Many thanks for the coverage, Shelby!

Love it. Now I can emulate my first PC from 1989, a 286, 1MB RAM, 10MB HDD and EGA graphics. It's like a time capsule for old PC memories.

As a teenager, when I was new to PC upgrades and building, the boot sequence had me pulling my hair out one particular evening. I was stumped so hard and started to question my sanity, as I wasted several CDs, reimaging the boot disc over and over again. Oooo sweet memories lol. Learning through lumps is most effective, by evidence of me remembering that evening some 25 years later.

all this emulation stuff aside, i absolutely love that tiny Pentium PC with the tiny monitor and tiny keyboard

I love 86Box! My only problem is I love tinkering with the old hardware too much :D

Glad to see the enthusiasm for both the emulation and the hardware. The real fun though, is sticking with "the hard way." Sure, the shortcuts are convenient, but anticipation is the biggest part of the experience. BTW, thanks for putting dates into the selections as it will be a lot easier for people to "size" their machines by dates rather than guess.

Hey AkBKukU, I appreciate your contributions in archiving as well as your coverage of older tech and emulation. Thank you for all that you do!

Glad to see you formally cover 86Box. I've been following it since it first forked off of PCem, since it happened when I was tinkering with PCem for the first time in college. Fantastic piece of software, tons of fun to build out different machine configs and experience them fairly accurately.

This came out at the perfect time for me. I just downloaded 86box for the first time 2 hours ago.

Really great to see that you didn't just complain when you had an issue, you not only fixed it but also upstreamed the fix, and we really need more of that nowadays. Awesome stuff!

86box can make near 1:1 analogs of several PCs I have, and as such run each other’s boot drives, including my ‘98 Falcon-NW Mach V w/ PII-450, V3000, & ASUS P2B board. Emulates everything but the Diamond MX300. Killer stuff.

Honestly, this is what I thought dosbox was when I first heard about it. This is awesome!

holy fuck I'm downloading this rn

I've been using PCem and 86Box for quite some time now. They've been very helpful for testing some old software and games.

Would love to see some more examples of different 86Box hardware configurations to emulate systems of different eras, especially for gaming. I went through 86Box a while back to play some of the Win98 games of my childhood and had no idea which hardware parts to use or which ones I even needed. Having something like built-in selectable presets would be perfect, but even a video or a list of hardware combinations would be enough for beginners to get started.

afaik pcem is using shortcuts and hacks, which makes it faster and better for gaming, 86box is more acurate in emulation, which makes it slower than pcem, but more compatible.

86Box is a great tool -- if you're a PC user or, likely, using a PC keyboard... Folks on MacOS using a Mac keyboard are left in the lurch owing to the inability to throw critical keystrokes to the emulator. Break key anybody? CTRL+BREAK is something I'm still trying to figure out how to send! And breaking out a captured mouse pointer is also eluding me!

You know, I still want a voodoo card and I hate that I got rid of my voodoo 2, but I still love that this is around.

Love that vid. It reminds me all the issues I've experienced in the 90s that made me smiles. I'll give it a try for sure. Thank you!

Awesome! Thanks for sharing. I need to give this a try!

Thank you for the flashback I had from hearing the music in revolt. We often played it back then via LAN…

Been using PCem for years and been wanting to try something different but haven't really ever.. seeked anything different. Good video mate, excited to give this one a try and see what more it can emulate

This takes me back to my childhood. I used to spend hours just getting hardware to work and games to load off floppy. I never managed to get Microprose F1 to draw the front wheels! Revolt was a great LAN game. Long live the Voodoo II.

This is the best video on 86 emulation Ive seen! Ill be checking this out immediately, thank you so much!

This is awesome, can't wait for more video and sound card emulation!

Great and valuable information. Thanks for taking the time to put it all together and share it.

Wow what a great video, I learnt a lot. Will be checking for other videos.

Thunk! What an awesome project! Thanks for covering it!

I’ve been looking for this!

This is great! One of my favorite games growing up was Grand Theft Auto which ran/looks best with a 3DFX card. The catch is that Glide runs in DOS mode so getting it to run without real hardware is tricky.

Great video. Love these shorter ones that explain a software or process

My go to for retro Pc gaming, I hope ATI Rage and Nvidia NV1 support is added for the exclusive games that only supported those cards in the future.

Saved as a "go to" for references and advices when using this INCREDIBLE software. Thanks!

Cool! I'm definetly gonna check this out! Thanks!

That was a very fun one Shelby, good job brother I've been using 86Box for years now, it's an awesome piece of software

Well, it didn't feel like half an hour has passed, but in no time, I'm here with a win98 desktop copying over the folder and getting drivers set up etc, delightful project and I genuinely appreciate the walkthrough as it's been ages since I've dabbled in older hardware and have forgotten so much of it.

Shelby, you are giving me ideas…

This is an amazing piece of technology! Hats off to the developers!

