FREEDOS 900MHZ PC

I'm not sure but dosbox runs fine on my 3.7 quad core. can you not undervolt and slow the clock speed on old machines?

>>2934420
There are CPU throttling utilities like MoSlo (and many others) that you can use for games that require it. Games that were written using Turbo Pascal (Jazz Jackrabbit 1 and Chasm: The Rift come to mind) refuse to run on machines over 200MHz, but Borland issued a patch that you can use to fix that. Its called TPPATCH.EXE.

How old of games (or what kind) of games are we talking?

Also, specific specs?

Maintaining DOS systems used to be somewhat of a hobby of mine, and I still dabble from time to time.

>>2934420
Yeah, I put together a PII400 a few years ago. IDE hard drive, genuine SB16, DOS 6.22 not Windows, the real deal.

Every time I use it I spend more time fucking around with configsys/autoexec and what combination of TSRs works with what game, than actually playing the game I want to play. Sound quality sucks because that delicious OPL3 is hidden behind a cheap shitty op-amp.

The most important thing this taught me was just how fucking great DOSBox really is.

See if you can slow the clock with a multiplier on the BIOS.

Also take a look at the BIOS and see if you can disable CPU cache. You can force the CPU to act like a 386 or 486 based on which level cache you disable.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcAqRbFFQPU

>>2934420
What era are you targeting? I've not much experience with FreeDos, but at Vogons most people stick with MS-DOS 6.22 or 7.

For CPU speed, check the multipliers. Do you have a soundcard that works in DOS? ISA = easy, PCI can be a pain in the ass.

>>2934420
>I'm worried that I won't be able to play older games cause the cpu is too fast.
For some games this will be the case whether you have 900mhz or 90mhz. Have Mo'Slow on hand to deal with games that run too fast.

What you really need to give a fuck about is whether you have a sound card that will work. Even ones that should be compatible sometimes have wonky problems like having the volume default to 0.

>>2934474
>The most important thing this taught me was just how fucking great DOSBox really is.
This. DOS computers aren't really worth it, as they're a pain in the ass to maintain and is very easy to emulate. A Win9x computer would be a better usage for your hardware. Pair that CPU with a decent GPU from the time period (or a bit later if you don't really care about having a Voodoo card, I roll a Geforce 3 Ti 200 in mine because that's the best I had on hand) and you should be all set.

>>2934807
If you love to tinker and muh nostalgia I think it's worth it. But only in that case. GUS emulation and Voodoo wrappers + custom builds of DosBox can probably take care of any gaming need.

>>2934469
Basically this. Device drivers, and autistic sys req for some games are a major pain.

>>2934617
Seems like an odd way to do that. The IPC of a pentium is always going to be higher. It's not like you can disable the second integer unit. And it's still going to be detected as a pentium + FPU so compatibility isn't going to be higher. Sure you're slowing it down, but to say it's "like a 386" is just plain wrong.

>>2935340
Anon could have used some better wording, but disabling cache causes a slowdown which brings some systems really close to 486 speed in practice. Just check Vogons for info and results.

>>2934420
I run a 700mhz Athlon as my retro computer. Disabling cache and I get 386 speeds which works well for those early 90s DOS games

>>2934474
>>2934807
Agreed. As long as you just want to play a few games and none of them run like ass on dosbox just use that. It's a lot easier than learning how to edit a text file.

>>2936317
The ease is not a factor for me. My work is writing operating systems, I know what I'm doing. The problem is that actual DOS requires so much more effort AND the final result is worse. Soundcards in particular are a huge disappointment for me. If a game didn't run well in DOSBox I'd probably try to fully emulate a DOS PC with KVM or VMWare before I ran real hardware.

>>2936386
Are you trying to outdo yourself on the bullshit scale with each sentence? "Actual" DOS requires very little effort and gives the best results. And long as you know WTF you're doing.
I think your work writing operating systems in CSS for your local coffee shops website might have damaged your brain.