X86 Discussion

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Yes, and that is reason DOS shortcuts from Win98 works great for DOS gamer. Once you start it from Win98, even on reboots it will go into DOS, all until you type EXIT in dos prompt.

Will not work for my setup... my laptop has AC'97 but fortunately VIA chipset supports soundblaster emulation

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Anubis

No, no and no.

Yeah, I read your guide from Abandonia. Quite handy. Now I see what the deal is with Win 98 & DOS. I don't recall using these shortcuts back in the day, think I had DOS dual boot or some such.

I must admit I don't really like this whole rebooting business, and the "DOS mode" itself...feels a bit inauthentic, if you catch my drift. On the other hand, installing DOS would be another hassle, I'd have to buy floppies first and so on. Hmm.

Maybe I'll get used to it. I guess once you reboot you can stay in DOS mode anyway, until some game needs different config. I haven't had time to set it up properly yet, first need to find a way to transfer files to that PC...don't fancy burning CDs with every little program. I installed some universal USB driver but so far it did not recognise my USB HDDs, different filesystem I guess. I need to find a spare flash drive I can reformat in FAT32...

[dreadnought]

Ufff. Spent few evenings in driver hell. People like to complain about modern Win but also forget (or don't know) about the "fun" we had back then.

It's not perfect yet (Win side is still a bit of a mess) but I do have sound in DOS mode, and that's all that matters.

My new question is: what's the best slowing down program? I knwo about Mo'slo, but could only find the basic version and I'm curious about the alternatives.

[rare_j]

Yes I don't miss the driver fun and games! By chance I have an actual soundblaster card, but have been through it all with the 3dfx.
I looked into a few slowdown programs but when you look into how they work none of them seemed very satisfactory.
If you find something that does work please let us know.

[lesta_smsc]

I have a collection of these I use on my DOS laptop!... unfortunately, I may not get a chance to have a look at it till later this weekend.

One good test BTW is to test Monkey Island with Sound Blaster option (not Adlib). It requires CPU to be limited for it to work correctly without crashing or not having any sound at all!

[SquawkBox]

Here is a list of such tools :
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=44

Something else you might want to give a try to :

On a computer that is running Windows 98 or Windows 95

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click System.
3. On the Performance tab, click Graphics.
4. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider until it is one notch to the right of None, the Basic acceleration setting.
5. Click OK, and then click Close.
6. When you are prompted to restart your computer, click Yes.

Reducing graphics hardware acceleration setting by a notch or two (or three, or four) may help you run some uncooperative games.
Source : https://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/263391.htm

[Glen M]

Finally got my 486 VLB system finished, fully spec:

Cyrix IBM Blue Lightning 486DX2 @ 66mhz
16mb 72pin ram
S3 850 VLB 2mb graphics card
A3200 sound card and proprietary SONY CD drive
PT607G Super IO card with 2GB Seagate HDD
NE2000 compatible network card

This was nothing short of a pain in the backside to get going. Finding the Sony cd-rom device driver was especially painful as was getting the jumper settings for the network card but all good in the end. Its currently running Windows 95 all be it I may replace that with 3.11. Saying that it runs windows fine.

The sony CD drive, while cool to have, may be getting replaced with an IDE drive as its not keen on reading CD-Rs, plus it has to run legacy DOS drivers under windows which apparently slows things down.

Only question is what can I run to show off the VLB graphics card. Tried Duke 3D in vesa mode, lol, 2 FPS maybe. Can anyone recommend a few VESA games that will play nice with the DX2-66?

[lesta_smsc]

I use a custom bat file for compilation of drivers to load for CDROM drive... it supports most drives from what I've tested.

[dreadnought]

It seems like all that struggle setting up my machine was time wasted. I can't get any games that run too fast to slow down. I'm using Mo'Slo 1.5 (basic) with the lowest values possible (0.33, or no parameter, which allegedly shoud default to XT speed) and it does not really seem to do anything. At least not in the old games I've tried, circa 1985.

