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Virtual PC 5 oddity

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First post, by Dominus

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Hi all, I treid for ages to get games like Ultima 8 and the two Crusaders (all three of them are based on the same engine) to run on Virtual PC 5.
Every time I would run into Exception.. bla bla bla...
Finally I found a post on the Connectix forums on which someone wrote that he got Virtual PC to run Ultima 8 and Crusader:No Regret...
I asked him for a working image and well it worked if I used the bootdisc image. As soon as I did a "sys a: c:" and copied all the files from the image to my hd image and changed the autoexec.bat and config.sys it stopped working again. Very odd.
The bootdisk image was of Dos 7.x that came with Win98SE...
Anyone can think of a reason for that behaviour?

Reply 1 of 28, by DosFreak

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Post the Config.sys/autoexec.bat from HIS image.

Crusader works fine in real DOS but I've never gotten it working in Windows or VPC.

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Reply 2 of 28, by Dominus

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Autoexec.bat (from the boot image slightly modifed as cd support is not needed but the fshare to be able to use my actual hd):
@ECHO OFF
PATH A:\
A:\DOSKEY.COM /INSERT
A:\CTMOUSE.EXE
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
a:\fshare.exe

Config.sys
FILES=50
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE

As you can see nothing fancy here but it works with it (only No regret, No remorse still refuses to run). Dos ver: Windows 98 [Version 4.10.2222]

Autoexec.bat on my emulated c:\ (same Dos version as above):
@ECHO OFF
PATH c:\;c:\Dos;C:\Dos2;C:\NC
c:\Dos2\DOSKEY.COM /INSERT
c:\Dos2\CTMOUSE.EXE
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

Config.sys:
FILES=50
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=c:\Dos2\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICE=c:\Dos2\EMM386.EXE

You see, exactly the same but the game refuses to run. Can someone explain this?

I attached the working disk image (be sure to start your virtual Os once, then click diskette on the menu and choose image and browse for that one).

Attachments

  • Filename
    dos_boot.zip
    File size
    677.94 KiB
    Downloads
    646 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 4 of 28, by LSD

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While on the subject of VPC oddities, I'm trying to run Terminal Velocity under DOS 6.21 and in VPC 4, 4.2 and 5 it has a nasty tendency to lock the keyboard in a single direction. The only way I can stop it is by pressing Esc to bring up the menu and then resuming the game but that only solves it for a matter of seconds. Anyone have any ideas as to whats causing this and more importantly, how to fix it?

Wasurenaide...
...watashi ga iru koto o.
Itsudatte soba ni iru yo.

Gentoo. Because everything else is just shit. 😁
Registered Linux user #319839

Reply 5 of 28, by Dominus

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Yawnmouth: I tried with running the Freedos that comes with VPC from the hd and it didn't work. Haven't tried yet with putting that on a disk image... As for asking the guy who sent me the disk-image - it's no use asking him about it, he's just an ordinary user as well. It's just an oddity that I thought someone might have an answer to...

LSD: try disabling joystick support in the game or try calibrating it...

Reply 6 of 28, by LSD

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Dominus wrote:

LSD: try disabling joystick support in the game or try calibrating it...

TV only allows you to select 1 input device (either mouse, keyboard or joystick) at a time and I've selected keyboard. Funny thing is it only seems to happen in DOS 6.21, DOS 7+ seem to be fine.

Wasurenaide...
...watashi ga iru koto o.
Itsudatte soba ni iru yo.

Gentoo. Because everything else is just shit. 😁
Registered Linux user #319839

Reply 7 of 28, by DosFreak

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Okay, tried everything I could think of and it only works from the floppy. BUT it's not that image. It's ANY floppy. Create a 95,98,ME boot disk with blank Config.sys/Autoexec.bat and Crusader will work just fine.

Gonna email Eric Traut about it since they may have done something odd with the virtualization of the HD controllers whereas floppies are pretty much just floppies. Last I heard he was throwing a bunch of DOS compaitibility into 5.1 since they broke alot of DOS compatibility going from 4 to 5.

