Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Games Entertainment

Playing Older Games on Today's Hardware? 40

Posted by Cliff from the software-obsoletes-itself-in-under-a-decade dept.
In a follow-up to this month old article, Toby Reyelts asks: "Just like people nostalgically play games like Galaga and Ms Pacman, I'd like to play my old DOS-based games which I own - like Warcraft and Master of Orion II. Unfortunately, every Windows computer in my household runs some variant of NT which prevents these games from playing correctly. I'd like to be able to play my games simply, rather than reformatting my hard drives to contain DOS partitions. My first go, was to setup a DOS boot disk which would create a RAM drive where I could install the games. Unfortunately, it appears that ramdrive.sys (for both MS and PC DOS) has a lame 32M limitation, which is well below the gig of ram I have and the requirements for disk space for these games. (Master of Orion II requires roughly 80M of disk space). Does anyone know of a better DOS ramdrive driver or some other easy way around this problem? Does anyone else think it's silly to have to go through so much trouble to play a game you purchased only a few years ago?" I'm certain other older games may have other technical issues with current hardware, as well. So, who has been having trouble getting older games to play on their newer systems? If you have been playing older games, what things did you have to do to coax your systems to play them (if anything).
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Playing Older Games on Today's Hardware? More

Playing Older Games on Today's Hardware?

Comments Filter:

  • Windows XP will do it (Score:2, Informative)

    by cd_Csc ( 151701 )
    WinXP has a "Compatibilty Mode" setting associated with every executable... using that allows you to tell the OS to act like a previous version of Windows when interacting with that program. The OS's on the list include everything between Win95 and Win2K. I haven't tried this personally, but Microsoft's article about it is at http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWSXP/pro/using/howto /gethelp/appcompat.asp [microsoft.com]. One of the coolest features of XP is that it supposedly overcomes the backwards compatibilty problems that stopped people from upgrading to Win2K.
    • Windows 2000 has a similar feature, availble from Windows Update as "Windows 2000 Application Compatibility Update" This will allow you to return Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 SP 4 (I think)

      The fundamental problem with this is that it doesn't maintain the system libraries for those OSes. To do so would require too much hard drive space, but all the compatibility layer does is returns a different version to any version checks called by a program, similar to the program SETVER in MS-DOS days.

      One of the best examples that comes to mind of this is C&C95's dependance on certain Windows 9x functions in KERNEL32.dll. Windows 2000 has this file, but it's a different file then Windows 98 has, and doesn't contain the same functions. Because of this, C&C95 can't find the functions it needs, and either crashes with illegal operation, or invalid pointer, or one of a dozen other error messages it spit at me for not having the right entry points where it expected them.

      Any (game/application) tied to an OS by anything more than a version number, such as dependance on the specific locations of functions in a system library, isn't going to run under a compatibility layer. The layer doesn't alter your system files - it just makes the program think you have a different operating system.

