Great, but I suppose there is no easy way to incorporate the patch into the DOSBox binary.

You'd have a to build a new binary from the patched source, which isn't difficult.

Qbix just commited the patch to CVS tonight, so it'll show up in the next CVS builds that are released. It probably won't be too long before a new official version of DOSBox is released, too. I'm looking forward to it 😀

You and I both. This will be the first release that has disk mounting (For my Defender of the Crown issue from long ago), and Tandy Graphics working correctly (For Thexder and other titles).

I been jumping between two versions for the longest (Newer for the disk mounting, older version for Tandy graphics). It will be great to use one version for everything.

-Trebor

Now that you mention it, is there anywhere a "Defender of the Crown" version that actually works with tandy? Other threads suggest that the problem is a cracked version, unfortunately even the official freely downloadable version seems to have that problem. I'd love to play it with tandy sound instead of speaker...

I have two different "Defender of the crown" versions:

1) An original booter version (CGA/EGA/Tandy). Nasty to get running, but I managed to make a BIN image loadable under DOSBox.

2) And standalone version (CGA/EGA/Tandy). I think I got it from Underdogs.

I think Tandy lockup would occur on both versions but it has been a long time since I last tried.

Yeah, the underdogs version is the one that's officially downloadable as well, and that's avialable anywhere else. (checked with md5 sums). I'd love to have a tandy-working version, however...

Has anyone verified that it's actually a problem with that version of the game and not DOSBox itself? You might be on a wild-goose chase.

Read the old threads about it... they strongly suggest it's an issue with that version of DotC, and that some people have a working version.

Kippesoep wrote:

The proper fix for this, though, should not be to change the working of an internal port for this. Best way is propably to reimplement the INT10 functions not to work the ports, but set the palette directly through VGA_ATTR_SetPalette.

As an INT 10h call would change the registers, the code need to do this as well. Otherwise you'd get wrong register reads.

JAL

It was using the wrong registers (which don't even exist on a Tandy system), so it doesn't matter. As I said: changing the workings of an internal port is bad.

Anyway, the patch fixes it in the proper way, by mapping to the correct registers.

Concerning Defender of the Crown: The widely available version, the "verified" good verson, the TOSEC set version, the available at Cinemaware home page version, the Home of the Underdogs version, and almost ever other version out there has the Tandy mode broke/corrupt.

Basically to work around the copy protection and/or the autoboot (For whatever version you may have obtained - I believe there are two very popular versions distributed by many sites/parties and a third version), they broke the Tandy mode of the game.

I was fortunate enough to "obtain" a disk image of an original copy of the game. An unmodified versions works perfectly as a boot image under DOS Box in Tandy Mode (As of version 0.63).

Hopefully, someone may crack/modify the game without breaking the Tandy mode someday. However, sadly, what is and has been distributed and approved by many sites is a "broke" version of the game (At least when it comes to the Tandy support).

All hope is not lost though. Case in point, "Spelunker !" version for *years* was said to be a good dump for the NES. It was not until mid-late 2001 that they discovered it was an incorrect dump of the game and it was redumped. Unfortunately though, there is probably not as strong of a following for: "Defender in the Crown" PLUS "Working in Tandy Mode" PLUS "Non-Autoboot". But you never know....

Anyway, DOS Box is fine when it comes to Defender of the Crown. It works as it should. If you are able to make a boot image from the original diskettes, or obtain one, the game works perfectly. Here's the autoexec.bat portion of a conf file that I use to make DOC work with the boot image i have obtained:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount c d:\box\dcrown
c:
boot defender.img

Of course, you want to make sure you ensure you're working from a Tandy Machine:

[dosbox]
machine=tandy
captures=capture
memsize=16

-Trebor

P.S . See here...
Defender of the Crown *still* crashes in Tandy mode (0.62)
...for all the juicy details. Some good loader tips for The 3 Stooges too!