Emulation with old PC's help

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I'd use MS Dos, or Freedos for it, it boots up a lot faster that way and will give you more memory for emulation, and you could easily throw a Gui in like Opengem or Ozone.

He's got 2GB's in there though, what could he possibly be emulating that demands that much?

[Dos]

True, I like dos for the fact it boots up a lot faster than windows if your willing to deal with command line. Thats my main reason. He could easily make a batch that starts with start up that will open a front end for all his emulators. Which would be very nice.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

True, I like dos for the fact it boots up a lot faster than windows if your willing to deal with command line. Thats my main reason. He could easily make a batch that starts with start up that will open a front end for all his emulators. Which would be very nice.

True, that is one option.

I've always wanted to try making an emulation box like that, but every time I start on it I just end up abandoning it thanks to having all the original hardware right on the shelf. It would be killer for the sheer portability though.

[Hatta]

It's hard to find good emulators for DOS these days. Things have come a long way since Nesticle was hot shit.

[CRTGAMER]

A removable DOS 6.22 drive does the trick just fine. Choice Command in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT sets up different memory configurations. HIMEM, HIEMS, WIN HIMEM and CLEANBOOT as well as DOS CD Driver memory configurations.

Great DOS frontend: POWER MENU.
Main Menu Brown Box section under Languages has WIN Workgroups, PC Geos and DOS Prompt. Numerous sub menus for various themed games including Board, FPS, Action, Simulators and CD based games.

There are a quite few good DOS EMUs, Retrocade leading the pack.

Purple Box has 3 sections:

1. EMULATED ARCADE
2. EMULATED OTHER
3. EMULATED HOME

MAME is listed as ARCADE MACHINE EMULATOR in the green box.

[Dos]

It's hard to find good emulators for DOS these days. Things have come a long way since Nesticle was hot shit.

That's a good point, however nesticle still is one of the better NES Emulators
Meka works great on dos for Master System/Game Gear, CCS64 is great for C64,
Kgen or Kgen 98 will work for genesis, etc. Theres plenty of emulators he can use.

Now obviously if he wanted to move into Playstation and N64 roms this set up wouldn't work, but that's another story. Linux with an auto-starting frontend would be better for that.

[gravitone]

It's hard to find good emulators for DOS these days. Things have come a long way since Nesticle was hot shit.

That's a good point, however nesticle still is one of the better NES Emulators
Meka works great on dos for Master System/Game Gear, CCS64 is great for C64,
Kgen or Kgen 98 will work for genesis, etc. Theres plenty of emulators he can use.

Now obviously if he wanted to move into Playstation and N64 roms this set up wouldn't work, but that's another story. Linux with an auto-starting frontend would be better for that.

No it isn't. Nesticle is not cycle accurate, which in itself creates a whole boatload of problems. It requires a soundblaster compatible soundcard, doesn't support a lot of mappers. Lots of mapper bugs, 6502 bugs, not to mention the palette used is whacked. Sure it plays super mario, but it's not great by a long shot.


Same story holds true for most other emulators that run on dos. They're 10 years old at least. And considering winxp or ubuntu will boot within 30 seconds, and provide a massive amount of infinitily superior emulators, suggesting DOS is a moot point at best.

[Dos]

And considering winxp or ubuntu will boot within 30 seconds, and provide a massive amount of infinitily superior emulators, suggesting DOS is a moot point at best.

I'm laughing at that a bit, I've never had a Pc with XP that boots in 30 seconds. Even if it can boot that fast it still has all the start up programs that will slow it down more at the beginning of each session.

I've never had any problems with Nesticle, it's been my most reliable emulator by far.

The point is, they still do the job, and can feel less like an computer in a sense, because all the lag from start up and all that crap is gone.

Oh hey look at this by the way Gravitone: http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/nes/
Notice how Nesticle is rated the 5th best Nes emulators? That must mean it has less problems and is actually better than some other emulators.

...but it still remains one of the best NES emulators currently available.

[CRTGAMER]

Same story holds true for most other emulators that run on dos. They're 10 years old at least. And considering winxp or ubuntu will boot within 30 seconds, and provide a massive amount of infinitily superior emulators, suggesting DOS is a moot point at best.

Obvious hasn't tried DOS EMU RETROCADE.

[arion]

You should be able to emulate up to Dreamcast games with this cpu however i cannot say the same about your graphic card. In fact that is the only thing holding this pc back.

Even if you dont upgrade it's still worth trying out various emulators to see what the machine is capable of.