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486... (no i'm not crazy)

AllGamer

AllGamer

Senior member
hehehe 😀

okay it's that time in life again... kind of missing the good old DOS era time, the Games and stuff.

problem is, now those games, will run so impossibly FAST!!! that you can't do anything with it.

Any now know of a good 486 Emulator?

because i recall back then when i had a Pentium 100

using those CPU "Slow Down" software, it didn't help much, some games still ran at an insane rate of speed.

so hmm... any suggestion on how to slow down a P-233mmx or current AMD 64/P4 machines to a scroll so those games can be playable again?

i've got tooo many Computers at home already, i though of building a good old 486 machine, but then there was the headache of finding an AT PSU, so hard to find those now.

suggestions anyone? 🙂
 
Hi, Programers of that era did not know how to use the real time clock for game timing. They were using the CPU clock timer. Faster machine = faster game. I saved a couple of 486 DX4s in my junk box. Jim
 
Dosbox (get it at sourceforge) will run these games. It's a real-mode x86 emulator with DOS installed, and it lets you slow it down to whatever you want.
 
Originally posted by: Atheus
Dosbox (get it at sourceforge) will run these games. It's a real-mode x86 emulator with DOS installed, and it lets you slow it down to whatever you want.
Click to expand...


Will that work with 32 bit DOS extenders and the Turtle Beach Maui card? This may be worthwhile to play Sam and Max again. 😀
 
Allgamer, you just joined up here ? ?
Figured you would have been around
before this

Oh & Welcome to Anandtech
 
Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Originally posted by: Atheus
Dosbox (get it at sourceforge) will run these games. It's a real-mode x86 emulator with DOS installed, and it lets you slow it down to whatever you want.
Click to expand...


Will that work with 32 bit DOS extenders and the Turtle Beach Maui card? This may be worthwhile to play Sam and Max again. 😀
Click to expand...

There is a program called ScummVM to run many of the Lucasarts games such as Sam & Max, Maniac Mansion, etc.

http://www.scummvm.org/

Works really well too.
 
Originally posted by: JimPhelpsMI
Hi, Programers of that era did not know how to use the real time clock for game timing. They were using the CPU clock timer. Faster machine = faster game. I saved a couple of 486 DX4s in my junk box. Jim
Click to expand...

Well, being a programmer of that era, I dispute that assertion. Most game programmers of the day knew how to program the hardware timer, set INT 8, and get whatever timing resolution they wanted.

The answer is much simpler, in that many games don't have any timing on the main loop at all.
 
I remember when I played Wing Commander (maybe 2?), I had to press the turbo button to slow down to 33MHz. Ahh... the good old days.
 
Originally posted by: Atheus
Dosbox (get it at sourceforge) will run these games. It's a real-mode x86 emulator with DOS installed, and it lets you slow it down to whatever you want.
Click to expand...

EXXCCCEEEELLLLENNNTTT !!!

thanks!! this is exactly the kind of stuff i was looking for 🙂
 
Hi Mark, I didn't mean to cast aspersion your way. Should have told the whole story. Most games of that era were written by amateur Programers. Most did not know how to write a program that would run on any PC at the correct speed. I got most of my practice correcting bad programs in that Era. Jim
 
Hi Mark, I didn't mean to cast aspersion your way.
Click to expand...

No problem, Jim. I didn't see it that way. Actually messing around with hardware, including the timer, was a favorite pastime of most amateur programmers back then. The 8253 timer and the 8042 keyboard controller, along with the VGA controller, which everyone was messing with, provided me with hours of fun. But your basic point is a good one, in that people were not taking the time to write time-regulated main loops. It wasn't necessary because everything always ran too slow.
 
Hi again Mark, I was really refering to the many BASIC programs written by Anateurs way back and the use of program loops instead of the TIMER function. Did you ever program a system using Magnetic Core Mem or reconfigure a CPU sys for use on another system? Jim
 
No, that was like one generation before me. I have some friends who worked with wire memory 🙂.

I started out in BASIC on an HP-3000 in 1975, and migrated to Pascal on the 80286 in the mid-80's, then on to C++ etc.
 
Hi Mark, My programing began with hard wired stuff using taper pin jumpers. I worked in Home Office service department of an outfit that peddled everything from pure mechanics to computers. Mostly I was in the test department and tested protoypes from Engineering for Sales. Good Luck to you, Jim
 
Just thought I'd add my experiences to the above. Sam n' Max works on Scummvm.

The Scummvm engine is excellent for those programs that run on it. This includes most of the Lucas Arts games (3 cheers for Lucas Arts!) and some other game engines. It lets you set up a front end menu and has game saves for the individual games with F5. Be sure to check this one out!

Dosbox is very effective, but a little more difficult (for me anyway) and confusing to set up. If the game you want to run isn't supported by Scummvm, this is the next best option I have found.

Just to be clear, Dosbox works well, but I find Scummvm easier to use. Since my favorite old games were mostly Lucas Arts games anyway, I only used Dosbox for "Carmen Sandiego".



Jim
 
Originally posted by: JimPhelpsMI
Hi Mark, My programing began with hard wired stuff using taper pin jumpers. I worked in Home Office service department of an outfit that peddled everything from pure mechanics to computers. Mostly I was in the test department and tested protoypes from Engineering for Sales. Good Luck to you, Jim
Click to expand...

man, you've been a computer geek for a long time!
 
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