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Dream computer for DOS system (Users)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 26.04.2008, 21:18

> 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.

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