DOS Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Why are new computers slower than really old ones?

Posted on January 29, 2024

Question from Larry: I was digging through some junk in my basement and found my old 1990s era Gateway computer with Windows 3.1 on it.

Just out of curiosity I hooked it up and was surprised to see it come on and boot up.

I spent several minutes just fooling around with it and I noticed how fast it was running.

I have a four month old Dell laptop that has an Intel i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM but it seems to run a lot slower than that 20+ year old Gateway.

Why would a modern computer with supposedly much better hardware run slower than a PC that’s over 20 years old? [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I run old DOS games on my Windows 7 PC?

Posted on May 16, 2019

Question from Darren S.: I have several old DOS-based games that I bought at a yard sale and I’d love to be able to play some of them on my Windows 7 laptop. Will they run on that computer? If not, is it possible to install DOS in a dual-boot configuration and run them that way?

Rick’s Answer: Darren, it is possible to run some DOS games under Windows 7 (as well as XP, Vista and Windows 8), but due to major differences in the way DOS and Windows handle memory and I/O you’ll need to run them within a DOS emulator.

There are several DOS emulators for Windows available, but I would recommend trying one called DOSBox first. DOSBox has been around for a long time and they seem to have a lot of the kinks in the emulation process worked out. [Read more…]