PS: Tried with MS-DOS 6.22 and I'm getting the same issue. Pinball Fantasies also has the same issue.

Did you already try disabling C:\DRIVERS\LOGI730\CLOAKING.EXE?

5u3 wrote:

Did you already try disabling C:\DRIVERS\LOGI730\CLOAKING.EXE?

Hmm I REM'd it out but no luck...

However I believe to have narrowed it down to SETSOUND.EXE

The first time the game starts after installing it runs SETSOUND.EXE on its own and crashes.

So after I booted with no memory managers, I ran it once, and now it works. After the first time you run SETSOUND.EXE it also creates a CFG file which you can simply edit to change the driver. But you can't change the quality setting without SETSOUND.EXE I'm afraid.

But running SETSOUND.EXE again crashes it again...

(Deleted. No longer relevant anyway)

I use UIDE as well, but I believe I had to perform a clean boot to install this game.

Haven't tried this workaround, but as I described above, booting with no memory managers and running SETSOUND.EXE once fixes the problem 😀

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

As crazy as it sounds, this works! uide.sys replaces your CD-ROM driver and the configuration options add a 25MB file cache. And for reasons I cannot imagine, this fixes the problem (I tried this on my Pentium 166MMX with 64MB of RAM). See if this works for you, Mau1wurf1977.

How fast is the CD-ROM drive on that computer of yours? Maybe it's some kind of weird race condition/timing issue.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

As crazy as it sounds, this works! uide.sys replaces your CD-ROM driver and the configuration options add a 25MB file cache. And for reasons I cannot imagine, this fixes the problem (I tried this on my Pentium 166MMX with 64MB of RAM). See if this works for you, Mau1wurf1977.

I can confirm your workaround works 😀

Because Pinball Illusions crashes even when you have configured a Sound Card successfully before.

Scratching my head how you found this fix though 😁

Good find!

Ok I have another question regarding only Pinball Illusion Deluxe!

The CD-ROM I burnt plays Audio CD music AND tracker music at the same time. It does this on my Pentium and also in DOSBox when the disc is mounted.

However the GOG.com release (when running their own shortcuts) works fine. So I digged a bit deeper and noticed GOG.com used a SVN of DOSBox. I replace the DOSBox exectuable with a standard one and now it also plays Audio CD and tracker music simultaneously.

What is the source of this problem and what changed does the SVN have to resolve it?

Update: Found a previous thread on VOGONS talking about this game manipulating the Sound Card mixer. This makes totally sense.

However I'm wondering why this mixer feature doesn't work on the AWE64 Gold. I could try out a Sound Blaster Pro or Sound Blaster 16 tomorrow, but just wondering...

Ok so I tested this with a Sound Blaster Pro 2 and the issue remains. It plays CD Audio and tracker music simultaneously.

Is this just how the game is?

Still wondering what the SVN version of the GOG.com version supplied does in order to resolve this. Why would it fail to control the mixer on a real DOS PC?

Still wondering what the SVN version of the GOG.com version supplied does in order to resolve this.

http://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0/3631/

SVN has audio channel control, which is actually a cdrom driver function, unrelated to the sound card. So, I would guess that you're using real MSCDEX; but are you using a generic cdrom driver, such as oak, or one specifically for your cdrom drive?

ripsaw8080 wrote:

SVN has audio channel control, which is actually a cdrom driver function, unrelated to the sound card. So, I would guess that you're using real MSCDEX; but are you using a generic cdrom driver, such as oak, or one specifically for your cdrom drive?

Oh I see, so the issue is related to the CD-drive / CD drivers.

I'll try a few drivers that I have accessible.

Yes I'm using MSCDEX (DOS 7.1 version). The driver is this UIDE.SYS as suggested in the discussion above. It resolves the game crashing at start-up...

Thanks ripsaw8080, that fixed it 😀

Went back to my trustry Toshiba CD driver and now the games behaves correctly! Still no idea what problem the game has with the memory managers, but as long as I boot clean (NO HIMEM.SYS and AND / OR EMM386.EXE) everything works fine.

Here a video of the result!

http://youtu.be/fY3b3AwzAK8?t=11m6s

This is the GOG.com version of Pinball Illusions. The first part explains how to burn the CD (quite a few steps as you need to convert the audio files, extract the data and merge them into a mixed mode CD).

The second part (where the link above starts) shows me installing the game from the CD, configuring the audio and game options and then playing around with a few tables.

PS: I recommend playing the game without XMS and EMS and otherwise it can be quite buggy, not reading keyboard input, getting stuck and things like that.

Real old thread I stumbled on. I'm one of the programmers of the game. If I recon it will play the cd track once and then start playing the mod. If mscdx (or what the cd driver was called) is reporting track length 0 it will just play mod. I remember this as game was cracked but they missed to fix this so the music was not working correctly.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote on 2013-04-30, 15:25:

You start the game with ILLUSION.BAT and on the PC I get this error screen: […]
Show full quote

You start the game with ILLUSION.BAT and on the PC I get this error screen:

However...

When I mount the CD in DOSBox, the game runs perfectly. All the Music is through CD-Audio and tracks change correctly.

Also when I disable HIMEM.SYS AND EMM386.EXE in CONFIG.SYS the game does run on my PC:

It's a bug the the DOS extender used with Pinball Illusions. If EMM386 is loaded, it runs in VCPI mode (which is the correct and only operation mode available with EMM386 loaded). VCPI mode crashes if too much memory is available (IIRC the limit is between 32 and 56MB). That's why loading a big CD cache helps.