Triggering disk access to activate a TSR \ VOGONS

Triggering disk access to activate a TSR

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First post, by Tiltowait

Posted on 2016-01-23, 07:50

Tiltowait Offline

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I just had a session of Star Control 2 crash on me, just as I was getting back to the space station with a full load of minerals and biologicals. So, to get back to where I was, I had to find an ancient cheat program. It comes as a .COM file and when you run it, it states:

1This TSR will reset your RES units every time the disk is accessed.
2Gives you 12000 BIO...
3
4Star Control ][ cheat has gone resident...

Thereafter starting the game, nothing happens. I assume this is due to the disk not being accessed. How can I trigger this deliberately?

Reply 1 of 6, by Dominus

Posted on 2016-01-23, 08:06

Dominus Offline

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Try ctrl-f4. This rereads the contents of the mounted folders and might work, though I doubt it does ;(

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Reply 2 of 6, by Tiltowait

Posted on 2016-01-23, 08:14

Tiltowait Offline

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Yeah, forgot to mention I already tried it.

Reply 3 of 6, by Dominus

Posted on 2016-01-23, 08:27

Dominus Offline

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Sorry then! I have no other idea ;(

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Reply 4 of 6, by Malvineous

Posted on 2016-01-23, 10:29

Malvineous Offline

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The game should read and write from the disk as per normal, so the only reason I can think of that it's not working is because a very low-level interrupt is being hooked and DOSBox doesn't use that.

If this is the case, you'd have to boot a real DOS installation inside DOSBox and run the game from in there. That will cause all disk reads/writes to go all the way down to the BIOS sector read/write functions, just like on a real machine. (I'm only assuming this doesn't happen normally in DOSBox for simplicity - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

Reply 5 of 6, by Tiltowait

Posted on 2016-01-23, 11:59

Tiltowait Offline

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Yes, hooking itself to an interrupt was how a lot of the TSR programs worked. There is no way to trigger this in DOSbox?

Reply 6 of 6, by Dominus

Posted on 2016-01-23, 12:18

Dominus Offline

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As Malvineous writes, it is likely to work IN DOSBox if you use a hd image and boot from that. A little more work but doable. There is a guide on that in the dosbox guides forum

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

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