First post, by grzeszczuk
Hi,
I think I overdid my retro rig a bit, and I'm having problems with the classic floppy X-Wing release, installed from the original floppies.
At first, I was playing the plain floppy install on a 486 DX2-80 setup, with some OPTI SB clone, Hard MPU and physical MT-32, and everything was just fine with the gameplay (I've finished all practice runs, all historical missions and 2.5 TODs with no glitches nor problems), but with SoundBlaster sound. Using MT-32 and SoundBlaster+Roland setup resulted in sound glitches and MT-32 hanging up and some overflows.
I've read that this is due to the fact that X-Wing was intended not for MT-32, but CM-32L, which has larger instrument bank.
Therefore, I've set up a second rig, based on AMD 5x86-133 run at 160MHz, and this one has CT1790 SB16 + WP32 McCake daughterboard, this time with CM-32L ROMs installed.
For this one, I've used the original game + Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing also installed from the original floppies. Those are confirmed to be error-free (I've checked the CRC with KryoFlux).
Finally, the whole intro sequence works like a charm sound-wise, in Roland+SoundBlaster config, and I really feel the difference between Roland and the ugly and off-tone GM.
But.
The gameplay glitches.
First and foremost, I loose the background music every once in a while. Sometimes it disappears right after I exit the hyperspace. The FX, like gunshots, work fine, but the music is gone.
It reappears when I go back do the game setup (ESC) or Damage Control panel, and back to the game. But then, after some time or events, it disappears again.
The events that I've verified cause the music loss are using numeric keypad to change the view, practically every time I tried. Also changing targets with T key sometimes give that effect.
I've tried different sound setups, namely:
- SoundBlaster + Roland
- Roland only
- SoundBlaster only
And in all the cases, just the music disappears, the FX work ok (I mean, there is still the firing sound, even in the Roland config, I can hear it and see on the McCake Roland display the appropriate instrument activated).
I've tried the SoundBlaster fix from this thread:
Star Wars X-Wing (floppy version) Sound Blaster driver fix
(My CT1790 is configured for 220 (as in the driver hardcode), IRQ7, D1 H5, MIDI at 330).
But it did not change any behaviour. Well, the only thing that happened, is that the whole game froze some time into the mission (which did not happen ever in the history of playing on the older rig, despite the 50+ missions I've flown, sometimes with numerous retakes). However, here the sample is pretty small, so I do not know if the game hanged because of the fix, or just because it is being run on a new machine, hard to tell.
The other thing that I've noticed is that the Historical Mission for B-Wing, namely mission 1 with the CRV Shantipole, it took the CRV a lot of time to actually depart, it was only 0:03 on a mission clock left when she hyped back home, and I feel it was much too late, I suspect there might be other glitches like that that could potentially prevent the completion of some missions - this could be attributed to the speed of the machine.
So, after that TLDR description, a summary:
- Is there any known bug for disappearing music on the SB16 / CT1790 that I should be aware of and is there any fix for that?
- Or maybe the disappearing music happens because of the speed of the rig, and what can I do to prevent it (I've tried downclocking the setup to 133 MHz, but it still happens)
- Is there any fix or method to overcome those timing problems in the missions for the faster rigs? Maybe some TSR that slows down, or anything? I've read that it could be a problem for TOD5 mission 2, but I've not confirmed that yet.
I really like the CM-32L music and would like to finally finish X-Wing with that "perfect" 486 setup I've created, so any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
AB-PB4/5x86-160/32MB/S3Trio64/ZuluSCSI/CT1790+WP32McCake/Gotek/FDD3.5"/USR-Sportster-14k4
Atari 130XE/65816-Rapidus/VXBE/Ultimate1MB/FujiNet/AVG/IdePlus2.0D