Comments on: DOS nostalgia? https://dfarq.homeip.net/dos-nostalgia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dos-nostalgia David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more Sat, 02 Oct 2010 04:17:11 +0000 hourly 1 By: Anonymous https://dfarq.homeip.net/dos-nostalgia/#comment-5839 Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:13:21 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=1771#comment-5839 In reply to Anonymous.

Sometimes I don’t mind emulators at all, but sometimes I really prefer the real thing. I’ve played Railroad Tycoon Deluxe on DOSBox and it just doesn’t feel quite right.

But it’s possible that in the back of my mind, I want to justify having kept that 486 for all those years. Three years as a computer, two years in a closet, three years as a router, and now five years somewhere in my basement.

And I guess that’s why it feels weird to be nostalgic for it. I thought it was a piece of junk when it was new (and compared to my Amiga, it was). It gave me more problems than any computer I’d owned before or since. So why am I so antsy to see Railroad Tycoon and Civilization running on a Compaq 486 with a Creative 2X CD-ROM and Sound Blaster 16 in it?

I guess it makes the memories more authentic. And it makes more sense than 30-something women listening to boy bands that now have to use Just for Men.

]]> By: Anonymous https://dfarq.homeip.net/dos-nostalgia/#comment-5838 Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:46:39 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=1771#comment-5838 I go back and forth between running a real old
machine and playing old games with DOSBox. I’ve
always contended that emulation is not equal to the
real thing, but sometimes it’s a lot more convenient.
In my game room I’ve simply run out of space for
any more consoles or computers. If I want to hook
something up, something else has to be dismantled
and packed away. In that respect, it’s a lot easier to
open up an emulator and play an old game or two,
especially when I just need a quick fix of a specific
old game.

With as much as I mess with VMWare, I should just
build a virtual DOS machine and see how that goes.
I remember trying it before and running into
problems, I just don’t remember what they were.
One of the problems I had was transferring software
to the virtual machine without making real 3 1/2
floppies. IIRC I was unzipping old zip files, making
them into IMG floppy disk files, mounting them on
the virtual DOS machine and copying them over. You
really have to want to play old games to go through
all of that.

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