Have also tried Planet's Edge, from 1992, and it seems to have some effect but it's all over the place, because you need to hit some exact sweet spot and it's not as obvious as just lowering/raising the values.

Not sure what to do next. Has anybody got some experience with Mo'Slo? My processor is 2.4Ghz P4. Is it just that Mo'Slo can't handle it, and changing to much weaker one would help?

Other options are buying full verions of Mo'Slo, it's supposed to have more options for slowdown but not sure the result would be different from the basic one.

I could also buy a ready made 486, they're not too dear, about 100USD, but that means another box under the table and probably more hassle with drivers etc... And old games would probably run too fast anyway.

Maybe I should just stick with Dosbox. I really want to use my CRT VGA monitor though.

[Glen M]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

It seems like all that struggle setting up my machine was time wasted. I can't get any games that run too fast to slow down. I'm using Mo'Slo 1.5 (basic) with the lowest values possible (0.33, or no parameter, which allegedly shoud default to XT speed) and it does not really seem to do anything. At least not in the old games I've tried, circa 1985.

Have also tried Planet's Edge, from 1992, and it seems to have some effect but it's all over the place, because you need to hit some exact sweet spot and it's not as obvious as just lowering/raising the values.

Not sure what to do next. Has anybody got some experience with Mo'Slo? My processor is 2.4Ghz P4. Is it just that Mo'Slo can't handle it, and changing to much weaker one would help?

Other options are buying full verions of Mo'Slo, it's supposed to have more options for slowdown but not sure the result would be different from the basic one.

I could also buy a ready made 486, they're not too dear, about 100USD, but that means another box under the table and probably more hassle with drivers etc... And old games would probably run too fast anyway.

Maybe I should just stick with Dosbox. I really want to use my CRT VGA monitor though.

Does the bios have any options for disabling cache or can you adjust the multiplier. If so the chip should underclock a fair bit and if you can turn off cache it'll soon be crippled. Not sure if it'll get slow enough to run early speed sensitive games but would be worth a shot.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

It seems like all that struggle setting up my machine was time wasted. I can't get any games that run too fast to slow down. I'm using Mo'Slo 1.5 (basic) with the lowest values possible (0.33, or no parameter, which allegedly shoud default to XT speed) and it does not really seem to do anything. At least not in the old games I've tried, circa 1985.

Have also tried Planet's Edge, from 1992, and it seems to have some effect but it's all over the place, because you need to hit some exact sweet spot and it's not as obvious as just lowering/raising the values.

Not sure what to do next. Has anybody got some experience with Mo'Slo? My processor is 2.4Ghz P4. Is it just that Mo'Slo can't handle it, and changing to much weaker one would help?

Other options are buying full verions of Mo'Slo, it's supposed to have more options for slowdown but not sure the result would be different from the basic one.

I could also buy a ready made 486, they're not too dear, about 100USD, but that means another box under the table and probably more hassle with drivers etc... And old games would probably run too fast anyway.

Maybe I should just stick with Dosbox. I really want to use my CRT VGA monitor though.

This just reminded me I was meant to check on my DOS laptop!

You can disable L1 and sometimes L2 cache with apps that works for some apps. There isn't an app that works with everything and so I have a few of these apps that works for everything I throw at it.

Fingers crossed I get time this evening.

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by Glen M

Only question is what can I run to show off the VLB graphics card. Tried Duke 3D in vesa mode, lol, 2 FPS maybe. Can anyone recommend a few VESA games that will play nice with the DX2-66?

X-Wing is a nice one - I seem to remember playing that on my brother's 486. There's a floppy version and a CD version. And a great game as well.

[lesta_smsc]

@dreadnought here are the files I use for getting apps to work:

setmul.exe (v1.24 - works for VIA/AMD/Cyrix) - for most CPU it can disable L1.

Bios.exe (Matthias Bockelkamp's BIOS utility v 1.35.0) - handy to do many bios mods (if supported)

MOSLO - which you have already tried.

Throttle.exe (v 26.1 by Jeff Leyda) - very simple to use and works well.