      JKoebel
      • Even the sample error message on the XP compatibility web site supports my above post. The message "This program requires Windows 95" can be corrected, since that's obviously a version check. However, "POINTER NOT FOUND ON LINE 224 OF KERNEL32.DLL. PROGRAM HALTED." cannot be corrected without a different KERNEL32, which is exactly what Application Compatibility Layers do not do.
        • An actual application compatibility layer _would do_ that, but since this isn't a real compatibility layer but simply falisfying the information returned from a single system call, I don't expect much.
    • The windows XP compatibility mode is aimed at compatibility with earlier versions of windows. It does not provide greater compatibility with DOS, and i assume these old games would be DOS games. In particular, NT based versions of unix will prohibit programs from gaining direct access to the hardware, something which was common and often necessary for performance reasons, with DOS games. Even installing a version of dos wouldn`t work well on most machines, ms-dos can only support upto 64mb of ram afaik, while enough to play games.. is not really enough for a huge ramdisk AND games, Plus a lot of modern hardware no longer comes with dos drivers, so you may find most games run without sound etc, plus you would be using the bios routines to access disks, which is far from optimal.. and disk caching software can cause problems with games. I would use VMware or similar, it emulates generic hardware, SVGA/VESA, soundblaster etc, which should be well supported by older games, and the underlying os will be doing the actual disk io.. so performance should be better, and with a modern computer the emulation overhead shouldn`t affect the running speed of games designed for older machines, and you can easily reduce the speed of the emulated machine just incase a game runs to fast.
      • It is perfectly possible to play DOS games under Windows Xp / 2000. If you have a fast enough PC to do it... (the dos box is a VM in windows 2000/XP) the most difficult problem is getting sound... the solution is VDMsound. (http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/) It allows SB16 emulation in a dosbox on your current installed windows soundcard. I succesfully tested: Day of the Tentacle (GREAT game), Monkey Island 2, Sam & Max. I hope this helps... Best Regards, Jeroen Vandezande.
  • FreeDos, www.freedos.org, is an open source "copy" of MS-DOS which would be great for playing old games. It actually is better in some respects than MS-DOS. Besides being free, in both senses, it can installed on large drives, not sure about the current limitations, but I think it's above 8 gigs now. Also the FAT-32 flavor of kernel, still in alpha/beta stages, supports Windows LFN and large partitions. If you wish to help out this project we are always looking for programmers and supports. We really could use a good EMM386 clone, and some work on the XMS managers. If anyones interested.
  • run a real OS, then boot other OS's in virtual machines using VMWare [vmware.com] (VMWARE is available for winNT as well, I just like Linux :-) )
    I've done it on my Pentium II 266 to run Win95, and it seemed to run at native speeds. If you have a Big Bad 1GHz+ machine with tons of ram, VMWare will work GREAT. You can re-partition for other OS's but you don't have to, you also have the option of storing that partition as a single file in your regular partition.

    • VMWare is brilliant, I used to run it at work under Windows 2000 on a 733Mhz PIII with 512Mb RAM. I ran redhat linux 7.1 and it managed everything perfectly, no re-formatting or re-partitioning and acceptable performace.

      It can run a huge list of "Guest" Operating Systems (under windows):

      • Win 2k
      • Win NT
      • 98, 95, 3.11, 3.1
      • MS-DOS 6
      • Linux (various)
      • FreeBSD 2.2.x 3.x

      It shares your PC's hardware brilliantly allowing sound input and output, CD-Rom sharing, floppy access, and even it's own network interface piggy-backed onto your network card.

      Yes it is fairly expensive but it will allow you great OS flexibility without and re-booting, and extra cool features such as VMWare journaling which allows you to "discard" changes made to the file system at the end of a VMWare session - Ideal for running those internet attachments without worrying about virus infection.

      I run Win2K at home and I am seriously considering getting it to run some of my old games, the only thing I'm not sure on is how well it would handle any old games that used 3D graphics via DirectX or OpenGL. If anyone knows / has experience....

    • VMWARE is a great solution for a lot of things but there are some issues:

      1. VMWARE runs DOS very poorly. Because DOS is a 16 bit operating system, VMWARE runs it pretty poorly, when I looked it up, this was a known issue.

      2. VMWARE doesn't get anything near native speeds, at least not with a Windows host. Maybe it is faster on Linux, (since they can see the source, I bet they can optimize much more), but on a 1GHz Athlon w/ Windows 2000 I don't get anywhere NEAR native speeds.

    • VMware?

      Bah, Look, all this guy needs to do is run his old dos games in dos right? Why pay money for an expensive application?

      Toby Reyelts, Look dude, go download a copy of Bochs for whatever OS you're running. Then go download freedos or some other freeware DOS clone. If you use the windows version of Bochs, then you will need some linux tools that have been ported to windows. Shouldn't be that hard to find..

