Problems starting Dune CD on Thinkpad 370C \ VOGONS

Problems starting Dune CD on Thinkpad 370C

Topic actions

First post, by bjt

Posted on 2015-06-02, 09:04

bjt Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1460
Joined: 2013-02-06, 10:40
Location: UK

I've been having a lot of problems running Dune CD on a Thinkpad 370C I have. This machine has a SCSI CD-ROM.

I have tried to simplify the case by disabling sound in the game and loading a minimal set of drivers - basically just the SCSI/CD drivers, MSCDEX, HIMEM and EMM386.

If I stop the game using either EMS or XMS, it complains that not enough memory is available (I have over 600K conventional).
If I use XMS, the game errors out on startup with "File not found: 😀" (yes, it prints the smiley face character)
If I use EMS, the game hangs with a black screen on startup.

This game runs fine on all my other machines. Anyone else had these problems?

Reply 1 of 5, by idspispopd

Posted on 2015-06-02, 14:48

idspispopd Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1213
Joined: 2012-02-15, 21:08
Location: Hamburg / Germany

I don't know, but does Dune need loadfix? This should cause an error in dosbox as well.

Reply 2 of 5, by bjt

Posted on 2015-06-03, 10:23

bjt Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1460
Joined: 2013-02-06, 10:40
Location: UK

Don't think so. It works OK on my other machines with a similar amount of conventional memory free.

I tried copying the CD to hard drive as a test, no luck though. Maybe it has a problem with the WD video card in this laptop.

Reply 3 of 5, by Jolaes76

Posted on 2015-07-09, 10:48

Jolaes76 Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 743
Joined: 2011-03-23, 09:31
Location: Hungary

Maybe it has something to do with the resources occupied by the SCSI controller itself. I recall I had the exact same issue when running the game from a SCSI HDD + IDE CDROM. Later when I cloned the HDD to an IDE one and removed the SCSI controller, the game started somehow.

If it is SCSI related, you are stuck (I do not think you can actually switch to an IDE controller on that laptop),

but if not, you might also try limiting available XMS and EMS RAM size to the amount the game could stomach back in the day... along with some system underclocking, perhaps ???

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 4 of 5, by bjt

Posted on 2015-07-14, 12:31

bjt Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1460
Joined: 2013-02-06, 10:40
Location: UK

Interesting. I should try it with the SCSI adaptor removed and at different IO addresses.

Reply 5 of 5, by bjt

Posted on 2016-04-02, 08:31

bjt Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1460
Joined: 2013-02-06, 10:40
Location: UK

Finally got round to playing with this. Changed the CT1770 SCSI controller from 340h to the only other choice, 140h. Dune works great now!

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to DOS