What is your system?

The games run fine on a Pentium 100 MHz with caches disabled.

Currently it is a P3-333 system (under-clocked because of MB issues.) It will eventually be a P3-800Mhz system. MB issues prevent me from disabling the cache (won't boot, and slow-down SW crashes the system.) Many of the games that I may be relegating to DOSBox are going to be re-tested when the MB is replaced. But many of my games play just fine, they just need something to tweak the speed issues. A lot of Sierra titles (for example,) have problems with their SoundBlaster drivers, but the patch(s) I download work just fine. I've read that the patch for "Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade" doesn't always work, but would like to try it (primarily after I replace the MB and/or V2 cards,) anyway. Only, it seems to have disappeared. All the links I've found have been removed or replaced (except the German one.) 🙁 Usually, I can find them archived "somewhere" but not this time.

Found the 486 patch for Last Crusade in my archives, but note that it's for the 256-color upgrade version, not the original 16-color version. I may have other LucasArts patches stashed, but it's probably hit and miss. Maybe someone backed up the LucasArts FTP server before it went offline.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

Found the 486 patch for Last Crusade in my archives, but note that it's for the 256-color upgrade version, not the original 16-color version. I may have other LucasArts patches stashed, but it's probably hit and miss. Maybe someone backed up the LucasArts FTP server before it went offline.

I'm hoping that as well. The 256 color version is the one I have. I may have an older version around somewhere, but I sort of doubt it (unless it was part of a compilation or batch purchase I didn't notice.) I couldn't begin to list my games collection just from memory. Something like 10 large boxes full (each box can hold from 10 to 30 games easily.) Fully half of them are unreachable in storage 🙁

Thanks for the file, I'll check it out. May not work with this MB, or it may work with this one but not the replacement. I'll find out 😀

Sometimes increasing the 8-bit IO recovery cycles in BIOS settings help with Adlib music in games. Also try to slow down the ISA bus clock to slowest possible setting. Too bad you cannot disable the caches, that would also be one of my standard suggestions.

The trick may not work however, because at least in Monkey Island the Adlib writes are timed with a delay loop instead of the default way of doing dummy IO reads between IO writes to OPL chip registers, so the extra wait states have no effect on delays between writes then.

Having said that, as OPL3 chip can be accessed with much smaller delays than an OPL2 chip, can you try a OPL3-based card in your system?

I'm actually building this system around my AWE32 and MPU-401 cards 😀 Several of the replacement MBs I'm looking at (won't be able to actually buy one till my refund on my last failed replacement hits,) have IO wait states (don't know about setting ISA bus speeds,) but this one doesn't 🙁 I'm hoping the new MB will allow SW disabling of the cache as well (so I can disable it for specific games and not for others.) I generally avoid using slow down utilities (MoSlow etc..) but will in some circumstances. They sometimes function unreliably (semi-random bursts of speed that can alter game mechanics.) Most times, if speed is an issue for game play, I move it to DOSBox. It's just games like this one, where game play is unaffected and it's just the driver that has an issue, where I will look for alternatives (driver replacement, slow down utilities, etc...)

An exception to the above rule of thumb, flight games and such I will move heaven & earth to get working on the vintage system. Even to having special boots, or having to go into BIOS before playing them. I like my Thrustmaster, and don't have one for my modern system. Not sure if I'm going to get one for it or not. On my old vintage system, I actually had Wing Commander running smoothly (though I don't remember the exact mechanics.) But it was only 233Mhz, and the SW cache disabling software worked just fine. I'm fairly sure that all I did was disable the cache, but that HDD was wiped long ago 🙁 I was in a hurry and forgot what I had on it.

Also, just to note, with this MB, the patch doesn't help. Indy256 will still only work with PC speaker. I'll try when the new MB gets here. I'll also be re-testing a dozen or more other games as well. I'm already moving on to my next game. Thanks for your help, and I'm still looking for anyone who knows of or has LucasArts patches archived.

I've noticed that with high cycles in DOSBox the 486 patch executable doesn't play AdLib music, but it does when you specify AdLib with a parameter "INDY256 a". Forcing it like that probably bypasses detection, which may be useful in your situation, but for a P3 it's far from a certain thing.

I have troubles with Adlib and games like Indy, Loom and MI1 in a 486. Usually turning off the CPU cache fixes them.

I made sure to grab all the LucasArts patches for any PC game released during the 1980s and 1990s from their Yoda's Help Desk well before they were purchased by Disney.

https://archive.org/details/ftp.lucasarts.com-20130427

Thanks 😀 I would have preferred to pick and choose over a single archive, but 2.45G isn't all that bad. I'll look around and see if someone has a relatively frequently updated site where the individual patches could be hosted 😀

Actually you CAN browse within and download individual files on some of these archives, it's just that the interface sucks.

I go into some detail describing how here:
Re: Preservation of historical ftp site content

Doesn't seem to apply to this specific one, however.

Stiletto wrote:

https://archive.org/details/ftp.lucasarts.com-20130427

How does this `work`?

Robin4 wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

https://archive.org/details/ftp.lucasarts.com-20130427

How does this `work`?

Just grab the torrent.

Or click "HTTPS" in the top left, which takes you to a folder directory, from which you can download the 2.45 GB TAR which contains everything the FTP contained on 04-27-2013.

But downloading the torrent might actually allow you to pick and choose which file you want (depending on your torrent client).

Sadly, even the torrent has the huge 2.45GB compressed file in it, so we have to download the whole thing.

Hey, it's much better than not having it at all... History of (old) gaming must be preserved! 😀

Well I'll be...! For those who don't want to download the whole FTP archive, Disney actually put some links to a few LucasArts's old patches:

http://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/Lis … s?section=Games

Ah, there's the patch for Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade I was looking for... 😎

Still, the FTP archive is the place to go, as the Disney link features no documentation whatsoever.

njaydg wrote:

Well I'll be...!

Agreed. Holy crap, did not expect that! 😁

It's a little ironic when the hosue of mouse treats their legacy game library better than most other companies like Ubisoft, Hasbro, 3DRealm and Zenimax.

you'd think they stick it all up into the Disney Vault(tm)!!!!

(sitll pissed for them dropping mvc3/umvc3 from the market though)

How exactly do you extract a TAR file?

Google it.

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