You know you are old when Bob is referencing the software that started me on this crazy PC journey . Keep up the fantastic work fella . Why is it no one else does the sponsors like Bob ? Keep em entertaining and I don’t skip them .
...Yeah, kinda mean to preload Doom onto a 386. For the young-uns curious enough, it's like getting a PS4 preloaded with Cyberpunk. Doom was basically made for the 486 onwards.
I had to look that one up, because i was confused. In the country where i live people use normal devices and the prisons have fully furnitured single person rooms. I think the clear devices are only used in maximum security prisons.
This was awesome!! As a 46 yr old, DOs brings back memories!! I so remember going over to friends house and playing low res Doom and loved Xwing on my parents 486!!!!! Old school nostalgia man
One quick note - it's not necessarily OLD hardware but new hardware that's meant to be compatible with old software. A lot of companies have software that only runs on hardware like this so it still requires this type of hardware to be made. My company has their entire system running on AS/400 green text on black screen software. Thankfully it's emulated because I still like to cruise reddit from time to time while at work.
I had Doom on my 386 33mhz 4mb RAM. I had to run it at the lowest res, it shrank the viewable area down to a quarter of the screen. And taht was on a 12 inch monitor. I needed my face right up next to the screen to see what was going on...and I loved it :)
If you want a modern version GPD has some mini form factor laptops and handhelds that run modern hardware. The Pocket 3 runs around $600 and has 16gb Ram and a decent intel chip in it. It would make a great little Linux pen tester.
I would absolutely love something like this, a small UMPC, but built around a higher-end Windows 98 gaming machine but with a firmware tweaked to support USB boot and USB optical drives. I would love to have something like that, Have my childhood dream laptop! Who wouldn't want a portable Age of Empires machine?
You know your old when you remember buying your first PC and it was a 386 because you could not afford the new 486. In hindsight I should have got a 486 as the cost when I payed back the 386 on credit was astronomical.
@@mukiex4413 No, not at all. The 486SX was MUCH better clock by clock. In Doom it's more than 2x faster. The lowest end 486SX performs as good as a 386DX 40. Your video card was likely the problem. A 486SX in Doom peforms the same as the 486DX, as it doesn't use the FPU. Ideally you'd want a PCI board, though an ISA ET4000 was fast enough not to be bottlenecked by the lower end 486.
While watching you be annoyed at the latest and samest from Anbernic or whatever is always entertaining, these kinds of videos are my favorite of yours. Your process really lends itself to scratching the "tinkerer itch" in my brain - seeing the frustrations and wonders of a piece of tech unravel - without me having to invest the energy, money, time, or winding up with a useless (to me) object in my house. I know this kinda stuff doesn't perform as well, but it's really a joy to watch.
15:15, you're wrong there, there have been different versions of Chips Challenge and the one on Steam is NOT the same as the one you were playing on, that one is the Windows 95 version which is extremely rare to find and play.
Imagine going back in time and showing everyone this video or just this device. Everyone will think you're an Alien with so Advanced Technology trying to make contact with Humans
There is an old version of (IIRC) Norton Desktop for Windows that contains a bunch of games including one called "Killer Crayon," a multiplayer Snake/Tron Lightcycles clone where a goofy sound plays whenever one of the snakes/lightcycles bites the dust. My brother and I thoroughly enjoyed it when we were kids and only had Windows 3.1/95 and no other PC games.
Quite happy about my Toshiba Libretto CT70 I got on a fleamarked for 7 bucks. Win 95, MMX 166 Mhz, small enough to fit in a pocket, has a mouse-pressure pad "early joycon". Life is good.
I have an old Windows XP desktop that is similar to the Dell Dimension that my family used to have. I also picked up a lot of old Windows 3.1/95/98 PC games from a thrift store and I might eventually pick up an old computer to try out some of these games.
OK. That is kinda a neat toy that I'd love to try out for nostalgia's sake. Though for that price tag, maybe i should just try and fix up the old Windows 95 machine I built as a teen that I recently found at my parent's place.
the button to the right of the spacebar is what you use to enable mouse controls, i can't remember if you press it or hold it but that's how you enable it
It might be niche but I enjoyed your struggle with this. Much better than another rundown of whatever incremental improvement of a retro handheld that has been shat out this week.
