DOS machine

[Mihalis]

If I was putting together an old P3 machine primarily for playing DOS games, but still wanted some form of Windows on it, what would be the best OS: Windows 98SE or Windows ME?

[Illdo]

Windows 98 I presume.
But you don't really need a special computer for playing DOs games, Dosbox will work fine.

[The Undertaker]

Most people won't touch ME with a 10ft pole. But DOS on ME sucks, no booting directly into DOS without installing a patch and no EMM386. And DOSDox will not work fine on anything that requires a 386 or faster.

[abysmal]

With my sound card I couldnt use Windows 2000 to play DOS games with sound. So I assume XP isnt much better. Win2000 and XP are not fully based on DOS.

I also put together an old business PC, ran 0's, Formatted and partitioned. I found Windows 95 for 10 dollars on Ebay. It works beautifully with DOS. I set it up to boot striaght to DOS.

[doomjedi]

windows 95 I think... 3.11 is a bit too old :)

[Mihalis]

hehe Good ol' Win95. By the sounds of things I think I'll go with 98SE. I can't go any earlier than 98SE due to the fact I want to be able to use my USB drive.

Anybody know of any generic sound drivers that work with DOS? Cuz I know that if I install 98SE or ME and "restart in DOS mode" I won't have any sound if I don't have any DOS drivers.

[abysmal]

Just go to device manager find what your sound card is and google it for drivers or DOS drivers.

Hopefully you wont have same problem I had with WIn2000.

[The Undertaker]

Sound Blaster DOS drivers (http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/snddosdr.htm)

[Mihalis]

Okay, so I went ahead and installed Windows ME on my DOS machine (I know, I know, ME sucks but it has better driver support for my hardware than 98SE does). Anyway, I installed a couple of my all time favourite DOS-only games like Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and Blood.

For the most part, it works fine. However, on occasion, I'll get a garbled display. It's usually just on cutscenes or level introduction screens, not in the game itself, thankfully. Also, on occasion, the sound will cut out entirely. Totally fixable by rebooting, but again, odd.

If there's any settings or drivers or anything at all that anybody can think of to make my DOS machine run a little smoother, that would be great.

[Mihalis]

I'm just wondering now... has installing Windows 98SE instead of ME in cases like this known to fix any problems?

[Mihalis]

Sorry for not being specific. It's SMK files that it doesn't seem to play properly and cutscene video files similar to these. Any reason I might not be able to play these files properly in Windows?