I suspect it's a regional thing. Do you have COUNTRY.SYS in your config.sys, or a command like MODE or CHCP in your autoexec.bat ?

here is pic of my config.sys file and autoexec.bat file

So the answer is "yes".

Comment out the MODE lines in your autoexec.bat (just put a semicolon at the start of the line), as well as the COUNTRY line in your config.sys. That ought to fix it.

I done that now and try it again and sorry it hasn't worked still same issues

Are you running Windows while you are trying to run the game? If so, then you should exit windows (or "restart in MS-DOS mode").

If all else fails, you can try changing the MODE and COUNTRY lines to match US English. I do not use these commands very often, but there is ample documentation for them online.

make these changes:

CONFIG.SYS
;COUNTRY=044 etc etc
;DEVICEHIGH /L:1,15792 =C:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS etc etc

AUTOEXEC.BAT
put REM at the begining of the last 3 lines

reboot and report back

no I not using windows when playing the this, I am using dos 6.22

and those change with the ; at start of the lines in config.sys and rem at start of lines in autoexec.bat has fixed and worked

thanks for help 😀

what different did that do out of curiosity and would that affect anything else like other games or windows 3.11

Those devices/programs manipulate display characters and any program using standard fonts will display them wrong. Like this game.

I'm glad solution was found 😀

Is a semicolon not the same as REM in a batch file? I guess it's been too long.

The changes might affect word processors or other productivity programs. If you are only running games, you probably have nothing to worry about.

ok didn't know that, I am new to dos since I grew up from the tail end of window 95 era and into windows 98 onwards

ok kl Jorpho my Pentium 1 machine is for dos/windows 3.11 and dual booted with windows 95 games mainly

Robhalfordfan wrote:

what different did that do out of curiosity and would that affect anything else like other games or windows 3.11

The following technical explanation is courtesy of Mr. Halford himself:

The sinner here is DISPLAY.SYS, which (in your case) reuses the upper half of the ASCII table for the UK regional code-page. The modified characters don't go away even in graphics mode, since it acts like a watchful sentinel and re-instates this codepage whenever there's an INT 10 video mode change. So you're basically locked in to a different 8x8 system font.

Now, Pharaoh's Tomb is being a bit of a cheater in how it displays stuff - it messes with the same extended ASCII table to get its different fonts (plus various little bits of graphics). That's why you were getting a raw deal there: all looks good on the main menu, but you've got another thing coming - it resets the video mode as soon as you start a game. That's when the never-satisfied DISPLAY.SYS goes running wild, and sets the font right back.

So the way this game does things is just a bit reckless, even if it isn't really breaking the law; it was simply designed in the US, without considering that some international users may be left out in the cold. So to answer your question, yes, any other game that uses this method could be a victim of changes. That's pretty rare however, so most run of the mill games/software won't be affected.

...hey, don't shoot the messenger. 😁

thanks for the info

love the judas priest references - am I also a massive fan of them and rob halford too 🤣

"Random funny thing" corner:

I wanted to verify that I wasn't just talking out of my ass up there, so I had a look at what exactly the game was doing... and this is the data that is referenced by the 8x8 font pointer (while on the main menu):

Made me kinda curious about what "Donald L. Pavia" has to do with Pharaoh's Tomb, and why his address is in there, so I looked around a little bit. And sure enough, at least that one font is directly ripped from a 1986 release "Alphabet Games", part of a "Kidgames" compilation by Donald L. Pavia. Or possibly from something else by the same author (with the same font)... smooth move, George Broussa(r)d. 🤣

ok kl and was that normal thing then

and I found out that only the to put the ; infront is display.sys line in config.sys and it works

trying to make bat file that does that automatically does that when game loads and automatically removes the ; when games exits

dos 6.22 - bat file help