Hmm. Random thought / video suggestion. So, a Raspberry Pi 4 is decently powerful. Further, Box86 is an emulator that allows the Raspberry Pi to run software that was programmed for x86 hardware. On the subject of mini Retro PCs & Emulation, I had a thought. What if Bob purchased a Raspberry Pi 4, used Box86 to install Windows 98 on it (if that is possible), and then put it in a case that is designed to look like an old Desktop tower... That seems like it could be a fun project. Like a DIY retro PC emulator box thingy. Also, I think that there's something called a C64 Mini and a C64 Maxi, which is an emulation device mimicking the Commodore 64 (the Mini requires an external keyboard, while the Maxi has a built-in keyboard and it can emulate the OS. Both devices support loading your own Commodore 64 ROMs). Oh, and Atari has their 400 Mini (which emulates old Atari computer games), the 2600+, the 7800+ (the 2600+ and 7800+ seem to be Analogue mini versions of Atari Consoles, but officially licensed by Atari), and the VCS (which is like a Linux PC / Console / thing. IDK, I have a Steam Deck and that's good enough for me, lol). That's an interesting rabbithole to go down... I also will sometimes use the Legend of Zelda Game and Watch as a novelty emulation handheld. I bought it at the Nintendo store at a mall in Tel Aviv and it is actually pretty neat, like I probably play it more than I play my Switch, lol. I guess I really like Zelda 1, haha. IDK, this is just a whole interesting rabbithole, IMO. The officially licensed emulation handhelds. We all know about the NES Classic Edition and the Sega Genesis Classic, but there are so many weirder emulation devices on the market...
Considering the price and availability of a Toshiba Libretto this could be fun, but also a Pentium 3 era machine with a VooDoo3 or a GF2 in this formfactor would be even more fun.
My windows 3.1 system sounded like a jet engine starting up whenever you threw the massive switch to turn it on. Also, Microcenter should always be your first choice.
iDOS 3 on iPad is a great way to experience DOS again. Just connect a keyboard and mouse, get Norton Commander, some old games and ideally MT32/CM32 ROMS for the best music and you're set.
I just found out through this video that Chip's Challenge is available on the switch! That game was my childhooooooddd, and I've been trying to play it for yeaarrrrsss, didn't knew it was so simple hahaha
Windows 3.1 was the first OS I ever "used". I say that in quotes because I was far to young to really know what I was doing. I do remember games like King's Quest though.
Sheesh, I kept a computer with those specs until I was ten year old, pretty sure it's still there in the attic, but at least that one could get into a windows start up with the right command.
I want a "new" Windows XP machine, not just to play some games that won't work properly on 64-bit Windows without faffing around with Virtual Machine but also to use my old perpetual license copies of software like Photoshop and Microsoft Word that are subscription-only these days. Like, there's really nothing I want to do in Word that I couldn't do in a 20-plus year old version of Word that shipped on CD-ROM with XP era computers if only I were able to actually install it on a modern computer. (Yes, I do use open source alternatives like Gimp and Open Office and they're mostly adequate replacements but I still get the itch to use my old copies of Photoshop and Word even if they're not the current versions.)
Game recommendations? Well, I suppose it's too "old" to run even the original Midtown Madness from 1999 properly so let's go back to 1989 which had Vette by Spectrum Holobyte, the great, great grandfather of all 3D open-world racing games, which took place in a very low-polygon version of San Francisco and even had P2P online play via dialup modem.
This’ll be great for those businesses and institutions that NEED a 386 processor, the QOL for them will be portability and compatibility to some modern I/O
The thing with PC emulation is that while DOSbox is pretty good, accurately emulating the actual hardware is very difficult. Using an emulator like 86Box, my 5800x3D with RTX 3080 can barely manage to emulate a Pentium II 233 at full speed. So accurately emulating anything past 97 or so is out of the question even for powerful desktops, let alone handhelds. As for DOSBox, a lot of emulation handhelds can already run it. Of course, you sort of need a keyboard and mouse to fully enjoy a lot of DOS games... and for that you can just use any modernish small laptop to emulate DOS. So you can see why no one's making PC emulation devices. It would just be an Android in a laptop form factor... so basically a laptop, but worse.
