Posted by GadgetMan on 21, 2001 at 9:05 AM:
In Reply to: Sounds like a great idea... posted by Sirwinston on 21, 2001 at 3:53 AM:
I collect all those games, and all the other stuff, like the Apogee stuff and ID software, etc. Remeber a game called Galactix? Great stuff. I also have a 30 GB drive on my network devoted to Abandonware.
You mentioned MAC, I have an old PowerPC and just got an iMac, interestingly, the Mac emulator Fusion, which boots to pure DOS, doesn't see the SBlive card no matter how I configure it. I finally did get it, after a month or so.
Most motherboards today can not only exclude IRQs and make them unavailable, but you can specify an IRQ for each specific PCI slot. It's very helpful for compatibility. If you need any help, I'm and OLD DOS pro that has made the transition to the new technology, but I haven't forgotten a thing, and have a lot of info and trickery to get stuff to work.
Game on!
: I never thought about forcing IRQ values; I always have so much hardware in my system that the SB16 emulation, when I've tried it, has always given me weird values that DOS games don't really like. I must say that I like having the AWE64 for DOS games, though, if for no other reason than that some of the later c. 1995-7 DOS based games have special sound modes to take advantage of the AWE32/64 line. I have heard that the Live! produces a "cleaner" sound though.
: I might have to try that when I finally have to upgrade to a board with no ISA slots. As it is, I've been making the presence of at least one ISA slot a prerequisite for buying any motherboard, but sooner or later the ISA will be dropped entirely.
: I too collect a lot of older DOS games, and old "demo scene" stuff as well. I finally completed the Commander Keen series last night--it took me the longest time to find a working link for #6.
: The only thing that bothers me is that, when I finally build my own cabinet, I'm going to want to write an interface for all these disparate games, from MAME and other emulators to old DOS games to Q3 and Elite Force and Alice, to make them all available in a way that makes sense and looks good from one unified desktop. The more Dos and Win and Mac games I get, the more complicated that's going to be. ;-)
: Oh, the sweet pain I will be enduring at that point... :-)