Dos, Windows, and PS1 Retro Gaming

Emulators

DOSBox, DOSBox Staging, DOSBox-X, PCem, 86Box, ScummVM, and DuckStation are great for emulating old Dos, Windows, or PS1 machines
for playing older games. It's a lot less trouble than building your own retro machine, which is fun, but one hell of a rabbit hole.

• DOSBox

  DOSBox is the OG of Dos emulators. It's used by Steam and GOG for a lot of their retro games.

  Download DOSBox

• DOSBox Staging

  From the DOSBox Staging website "DOSBox Staging is a modern continuation of DOSBox with advanced features and current development
  practices." I've just got around to trying DOSBox Staging, and it is very impressive. I'm switching the games I have that use DOSBox to DOSBox
  Staging.

  Download DOSBox Staging

• DOSBox-X

  With DOSBox-X you can setup a Windows 95/98 machine pretty easy, and it works good. Very impressive! If you are going to be playing any 3d
  games I'd go for PCem or 86Box, from my experience. In my opinion DOSBox-X is best used for a Dos or Windows 3.1 machine setup.

  Download DOSBox-X

• PCem

  Something I like even better than DOSBox-X for setting up a Windows 95/98 machine is PCem. Just got around to trying PCem for Windows, WOW,
  I'm blown away by PCem. With PCem you can choose what motherboard to emulate, and the motherboard comes with a real bios, so you can go
  into the bios and make adjustments just like a real motherboard. PCem also has a nice selection of video cards to emulate, and for 3d you can choose
  from Voodoo 1, Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3, or Voodoo Banshee. For Windows 95/98 emulation PCem is the best I've seen. I was actually able to play an
  old very strange game I found called "Faust: Seven Games of the Soul". Faust requires a 3d card to play, so I emulated a Windows 98se machine with
  a Voodoo 3 3000 3d card, and the game plays great, just like on my actual retro machines. PCem is my favorite for setting up a Windows 98se gaming
  machine. I'm sure 86Box will eclipse PCem in the future, but for right now PCem is the way to go for reliability and stability.

  Download PCem

  Download latest PCem ROM set

  Phil's Computer Lab PCem setup video

• 86Box

  86Box is another great emulator, and has the largest selection of hardware to emulate. Just started to play with it, but so far it looks outstanding. It's
  a lot like PCem, and I think that's where it originated.

  I've been playing around with 86Box for awhile now, and have been having problems setting up a machine without some sort of problems, sound problems
  mostly. From what I can tell 86box requires a more powerfull underlying CPU than PCem does to run the same motherboard and CPU combination without
  problems.

  Download latest stable 86Box

  Download latest 86Box ROM set

  Download latest 86BoxManager

  Phil's Computer Lab 86Box setup video

• ScummVM

  ScummVM is not an emulator, but the games code has been changed so they will run on the operating system you are using, eg. Windows 10-11. A lot
  of times it will play old games better than any emulator. It's Lucasarts, they better know their stuff.

  Download ScummVM

• DuckStation

  DuckStation is a great Playstation 1 (PS1) emulator. I tried a few PS1 emulators, and DuckStation seemed to be the best of the ones I tried. I have little
  experiance with PS1 emulators, so I'm learning about them now.

  Download DuckStation

Building a Retro Gaming PC

If you want to build your own Dos, Win3.1, Win95, or Win98se retro gaming machine, then you'll definately want to check out philscomputerlab.com. He
has a great amount of videos, guides, and drivers for building retro gaming machines. I got most of my info from him. You'll also want to check out Phil's
Youtube channel at PhilsComputerLab He has a lot of great videos about retro machines.

DOSBox, DOSBox Staging, DOSBox-X, PCem, 86Box, and ScummVM do a great job of emulating, but some games just will not play right unless played on
actual retro hardware. "Bad Day on the Midway" and "The Dark Eye" are two such games. I'm sure there are more games that don't play right when played
on a emulated machine, but the two I mentioned are all I personally know about. "Bad Day on the Midway" and "The Dark Eye" play flalessly on two of my
retro machines below, #1 and #2 below play these games perfect, but #3 has problems with these games, because it only has a AGP video card, and some
old games do not play properly on a AGP card, so you'll definaitely need a PCI video card to be able to play a lot of the old 2D games. The least expensive
setup is to have a PCI video card for 2D games, and a TNT AGP video card for 3D games, then switch back and forth in the BIOS to which card you want to
use. The more expensive route is to have a 2D PCI video card connected to a 3D PCI Voodoo card, then you don't have to worry about switching video cards
in the BIOS.

Retro Machines

I've setup 3 working retro machines so far.


1. 
   Operating System: Windows 98se
   Motherboard: Asus TX98-XV socket 7 ATX with Intel 430TX chipset
   CPU: Intel Pentium 233mhz MMX
   Memory: 128MB
   Video Card: Cirrus Logic 5446 PCI 2MB - Great 2d video card for retro machines.
   Soundcard: ESS AudioDrive ES1868F ISA
   Hard Drive: 20GB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM IDE
   Cdrom Drive: Toshiba-Samsung IDE - My favorite cdrom drive for retro machines.
   Floppy Drive: Mitsumi 1.44MB 3.5"


2. 
   Operating System: Windows 98se
   Motherboard: Asus P2B-F Rev.1.0 Slot 1 ATX motherboard with Intel 440BX chipset.
   CPU: Intel Pentium II 300Mhz.
   Memory: 256MB
   Video Card 1: Diamond Viper V550 NVIDIA RIVA TNT 16MB AGP for 3D.
   Video Card 2: Diamond Stealth 64 Video(S3 Trio64V+) 2MB PCI for 2D - Great 2d video card for retro machines.
   Soundcard: Yamaha YMF719E-S Opl3Sax ISA soundcard - My favorite soundcard for retro machines.
   Hard Drive: 20GB Western Digital 7200RPM IDE.
   Cdrom Drive: Toshiba-Samsung IDE - My favorite cdrom drive for retro machines.
   Floppy Drive: Sony 1.44MB 3.5".
   


3. 
   Operating System: Windows 98se
   Motherboard: MSI MS-6156 Slot 1 MicroATX motherboard with Intel 440BX chipset
   CPU: Intel Pentium II 350Mhz
   Memory: 256MB
   Video Card: Asus V7100Pro GeForce2 MX 400 64MB AGP.
   Soundcard: Sound Blaster 16 CT2800 Vibra 16S ISA.
   Hard Drive: 40GB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM IDE.
   Cdrom Drive: Lite-On IDE - Don't get any Lite-On cdrom drives for a retro machine, they're noisy and don't last long.
   Try to get a Toshiba-Samsung, they hold up well over time, and run pretty quite.
   Floppy Drive: NEC 1.44MB 3.5".