You should try the Gigatron TTL computer. It has no CPU but the whole CPU is build out of 37 TTL chips, equaliing 600 Transistors. This includes graphics and audio, although only over HDMI, but you also need to attach a SRAM for memory, 64kByte are standard. And WTF, it emulates an 8088 at around 800khz in pure software!!! It even runs DOS and Windows up to 3! Oh, it also emulates an 6502 at 500kHz.
Well if it can run windows 95 it can run the NES, SNES emulators with tons of tweaking. Running those on a Cyrix based PC back in my childhood was as fun as playing the games themselves. (It has the NESticle emulator preloaded, you can see it on the directory around minute 11:00 right before he ran DOOM!)
yeah 486 would make more sense with turbo on/off feature and possibillity to use external usb cd-drive. also there would be fairly good ammount of old graphics chips available like ATI Rage XL (with lower clockspeed it might be very power efficient too) and the system would operate with better speeds allover without (+ if it would have its own 8mb vram it should perform decently)
Windows 3 & 95 can be made to work with USB mass storage only things like game ports or mice and keyboard seem to never really work at all over USB in windows 3/95 when I was a kid we had a 95 PC I made the mistake of getting a USB controller and it didnt work later we upgraded that same PC to windows 98 and the controller started towrking as it should.
I wonder how this compares to an EEEPC running Dosbox. IIRC, you used to be able to emulate machines that were at least 10x slower than the host, which may even be enough for the Pentium era.
There are so many old games that I just can't figure out how to get working on modern hardware-- god, I would love a retropc that could just boot up Catechuman
When I was a kid, it was a long time until we had a Pentium or a 486. So I totally had to play Doom on a 386. And yeah…it was pretty bad. Then I tried playing Duke Nukem 3D on our 486 when we had it eventually. Similar story. Eventually we tried to get it to run Quake and Quake 2. Finally we got an AMD K6-2 and a 3D card and running these things became easy.
I watch LGR setup old computers and it would drive me nuts, I did not like to mess with drivers when I used windows. It never really worked right and I doubt it does now. I think I'll wait until there is a FPGA system that can emulate everything for a windows95/98 machine that the community has the best drivers to make it as painless as possible. Until then I'm good with just using an proton for old games.
11:15 for anyone playing around with dos. You don’t need to type .exe or .bat. Just type in doom or whatever the .exe or .bat file name is and it will run it. I have iDos for my iPAd when I want to relive old PC times, it’s honestly a horrible way to get games running 😅 i rather just pay the couple of bucks it costs to run doom on any console that exists.
I would pay good money for a ms-dos emulation mini pc like they did with the mini consoles, to play scummvm adventures and other games. The next best thing is gonna be the full size Amiga when it comes out in 2025.
If only you were around last year for the _Hand386,_ which came with Windows 95 by default (although unimpressive compared to a Libretto of the same price point). I still have mine and quite enjoy the GameBoy sorta Analogue Pocket form factor, if anything I intentionally downgraded mine to Windows 3.1 for Chip’s Challenge which works right on-the-go
One of my favorite DOS games out there is Master of Orion. Its on that archives page and on GOG, but you're going to definitely need a mouse for it. But it's a cool one as one of the original 4X games.
If that was 486 66mhz it would be perfect! Still interesting though. I believe there is an abundance of 386 CPUs around for some reason and that's why these devices are popping up.
Doom runs like crap because this is a 386 based PC. Try FastDoom for better framerates, but Doom REALLY wants a 486. Although it's nice to see that the new version of this thing has a sound chip finally.