      Just run bochs, setup your games on a hdd image file, have a freedos image file and emulate it, just like old Arcade, Nintendo, Sega, etc games.

      Not hard :P
      • I haven't tried Bochs, but have you tried, VMWARE? for just one really neat feature -- copy and paste from one OS to another --

        the other thing that is real important for those of us that aren't CS majors, is that VMWARE is REALLY EASY to setup.
        then you will need some linux tools that have been ported to windows. Shouldn't be that hard to find.. where do you think they should look for this? microsoft.com/downloads? I'd love to be able to install a PCI card with a PPC platform in my x86 box and run Mac OS just like VMware will do for most x86 OSes, how'd that be for cross platform in a box?
        get the VMware DEMO, and decide if it's worth the price, it's real easy to setup. Although systems like BOCHs or WINE are good, there're hard to get right.
  • I've thought about pulling my old 486 out of mothballs, rebuilding it, and slapping DOS 6.22 on it just to play things like Wing Commander and Space Hulk on it. A full 486 system wouldn't cost much more than chump change, and coupled with a KVM switch, it likely wouldn't take up all that much space.

    Of course, the KVM would cost more than the box itself, so an elcheapo serial mouse and keyboard could replace it. Switching a monitor to it wouldn't be any more annoying than having to reboot, I would think.

  • Well I'm just gonna through this out there: Anyone here attempting to play Star Wars X-wing under windows 98? I got EMS to work right but it returns a Divide By Zero when I try to configure my joystick. Anyone else had that problem?
    - Hyperbolix
    • Get the re-released "Win95 version". I think it's included in the XWing Collectors Edition or something like that.

      I believe that it also includes the additional mission packs from the floppy version. This is still one of my favorite games. In fact, the trench run is just awesome. Too bad the XWing: Alliance game didn't have that as well as a training mission or something...

      Here it is for $15 [lucasarts.com]

      Todd

  • Connectix, long time purveyors of Virtual PC (I've seen a number of Mac versions, as well as a NeXT version an I think a few variations of IRIX and Solaris) released a version for Windows a few months back. Virtual PC for Windows [connectix.com] allows you to create a virtual x86 box on your Windows machine, without any partitions.


    I think you might also be able to emulate a dos environment inside of Mandrake's LNX4WIN [linux-mandrake.com].


    Or you could go buy an old machine for a song. Try Goodwill. Go to a garage sale. Bring a $20.

  • DOS commands (Score:3, Informative)

    by man_ls ( 248470 ) on Sunday October 21, 2001 @08:55PM (#2457865)
    DOS has some elementary directory restructuring commands that you might be able to use to get around this limit by setting up multiple RAM drives.

    SUBST {drive letter} {path} assigns the drive letter {drive letter} to a directory. It doesn't need to be on the same

    ASSIGN {target}={actual} reroutes drive requests for TARGET to ACTUAL.

    JOIN (this is probably what you want) driveletter: path. This allows you to access the contents of one directory through another.

    These might work.

    JKoebel
  • Some older games are unplayable on new hardware due to the speed of the CPUs. I got some old games back when I had a 233MHz Pentium, and they were unplayable as they ran far too fast. One Pacman clone was horribly fast, even though it had a speed setting (ie, you could slow down/speed up the game).

    I dread to think what they would be like on a 2GHz P4 or an Athlon XP!

    Some games are more intelligent and some don't have such issues (i.e. by not being real-time).

