dunno I use core normal and played for half an hour.

Yesterday i was often getting "Exit to error: PIC: Unhandled command 81" just while walking at the beginning.

oh, and i run the game with sound balster:
7cities -s

Robertmo is having the same error I am. I usually can't make it from the starting point to the end of the pier.

I tried with core=normal and with/without sound with no change. I also disabled EMS and XMS. If I pick the historical campaign it appears to last a bit longer on average, but I haven't measured that scientifically.

Here's my setup in case anyone was dying to know:
Motherboard: Unknown (it's an Intel chipset)
CPU: Pentium 4 2.6GHz
RAM: 512 MB DDR2600
Video: Geforce 6800, 128MB
Sound: Soublaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
OS: Win XP Home (SP2)

I've been running Dosbox in windowed mode lately with overlay output mode (I also tried surface).

well I added command 80 to the switch for 7cog
unfortunately it somehow (according to your reports) does an 81 as well.
a bit odd as it doesn't happen at my place....
any way the whole idea of 80 is wrong. (it's the 8 that counts not the 0)
so it will be changed in a way that the 0 are ignored in the future version of dosbox.....

For now save often 😉

Well basically 81 can happen if IRQ0 is requested
(PIC_ActivateIRQ) within an IRQ1 (that is in the very
short time between IRQ1 is run and port20 is read).

Anyways their keyboard handler doesn't look like
they knew what they were doing 🙁

wd

Keyboard handler? Hey this thing actually works if I use the joystick for movement! That must be why others have reported no problems. Thanks guys!

Using a joystick is a clever workaround 😀
Does sailing work continuously or does the ship stop
every now and then for a moment (as it is when using
the keyboard)?

wd (not having a joystick)

Joystick doesn't help with that problem.

Well actually it DOES, as this means it has nothing
to do with the odd 80/81 to the pic (if i got you right).

Thx for testing!

wd