It happened to me as well but I got a floppy image of altered files and it installs and plays but it ya might need slowdown software ad the only other thing is I get garbled sounds from soundblaster pro 2 card and posted about it on here and waiting for response

Thanks... I can slow the machine down, so that's not a problem. I'd love to mess around with the sound. I know not to ask for files here, etc., but in this case, could you point me in the direction or maybe host them? I do have them also as part of a DOS games collection, so will try that file set as well.

Ask all questions involving old hardware in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems.

collector wrote:

Ask all questions involving old hardware in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems.

Maybe change the description then... "getting old DOS games working." Specifically says no DOSBox too, which this is not.

NooNaN wrote:

Thanks... I can slow the machine down, so that's not a problem. I'd love to mess around with the sound. I know not to ask for files here, etc., but in this case, could you point me in the direction or maybe host them? I do have them also as part of a DOS games collection, so will try that file set as well.

I can email the floppy images or Dropbox them and when installing it might say to insert disk 2 but they will on same disk as first, so just press enter but insert the physical second disk when it says to insert disk 3 or 4, I can't remember which 🤣

Robhalfordfan wrote:

I can email the floppy images or Dropbox them and when installing it might say to insert disk 2 but they will on same disk as first, so just press enter but insert the physical second disk when it says to insert disk 3 or 4, I can't remember which 🤣

Thank you!!! Will PM you for the email address. I'll mess with the sound and let you know as well.

email sented

Thanks! So, it launches with those files. I do get sound right off the bat. All the intro stuff plays fine and there is sound in the game. Initially, the heart beat and bumping into things generates sound. That seems to go away after a little bit though and since I have no clue how to play the game, I can't generate any other sound. Even with the quick reference card, it's not making a lot of sense. Supposed to seek out someone that doesn't read as "eliminated?" No clue...

I'm using a SB AWE 64 Gold, 200, 5, 1, and I've disabled both internal and external cache as well as slowed it down to 133Mhz. Oddly though, it actually runs slow with this setting. Turning the graphic detail down in game actually speed it up...weird. Maybe turning on one of the caches and keeping the multiplier low is the way to go.

yeah basicly same as me as I have 133mhz pentuim 1 with sb pro 2 and discovered that that turning the internal cache off only and it seems make the sound ok (I use a program call setmul to disable l1 cache within dos without having to go into the bios) and using slowdown software like moslow dosen't work with it properly

NooNaN wrote:

Maybe change the description then... "getting old DOS games working." Specifically says no DOSBox too, which this is not.

The old hardware stuff is an afterthought. See what VOGONS stands for. There used to be no retro hardware discussions here, but the founder of the board added Marvin when people started to post old hardware stuff all over the place. All retro stuff belongs in Marvin.

Ha, never new it stood for that. Thought it was just the Hitchhiker's reference. Seems like a good portion of the activity on the site is retro HW focused. Maybe the site evolves based on the interests of the members.

NooNaN wrote:

Ha, never new it stood for that. Thought it was just the Hitchhiker's reference. Seems like a good portion of the activity on the site is retro HW focused. Maybe the site evolves based on the interests of the members.

I concur. Virtually no-one in this section is talking about running DOS games on modern hardware, as doing that with sound and without emulation is largely a fruitless endeavour these days. It probably made sense over a decade ago, but now? Besides, the description for Marvin states: "Discussion about old PC hardware and Retro PCs". Unless you are psychic, you're going to take from the descriptions that this section is used for discussion of getting DOS games working in any native DOS environment, while Marvin is used for talking about the hardware itself. IMO it makes far more sense to use the sections like people are doing, rather than this section being moribund while Marvin is stuffed with many disparate topics. IMO, anyway.

Perhaps a mod or admin could give their view.

Collector is right though. Especially from the point of view that vogons can be used as a resource of information. Having topics at the wrong place makes it hard to find stuff.

Nonetheless, I agree that Marvin has too many active topics and maybe it should be split/extended.

Qbix wrote:

Collector is right though. Especially from the point of view that vogons can be used as a resource of information. Having topics at the wrong place makes it hard to find stuff.

Nonetheless, I agree that Marvin has too many active topics and maybe it should be split/extended.

But why split Marvin when there's already a section that can perfectly serve that purpose? The title of this section is "Getting old DOS games working. (DOSBox topics belong in DOSBox areas below, not here)"; there's nothing ambiguous about that. What is confusing is expecting users to know unwritten rules from ~14 years ago, rather than posting in whichever section has a description that matches their problem. Times have changed: no-one tries to run DOS games on modern hardware any more except under emulation, and this section has no purpose unless we are considering hardware and OSs over a decade old as modern. If that's the case, surely the description should be changed to reflect that.

If I were to change the description and purpose of this section, then all of the old topics (of 14 years ago) are in the wrong place from an information organization point of view.

Qbix wrote:

If I were to change the description and purpose of this section, then all of the old topics (of 14 years ago) are in the wrong place from an information organization point of view.

I'd argue that if the purpose of this board was simply, as it's description already implies, help with running games on unemulated versions of DOS, virtually all of the topics would still in the correct section. Marvin also seems primarily to have been used to discuss retro hardware, as that is also what's implied by its description. There seem to be very few topics there that discuss getting games running, except ones dealing with specific types of hardware, even going back to the earliest posts.

As it is, if retro setups cannot be discussed in this section, virtually every topic in recent years is in the wrong place.

Note that DOSBox is not the only way to play DOS games on modern systems. x86 Windows can use the NTVDM to play them (which is what this forum was originally intended) as well as FreeDOS on modern hardware, not to mention other emulators or virtualizers.

There are also a number of threads in this forum that deal with the games themselves, not what you play them on, such as some of the game sound driver hacking or creating a catalog of install media file lists.

No one is making bad points, but just comment on this one point from my perspective:

The Terminator is an old DOS game, I couldn't get it to work, I post in the section that says, "Getting old DOS games working" (non-DOSBox)

Just directly answer how that should have gone differently?

Also of note is that the only solution I received, which actually fixed the issue, WAS a software one, NOT hardware! (thanks again, Robhalfordfan)

Lastly:

"There are also a number of threads in this forum that deal with the games themselves, not what you play them on" - isn't it always appropriate to include the HW as a courtesy to people that might help?

You guys are making my point... 😀

When VOGONS was first started in 2002, this subforum generally served the purpose of getting DOS games to run in Windows XP/2000 systems. For the first couple of years when DOSBox was immature, that was the general focus. A good deal of the compatibility issues could be dealt with in the VDMSound subforum. However, as people adopted to Windows 7 and 64-bit OSes and DOSBox became more mature and compatible, the need for getting games to run in Windows XP was no longer quite so important.

Today relatively few members care about getting DOS games to run in Windows XP anymore. Many members do care about problems and solutions of getting software to run on real DOS and real hardware. However, if everything gets thrown to Marvin, it becomes hard to segregate and distinguish posts that are mainly about hardware from posts mainly about software. I think this subforum should be maintained for individuals struggling to get games working outside of emulation like DOSBox and PCem.