retro games 100 wrote:

I bought this pile of SSI RPGs on ebay (going cheap! :happy: ), because I've just completed Champions of Krynn and have just st […]
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I bought this pile of SSI RPGs on ebay (going cheap! 😀 ), because I've just completed Champions of Krynn and have just started its sequel, Death Knights of Krynn - without having the printed documentation to hand.

All 3 Krynn games look complete - Death Knights (shown in the 1st photo) even has a cluebook. A couple of the other games aren't complete however, but I was mostly interested in the Krynn "trilogy".

I've got a minor problem - I want to back up the floppy disks, but I don't currently have a 5.25" 1.2MB floppy drive. I guess it's time to have a browse on ebay, to see if I can get one of these ancient things...

Incidentally, one of the games (Pools of Darkness) had a till receipt (dated '91) in it. The game cost £30.99 (a lot of money really), and came from Leeds, England.

Ohhh....nice lot you got there

Death Knights of Krynn rocks! completed it on the Amiga when it came out but I never completed Champions Of Krynn

What? a retro hw enthusiast without a 5.25'' floppy drive? 😳

Amigaz wrote:

What? a retro hw enthusiast without a 5.25'' floppy drive? 😳

Um...it's true! 😊 (Hangs head in shame.) In my defence, I did have one, but I thought I'd never need it, so to save space I gave it away.

retro games 100 wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

What? a retro hw enthusiast without a 5.25'' floppy drive? 😳

Um...it's true! 😊 (Hangs head in shame.) In my defence, I did have one, but I thought I'd never need it, so to save space I gave it away.

This is how it goes when you fiddle too much with dosbox and not the real thing 😉 😁

retro games 100 wrote:

....so to save space I gave it away....

Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!! Tell me you didn't! Tell me you didn't!!!!!!!!!! 😁

I have 2 of them. Just in case.... And I also have the 5.25" disk cleaner. Just in case.... too! 😉

I have some 5.25" drives laying around. I need to get them hooked up to the PIII-550 system in the closet that my mom left behind and use it to rip some of my 5.25" disks before they become unusable due to degradation.

Has anyone else worked with old floppies recently? Are they wearing out?

HunterZ wrote:

I have some 5.25" drives laying around. I need to get them hooked up to the PIII-550 system in the closet that my mom left behind and use it to rip some of my 5.25" disks before they become unusable due to degradation.

Has anyone else worked with old floppies recently? Are they wearing out?

Have worked quite alot with them recently...both on my vintage PC's and my Commodore 64...have quite alot of disks and they seldom go bad

I work with tons of floppies from both c64 and pc, my experience is double density disks don't have much of a problem, but high density 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 disks bit rot much more frequently.

Back them babies up as soon as you can =]

Amigaz wrote:

This is how it goes when you fiddle too much with dosbox and not the real thing 😉

Heehe! I just had to chuckle at this. I, too, gave away my 20 yr old Packard-Bell PC (it had a 5.25 ", a 3.5", and a CD-Rom drive in it) this past Spring because I, too fiddle too much with DOSbox.

Amigaz wrote:

my Commodore 64..

What? you still have a Commodore 64? My God, I thought no one had these nowadays - aren't they obsolute? 😳

Where/how did you get your Commodore 64, Amigaz (just curious)? I thought no one sells them anymore?

Kelly Stiver wrote:

Heehe! I just had to chuckle at this. I, too, gave away my 20 yr old Packard-Bell PC (it had a 5.25 ", a 3.5", and a CD-Rom driv […]
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Amigaz wrote:

This is how it goes when you fiddle too much with dosbox and not the real thing 😉

Heehe! I just had to chuckle at this. I, too, gave away my 20 yr old Packard-Bell PC (it had a 5.25 ", a 3.5", and a CD-Rom drive in it) this past Spring because I, too fiddle too much with DOSbox.

Amigaz wrote:

my Commodore 64..

What? you still have a Commodore 64? My God, I thought no one had these nowadays - aren't they obsolute? 😳

Where/how did you get your Commodore 64, Amigaz (just curious)? I thought no one sells them anymore?

Yep, still have my first C64..the breadbox model
Have had it since 1986, in 1989 I got the more "slimmed" C64-II...and in 1990 I got an Amiga.

