At the moment i can't see anything wrong with the int10/ah=10 implementation
of dosbox, it's much the same as that of the tandy1000 roms. Ralph Brown's
interrupt lists this specific interrupt call to have a different functionality on
tandy2000, that is returning pointers to font tables. The way pdm2 calls
the int10/ah=10 definitely looks like it expects this behaviour.

Now there are two possibilities: either deskmate does some detection thing
that gets it to assume dosbox is a tandy2000, and therefore uses those calls.
Or this deskmate version is some specific build for the tandy2000s or something
like that.

Mess producing garbage could hint at the second possibility, that is this pdm2
simply does not work on tandy1000. Any way it *might* be possible to just
add this tandy2000 functionality, but unless the real source of the problem is
known this is not what will be put into official sources.

How far did you get with tand-em? Does it have the same character corruption
as seen in dosbox?

To be honest, I couldn't get Tand_Em to work at all. I went through the entire required process, Trying various ROM images and renaming to get the program to acknowledge them. When I was able to initiate boot, the program would always freeze at a certain point. With all due respect, it appears that the Tand-Em project may have had great promise, but I don't see any serious development there anymore.

Keep in mind that PDM2 was supplied with both the Tandy 1000 HX and TX, both considered to be "second generation" Tandy 1000 machines. This may have put them into the time frame of the Tandy 2000, so you may be on to something.

The tandy1000hx bios to be used with mess doesn't have the tandy2000
style of the int10/ah=10 though.
The video driver seems to be the file DMVD1000.MOD so maybe this one
is not the original but has been replaced in the progress of making deskmate
compatible with some non-tandy1000 system. But this is just guessing,
i didn't look too close at the file itself yet.

WD,
The file dmvd1000.mod is indeed the original video driver, as I am a former HX owner who still has the original DeskMate diskette. I will tell you that I even tried substituting that file with others from succeeding stand-alone versions of DeskMate (and renaming) with no results. The file is called by Dmcsr.mod, which provides various resources to the program.

I also thought about something else concerning MESS that may provide more clues. There was another poster on that forum who got slightly different results and posted an image. His were less garbled, as he described the screen as "fuzzy." The interesting point is that fonts were barely distinguishable along with the shell. In other words, in this case the program was an equal opportunity garbage generator.

DeskMate uses the int10/ah=10 as implemented in dosbox (palette setting)
and not as the tandy2000 one. So that part is fine.
Writing the tandy rom into the 0xf000 memory area didn't help either.

So they're retrieving the font information from somewhere else, maybe a
pointer that isn't set in dosbox.

The screenshot on the bannister/mess forum looked like the screen mode
was wrong, do you mean that one?

> So they're retrieving the font information from somewhere else, maybe a
> pointer that isn't set in dosbox.

I think it's INT44.

Don't know what it is supposed to point to but when I add
RealSetVec(0x44,bullshit);
the picture is garbled differently.

Bah, just found it, too 😉

congrats!

Fantastic! But can you tell me in layman's terms how to implement it, or do I wait for a future release? Thanks for everything.

It's actually quite easy, as hal said. If you can compile the dosbox sources
i can post the change. Otherwise it'll appear in the sources somewhen so
the next version should run it.
If you urgently need it for something (what? 😉 ) maybe posting a compile.

It would probably be easier for me to wait until the next release, but if you're feeling generous, would it be possible for you to e-mail the replacement EXE to me? As a new member I don't know much about your policy, but if this is possible, I would really appreciate it.

See attachment, hope it works for you. Copy missing dlls from your
current dosbox installation.

I just copied the new EXE into my current DOSBox directory so it would find all the resources, but I got an "illegal instruction" error when trying to execute. Does it make any difference that I am using Win_98SE?

What processor do you have?

Believe it or not, I am still getting by with an AMD K6III+/600 in a system that I custom built myself. Amazing what an "older" system can still do, but I hope that will also somehow include the benefit of your generous efforts.

Try this one.

No, sorry, same error. Yet the original DOSBox EXE without the enhancement still launches fine.

Dunno, sorry, does it work for somebody else (ie. doesn't crash)?
It's built without architecture specific optimizations, so it *should*
work even with your K6.
Maybe create a new directory, extract the dosbox.exe and copy the
SDL.dll and SDL_net.dll in there (so you don't have any dosbox.conf yet).

Well, I tried all of that with the same result. Is it likely that it will work for me in the next official release (considering that 0.70 works fine)? And how long will that be? In the meantime, thanks for all you have done.

Next official version will be out sometime this year. It's likely this fix will be included.

I'd like to say that if 0.70 works on your machine then the next official version should too but we can't say for sure unless someone with a K6 machine tests DosBox...like you for instance. 😀

I stopped using a K6 machine back in 2000 and my mobo has been gathering dust for 7 years so I can't help with the testing.