I've never noticed that problem with Syndicate or American Revolt. What release of DOSBox are you using?

DOSBox must be restarted for some altered settings to take effect; the machine= setting being a more significant example than the memsize= setting. In SVN you can use a "config -writeconf -r" command to restart DOSBox without exiting, and changes to the machine= or memsize= settings will go into effect after the restart, but note that this updates the settings in the conf file.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

DOSBox must be restarted for some altered settings to take effect; the machine= setting being a more significant example than the memsize= setting. In SVN you can use a "config -writeconf -r" command to restart DOSBox without exiting, and changes to the machine= or memsize= settings will go into effect after the restart, but note that this updates the settings in the conf file.

So you're saying that from within DOSBox I can change the memsize and have the emulator automatically restart with the new setting saved to the .conf? But this feature is only available in an SVN build? Which one?

Not automatically, you have to use the command mentioned to save settings and restart. I am certain that it works with a vanilla SVN build, but it should also work in others provided they have incorporated the feature.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

Not automatically, you have to use the command mentioned to save settings and restart. I am certain that it works with a vanilla SVN build, but it should also work in others provided they have incorporated the feature.

SO would I do it like this?

memsize=16
config -writeconfig xxxxx.conf -r

And this doesn't work with regular official DOSBox, right? I have no experience with SVNs...in fact I didn't even know that was a thing until you mentioned it and I looked it up. Do SVN builds maintain all the features of the official DOSBox and just add more? Or are they known for adding new stuff while mucking up some existing functions?

The -writeconf option is in 0.74 and SVN, but the -r option to restart is only in SVN. I mentioned -writeconf because if you don't write out the settings then any changes you made to them from the prompt will be lost in the restart.

See here for info about SVN builds: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/SVN_Builds

ripsaw8080 wrote:

The -writeconf option is in 0.74 and SVN, but the -r option to restart is only in SVN. I mentioned -writeconf because if you don't write out the settings then any changes you made to them from the prompt will be lost in the restart.

See here for info about SVN builds: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/SVN_Builds

Thanks for the info. I will have to play with some SVNs and see what I can do. I hope the feature you refer to is incorporated in the next official release of DOSBox as I much prefer to use the an official release over one that's just been tinkered with.

Thanks again!

"Syndicate" behaves strangely with more than 8 Mb. RAM. It already did on DOS. I rembmer having more available RAM would cause the game to crash every couple of stages or so.

I think I replicated the issue with the CD-ROM version as well, the one that has the "American Revolt" expansion embedded.

Something weird is going on there, then. I have Syndicate on my physical machine (S7, 64MB RAM), and I've secured entire continents in single runs. I know it can be more stable than what you're seeing.

Could be the XMS / EMS settings?

Seems doubtful. This is with EMM386, JEMM386, XMS, XMS+EMS. Seems pretty immune to changes.