The ArcaOS 5.x Retro Gaming Machine

The goal of this experiment will be to create a Retro Gaming Machine (PC) with ArcaOS 5.x (OS/2 Warp 4.52). The idea is to list the things that you will need to setup ArcaOS to run:
 * Native compiled OS/2 games
 * DOS games on the virtual DOS VDM session that OS/2 has.
 * Windows 3.1 or 16bits games on Win-OS/2.
 * DOS games with DOSBox if required.

So let's start:

Native OS/2 Games
To run OS/2 native games I recommend preparing the system with the following utilities and libraries: yum install xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 * Arca Noae Package Manager is a very good tool install rpm packages, maybe you already have it, but double check that you are on the latest level.
 * There is a pack of libraries that you must have installed, just check that you have the followin:
 * SDL Libraries
 * GI Libraries. A few games require it, not very critical.

DOS Games with OS/2's DOS VDM

 * Internet Archive DOS Games

Audio Limitation
There is still a limitation with DOS VDM sound support at this moment. The most common OS/2 audio driver is Uniaud and for the moment there is no way to support audio on a DOS VDM session using this driver.

A VDD (Virtual DOS Driver) is required to be made so DOS VDM can have sound through the Uniaud uadio driver on OS/2. We have our hopes that Arca Noae update the DTA driver so it can work.

Audio on DOSBox works because it uses the SDL libraries for sound.

Win16 games with Win-OS/2
Trying DTA.


 * Install DTA (2002/11/30)
 * Configure the Win-OS2 Session:
 * EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT = 0
 * EMS_FRAME_LOCATION = NONE

Extra things for Windows 3.1

 * Quicktime 2.12, 1.81 M: The latest Quicktime version that will work with 3.1x. The archive additionally contains the Quicktime Internet-Plugin v. 1.1.
 * Video for Windows 1.1e -
 * Media Player 5.2 beta, 5.5M
 * WIN32s 1.30.172, 2.41M

Games Library

 * https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_win3?&sort=-downloads&page=4