DescentBB

I don't recall seeing this brought up before but I came across this site that purports to emulate DOS and enable older games to run under XP. In the Supported Games list appears both D1 and D2. Anyone mess with this?

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Also, a quick search in their forum turns up alot of Descent references.

You need an incredibly fast processor to get a decent framerate. I have issues keeping Tyrian 2000 doing well at high detail levels, and I'm running on a 1.6GHz system. And Tyrian 2000 is a 2D game.

I've attempted to run D1 in it, and I was getting about 1 FPS. However, the program's constantly in development, and it seems to be getting faster, so maybe someday we'll be able to get decent framerates in it.

It's great with MINER for recording the music. Set the mixer to 44100hz, and the OPL3 emulation to 176400hz (4*44100), hit ctrl-F6, and play a song from the main menu. Works great, better quality than a recording, almost exactly like the original (I've listened to the old D1 FM music a lot and can say that there are definite differences, but they aren't too big). Just make sure you're doing nothing else, DOSBox 0.63 had a hard time recording the audio well at that sample rate on my old Barton 2600. Haven't tried it since moving to my 3000+ 939...