Fantastic rundown

You just activated a PTSD I had forgotten. The VA-502 was not one of FIC's finer products. It was just such a buggy board. Loved the VA-503+.however!

Ive been playing with 86Box for a while now! I have my 286 desktop re-built in 86Box and I use it to test software before I take the time to write floppies to move to the actual machine.

This video made my weekend. I've become bored with emulation, and being able to mess with the hardware I had as a kid was amazing fun!

Excellent video. I recently made the switch from PCem to 86Box as there is so much more hardware available on 86Box now and they are adding more with each release. BUT, as mentioned, it can be a bit overwhelming to choose and know what it all is and does. Would be great if they added a description field or better yet, a photo for each item to help with selection. Alternatively just a wiki page with all emualted hardware. Would really help with deciding on builds. Also, is there a patreon or other way to donate? I'd love to support this excellent project. Keep up the good work!

I love 86Box. It's emulation is superb to put it mildly. I use it quite often.

thanks for the info, bookmarked for future ventures with old software :)

That is very cool! I'm gonna have to try that one out!

Thanks for the Great Setup Guide

ah win98 the good old days - we used to play Revolt at work on our Novell network!

one of the best videos at all and the best advertisement for 86box! Let's make 86Box great again!

"These programs aren't meant to walk you through the process." The process? I was born in the process. Molded by the process.

This is exciting!

Great video… brings back a lot of memories working with Windows pre XP. I have not used 86Box yet, only DosBox, PCem and VirtualBox. I think it’s time to virtually create my 1999 build since it bought the farm 14 years ago.

awesome run through

Hey Shelby, it's good to see that you covered projects like PCem and 86Box in your video. In addition, I think you might find DOSBox Pure libretro core using EmuVR (especially after the UGC update) interesting for a future video. You also have a great video about proxy projects like WaybackProxy and ProtoWeb for retro web browsing, but it might be cool to briefly mention these in the video as well for viewers who might be interested.

Great walkthrough! 86Box is amazing, now I want to configure a system and run some games and software on it! :D

The idea to emulate the own hardware sounds fascinating. I built multiple machines over the last 2 decades that are a kind of timestamp what I used back in the day. Especially for the early Linux days testing it live on the machines is sometimes really hard, especially when you kill something entirely 🙂 I will give 86Box a try, when the time is right.

Hurray!!! Civ2 with the redbook music finally can be emulated!!!

Thanks. I'm always interested in software related to vintage computing.

Heard of 86box and empc before but great guide and really useful

Been trying to get a Nic installed for the past hour. Use to do this all the time 20 years ago (on real hardware).... but for some reason this is kicking my butt.

Viewer 3000, thanks for the amazing content Shelby!!! ( Found out my number by the description box lol)

OMG.. thanks for video. I have NO idea about this kind of software. cool

This is the route I went for my summer project of writing a game engine from scratch on a 386SX based Win3.1 system without having to dig up the hardware I have and buying what else I would need. I already write software on a real Apple IIgs and Mac iici (both were loaded with the best expansion/accelerator/upgrades you could get at the end of their life since both were used as workstations at my uncles work...and they didn't cap how much he could spend on building/upgrading them), for a hobby that I don't want to sink a ton of money into that's good enough for me. I have a real 386DX and a few 486 boards, just never had the "I'm more of a buffed up 286 than 386" 386SX to write programs on. It's every bit the potato I figured it was, but it did make me want to try and put together a 386SX machine.

... i can play _Interstate76_ again !! Life is good..... thank you very much.

Showcasing new retro products would be interesting, too 😊

Excellent video, my wife isn't pleased that I pulled boxes out of storage but I installed my cd copy of Windows 98SE and now I'm installing every game from my collection. Recreated my PII-300 from 1997 almost exactly. Just about to play some Dungeon Keeper.

Wonderful video. I play with stuff in 86Box a lot too, and it's good to know if something's going to roughly work before lugging out big heavy hardware and setting stuff up. It's a fantastic emulator.

Awesome!

These are great for test systems for older hardware.

This sounds superior to DosBox in many ways. I may need to look into this. Thanks for this video. I was totally unaware of this.

awesome video not sure I would ever use it as I have retro machines, but this has always been in the back of my mind and it's features to me are mind blowing, I still have a box full of old cpu's and have loads 386 chips lol

Honestly, emulation of older systems is SO good you can often get away with just it. Always amazes me I can run an old system on my modern PC.

Software like 86Box, Vice, and Win/Fs UAE keep the good times going.

Thanks for this! Seems like great complimentary software or even an alternative (in my use case) to wine, dosbox and qemu. Going to check it out!

Thanks Shelby! I have to give a try to the latest version using my updated system, the last time I tried my system was not up to the task.

Awesome… except now my fingers are itching to spend WAAAYYYY too much time trying out pentium-age MS-DOS demos… Thanks a lot for this video, and for your idea of presenting hardware by year, super helpful! Keep being awesome!

