SOLVED Star Control 1 - can it be played on a 486? Yes it can \ VOGONS

SOLVED Star Control 1 - can it be played on a 486? Yes it can

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First post, by dekkit

Posted on 2023-03-05, 13:58

dekkit Offline

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Firstly great game, works wonderfully on dosbox emulator BUT I'm keen to get it running on an old 486 dx2 - 66mhz hardware.

Ive tried slowing it down with setmul (disabling L1 cache...brings it down to 386 speeds).

Also messing with the game runtime switches (/S and /G to change sound and graphic options)

Yet it still crashes everytime.

I can see its on the list of speed sensitive games, so before I give up... has anyone successfully gotten it work on original 386 / 486 hardware? Or is that still too fast?

If you have managed to get it running - what specs were you running on and what did you disable / change in your config.sys etc etc

If you haven't played it highly recommend playing the melee mode.

Note: star control 2 seems to load fine.

Updated
See below for resolution - ended up being a video/ soundcard issue

Last edited by dekkit on 2023-03-06, 05:46. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 5, by Shponglefan

Posted on 2023-03-05, 16:41

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I have a 486 DX2-66 and can run Star Control.

The only issue I do have is I can't seem to get Adlib sound working (I'm using a GUS Extreme). But it does work with MT32 or PC Speaker sound.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 2 of 5, by Jo22

Posted on 2023-03-05, 16:48

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I think the same, but..

Smooth game play is highly subjective.
For example: Back in the 90s, we found 15 to 20 fps to be playable and an upgrade from 8 fps.
Nowadays, everything below 30 or 60 fps is considered to be unbearable.

Personally, I think that such questions cannot be answered these days anymore.
Their time is simply over, too many different generations with different standards.
Everyone should instead watch YT videos or try emulators like PCem/86Box and judge himself/herself/thyself.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 3 of 5, by konc

Posted on 2023-03-05, 16:54

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Absolutely, on 386DX/40 and 486DX4/100 it works fine, the same back in the days on similar machines in the neighborhood. Nothing special in config/autoexec, just a the common configuration without the need for changes for it to work. So most probably it's a quirk/weird incompatibility with the specific PC, I'd try bypassing config/autoexec first of all.

Reply 4 of 5, by dekkit

Posted on 2023-03-05, 22:27

dekkit Offline

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Thanks, leaning towards weird quirky pc (likely its due to its embedded crappy video card) so I'll try messing further with it.

Thanks for answering and confirming.

Reply 5 of 5, by dekkit

Posted on 2023-03-06, 05:44

dekkit Offline

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With motivation to mess round further with config.sys and autoexec.bat... Its now working.

Issue(s):
Ess soundcard (possibly due it being on irq 7?)

Solution:
- Disabled the sound card initialization of my ess soundcard in autoexec.bat
- forced graphic mode cga (which then looks to have reverted back to vga or ega
To do this I ran "Starcontrol /G:CGA"
- not needed, just a sound card issue

PC speaker audio is pretty decent and how I remember it.

So very pleased. Can prob tinker further but this will do for now.

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