You know you can get a PS/2 to USB converter on Amazon for like 7 bucks right? I'm shocked Microcenter didnt have like a box of them on a shelf somewhere for 1.99 (for the whole box). Linux folk might be okay will all the DoS doings. But yeah, 200 bucks for the "privilege" of reliving the days of OLDE with one of these is a niche of all niches. Also I totally agree with the sentiment about using some of this old Retro game tech to emulate a PC, especially since I'd been looking for a new mini pocket computer for a while, and then someone got desktop linux running on a Anbernic xxSP.
I was amused to see this usually comes with Windows 95. I feel like it was just yesterday in actual 1995 that people were pointing out that 386 *barely* runs Windows 95. Personally I want to see a 486 one of these and I may have to get my wallet out.
No Space Pinball? That was a classic game back on early Windows. I also remember playing The Great Adventure, Battle Bots, and this one game that had the Mona Lisa on the CD. These were all on Windows 95/98, so they may be too new to work on this thing. I'm honestly surprised Doom worked on this, considering how cheep the hardware looks. All of that looks like it isn't even original hardware from back in the day, but rather reproduction parts with plastic components.
You know you are old when Bob is referencing the software that started me on this crazy PC journey . Keep up the fantastic work fella . Why is it no one else does the sponsors like Bob ? Keep em entertaining and I don’t skip them .
He's one of the only ones whose sponsor spots I don't skip. He gets it.
i'm surprised he hasn't been picked up to write actual commercials
@@Gage_Danger right? Though, I've heard writing commercials professionally is harder than it looks.
nakey jakey does decently funny sponsor spots too
...Yeah, kinda mean to preload Doom onto a 386. For the young-uns curious enough, it's like getting a PS4 preloaded with Cyberpunk. Doom was basically made for the 486 onwards.
Ahoy, I bought a Compaq Prolinea 4/25S just so I could play Doom. Wolfenstein 3D was great on the 386 but not Doom. Cheers, daveyb
No one thought Doom on the SNES was a bad idea, look how far we've come since.
Or Doom on the 3do now that was a painful port. The SNES Doom was a miracle that anyone got that game to work on the SNES hardware.
@@Fender178 They didn't. Had to have extra hardware on the cartridge, a Super FX 2 chip.
@@Kumimono oh my mistake. Thanks for the info.
Clear shell makes it look like a computer inmates can purchase
I legit thought that's what the video was going to be about.
I had to look that one up, because i was confused.
In the country where i live people use normal devices and the prisons have fully furnitured single person rooms. I think the clear devices are only used in maximum security prisons.
That manual referencing Planet X3 is crazy. Thats a new game made by The 8-Bit Guy. Zero chance thats officially sanctioned.
Oh shit I forgot to migrate 8-bit guy to this account's subs 😮
@@TheoRae8289 wut?
@@onedeadsaint bot probably
@@onedeadsaint I used to be subbed to him on my old account, and apparently I didn't sub on this one. That's been rectified though lol
This was awesome!! As a 46 yr old, DOs brings back memories!! I so remember going over to friends house and playing low res Doom and loved Xwing on my parents 486!!!!! Old school nostalgia man
One quick note - it's not necessarily OLD hardware but new hardware that's meant to be compatible with old software. A lot of companies have software that only runs on hardware like this so it still requires this type of hardware to be made. My company has their entire system running on AS/400 green text on black screen software. Thankfully it's emulated because I still like to cruise reddit from time to time while at work.
I had Doom on my 386 33mhz 4mb RAM. I had to run it at the lowest res, it shrank the viewable area down to a quarter of the screen. And taht was on a 12 inch monitor. I needed my face right up next to the screen to see what was going on...and I loved it :)
Windows 98 is as far back as I'd go personally, but for the novelty this does look pretty sweet! Thank you for documenting the struggles involved haha
A wulff den video about old tech? Hell yeah.
Oh the nostalgia... Thank you for taking me on this trip down memory lane.
Remember the 1995 movie hackers….this thing screams STRAIGHT outta that. SO COOL!!! 😮
I was like "movie hackers"? What's that. Then I realized. "movie, Hackers".
The monitor is pretty crisppy.
If you want a modern version GPD has some mini form factor laptops and handhelds that run modern hardware. The Pocket 3 runs around $600 and has 16gb Ram and a decent intel chip in it. It would make a great little Linux pen tester.