I fire up the C64 sometimes together with the matching 1541 disk drive and play some old classics from the past

I've just tried Death Knights of Krynn on an old Pentium with an AWE32 soundcard. I noticed that this game's soundcard options are quite limited. Here are some of the options -

C/MS
Adlib
(plus a few others)

Firstly, what is a C/MS card? I selected Adlib, and got cheesy music coming from my AWE32, but I can't hear any sound effects. (Running this game in DOSBox, when you walk about you hear footsteps.)

retro games 100 wrote:

I've just tried Death Knights of Krynn on an old Pentium with an AWE32 soundcard. I noticed that this game's soundcard options […]
Show full quote

I've just tried Death Knights of Krynn on an old Pentium with an AWE32 soundcard. I noticed that this game's soundcard options are quite limited. Here are some of the options -

C/MS
Adlib
(plus a few others)

Firstly, what is a C/MS card? I selected Adlib, and got cheesy music coming from my AWE32, but I can't hear any sound effects. (Running this game in DOSBox, when you walk about you hear footsteps.)

mmm...I also think it's odd that it doesn't have the SB as an option but the game has no digital SFX

C/MS = Creative Music System (Game Blaster)

Amigaz wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

I've just tried Death Knights of Krynn on an old Pentium with an AWE32 soundcard. I noticed that this game's soundcard options […]
Show full quote

I've just tried Death Knights of Krynn on an old Pentium with an AWE32 soundcard. I noticed that this game's soundcard options are quite limited. Here are some of the options -

C/MS
Adlib
(plus a few others)

Firstly, what is a C/MS card? I selected Adlib, and got cheesy music coming from my AWE32, but I can't hear any sound effects. (Running this game in DOSBox, when you walk about you hear footsteps.)

mmm...I also think it's odd that it doesn't have the SB as an option but the game has no digital SFX

C/MS = Creative Music System (Game Blaster)

Yep, Amigaz is the only lucky guy in this board to own it! 😀

Particular point of interest here is that, Champions of Krynn, which came out a year before Death Knights of Krynn has support for Roland LAPC, but Death Knights does not have any advanced midi support. The best output is via either the Game Blaster or Adlib. The other options are Tandy and PC Speaker, and last and least, Silent.

This, in spite of improved graphics in Death Knights of Krynn.

Adlib cards seem quite rare. Unfortunately I don't have one, but I guess using an old Creative should be OK - if I select Adlib. It won't be as good as the Gameblaster, but these really are rare.

Basically, any Sound Blaster card should be fine. Death Knights of Krynn's music is not very memorable, at least for me. Game Blaster should be able to output the FM sounds in stereo, if SSI had coded as such. As of now, only Amigaz can comment on the Game Blaster sounds, if he has DKK.

Malik wrote:

Basically, any Sound Blaster card should be fine. Death Knights of Krynn's music is not very memorable, at least for me. Game Blaster should be able to output the FM sounds in stereo, if SSI had coded as such. As of now, only Amigaz can comment on the Game Blaster sounds, if he has DKK.

DKK? *check!*

Although I'm missing the adventurer's journal book *waaah!* 😢

Just ran the game and used my game blaster card....to my ears the music is mono...and sfx comes thru the pc speaker

Amigaz wrote:

DKK? *check!*

Hehehe! Great! Thanks for sharing the info! The PC speaker sound effects, on the other hand, is quite nice!

Malik wrote:

Hehehe! Great! Thanks for sharing the info! The PC speaker sound effects, on the other hand, is quite nice!

Ah, that explains everything - the sound fx are being sent to the PC speaker. I didn't realise this, because I rarely plug my "mobo testing kit PC speaker" on to its 4 pin header on the mobo.

Vangers. Yes, gamespot gave it lukewarm review. On the other hand, I don't always agree with gamespot either.

I remember playing the Vangers demo when it came out and was unimpressed. At that time if a game left my Voodoo card idle then it was a waste of time. 😢 I feel so ashamed now.

bushwack wrote:

I remember playing the Vangers demo when it came out and was unimpressed. At that time if a game left my Voodoo card idle then it was a waste of time. 😢 I feel so ashamed now.

To be fair, I skipped Vangers the first time it came around, not to mention that I was skeptical to Interactive Magic at that time (despite the name "Wild Bill" Stealey and the supposed Microprose legacy). But upon reading this and this, my interests began to stir.

IT Reviews wrote:

(Several days later) Wow. Vangers is a game that truly defies classification. But I'll try anyway. It's something of a cross between a strategy game like Total Annihilation, a driving game like Micro Machines and a trading/adventure game like Wing Commander Privateer. All rolled into one

Game Over Online wrote:

Fun Factor:

This rating depends a lot on your tolerance. If you are a patient person and don't mind LEARNING a game before you can play - then the rating's right. If you're a mind-warped lunatic who bought a laptop and lives in a trailer park because you think you'll move, I STILL stand by my rating, since it ain't my problem - but you may want to pick up the trainer for the game on our Trainers page. Or rather, don't play this - this is not for the brainless, go play Quake instead 😉.

Ironically, a resource-light game like Vangers would make a good laptop game. Plan to run it on my MSI Wind.

By the way, am I the only one who think that Gamespot reviews tend to get biased towards Quake-like games? 😖