Slowdown.exe (v 3.10 by Bret Johnson) - another excellent utility.

cpucache.com (v 1.00 by Bret Johnson) - simple on / off utility for cache

slowint1.com (v 0.10 by Bret Johnson) - just type that and computer is slow! This Bret Johnson made lots of apps and these listed are FREE!

Bremze (v.5.02 by Ansis Berzins) - actually a VERY nice programme. It's shareware and works for only 5 mins but literally change speeds with key press and gives a nice speaker buzzer to demonstrate is low or high speed! Good for testing on the fly to get apps working... I'd buy this if it works for you when others don't.

For Monkey Island 2 the best app was slowint1.com - it required NO settings and worked by running the game exe!

Also if you want to control your audio voume in DOS (both voice and music/MIDI and let's you change volume separately too) then you can do with SBVOL.COM (v.4.01 by Santiago Mantinan). Simple to use, low memory usage and works great to reduce music in MI2! Some laptops have the means to change the volume generally but this changes it like mixer which can be very handy.

Hope the above helps you out. Let me know how you get on


@Glen M - have you tried VIDE-CDD.SYS (videcdd.sys)? Very small DOS CDROM driver made by Acer. The simplest I've found and easy to configure.

[SquawkBox]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I could also buy a ready made 486, they're not too dear, about 100USD

Maybe it's time to part with that P4 computer of yours and start all over again with a new one, more precisely a laptop from the late 90's. This Compaq Armada is a bit above your budget, but it seems well balanced and bears functional VGA out, floppy drive and CD-Rom :
https://tinyurl.com/y56nsedn
Btw, I never had to use any slowing down app to run a DOS game. To me, most of these are just plain crap .

[Anubis]

Wing Commander series is crap for you?

That laptop is really not worth that much... you can get real computer for that price.

[lesta_smsc]

I got my DOS laptop for free... fixed it and all good. DOS sound drivers are excellent. Works very well and actually has run everything I've thrown at it.

Any recommendations to 'test' it further?

[dreadnought]

Thank you for the suggestions gents. I will test it when I have a bit of time. Though perhaps this machine is just too fast.

I will try disabling stuff, and these slow down programs you have listed, lesta_smsc, but I suppose most of them work by overloading the processor, which is a brute force solution. Thats' why Mo'slo was supposed to be the best, using some other methods (though I'm not 100% sure).

Thanks for the suggestion SB, but as Anubis says it's too pricey, plus I don't really dig laptops as main PCs...I like to be able to open it and swap stuff around. Will have to mull it over and perhaps buy a Pentium 100-200Mhz. There are some cheap 486s around but they have serial mouse/kb ports so that's an extra expense...and they would probably be battered anyway.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I will try disabling stuff, and these slow down programs you have listed, lesta_smsc, but I suppose most of them work by overloading the processor, which is a brute force solution. Thats' why Mo'slo was supposed to be the best, using some other methods (though I'm not 100% sure)

Most are fast due to cache. Disable that and you have a very slow machine lol.

Try slowint1 as a start... Bremze I liked too as hot keys to change on the fly!

[SquawkBox]

Already mentioned that P4 is too fast, even P3, with or without cache.
Laptop is interesting for being a preserved Win95-98 ecosystem IMHO, and you can get one with floppy drive to install those old OSes (Win3.1...) with actual floppies.
It's still possible to tinker (adding SDRam and such) a laptop, only it requires a steady hand.
About the price, well, it's a bit like Nintendo's game & watch, it's getting more and more difficult to get one in perfect working order and without scratches and marks. Just browse eBay, there are many more.
Plus, you mentioned lack of room under the desk.
By disabling caches in software, you will hamper performance but raw speed remains the same.
I miss my 13,3'' IBM Thinkpad.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by rare_j

X-Wing is a nice one - I seem to remember playing that on my brother's 486. There's a floppy version and a CD version. And a great game as well.

And a 1998 remake in the X-Wing VS Tie-fighter engine which unfortunately dropped the wonderful iMuse music, but it does have the best out-of-the-box joypad support of the three...