Hack the Planet!
Miniature computers are so interesting to me... please make more videos like this!
Well, its still less privacy-destroying than Windows 11...
Or windows 12 but still from what you said. But my question is what do you mean?
Blah blah something something windows bloatware steals data like every company ever blah blah
Hahahaha
Finally something besides the same old retro handhelds. 🎉
I would absolutely love something like this, a small UMPC, but built around a higher-end Windows 98 gaming machine but with a firmware tweaked to support USB boot and USB optical drives. I would love to have something like that, Have my childhood dream laptop! Who wouldn't want a portable Age of Empires machine?
You know your old when you remember buying your first PC and it was a 386 because you could not afford the new 486. In hindsight I should have got a 486 as the cost when I payed back the 386 on credit was astronomical.
The 486SX was quite affordable and much better than even the highest end 386.
I had a 486 SX which was damn near a rebranded 386. I 100% remember the performance that Bob was getting in Doom.
@@mukiex4413 No, not at all. The 486SX was MUCH better clock by clock. In Doom it's more than 2x faster. The lowest end 486SX performs as good as a 386DX 40.
Your video card was likely the problem. A 486SX in Doom peforms the same as the 486DX, as it doesn't use the FPU. Ideally you'd want a PCI board, though an ISA ET4000 was fast enough not to be bottlenecked by the lower end 486.
Chip’s Challenge, FUCK YEAH!!!!! Ski Free!!! I played the SHIT out of Tetris For Windows in 7th grade computers class!!!!!
**BUMMER**
Only channel I don't skip the ads
Windows 95 was the first OS I ever used. Played Hunter Hunted alot on it.
While watching you be annoyed at the latest and samest from Anbernic or whatever is always entertaining, these kinds of videos are my favorite of yours. Your process really lends itself to scratching the "tinkerer itch" in my brain - seeing the frustrations and wonders of a piece of tech unravel - without me having to invest the energy, money, time, or winding up with a useless (to me) object in my house. I know this kinda stuff doesn't perform as well, but it's really a joy to watch.
That sponsor video was pretty fire
Yeah, those DOS laptops got a bit of popularity.
i love that you did this but also really shows how hard working with old tech is
15:15, you're wrong there, there have been different versions of Chips Challenge and the one on Steam is NOT the same as the one you were playing on, that one is the Windows 95 version which is extremely rare to find and play.
Dude, just let him cook
Imagine going back in time and showing everyone this video or just this device.
Everyone will think you're an Alien with so Advanced Technology trying to make contact with Humans
Japan made a few computers back in the late 80s to mid 90s that were similar to this.
At least on the surface level. Im sure this is slightly better
Japan made a few computers back in the late 80s to mid 90s that were similar to this.
At least on the surface level. Im sure this is slightly better
I felt that way seeing an RM tablet PC at my school in around 2003. An entire computer in a fraction of the space even the monitor took up
Cats was one of my first PC games in the 80s. Still love it.
There is an old version of (IIRC) Norton Desktop for Windows that contains a bunch of games including one called "Killer Crayon," a multiplayer Snake/Tron Lightcycles clone where a goofy sound plays whenever one of the snakes/lightcycles bites the dust. My brother and I thoroughly enjoyed it when we were kids and only had Windows 3.1/95 and no other PC games.
10:05 You used to be able to get USB to PS2 adapters back in the day.
14:58 Ski Free jumpscare, that Yeti used to freak me out
This device is kind of cool, imagine packing all the big PC we have in the 90s in one small device
Quite happy about my Toshiba Libretto CT70 I got on a fleamarked for 7 bucks. Win 95, MMX 166 Mhz, small enough to fit in a pocket, has a mouse-pressure pad "early joycon". Life is good.
I remember going to microcenter with my parents to pick up our family’s first windows 3.1 machine. Played a whole lot of ms paint on that bad boy…
I have an old Windows XP desktop that is similar to the Dell Dimension that my family used to have. I also picked up a lot of old Windows 3.1/95/98 PC games from a thrift store and I might eventually pick up an old computer to try out some of these games.
the music from the start immediately made me feel nostalgia
The best part of this video is that I learned that Chip's Challenge is available on the eShop.
