Retro : Retrogaming Adventures with Ook

[Ook]

So the death of CUA (Common User Access) in GUI’s have triggered me, and I’m seriously considering a falling back to some simpler times, with better GUIs.

Also, this article by The Register inspired me to start doing something, and to help others looking for ideas and steps on how to get things done :

Build your own antisocial writing rig with DOS and a USB key

I have located two motherboards, the one is an Intel AL440LX with a 266MHz PII CPU and 192Mb RAM (1x 64Mb and 1x 128Mb), and the other is a Gigabyte motherboard GA-G31M-ES2C v1.1 with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 2Gb RAM.

Both CMOS batteries have been removed in order to prevent accidental leakage.

Yesterday I gave the Gigabyte motherboard a test drive. It works.

FreeDOS installs without any issues, and Win2000 also installs without any issues.

Unfortunately I have to use a SATA CDROM drive as this Gigabyte knows diddly squat about booting from an USB drive (using Ventoy would’ve been ideal tho). Still not a dealbreaker.

One drawback from this Gigabyte MB is that certain older DOS games runs at turbo speed, which is hilarious.

Will have to find a way to slow the DOS environments down enough for DOS games to work properly.

However, WordPerfect and SuperCalc5 works fine.

Sadly, OS/2 does not want to install on the Gigabyte motherboard. Will have to see if it is actually possible to…

So, things to do :

• Obtain a graphics card for the Intel mobo (in progress)
• Obtain a micro SD card reader for the IDE interface, which will allow booting from SD card (for both motherboards). Disk space is not a premium if you consider that all DOS programs (and DOS itself) requires very little storage space, a 128Gb micro SD card will do just fine. Heck, even OS/2 installs in less than 450Mb… (a work in progress)
• Test the Gigabyte motherboard. Luckily the driver page from Gigabyte is still available. (Result : it is in a working condition)
• Test the Intel motherboard
• If both motherboards tests and works out OK, procure two cases with the required input peripherals (PS/2 preferably) for both, install and mount the motherboards

Other items will be added as time goes by. But for now, that is the main points I want to complete.

[Ook]

Windows2000 works well.

However, DOS games are running too fast.

Keep in mind that back in those days the fastest CPU was 8MHz, then 16MHz, then 33/66MHz and so on…

Nowadays we have CPUs running at 2GHz (and faster), which is way beyond those old DOS programs capability to handle.

Some do have built-in delays in order to accommodate faster/slower CPU’s, but the programmers of those days did not foresee that their DOS program will be installed and run on a CPU running at far higher clock speeds than back in those days.

I googled a bit, and decided to install DOSBox, as the use of a TSR (terminate, stay resident) program may cause issues with Windows2000.

Now everything runs at a proper speed.

Should you try to run plain DOS games or applications, and these don’t work at all because the CPU is too fast for them, try installing DOSBox and run these from there.

DOSBox download and website : https://www.dosbox.com/
D-Fend Reloaded website : https://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.io/

Currently I am documenting everything for the real installation at this stage, getting all the software and assorted bits and bobs ready for the Real Thing™ so that the install will go without hiccups.

And, take a look at this - the space used by Windows2000 and all the assorted DOS programs. These days you need just a 150Gb (or bigger) partition just for Windows…

[Ook]

Ran Win2k overnight with two DOSBoxes running.

No issues at all. So that mobo will go into storage for now, and I’ll wait for the video card to arrive.