I have an old (8-10 yrs) system sitting AROUND that I got from my brother in law as a stopgap measure when my then current system was down.  It is a Micron Clientpro with Windows ME for O/S.  Since he doesn't want it back, and I have no use for it, it occurred to me I COULD clean the hard drive, and reload it with DOS, then use the system for playing all those wonderful games I haven't played in about twelve years. (I have had no luck at all with the EMULATORS, and darn it, I miss those old games I've got stacked up down in the basement.)  Anyway, I have a little bit of technical know-how (enough to know my biggest problem just getting this off the ground will be the drivers having to be reloaded - I don't have any discs for the devices in this system, and while I might be able to find some of the drivers on line, whether it would be as easy to install them to fresh DOS in a system that wasn't designed to work with DOS frightens me a little bit.  I have managed to get one or two DOS games to work on XP by opening the .exe files (Panzer General, for instance), but others don't COOPERATE the same way.  Furthermore, saving a game is impossible, apparently.  And, of course, there are issues that I have learned to work around, such as inability to adjust mouse sensitivity or video playback speed.  Another major obstacle with many of the DOS games is the soundcard setup procedures they put you through, which obviously weren't set up by Nostradamus, and don't provide options that feature today's cards, and can't auto-detect modern soundcards.
So, I guess I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on this twisted little idea of mine, or instructions on how to do it.  If you do, please keep your instructions as simple as possible, as when it comes to things like changing lines of text in BIOS, or similarly scary procedures, my brain just shuts down completely.
I'm mainly wondering about the driver issue, but if we can get me past that hitch, then I guess any advice somebody has about installing/setting up these old games re: the sound card issues or settings that will allow them to be played with less scrolling problems, etc, that would be great too!
If you're able to give me a step by step, please remember I'm starting out from having to clean the hard drive... Thanks! [/i]Well- first you'll need to get the system information from that PC. If it still boots into ME, you can download and Install Everest and Save a report and attach it to a reply here.

The next obstacle would be getting DOS install disks. Obviously Version 6.22 or 6.0 are the better versions to try to get. Note that MS offers a free upgrade from version 6.0 to 6.22, so if you have to settle for 6.0, go for it.

Ebay is a great source for older Operating systems.

Once you've got that set up, we can help you find the appropriate drivers for the system. Since it's about the right age to still have DOS drivers for it's components, you should be alright. Some games work WITHOUT any drivers installed at all- all they need is the BLASTER environment variable. Thankfully most sound card setups set this variable for you  Hoo-Ahh!  I have 3.5"s of 6.22 right here! So far so good.  Yes, it does still boot, but i'll have to set it up to get all the system specs before I do anything else.  It was primarily used for business apps, so I'm guessing there's not much of a video or sound package in it. (One of the reasons I figured it would lend itself more to this DOS project than anything else of the same approximate age...well that's good, no need to go hunting through listings.

As far as sound and video, it's probably state-of-the-art compared to what was available when DOS games were king. Or at least high-end.


The only thing might be how compatible it's video is to VGA standards, and how compatible it's sound is with a sound blaster.


only really an issue in maybe 2% of PCs that are this age. Really, it's the perfect age for a PC to convert to a DOS game machine.Looking under the hood didn't tell me anything much, but old article from PC world suggests this thing has got:  Celeron 433, 4.3 gb HD, 24x40 CD Rom, 128 mb SDRAM, 128kb cache, Intel 810 Integrated graphics, and ADI 1881 sound.  Only modem card and phone card in PCI slots, plus a little brown slot above the PCIs (AGP maybe?).You should be able to use some generic svga driver and generic 'sound blaster compatible' sound driver but with a system that old you're going to end up replacing the cmos battery soon - hopefully it's removable.. I had an old system where the battery was soldered to the motherboard, lol.

What emulators have you tried?  My suggestion is to download Dosbox on your best pc.  I wouldn't have recommended it a few years ago but it's come a long way and more recently I've been able to run some big games I couldn't before.