Man, I feel so much nostalgia as a kid seeing Windows 95.
I was there for thumbnail education on stream last night 😂 imma have to share this video with a friend of mine, he loves this kind of stuff
OK. That is kinda a neat toy that I'd love to try out for nostalgia's sake. Though for that price tag, maybe i should just try and fix up the old Windows 95 machine I built as a teen that I recently found at my parent's place.
the button to the right of the spacebar is what you use to enable mouse controls, i can't remember if you press it or hold it but that's how you enable it
It might be niche but I enjoyed your struggle with this. Much better than another rundown of whatever incremental improvement of a retro handheld that has been shat out this week.
i want modern laptop with this type of form factor, this is a very attractive look
It'd be cool to see a latte panda inside that enclosure it could propably vome closer to the experience Bob mightve hoped for
Hmm. Random thought / video suggestion. So, a Raspberry Pi 4 is decently powerful. Further, Box86 is an emulator that allows the Raspberry Pi to run software that was programmed for x86 hardware. On the subject of mini Retro PCs & Emulation, I had a thought. What if Bob purchased a Raspberry Pi 4, used Box86 to install Windows 98 on it (if that is possible), and then put it in a case that is designed to look like an old Desktop tower... That seems like it could be a fun project. Like a DIY retro PC emulator box thingy.
Also, I think that there's something called a C64 Mini and a C64 Maxi, which is an emulation device mimicking the Commodore 64 (the Mini requires an external keyboard, while the Maxi has a built-in keyboard and it can emulate the OS. Both devices support loading your own Commodore 64 ROMs). Oh, and Atari has their 400 Mini (which emulates old Atari computer games), the 2600+, the 7800+ (the 2600+ and 7800+ seem to be Analogue mini versions of Atari Consoles, but officially licensed by Atari), and the VCS (which is like a Linux PC / Console / thing. IDK, I have a Steam Deck and that's good enough for me, lol). That's an interesting rabbithole to go down... I also will sometimes use the Legend of Zelda Game and Watch as a novelty emulation handheld. I bought it at the Nintendo store at a mall in Tel Aviv and it is actually pretty neat, like I probably play it more than I play my Switch, lol. I guess I really like Zelda 1, haha. IDK, this is just a whole interesting rabbithole, IMO. The officially licensed emulation handhelds. We all know about the NES Classic Edition and the Sega Genesis Classic, but there are so many weirder emulation devices on the market...
Oh my god I havent seen JezzBall since I was like 6, this was CRAZY
Considering the price and availability of a Toshiba Libretto this could be fun, but also a Pentium 3 era machine with a VooDoo3 or a GF2 in this formfactor would be even more fun.
My windows 3.1 system sounded like a jet engine starting up whenever you threw the massive switch to turn it on. Also, Microcenter should always be your first choice.
14:08 DON'T YOU DARE DISS ALLEYCAT
Btw there's a modern fan re-released called Alleycat ReMeow, highly recommended
I feel old, knowing what that ram check boot up screen is like before the Windows logo pops up.
10:07 You're offer of a USB C cable is tempting.
iDOS 3 on iPad is a great way to experience DOS again. Just connect a keyboard and mouse, get Norton Commander, some old games and ideally MT32/CM32 ROMS for the best music and you're set.
I just found out through this video that Chip's Challenge is available on the switch! That game was my childhooooooddd, and I've been trying to play it for yeaarrrrsss, didn't knew it was so simple hahaha
I had a laptop in 91. It was HUGE.
Windows 3.1 was the first OS I ever "used". I say that in quotes because I was far to young to really know what I was doing. I do remember games like King's Quest though.
14:08 HEY! Don’t disrespect Alleycat! Most people at the time didn’t have the luxury of having Doom. Or even knew it existed. 👀
Sheesh, I kept a computer with those specs until I was ten year old, pretty sure it's still there in the attic, but at least that one could get into a windows start up with the right command.
