Yeah, now I see you said you run your old _disc_ games on virtual machines.

How is that working for you anyway? To me it seemed those virtual machines are quite often helpless also with simple CD copy protections. When i tried to run e.g. the original Wheel of Time CD with VMWare, it would install, but when trying to actually run the game, it would keep complaining the original CD is not in the drive.

When I applied a noCD crack for the game, then I could at least run the game in a VMWare Windows XP session. But only barely, there were still serious issues with it, like the graphics looking a bit crappy (maybe it wasn't running 3D accelerated after all even though I told VMWare to use 3D acceleration, not fully sure). it was quite slow, and the mouse controls were messed up (for some reason the game liked to make me stare up to the sky if I merely touched the mouse).

The reason I tried to run WoT on a virtualized Windows XP session is because that game has some Quicktime video issues on Windows 7, ie. the game videos are played like some kind of slideshow (if you run the game videos in a separate video player like VLC or even Quicktime player in Windows 7, they play fine). So in the end I played the game on Windows 7, and just played the in-game videos with a media player whenever I finished a level, to see how the story progressed. The game actually tells a big part of the story in those videos, without them you'll be wondering how the heck you suddenly ended up to some new location etc., and what the heck the protagonist is referring to.

As you mentioned DOS games, for those you should usually use DOSBox, it works fine as far as I can tell even for DOS CD games (you need to mount the game disc first for DOSBox). Sometimes e.g. ScummVM or somesuch might be a good solution too, both for DOS and old Windows games.

Also as someone mentioned, for e.g. 3Dfx Glide (Voodoo) accelerated games, you could use something like nGlide to make the graphics work fine on modern graphics cards, in case the game has no Direct3D or OpenGL support as well, or the latter ones work poorly. The Glide support with nGlide normally works great.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Windows-98-95-DOS-Gaming-Computer-3DFX-Voodoo3-1000-AGP-ISA-Slots-AT-Case-Power-/271995279835

LOL at the description. But have you looked into getting an old desktop? Or installing an old OS on older hardware? :P

Yea, I don't really want to spend that much though. I'm looking to pick up a Windows XP machine, since it typically has pretty good compatibility. I did try to install a dual boot with XP and Vista, but ended up messing up the computer. It looks like I'll just have to cut some losses and play what I can play. It just seems like I spend a lot more time configuring and tinkering than I ever do actually playing games on PC.

Wow, he wants $399 for it, and other similar retro-PCs seemed to be over $300 there too?

A year ago I bought somewhat similar old desktop PC (without a monitor, I have plenty of them) specifically for Windows 9x and XP gaming (it has now both 98SE and XP side by side on it, albeit it is quite rare I'd have to use 98SE for some games). I bought it from a local "ebay" page (www.huuto.net), and it cost me 20€ I think. It came with an old ATI 3D card.

I seemed to be the only one interested in it anyway, maybe there is a bigger demand for old desktop PCs in the US...

Finding older PCs is kind of odd here, at least in my experience. You can find them rather easily at places like yard/garage sales and even thrift stores fairly cheap. I think the reason that ebay page had "watchers" was probably because it is marketed as a retro gaming rig that was custom made.