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Reply 8 of 28, by Dominus

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I suspected it would work with any image, thanks for confirming it. And if you are on speaking terms with Eric Traut and you bring this to his attention this would be great.
Can't wait for the 5.1 update as AFAIK the also broke some emm386/Dos4gw compatibility...
Thanks for confirming it.

Reply 10 of 28, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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DosFreak wrote:

...Last I heard he was throwing a bunch of DOS compaitibility into 5.1 since they broke alot of DOS compatibility going from 4 to 5.

Does this mean that DOS programs in 5.1 will finally "see" the emulated ISA SoundBlaster properly? *hope*hope*

Oh, and will they charge for the 5.0 to 5.1 upgrade? *hope not*hope not*

Reply 11 of 28, by LSD

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Snover wrote:

LSD:
Doesn't TV run in Windows 2000? I could've sworn it did...hrm...
do you have the floppy or CD version?

Well yes and no. Yes it runs (I think you need VDMSound even under XP though, I can't remember) but that gives rise to the second problem: I have a Riva TNT 1 and TV is dependent on 8 bit palletted textures which the TNT doesn't support resulting in a quite spectacular display when running TV.

Wasurenaide...
...watashi ga iru koto o.
Itsudatte soba ni iru yo.

Gentoo. Because everything else is just shit. 😁
Registered Linux user #319839

Reply 12 of 28, by Snover

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Heh...um, well, here's a suggestion:

buy a new video card, for god's sake!

Seriously. Get a GF3Ti500 for $150. GF3Ti200 for, like, $50. (Cheap!) I got mine for somewhere around the lines of $350. Well, I didn't, but my dad did. 😜 (I'm so spoiled, teehee.) We're talking about old games running on NEW systems here, remember? 😉

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 13 of 28, by LSD

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Snover wrote:

Heh...um, well, here's a suggestion:

buy a new video card, for god's sake!

Seriously. Get a GF3Ti500 for 0. GF3Ti200 for, like, . (Cheap!) I got mine for somewhere around the lines of 0. Well, I didn't, but my dad did. 😜 (I'm so spoiled, teehee.) We're talking about old games running on NEW systems here, remember? 😉

Are you offering to pay for it? Also, can you guarantee that later generations of nVidia chipsets support 8 bit paletted textures?

I'm getting there but I don't earn a great deal of money and have had more important things to spend it on these last three years or so than on computer parts.

Wasurenaide...
...watashi ga iru koto o.
Itsudatte soba ni iru yo.

Gentoo. Because everything else is just shit. 😁
Registered Linux user #319839

Reply 14 of 28, by Snover

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heh, no, I'm not offering to pay for it...

I know 8-bit paletted textures work fine on my GF3Ti500. (FFVIII uses 8-bit palletted textures.) However, it doesn't appear that TV actually works in Windows 2000. I'm not sure if it ever did. The 3D Realms logo appears, and then nothing. *sigh* That's frustrating. However, if it DOES work in XP (except with messed up video), I would HIGHLY suggest you upgrade your video card.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 16 of 28, by DosFreak

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Uh, TV works in NT4/2K/XP. It's just if you enable VESA on a card that supports it (like the 9700, wheras the GF line it doesn't). Then the screen is all jittery.

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Reply 17 of 28, by Snover

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DosFreak wrote:

Uh, TV works in NT4/2K/XP. It's just if you enable VESA on a card that supports it (like the 9700, wheras the GF line it doesn't). Then the screen is all jittery.

Wait, what? NOLFB couldn't get it working, nor did running it with no sound, nor did anything else. I'm horribly confused.

All this said, I'm trying to run the hi-res (640x480) CD version. Some of the problems MAY stem from problems with MSCDEXNT. I might try swapping in the other one that's being worked on, but I don't know if that will fix it.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 18 of 28, by DosFreak

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Hmm, I copied TV off of ma' TV CD a long time ago. Think all I did was modify a cfg file or something to point to the movies in the TV directory instead of on the CD.

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Reply 19 of 28, by DosFreak

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TV should be pretty simple to make Win32 considering that Microsoft Fury was made by the same team. Dunno why they never made a Win32 executable for it. 🙁

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