Comments on: Windows Vista and OSX Intel: Threats to Gaming History

By: william

william — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:15:39 +0000

They needed to get rid of dos because of the insane clock speeds with the newer computer chips. I still play dos games.

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:51:04 +0000

Before I bought Windows Vista I did a little research to play some of my old dos based games, I found that if I move a file or two from the System32 folder to another it would work…to my amazement it did work, unfortunately I can’t remember what the two files were I just wish things were a little easier with vista. I tried playing Command & Conquer via DOSBox with no luck, and still searching. If there is anyone there that could help I would be much abliged.

By: Alan Lees

Alan Lees — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:25:26 +0000

I got my first home computer in 1999 a mac – now I can’t take my computing history with me with an Intel mac – I bought it and suddenly realised I couldn,t play all my old games Deus Ex Tomg raider Monkey Island etc and I’m pissed off

By: crabby

crabby — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:32:29 +0000

Quit yer crying and go with the flow. Compatibility Smability. Software changes, hardware changes. Upgrade yer machine and wait for an emulator (it’ll happen)

By: wmarsh

wmarsh — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:21:32 +0000

Download Virtual PC from Microsoft. Its free.

I prefer Virtual PC 2004 SP1 over VPC 2007 as it can run OS/2. It says it won’t run under Vista but it seems to work fine. Here is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d58729d-dfa8-40bf-afaf-20bcb7f01cd1&DisplayLang=en

Install DOS on it but remark out out smartdrv.exe in autoexec.bat. You don’t need it. Or use Win98SE as it ran DOS games nicely.

This emulates DOS with a soundblaster card, and it gives you more DOS memory than you ever had with real DOS. so its actually easier to set up old DOS games than it was with real DOS.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:26:43 +0000

Well, I wrote a Windows 3.1 game once – I used the Windows 3.1 APIs for drawing graphics, playing sound and so on.

But I agree, DosBox is the way to go.

By: Digital_Utopia

Digital_Utopia — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:01:24 +0000

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a “Windows 3.1 game” considering Windows 3.1 was basically an application itself on top of DOS. Games didn’t become “Windows games” until Windows 95, when Windows actually became more of an operating system.

The way I see it, is either a) get DosBox (or some other DOS emulator) so you can play your beloved old games within Windows….or b) simply make a DOS boot CD consisting of DOS and all your DOS games.

By: pastafarianist

pastafarianist — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 08:22:52 +0000

I’m using an intel mac and rosetta is the worst attempt at an emulator i have seen

none of my classic apps work, and that is particularly disappointing as i got my new mac when my old mac was fried. I wouldn’t mind if i could find an emulator to run classic apps, but rosetta only translates osX apps, which it almost never needs to do. I also really wouldn’t mind if a certain software company would make osx versions of three or four of its games, or at least provide a porting tool so i can run my favourite games again.

The most annoying part is when this company brings out an updated version of the first game, that still runs on classic, even though everyone’s on osx by now. Yes, CYAN-RED ORB-Whatever you are, i’m talking about YOU.

Anyway, long story short, we wouldn’t need backwards-compatible operating systems if games could just be future-proofed.

And why would windows give up on such an easy thing as dos? some of those games are the coolest.

By: Don Kelley

Don Kelley — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:39:37 +0000

actually, I have to ammend my comment – it’s not proven in the world yet, but I’m running osx on intel currently (who isn’t these days, it is so VASTLY superior to windows xp), and intel osx contains rosetta, a powerpc emulator. Rosetta is absolutely amazing. It’s the fastest cpu-level software-based emulator I’ve ever used, and it’s transparently integrated into the OS so you don’t even know you’re using it. if you have an sse3 CPU and compatible motherboard, osx for intel will run ppc osx apps very VERY fast. It’s not as fast as native, but it’s like 70% speed for me which is freakin unbelievable when you consider that pearpc, an architechture emulator which also emulated the ppc cpu through software, only got to about 5% to 10% speed of the original cpu.

Once again, the only developers in the world to create transparent, built-in, automagical cpu emulators is: APPLE COMPUTERS INC.

These guys never cease to impress me.

By: Don Kelley

Don Kelley — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:34:19 +0000

Use an emulator. That’s what they’re for. Shapeshifter is a powermac emulator for windows and linux, it emulates a g3 mac and can run os 8.6 through 9.04. It has a nice configuration tool (which I wrote) called sheepgui (windows only though), and I’ll bit that sheepshaver will run great under osx using either darwine or via the linux version running under apple-x.

Soooo, you can still run your old mac games etc as well as or better than you could years ago. I do it all the time, and I run my os9 games on windows using this technique…. you should try it.

And yes, to everyone out there who commented, emulation built into the operating system is dangerous, the only successful built-in emulator is the 68k emulator built into powermacs. you wouldn’t know it was there. but software/os level emulators have a bad history. a stand alone application based emulator is far more reliable, you just have to start the guest os within the application rather than having the ancient program run transparently in your native os.