Advice needed: Classic PC gaming

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Ozzy_98:
I use MameWah, it's a pain to get working post XP, if you get it working at all. I use it mostly because I'm good at configuring it, so I can make it look however I want. It's been a while since I messed with it though for dosbox, I was thinking I called .lnk files in windows, and the windows shortcut was what had all the commands to make the game load.

Jeff:
D-Fend seems like a popular DosBox frontend. Nothing flashy, but it lets you change settings without digging through text files. I've never tried MameWah.

noemann:
This post reminded me to install my old systems. I get too busy and always forget about them.
Spent most of today installing some old OSs and software. ;D

I'm going to install my old Win98 games.

noemann:
VirtualBox works well with Windows 98 SE. I'm posting this message with ie5 in Win98. I will try to play some games today but i had to install an svga driver to break out of 16 color mode vga. I'll have to play with settings a bit. OS/2 works well so i am stumped about the graphics support for Win98. You will have to add DirectX 7.

I have downloaded ALL of the updates for Windows XP since 2008 (SP3.) I have been archiving software from MS for XP but i never did this for 98. I don't even have a copy of s1-a for Office 2000. oh well.

anyway, VBox works well for me. I'm going to poke around my software to find my old copy of Norton Internet Security. I'm surprised that alot of web sites will load in ie5. good stuff. maybe i can use my favorite web browser again - Lynx ;D

off i go ...

Ozzy_98:
I used to make games in 15 and 16 bit color mode, the problem with it is support from drivers, they're not always the same, and can be very problematic. With 24 bit graphics, you have 8 bits red 8 bits green, and 8 bits blue. With 16 bits, you have to split 16 three ways, and it just doesn't work, you have 5 6 5. The problem is, different hardware used the extra bit in different locations, so 15 bit color was normally more compatible. Don't listen to Wikipedia on this, I've never seen a card that wasted 4 bits for an alpha channel giving you 12 bits of color depth, and I have a lot of programming experience from that time span and on more than a few devices (The Ozzy_98 on some TG-16\PCE demos was me)

If you're wondering about 32 bit color, it's 8 per channel plus an "alpha" channel. meaning they pretty much waste 8 bits, but most hardware can process 32 bits faster than 24, so that's the advantage there.

And don't forget the joys of dos extenders!

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