What computer are you using? What is your game port? You mention Windows, are you playing the Kilarathi Saga?

philscomputerlab wrote:

What computer are you using? What is your game port? You mention Windows, are you playing the Kilarathi Saga?

Hello! Actually the computer is based on your retro PC tutorial video! It is an AMD K6 III+. Is Wing Commander 1 (GOG version), and lowering the CPU speed actually makes it playable, the arcade game at least, because as I said before it crashes when you are set off to start a mission in Windows 98.

The game port is 201h

1. As as mentioned earlier, double-check the port for speed-sensitiveness and possible conflict (another joy port? misdetection?)
2. Try a few general or soundcard (port card)-specific calibration utilities, for example:

http://www.oldskool.org/pc/joycalib

Try shutting down into MS-DOS mode and load the game from there.

jolurove wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

What computer are you using? What is your game port? You mention Windows, are you playing the Kilarathi Saga?

Hello! Actually the computer is based on your retro PC tutorial video! It is an AMD K6 III+. Is Wing Commander 1 (GOG version), and lowering the CPU speed actually makes it playable, the arcade game at least, because as I said before it crashes when you are set off to start a mission in Windows 98.

The game port is 201h

Wing Commander 1 is VERY speed sensitive. I originally played this on a 386-33MHz, played perfectly. It was unplayable on a Pentium II 400MHz even booting into Windows 98 DOS mode. Your K6 III+ rig is definitely too fast to play WC without some kind of slowdown utility. Maybe someone here can recommend a good one, I haven't had much luck with them. You're probably better off just running it on DOSBOX (isn't the GOG version Wing Commander + DOSBOX?).

I have cpu core=386_slow and cycles=6000 for WC in DOSBOX.

If you can get it to run successfully without DOSBOX let us know.

AFAIK the K6 III+ can cut it nice, provided the OP disables both L1 and L2 caches.

You can use SETMUL for further fine tuning by adjusting the K6-III+ clock multiplier in software.

Norton Commander wrote:

Wing Commander 1 is VERY speed sensitive. I originally played this on a 386-33MHz, played perfectly. It was unplayable on a Pe […]
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jolurove wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

What computer are you using? What is your game port? You mention Windows, are you playing the Kilarathi Saga?

Hello! Actually the computer is based on your retro PC tutorial video! It is an AMD K6 III+. Is Wing Commander 1 (GOG version), and lowering the CPU speed actually makes it playable, the arcade game at least, because as I said before it crashes when you are set off to start a mission in Windows 98.

The game port is 201h

Wing Commander 1 is VERY speed sensitive. I originally played this on a 386-33MHz, played perfectly. It was unplayable on a Pentium II 400MHz even booting into Windows 98 DOS mode. Your K6 III+ rig is definitely too fast to play WC without some kind of slowdown utility. Maybe someone here can recommend a good one, I haven't had much luck with them. You're probably better off just running it on DOSBOX (isn't the GOG version Wing Commander + DOSBOX?).

I have cpu core=386_slow and cycles=6000 for WC in DOSBOX.

If you can get it to run successfully without DOSBOX let us know.

Running it in DOSBox is boring 🙁 But seriously though, as others have mentioned, the K6-III+ is very handy in that you can actually lower the clock of the CPU without any "slowing" software. You set the multiplier at 2, and turn off the L1 and L2 cache and you get a 386 😁. The game itself runs perfectly, I can play it with the keyboard with no issues whatsoever, the problem comes when I try to play it with a joystick.

I'll try that calibration tool recommended above and will report back.

I installed another sound card. A SB16, and now the joystick is not even detected. I think I'm missing something in the sound card though.

I played WC1 using a joystick on a K6-3+ with no problems, as previously mentioned L1 and L2 disabled and 2x multiplier.
DOS 7.0, original floppy release of WC1, AWE64 Gold and Gravis analog joystick. Maybe try a different sound card and/or joystick.

I tried a different joystick (Microsoft SideWinder Standard) with the same result. And I couldn't get the joystick port on my Sound Blaster 16 to work under DOS, so there's that.
Anyway, I found somwhere in a support page that some games may have problems detecting the correct position of the joystick because the CPU is too fast, which I thought I had solved with Setmul, but then it said that the AT bus clock AKA ISA bus may be too fast, so I set it to the lowest my motherboard allows and still getting the same results. Maybe this computer really IS too fast for wing commander 🙁

Sorry for bumping up this old thread. But I made some interesting discoveries today that may be of interest.

As stated before I wasn't able to get a joystick to work correctly with wing commander. I tried different sound cards, different joysticks, different CPUs, RAM, hard drives... you name it, but there was one variable that never changed, and that was the OS. I was always running it in Win 98SE "Pure" DOS mode. So today I tried installing DOS 6.22 on a K6 266 machine, and guess what? Everything works perfectly. I just turned off the caches, and off I went.

I also noticed that a bug with the mouse in Descent, in which my weapons fired randomly and sometimes the mouse froze for a few seconds dissapeared.

What I'm saying is, that maybe there maybe are some compatibility issues with DOS 7. Maybe it's not the be all end all of our DOS needs.

Anyway, just wanted to point that out.

Peace.

IMO there must have been something else going on because I haven't experiences Wing Commander joystick issues with MS-DOS Mode and I test all sorts of hardware 😀

But it's working for you now, so that's a great outcome.

Note that for DOS games and software on old hardware the proper forum is "Marvin, the Paranoid Android" > "Software"