  • This was one of my favorite games in middle school. I bought a copy, but never could get it to work. First, the sound card wouldn't work in DOS mode. I use a laptop in a port replicator, and I think it has something to do with how the sound card is integrated into it, but I couldn't find any way to get it working in DOS mode. The bigger problem is that without real mode drivers the game crashes when you try to enter a mission. I couldn't get these drivers working in Win98.


    so, can't really help you, but I feel your pain!! :)

  • bochs is a portable, open-source PC emulator-- not only will it run on Linux and Windows, put on PPC and Sparc hardware too. It is slow enough (on today's hardware, about a 386/12 to 386/33) that it is a good match for older DOS games and normally you do not need a slowdown utility (which can have unexpected effects).

    http://bochs.sourceforge.net

  • Sound In DOS Games (Score:4, Informative)

    by CritterNYC ( 190163 ) on Monday October 22, 2001 @12:40PM (#2460412) Homepage
    To get sound in DOS games under Windows NT/2000, try using VDM Sound [sourceforge.net]. It is an "open, plug-in oriented platform that emulates an MPU-401 interface (for outputting high-quality MIDI music), a SoundBlaster compatible (SB16, SBPro 2, SB2, SBPro, etc.) implementation (for digital sound effects and FM/AdLib music), as well as a standard game-port interface (for playing games with joystick support)." I've used it on my Win2K box and been able to play several old DOS games with sound.
  • Simply getting an older PC seems like the most natural and easiest choice here. You could probably pick up a 166 P1 or something for a song. Install a CD-Drive, ISA sound card, throw on an old copy of Win95/DOS, and your golden.

  • Bochs (Score:2)

    by AT ( 21754 )
    I've had limited success running DOS under Bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net/). Bochs is a PC hardware emulator done completely in software, so it should work on non-x86 platforms too. Additionally, it has the added "feature" of running the game slow enough to play.
  • Back in time a few years, I used to install the demo version of Duke 3D in a ramdisk at school because the all new P100s didn't have an easily accessible harddisk. They were booting by a ROM on the network card, where you could press F5 or F8 to stop the loading of config.sys and autoexec.bat and then you had the control. Of course, without a hard drive, you couldn't do much...

    The catch here was that you couldn't use the normal DOS ramdisk because you couldn't write to config.sys. The trick around that was to find a nice little utility called fu_rd (accessible from any Simtelnet mirror) which allowed you to setup your ramdisks on the commandline, and to resize them on the fly. Not sure how it works under Windows, though.

    Anyway, back to Duke3D, they finally caught us because 1) we were shouting at each other in the lab, 2) the lights on some hub or router went mad and they looked for the cause, 3) it was against their policy. Still, after that, we played Descent on the new (1996) Macs, and a little bit of Doom, too. Never been caught on those.

    On another note, anybody has some info as to the development of the next version of Duke Nukem?
  • OS/2 has always had excellent DOS emulation support, way better than any version of Windows has ever had. I remember running two copies of Wing Commander at the same time, each in its own window.

    For more information on running DOS games under OS/2, see http://www.os2world.com/games/ [os2world.com].

    There are two versions of OS/2 available now, IBM's (called the Convenience Pack), and eComStation. eCS is better choice for the end-user. And thanks to Project Odin and VirtualPC for OS/2, you can also run tons of Windows software (more than Wine will). Plus, lots of Linux apps have been ported to OS/2, like XFree86, Gimp, Apache, and so on. In fact, I think OS/2 now runs more apps than any other OS. Plus, it makes a great desktop OS with it's powerful and easy-to-use WorkPlace Shell user interface.

  • I still use a MS-DOS partition for some stuff, and I still use the SRDISK ramdrive manager. It's WAY beyond ramdrive.sys (it lets you change the size of the drive on-the-fly!). I can't check it now, but it surely is still to be found in SIMTEL's MS-DOS section, or in garbo.uwasa.fi. Look for a file called sr*.zip in the ramdrive directory (my memory is a bit hazy right now).
  • Incidentally.. Does anyone know of a good bootable dos disk image.. preferrably a hdd image that I can inject some stuff into and burn on an 'el torito' bootable cd? (Or maybe a floppy drive one that has a cd-rom driver that can load the data off of the cd-rom part of a bootable cd...)

  • There IS a Windows Version of MOO2, you know :)

Slashdot Top Deals

8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss

Close