VOGONS

Ultima 7 Hanging while loading

Topic actions

First post, by Rav

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Hi.
I been trying to get Ultima 7 working on my 486 and I could not get past the red loading screen (The black gate) or blue loading screen (serpent isle)
Most of the time it just hang there , I think, after it loaded everything.

But sometime it crash to dos with the following message: Sorry, an error has occurred. Please write down the following information: Error 0x6601 at 7F1A:0273.

* tested with different cut-down config as game have EMS allergy:

himem.sys only
mmouse.com only
mvsound.sys only (sound driver)
xhdd.sys then smartdrv then none (disk caching)
ansi.sys and no ansi.sys
4DOS and command.com
fast40.com only (Ali M1429 fixer, needed to run Cyrix 5x86 CPU with FSB40 on my Acer system, AT bus default speed is wrong and without it, it "beep" half of the time I press a key on the keyboard)
5x86.exe and no 5x86.exe (Peter Moss tool to enable CPU experimental features)

I also did reinstall the games, checked if it had read only files.

Reply 1 of 1, by Kurasiu

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

A bit of a necrobump, but I had the exact same issue on a Compaq Presario 425 I was working on just recently, and found a solution... well, somewhat hahah

U7 also froze for me on the red moongate loading animation (blue on SI). While going through Ultima Dragons usenet messages and the original manual, I decided to free as much conventional memory as possible, and switch from CTMouse to default Microsoft v7 driver. The manual explicitly stated it's only compatible with that one, plus there's a known bug with U7 installer that causes to report around 100k less of conventional memory free while using CTMouse. If that's the case with the game too, it's no wonder it crashes on load!

I whipped up a boot disk, and also changed files/buffers from suggested 25 (manual) to 40. mem reported I have 606k free, and apparently U7/SI requires around 585k to work with sound.
I don't know which exact thing helped, but I'm happy to report U7 and SI are working absolutely fine now. 😀

config
DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=40
FCBS=1,0
BUFFERS=40
STACKS=9,256

autoexec
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
LOADHIGH /L:2 =A:\MOUSE.COM
A:\ESSCFG.EXE /A:220 /I:5 /D:1 /B:300 /J:E

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to Software
Close window
Close window