First post, by DSS
I've been able to successfully use DOSBox for a variety of games in the past, but I dusted off my old TIE Fighter CDROM (the original one, not the Windows 95 one) to see if I could get things up and running. Within DOSBox, the game installed fine and I was able to set up the sound without a problem using General MIDI for music and Sound Blaster 16 for digital sound. But when I go to launch the game itself, after the DOS4GW prompt is displayed I get this crash:
The text is significantly larger than usual (the cropping is exactly how it is displayed) and I cannot type anything in the prompt. I must exit out of DOSBox entirely after this point. No error message is displayed in the DOSBox Status Window.
This always happens 100% of the time and appears to be a memory-related error. The only time it does not happen is when I disable XMS, at which I am prompted with "VESA BIOS not detected. Hires mode may be unavailable. Do you wish to run Univbe to emulate VESA BIOS?" If I say yes, it tells me "Attempt to emulate VESA BIOS failed" then displays the error "DOS\16M error: [40] not enough available extended memory (XMIN)". This makes sense considering that I've disabled XMS. But if I enable it, I get the crash regardless of whether EMS or UMB are enabled or not. I normally use a CVS build of DOSBox 0.72, but I have also tried the standard version of DOSBox 0.72 and gotten the same result. I generally set my available RAM to 38, though I have lowered it to more traditional values such as 32 and 16 to see if it would help matters. It made no difference.
Yes, I have read the README. I have also read several various guides to getting TIE Fighter Collector's CDROM Edition up and running in DOSBox such as this one and this one. Before I list my dosbox.conf file, here's my system specs:
# Motherboard - ABIT IP35-Pro
# Processor type and speed - Intel Core 2 Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz
# Amount and type of RAM - 2 GB DDR2 Corsair XMS2
# Video board w/ RAM amount and type - Geforce 8800GT w/512 MB RAM
# Sound board - Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
# Operating system - Windows XP Pro SP2
# Game name (and version, if applicable)
# Video mode - I have tried both ddraw and overlay, with no change
Now, my dosbox.conf file. I'm removing the parts commented out in the interest of post brevity:
[sdl]
fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=ddraw
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
pixelshader=none
usescancodes=true
overscan=0
[dosbox]
language=
machine=vga
captures=capture
memsize=38
[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=normal2x
[vsync]
vsyncmode=on
vsyncrate=60
[cpu]
core=auto
cycles=auto
cycleup=500
cycledown=20
timesynched=false
[vga]
svgachipset=s3
videoram=2048
[mixer]
nosound=false
rate=44100
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10
[printer]
printer=true
docpath=.
dpi=360
width=85
height=110
printoutput=ps
multipage=false
[midi]
mpu401=intelligent
device=default
mt32rate=44100
config=
[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=44100
[gus]
gus=true
gusrate=44100
gusbase=240
irq1=5
irq2=5
dma1=3
dma2=3
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND
[innova]
innova=false
samplerate=22050
sidbase=280
quality=0
[speaker]
pcspeaker=true
pcrate=22050
tandy=auto
tandyrate=22050
disney=true
[joystick]
joysticktype=auto
timed=true
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=true
[serial]
serial1=dummy
serial2=dummy
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled
[glide]
glide=false
[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
automount=true
keyboardlayout=none
[ipx]
ipx=true
[autoexec]
mount d j:\ -t cdrom
mount c f:\dosbox
c:
Any help would be appreciated. I know that TIE Fighter is very popular among the DOSBox crowd, so hopefully someone else out there has encountered this issue. I'll worry about whether or not I should set the joystick timing to false after I can actually start the game.
The weirdest thing? X-Wing Collector's CDROM Edition starts up just fine! Crashes as soon as I press a joystick button if I fullscreen the display, but I can worry about that later.