Oh, I should say:

This is being run on a Mac (PowerBook G4 1.25 gHz, as if that's going to help anyone) with 1.25 gigs of RAM, and Mac OS X 10.3.8.

The version of DOSBox is 0.63.

I have tried using 'loadfix' but that seems to do basically the exact same thing as just running the 'start.exe' program once.

I have not tried disabling extended and/or expanded memory, because I don't have a good model of what the dosbox.conf file should look like nor where it should be put in the Mac world. I'll see if I can figure that out and try it.

The crash "Program too large" is IMHO not only problem of DOS-Box. The same error messages will be shown on real 386-machines, too.

The reason is, that the ANSI.SYS-Driver MUST be loaded with CONFIG.SYS. Otherwise the program will crash.

I haven't found anything in the profile editor to change settings of CONFIG.SYS. At the moment, it is not possible to start Shard of Spring with DOS-Box.

Perhaps the developer-team could have a look for this to fix it.

Another important information to this programm: If installed on HD, disk1 must always be present in the floppy, otherwise the program won't run.

You can also get this error message with a corrupted executable.

My version runs fine with an old 386SX, so I can exclude a currupted executive.

Will TSR ANSI drivers work, such as NNANSI.COM?

Not apparently. I just tried and it gave me the same error, with nnansi.com loaded.

Of course, it could be that I have a corrupted executable. I can't exactly find out, because, although I do still have a copy, it's on 5.25" diskettes, and I don't even have a 3.5" drive in the house, let alone a 5.25"...

-fred

Have you tried using LOADFIX (just a shot in the dark)?

As I mentioned in the second message on here, I did try loadfix.

-fred

Have you tried playing with XMS, EMS, and core settings in DOSBox? You might also try booting an actual MS-DOS (or FreeDOS or PC-DOS or whatever) version as well.

Are there any other executables or batch files included with the game?

Have you tried getting it from somewhere else in case it's corrupted?

Have you looked for patches (try dlh.net) for the game?

I have been tinkering with HOTU version. The executables are weird, very weird indeed. Programmed with Quick Basic (thanks WD for correction). Some of them have NEGATIVE OVERLAYS.... 😳 😳 😳

Anyway, forget about START.EXE

Just run the game using MENU.EXE

Have fun! 😁

They use a unusual memory allocation strategy (works
like a stack using dos calls), and the memory resize
function of dosbox does not expect this.

Further the game needs to be started from c: (directory
does not matter it seems, but drive).

wd

Visual Basic? It seems pretty unlikely, given that the game was released in 1987, doesn't it? 😉

As for Menu, I'll try it when i get home.

-fred

Oddly, there were DOS versions of VB in the beginning. I had forgotten about them until this thread came up. 1987 seems a bit old though - I don't think even QuickBasic was around then.

It's compiled with QuickBasic.

Somehow I mistyped Visual Basic for Quick Basic. Thanks for the correction, guys. 😁