I want a "new" Windows XP machine, not just to play some games that won't work properly on 64-bit Windows without faffing around with Virtual Machine but also to use my old perpetual license copies of software like Photoshop and Microsoft Word that are subscription-only these days. Like, there's really nothing I want to do in Word that I couldn't do in a 20-plus year old version of Word that shipped on CD-ROM with XP era computers if only I were able to actually install it on a modern computer.
(Yes, I do use open source alternatives like Gimp and Open Office and they're mostly adequate replacements but I still get the itch to use my old copies of Photoshop and Word even if they're not the current versions.)
Game recommendations? Well, I suppose it's too "old" to run even the original Midtown Madness from 1999 properly so let's go back to 1989 which had Vette by Spectrum Holobyte, the great, great grandfather of all 3D open-world racing games, which took place in a very low-polygon version of San Francisco and even had P2P online play via dialup modem.
This’ll be great for those businesses and institutions that NEED a 386 processor, the QOL for them will be portability and compatibility to some modern I/O
The thing with PC emulation is that while DOSbox is pretty good, accurately emulating the actual hardware is very difficult. Using an emulator like 86Box, my 5800x3D with RTX 3080 can barely manage to emulate a Pentium II 233 at full speed. So accurately emulating anything past 97 or so is out of the question even for powerful desktops, let alone handhelds. As for DOSBox, a lot of emulation handhelds can already run it. Of course, you sort of need a keyboard and mouse to fully enjoy a lot of DOS games... and for that you can just use any modernish small laptop to emulate DOS. So you can see why no one's making PC emulation devices. It would just be an Android in a laptop form factor... so basically a laptop, but worse.
My god chips challenge and skiifree videos awakened some deep memories lol
Not to mention you can emulate the Gravis Ultrasound in Dosbox very accurately so.. yeah.
You should try the Gigatron TTL computer. It has no CPU but the whole CPU is build out of 37 TTL chips, equaliing 600 Transistors. This includes graphics and audio, although only over HDMI, but you also need to attach a SRAM for memory, 64kByte are standard.
And WTF, it emulates an 8088 at around 800khz in pure software!!! It even runs DOS and Windows up to 3! Oh, it also emulates an 6502 at 500kHz.
Honestly, when you think about it, how many pc games are lost to time if certain computer older systems are absolutely not accessible.
Well if it can run windows 95 it can run the NES, SNES emulators with tons of tweaking. Running those on a Cyrix based PC back in my childhood was as fun as playing the games themselves. (It has the NESticle emulator preloaded, you can see it on the directory around minute 11:00 right before he ran DOOM!)
That “VGA port” is more likely a Serial port. It uses the same pinout but is intended for Data…
The most funny thing would be if adobe finds out and sends their lawyers. That would be hilarious. and scary.
very funny rant and video!
yeah 486 would make more sense with turbo on/off feature and possibillity to use external usb cd-drive. also there would be fairly good ammount of old graphics chips available like ATI Rage XL (with lower clockspeed it might be very power efficient too) and the system would operate with better speeds allover without (+ if it would have its own 8mb vram it should perform decently)
I need this. I. NEED. THIS.
It is just now a bit over what i can justify affording.
YES!!! DOS!!! YAAHOOO!!!
It has like 7 of my favorite games on it.
Windows 3 & 95 can be made to work with USB mass storage only things like game ports or mice and keyboard seem to never really work at all over USB in windows 3/95 when I was a kid we had a 95 PC I made the mistake of getting a USB controller and it didnt work later we upgraded that same PC to windows 98 and the controller started towrking as it should.
Hot damn what a throwback!!!!
Getting Andy Rooney vibes from this one. Love it.
Perfect machine for Castle of the Winds.
I remember playing commander keen on windows 3.1
I wonder how this compares to an EEEPC running Dosbox.
IIRC, you used to be able to emulate machines that were at least 10x slower than the host, which may even be enough for the Pentium era.
