Originally posted by akira07 however ... when i tried to run wing commander privateer ... i get a memory error.

When you built this did you run any kinds of diagnostics on the memory to confirm that it's still good?

... mentioning about JEMM and listing a memory address(i think) at D000-EFFF.

Are you sure that is JEMM? Not QEMM?

I tried running the game with 8MB EMS and 580 conventional and it have this problem.

Presuming this meets the minimum requirements, I don't know why it would refuse to run. You're not trying to run it within Windows are you?
That you cannot do. You must run it at the DOS level.

- the memory work fine i think cos it also complete the memory test

- its is JEMM i believe...

- and i run it from pure dos ... without using doublespace and just loading the basic config from config.sys and autoexec.bat

Double-check that JEMM thing. That doesn't sound right. I did a search in Google for JEMM memory manager and didn't find anything about such a program.

QEMM is evil and you shouldn't use it. Period. (Aren't I helpful? 😉)

Find a more thorough memory scanner/checker. POST doesn't really check the memory that well, and turning "fast" POST on skips the check altogether (it just looks to see if it actually exists).

http://www.memtest86.com/

he he, I was just about to enter thaz link myself. Memtest86 is great.
It soved one of the mysteries of my computer when I thought my HD was going bust. Turned out one of my RAM sticks was bad and was doing all kind of weird stuff to my PC...
The downside is that I'm now only running 256 MB and at times I really do notice that...

JEMM is just the freaky memory manager/dos extender privateer uses.

i posted a post regarding this game a few days back and i managed to narrow down the problem ... please kindly see if you can help ...

i assembled a PII 166MHz computer just to run this game ... however when i tried to run the game i get a msg "ERROR CODE: D002-DFFF .... JEMM unloaded" ... i found a old post in one of the forum and discovered it is a sound problem.

Therefore, i disabled the sound but playing the game without any sound make the game less appealing ... therefore i am seeking your help. Thanx in advance.

General Info:

CPU : PII 166MHz
OS : Win98SE
Memory : 64 MB
Sound Card : Built-in (integrated with mainboard)

Note (Methods tried):
- I know the game must be run in PUREDOS and i am using a boot disk specially written for this game with only the required elements loaded.

- I have also loaded my sound drivers for DOS which has a Sound Blaster Emulation cos i can auto-detect Sound Blaster(and PRO) using some other games' setup.

- My sound driver by default will load a IRQ 10, IO Port 220 and DMA 1, and i did try selecting all different configuration in the setup of the game but to no avail.

- I read somewhere that there could be IRQ conflicts between the sound card and the printer ... therefore i did DISABLED

i submit another post regarding this but in greater details ... please kindly take a look. thanx

Originally posted by akira07 Sound Card : Built-in (integrated with mainboard)

Note that this is probably the worst sound source for old DOS games. It's primarily made as a cheap sound source for Windows. This is likely to be an endless source of trouble.

- I have also loaded my sound drivers for DOS which has a Sound Blaster Emulation cos i can auto-detect Sound Blaster(and PRO) using some other games' setup.

Don't rely too heavily on what a sound setup program tells you. Use the documentation for the motherboard if you want to be sure what it can do. If nothing else works, try a generic (basic) SoundBlaster setting.

My sound driver by default will load a IRQ 10, IO Port 220 and DMA 1, and i did try selecting all different configuration in the setup of the game but to no avail.

If that's the case, you are D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival). The VAST majority of DOS games will NOT accept these settings for use. If you can't change the IRQ to 5 or 7 then it's useless as a DOS sound source.

I read somewhere that there could be IRQ conflicts between the sound card and the printer ... therefore i did DISABLED

The parallel port usually uses IRQ 5 or 7, so yes, disabling it usually helps. You might check your BIOS settings to see if it has an option for your soundchip's IRQ.

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

If that's the case, you are D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival). The VAST majority of DOS games will NOT accept these settings for use. If you can't change the IRQ to 5 or 7 then it's useless as a DOS sound source.

but note that the privateer game setup does allow IRQ 10 but it just happen that it cannot/didn't solve my problem

i would like to know if my sound card dos driver will load a certain config for my sound card ... will "set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 t4" this line overright the setting or no effect ?

and my dos sound driver mention that my IRQ is 'A' ... and because 'A' stands for 10 in HEX ... i presume is it IRQ ... am i correct to say so ?

All SET BLASTER does is tell the program where to look. It won't change the settings for the sound card's DOS drivers/emulation.

Originally posted by akira07 ... sound driver mention that my IRQ is 'A' ... and because 'A' stands for 10 in HEX ... i presume is it IRQ

That is correct. Note that the option of using IRQ 10 may be on the earlier/floppy versions, but it was removed by the time it hit the "all-in-one" cd version.

Also note that the IRQ # designates it's "priority" on the list of interrupts. Considering that sound in action games was very time-sensitive, it's no wonder that most games wouldn't support anything "lower" than 7.

Also be aware that old titles can be very picky when you use anything other than an ISA sound card. If you can't find an ISA sound card then you can try looking for a PCI soundcard that specifies compatibility with SoundBlaster at the DOS level. Be aware that those are getting hard to find.

i managed to find another sound driver for my sound card and load it ... now it can emulate my sound blaster at IRQ 5 IO 220 and DMA 1 .. but still there is 1 more problem ...

there is no problem with the music but if i enable the sound effects ... the game will freeze during the intro part ...

any pointers on this ?

Yep, JEMM is the right name for this thing. It is Privateer´s own memory driver. Origin chose to use this so users wouldn´t have to mess around with XMS / EMS.

Make sure you´re running Privateer on a system which doesn´t have more than 32MB RAM, otherwise look up the feature called something like "Memory hole at x for OS/2" in your system´s BIOS and activate it. This will cap the memory available to DOS to 64 megs. Now, use a disk caching utility of your choice to reduce these 64 megs to 32 megs or less.

Now for the sound: if memory serves me right, in DOS 6.0 - 6.22 there was some "Help" thingie included. It was an executable file with syntaxes to programs used by DOS like "EMM386.EXE". Look up the "EMM386.EXE" part and see what it tells about "DMA=?" Put this into your config.sys file and reboot. This should fix crashing the game or crackling while playing sound / music. At least it did it for me.