Good to know. I haven't done any PC emulation (not even on my MiSTer), but I just figured DOSBox was the way to go.

Thank you for this video. I've been wanting to test PCem, but wasn't sure about which fork, or just go with 86Box.

86box is truly a nice piece of software, used it for a while now! This video was also a first time I heard music on Re-Volt... :D

Fun thing about the on-the-fly ISO-9660 generation (what happens when you select a folder for the CD drive): it generates both Joliet and Rock Ridge extensions. The former is useful for long file names for Windows (95/98/Me, NT4 and above), the latter for running Linux and FreeBSD inside of 86Box. If your host is Linux, it'll pass the exact same ownership and modes as on the host file system.

well that just really simplified my retro tower of power I have been designing and planning to build, was going to custom build a case with a built in kvm and probably about 5 motherboards with different configurations of different eras, and since have been working from new to old on that this could be a game changer for me. especially since I just got my P3 based system parts delivered. Even if I build a new system to run this just to do earlier hardware that sounds great. Especially over buying old parts, bench testing, recapping, and crossing my fingers before I am even ready to try it in system I have spent months prepping.

Windows 95 makes me feel all fuzzy warm inside. I was using PCs when Windows leapt from 3.1(which felt like a accident while trying to copy Apple) to 95 which felt like a highly functional-usable art project. Win7 was probably the best but 95 gave me the most feels.

You had to run the *8088 mph* demo. As they say, this demo breaks all emulators :)

I used to love installing Win98 since I had to do it so many times. I’m checking this out so I can do it again! 👍

Nice!!!

First I thought this is a nice new video about the 86box, didn't think I learn the reason for bin cue here

Very informative. Its great people are preserving computing history. It’s sad the likes of Microsoft and Intel don’t have any ‘historical’ departments and preservation teams. They could help build these emulators and support these open projects. Just imagine manufacturers like Porsche and Ferrari sent lawyers to historic race teams to shut them down… both those companies have dedicated experts who rebuild and maintain collections of their old vehicles and share them in their own museums.

Nice vid :) Here is my setup : - a 750MB C: for Windows 98 w/ P2 and Voodoo3. - a D: drive for each game. A cool addition is an hidden folder containing a jpeg wich windows looks for desktop wallpaper, that means I have dedicated wallpaper for each game. All this stuff is driven by my own rocketlauncher module. A very simple one : launch 86box with a per game config file.

So I'm hearing is that I can play Lego Island... Sounds fantastic! Thanks!

I compiled PCem yesterday with a hardcoded Seagate Medalist ST32132A model, firmware and serial number for the ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE command so I could use the same 32 bit disk access driver as on the real hardware, if that driver doesn't find a Seagate drive it disables 32 bit disk access. In the end it seems that the driver had enough with the drive model to "confirm" it was Seagate drive and ignored the firmware and serial number... It would be nice to have an option to choose the hard drive manufacturer/model too, 86Box already has it for CD-ROM drives.

86-box is great for getting problematic games to run that have weird compatibility issues (or various bugs). I found it very usefull for some Acclaim games from the mid-90's that are super tricky to get running.

now i remember this i have tryed it befor its great

I use 86box when I want to quickly test something without pulling a PC off of the shelf in the basement. I try to just use real hardware when I stream, but otherwise something like 86box is an excellent route to go. It does most everything I need. I know there will be cases where it doesn't for people, but I have been impressed with this all the way back to the early releases of PCem. It will be interesting to see where this goes. I would really like to see some more uncommon hardware for 3d acceleration supported, like the Rendition and so on, but I am a patient person.

Great video. Good length and well explored. It covers well the era that is most tricky for x86 software preservation that otherwise has people collecting sometimes failing hardware. Win 9x in VMs has never been quite compatible/performant enough to run everything I'd want accurately. The way software was written back then, being able to emu specific era-accurate devices is sometimes crucial.

Now I feel dumb buying an old desktop lol. And it turned out to be slightly too new for ISA slots. Now I'm eyeballing one being sold locally that has ISA slots and a SoundBlaster. Still, I'll definitely keeps this emulator in mind, the fact you can emulate just about any hardware config (at some point probably) is amazing. Perfect for listening to different sound cards and stuff. Truly an amazing time to get back into old PCs.

Been looking for something like this!!! (!!!)

Oh this is a joy. I ran with 86BoxManager because I want to build every old system I had to relive my frustration 🤣 Unfortunately not much support for the IBM PS/2 Model 30-8088 though, guess I'll have to run with the Model 30-286 lol

Neat. I don't know why I've never heard of this before. I'm not sure what use case I have for it vs Dosbox, but I'm sure I will find a reason one day.

didn't know 86box supported imaged disks, just made an image of a old HDD that was using a socket 7 GA5-AX, works perfectly

The concept of copying the CD to the HDD was a common practice of many OEMs to reduce the need of the CD... somehow some even got the CD installer to do that for you.