There are so many old games that I just can't figure out how to get working on modern hardware-- god, I would love a retropc that could just boot up Catechuman
When I was a kid, it was a long time until we had a Pentium or a 486. So I totally had to play Doom on a 386. And yeah…it was pretty bad. Then I tried playing Duke Nukem 3D on our 486 when we had it eventually. Similar story. Eventually we tried to get it to run Quake and Quake 2. Finally we got an AMD K6-2 and a 3D card and running these things became easy.
I miss 3.11.... so straight forward.
Sadly, those viewing angles are the correct retro experience. LCD screens almost uniformly had terrible viewing angles until the mid 2000's.
win95 and Doom were not meant for the 386, both kinda needed a 486 but ran better on Pentiums
I just came here from watching a JerryRigEverything video and I feel like Bob is yelling at me!
I watch LGR setup old computers and it would drive me nuts, I did not like to mess with drivers when I used windows. It never really worked right and I doubt it does now. I think I'll wait until there is a FPGA system that can emulate everything for a windows95/98 machine that the community has the best drivers to make it as painless as possible. Until then I'm good with just using an proton for old games.
11:15 for anyone playing around with dos. You don’t need to type .exe or .bat. Just type in doom or whatever the .exe or .bat file name is and it will run it. I have iDos for my iPAd when I want to relive old PC times, it’s honestly a horrible way to get games running 😅 i rather just pay the couple of bucks it costs to run doom on any console that exists.
I would pay good money for a ms-dos emulation mini pc like they did with the mini consoles, to play scummvm adventures and other games. The next best thing is gonna be the full size Amiga when it comes out in 2025.
Oh yes chips challenge that's a name I haven't heard in years
It's not exactly the same thing, but a deep dive into old Windows emulation could be cool with something like virtualbox
should be mentioned that chips challenge on switch is the Lynx version if that ends up mattering to anyone
i like the form factor, could be a little thinner but yeah id be down if it was more modern.
If only you were around last year for the _Hand386,_ which came with Windows 95 by default (although unimpressive compared to a Libretto of the same price point). I still have mine and quite enjoy the GameBoy sorta Analogue Pocket form factor, if anything I intentionally downgraded mine to Windows 3.1 for Chip’s Challenge which works right on-the-go
One of my favorite DOS games out there is Master of Orion. Its on that archives page and on GOG, but you're going to definitely need a mouse for it. But it's a cool one as one of the original 4X games.
If that was 486 66mhz it would be perfect! Still interesting though. I believe there is an abundance of 386 CPUs around for some reason and that's why these devices are popping up.
Doom runs like crap because this is a 386 based PC.
Try FastDoom for better framerates, but Doom REALLY wants a 486.
Although it's nice to see that the new version of this thing has a sound chip finally.
i wanted this, until i saw the specs on ali. honestly i would pay more with this format with modern hardware
You know you can get a PS/2 to USB converter on Amazon for like 7 bucks right? I'm shocked Microcenter didnt have like a box of them on a shelf somewhere for 1.99 (for the whole box). Linux folk might be okay will all the DoS doings. But yeah, 200 bucks for the "privilege" of reliving the days of OLDE with one of these is a niche of all niches. Also I totally agree with the sentiment about using some of this old Retro game tech to emulate a PC, especially since I'd been looking for a new mini pocket computer for a while, and then someone got desktop linux running on a Anbernic xxSP.
I was amused to see this usually comes with Windows 95. I feel like it was just yesterday in actual 1995 that people were pointing out that 386 *barely* runs Windows 95. Personally I want to see a 486 one of these and I may have to get my wallet out.
I got the 8088 version of this when it came out.. i should have waited until this model 😭
This device looks like what a timetraveller lost along the way and was just released from the secret service archives in the present.
I'd love something that's the same form factor but present day specs
No Space Pinball? That was a classic game back on early Windows. I also remember playing The Great Adventure, Battle Bots, and this one game that had the Mona Lisa on the CD. These were all on Windows 95/98, so they may be too new to work on this thing. I'm honestly surprised Doom worked on this, considering how cheep the hardware looks. All of that looks like it isn't even original hardware from back in the day, but rather reproduction parts with plastic components.
Omg chips challenge I forgot all about that
Thank you for correctly pronouncing niche even though I can't spell it