Now I only have experience with this game in DosBOX but I noticed the game (and indeed the sound system it uses) really freaks out when you have more than 11 MB of free memory.

Try reducing the amount of memory usable?

Are there any tools you recommend for doing that? Thus far, I've been able to limit available EMS using EMM386 (I've tried going as low as 4096, though 16000/16384 are the most commonly suggested) and allocate the remaining XMS to a ramdisk using XMSDSK. Neither has been able to fix the sound problem. It has occurred to me to try to find a way to limit the overall physical memory DOS sees, but I'm not sure how I'd go about doing that.

You can try using CPUCACHE.COM or SetMul to disable L2 cache, it somtimes help getting the sound right on faster machines. AFAIK you can't disable L1 cache on Pentium 4.

SetMul

CPUCACHE.COM - Homepage

Edit: You can also try out Throttle which can slow the Pentium 4 even further down.

I tried CPUCACHE and SetMul, though both crashed when I tried using them with EMM386 so I've switched to JEMMEX for the time being. I've also physically removed three of the RAM sticks in the computer, which brings the overall RAM down do a slightly more manageable 1 GB. This at least keeps XMSDSK from freaking out when I try to allocate a ~1GB RAMdrive, but the sound problem remains.

Here's my updated AUTOEXEC and CONFIG. Let me know as always if you need any other information, like MEM reports or whatever.

AUTOEXEC.BAT

1@ECHO OFF
2PROMPT $p$g
3PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS
4SET TEMP=C:\DOS
5SET INIFILEDIR=C:\AU30DOS
6
7REM LH C:\SLOWDOWN\CPUCACHE.COM D
8LH C:\SETMUL\SETMUL.EXE L1D
9
10C:\XMSDSK\XMSDSK.EXE R: 1023808 /y /t
11
12C:\AU30DOS\AU30DOS.COM
13SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
14
15REM     CD-ROM device drivers
16LH C:\DOS\SHSUCDX.COM /D:mscd001 /L:E
17
18REM     Mousie drivers
19LH C:\DOS\CTMOUSE.EXE

CONFIG.SYS

1DEVICE=C:\JEMM575B\JEMMEX.EXE 16000 I=B000-B7FF NOVME /V
2DEVICE=C:\XMSDSK\SETXMSTO.EXE 1040192
3
4BUFFERS=40,0
5FILES=100
6DOS=UMB
7LASTDRIVE=Z
8FCBS=4,0
9
10DOS=HIGH
11
12DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\XCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001
13
14BREAK=ON
15
16STACKS=9,256
17SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS /P
18
19DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS

I just recently played through Privateer on my Pentium MS-DOS PC. I believe Origin requires EMM386 and I just limited the EMS to 4MB:
c:\dos\emm386.exe 4096
and it ran fine.

I reverted to using EMM386 with 4MB of EMS, which I had tried before a few times but never with 3/4 of my RAM removed. I hoped this would make the difference, but of course it doesn't, irrespective of whether or not I use XMSDSK. (On an unrelated note, Rogue of all things is suddenly freezing every time I try to play it, which doesn't make much sense to me.)

I use HIMEMX and JEMM386 (with the NOVME flag) to run Privateer. Works like a charm.

gdjacobs wrote:

I use HIMEMX and JEMM386 (with the NOVME flag) to run Privateer. Works like a charm.

Do you use XMSDSK with that, or the /MAX flag with HIMEMX? I'm working through this option now but I'm still getting the same scraping sound effects.

Could it be something to do with the sound card? Or am I just not configuring my memory managers correctly? 😜

I have used the MAX flag on an AM2 system, so I can confirm that works well.

What chipset does your motherboard have?

If I'm reading this right, it's an Intel 915G/P/GV of some sort. I may be able to get more specific than that if you need.

This is a P4, why not just use DOSBox to play the game?

derSammler wrote:

This is a P4, why not just use DOSBox to play the game?

Heh of course that's an option, but it's always more fun trying to do this the hard way. 😜

You may be able to use a Yamaha PCI card with DSDMA instead, but the Intel 9xx series chipsets aren't great with DOS.