IRQ conflict most likely. Try using a different IRQ for the sound card.

Xs1nX wrote:

Hi all, […]
Show full quote

Hi all,

Having an issue whereby Doom is hard resetting the system when I press fire once I am in the game. As soon as i hit Control it hard reboots. Game runs fine in the demo loop in the menu however.

System is a 386DX40 w/4MB Ram, Soundcard is a Aztech Multimedia Pro 16 IIB.

I'm not sure but I don't think it hard locks when I have sound disabled, also same thing happens in Wolf3D strangely enough.. press fire and a hard reset.

Try other games, if the issue happens with digital sounds in all games it's probably an IRQ or DMA conflict. It may have to do with memory not playing well with board's DMA..

What soundcard do you use? and what settings?
Are you using a memory manager?

For best compatibility with old games, I'd suggest IO:220, IRQ:7 and DMA:1 assuming you use a soundblaster-type card.
Just be sure your LPT1 port is disabled or assigned to a different IRQ.

Cheers

So i have tried every single combination I can think of of DMA/IRQ and PORT and all lead to the same problem happening, at some point Doom is gonna freeze up and/or hard reset the system.

Really frustrating.

tpowell.ca wrote:

What soundcard do you use? and what settings?
Are you using a memory manager?

Soundcard is a Aztech Multimedia Pro 16 IIB
No Im not using anything but the bare minimum in config.sys and autoexec.bat to get Doom to run. Which is basicly just sound setup stuff.

I worked tech support for a game company during that time period. There were 3 major reasons when someone called that was usually why they were having a problem with our products.

1. They were running a dos overlay of some sort. It was trendy about that time and every company had their own version of it. All of them caused more problems than they solved.
2. They had a video card with 2MB RAM or greater.
3. By far the most common, They were running an Aztech sound card.

I know there is a guy on here that swears Aztech makes good cards but the ones during the Doom/Doom 2 time period were a major source of problems. Anyways, maybe the Aztech guy is around here to give you a hand.

Shagittarius wrote:

I worked tech support for a game company during that time period. There were 3 major reasons when someone called that was usual […]
Show full quote

I worked tech support for a game company during that time period. There were 3 major reasons when someone called that was usually why they were having a problem with our products.

1. They were running a dos overlay of some sort. It was trendy about that time and every company had their own version of it. All of them caused more problems than they solved.
2. They had a video card with 2MB RAM or greater.
3. By far the most common, They were running an Aztech sound card.

I know there is a guy on here that swears Aztech makes good cards but the ones during the Doom/Doom 2 time period were a major source of problems. Anyways, maybe the Aztech guy is around here to give you a hand.

Interesting statistics... what was wrong with a 2MB vga? badly written software? Did you ever get any explanation/clue at the time?
I had no idea about Aztech cards, good to know.

Shagittarius wrote:

1. They were running a dos overlay of some sort. It was trendy about that time and every company had their own version of it. All of them caused more problems than they solved.

I am running a Drive Overlay, namely Ontrack Disk Manager..

Nah Disk Manager should not cause this I've ran it for years without such issues. Have you tried removing your soundcard completely?

I had Doom running without sound very briefly before I put the Aztec in there and it ran fine.

keropi wrote:

Shagittarius wrote:

I worked tech support for a game company during that time period. There were 3 major reasons when someone called that was usual […]
Show full quote

I worked tech support for a game company during that time period. There were 3 major reasons when someone called that was usually why they were having a problem with our products.

1. They were running a dos overlay of some sort. It was trendy about that time and every company had their own version of it. All of them caused more problems than they solved.
2. They had a video card with 2MB RAM or greater.
3. By far the most common, They were running an Aztech sound card.

I know there is a guy on here that swears Aztech makes good cards but the ones during the Doom/Doom 2 time period were a major source of problems. Anyways, maybe the Aztech guy is around here to give you a hand.

Interesting statistics... what was wrong with a 2MB vga? badly written software? Did you ever get any explanation/clue at the time?
I had no idea about Aztech cards, good to know.

Haha, yes bad software, this was about Air Warrior SVGA, or at least whatever the current version was at the time. Whenever we got an Air Warrior call it was usually because someone had one of those new-fangled Diamond Stealth cards with the whopping 2MB Ram. I believe Diamond Stealth is the correct card for the time period. 2MB was definitely not standard at that time and I'm sure other games had issues as well but ours definitely did. Usually the people who called were satisfied to hear that they couldn't run the game because their video card was "Too Good". Given the option to downgrade or return the game to the store, since no patch was incoming, they usually returned the game.

Ok so this may not be sound related after all,

Just ran Doom with no soundcard and a blank config.sys and autoexec.bat and same issues as it happens.

@Shagittarius
thanks for the info, interesting again

@Xs1nX
well check your ram and cache could be a faulty region in them... it might worth to check your PSU as well
could also be your BIOS settings, too low timings that the current ram/cache can't handle

How would i Check RAM on this ? memtest does not work.

^ old versions work, experiment a little and you'll find one. IIRC it was 2xx that still worked on old systems

edit:
yep, 2.01

keropi wrote:

^ old versions work, experiment a little and you'll find one. IIRC it was 2xx that still worked on old systems […]
Show full quote

^ old versions work, experiment a little and you'll find one. IIRC it was 2xx that still worked on old systems

edit:
yep, 2.01

Got a link to the 2.01 floppy image ? i cant find it.

THIS -->

Xs1nX wrote:

Got a link to the 2.01 floppy image ? i cant find it.

Please 😎

It's right there on the first page of the official site guys, unusually easy to find (most times old versions are buried).
Do you still need a link for that?