary lines for ISA DMA via PCI2ISA bridge and ISA soundcards don't work there. It's my bad experience (I wrote it here before).

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Let try to specify the best PC configuration for DOS. "Best" means as fast
> as possible and as compatible as possible (working sound, VESA video,
> etc.)

I expect you don't want to hear "the obvious things", but from my experience with three laptops it should be a low-noise desktop or tower PC with a good keyboard, e.g. Cherry G80-3000 or G81-3000. No laptop, no emulation, no working on bed, ...

In the past I was very productive with such a PC, then I switched to a laptop, because it's easier to carry around, but productivity dropped rapidly.

Now I really miss my "Viper" PC (), but currently there's not enough room to install it again.

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Forum admin

> Let try to specify the best PC configuration for DOS. "Best" means
> as fast as possible

NO. Maybe for video you need as fast as possible ... but otherwise 400 MHz is good enough.

> and as compatible as possible (working sound, VESA video

OK. But I really don't care about "SB emu drivers". Instead natively working MPXPLAY, "officially" documented card/chip, and a working PC speaker.

Also old PC's are important for DOS #

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