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First post, by bjwil1991

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But... I'm having troubles running Doom when I'm running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus as it locks up when it gets to a certain command when loading up. It locks up either with the keyboard only, keyboard + joystick, or keyboard + mouse combination, with or without the music loaded, etc. In pure MS-DOS, it works perfectly fine. Drivers are working for the sound card as I do get sound coming from the speakers for both music and SFX in Windows and MS-DOS.

Is it because I need L2 cache for it to work within Windows? It always worked on my K6-2/300, K6-2P/550 and Socket 370 systems without issues.

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Reply 1 of 16, by mrau

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i would assume that depending on settings of windows this may not be compatible as a software environment; this is just a wild guess - You cannot run protected mode software in any environment but the one that the author had in mind;

Reply 3 of 16, by bjwil1991

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mrau wrote:

i would assume that depending on settings of windows this may not be compatible as a software environment; this is just a wild guess - You cannot run protected mode software in any environment but the one that the author had in mind;

Would the 32-bit file access cause the game to not load? I did find the link about how to play Doom in Windows 3.11 by making a PIF File and making a shortcut to said PIF file, and using an ICO file (optional).

Windows 3.X was considered a 16-bit file and disk access, while Windows 95 and higher were considered either 32-bit or 64-bit (x64 XP and higher) for file and disk access.

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Reply 4 of 16, by DosFreak

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Why would you want to run Doom in a VM in Windows 3.11 when you could run it in DOS? Playing skifree while playing doom?

If you want Doom in Windows 3.11 then use WinDoom.

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Reply 5 of 16, by mrau

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bjwil1991 wrote:

Would the 32-bit file access cause the game to not load? I did find the link about how to play Doom in Windows 3.11 by making a PIF File and making a shortcut to said PIF file, and using an ICO file (optional).

Windows 3.X was considered a 16-bit file and disk access, while Windows 95 and higher were considered either 32-bit or 64-bit (x64 XP and higher) for file and disk access.

sorry, i really cannot answer that; since the others say problems should be expected maybe a change to windoom is indeed the best way out?

Reply 6 of 16, by dr_st

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I recall that when I had a DOS6.22/Win3.11 machine, more than 2 decades ago, I too could never get DOOM to run in Win3.11. It always crashed much like in your case. I tried various PIF settings, and nothing helped.

There may be a way to maybe sort of get it to work, but... why?

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Reply 7 of 16, by bjwil1991

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I installed Windows 95C on my machine, and it takes a long time for it to load and too slow as well. Maybe the game requires L2 cache for it to run properly. My old DX4-120 and 5x86-P75 machines ran Doom in Windows 3.11 just fine and they had L2 cache in it.

Edit: Maybe WfW 3.11 isn't a good OS to run Doom on it, standard Windows 3.11 would do the trick, I believe. Someone on YouTube had an issue where the game would kill Windows for Workgroups and crash the DOS Shell.

Last edited by bjwil1991 on 2017-12-07, 13:12. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 8 of 16, by derSammler

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bjwil1991 wrote:

Would the 32-bit file access cause the game to not load?

There is no 32-bit file access in Win 3.x. What is called so is really just 16-bit file access from protected mode without real-mode switching. Do you have it enabled? If so, just turn it off to see if it makes a difference for DOOM.

But why waste resources anyway. DOOM is a DOS game and runs best in pure DOS.

Reply 9 of 16, by bjwil1991

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derSammler wrote:
bjwil1991 wrote:

Would the 32-bit file access cause the game to not load?

There is no 32-bit file access in Win 3.x. What is called so is really just 16-bit file access from protected mode without real-mode switching. Do you have it enabled? If so, just turn it off to see if it makes a difference for DOOM.

But why waste resources anyway. DOOM is a DOS game and runs best in pure DOS.

I disabled it, and set the Virtual Memory to temporary to no avail. I'm on the edge here, and I believe that WFW 3.11 isn't meant for DOS gaming since it uses 99% of the system memory only having 1MB RAM free. Going to install Windows 3.11 on my machine as soon as I get home to see if there's a difference. Windows 95C does load it, but not very well (almost froze up again).

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Reply 10 of 16, by dr_st

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Just do what everyone tells you, and run the games in pure DOS. Win3.11 is a freaking shell on top of DOS anyways, just exit it before you run the game, jeez. How much of your own and everyone else's time do you plan to waste on stupid pointless stuff?

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Reply 11 of 16, by jesolo

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I echo dr_st's & derSammler's sentiments.
Doom was specifically developed to run under DOS.
I honestly don't see the point of running any DOS based game under Windows 3.1, which itself just runs on top of DOS. You are effectively adding "layers" on top of your main OS, which just consumes more resources.

Reply 13 of 16, by bjwil1991

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leileilol wrote:

I know Doom 1.0 couldn't run under Win3.1 at all. 1.2 had more tolerance for Windows (but still isn't perfect either)

I have version 1.9 installed (works on my other retro machines from the K6-2/300 system to the Socket 370 system, and Pentium 4M laptop when it had 98SE installed on it), and I don't understand why it won't work. Some say it's the Enhanced mode for the WFW 3.11 OS.

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Reply 14 of 16, by jesolo

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bjwil1991 wrote:
leileilol wrote:

I know Doom 1.0 couldn't run under Win3.1 at all. 1.2 had more tolerance for Windows (but still isn't perfect either)

I have version 1.9 installed (works on my other retro machines from the K6-2/300 system to the Socket 370 system, and Pentium 4M laptop when it had 98SE installed on it), and I don't understand why it won't work. Some say it's the Enhanced mode for the WFW 3.11 OS.

There is a relatively large difference between Windows 98SE and Windows 3.11.
Windows 9x runs many DOS based games better than what Windows 3.1x does.
However, I still fail to see the point on why you wish to run Doom (for DOS) under Windows 3.1x.

Reply 15 of 16, by dondiego

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Actually Doom 1.2 ran pretty well under win 3.1. You get faster disk access and you can use virtual memory, in fact i managed to run Doom on a machine with only 3 MB of ram (you know it ran on 4 MB machines with an adequate config or a clean boot pressing F5 when the starting MS-DOS message appears). That machine was an olivetti 386sx 20 and it was playable (with low detail and reduced screen size of course). Disk accesses were not frequent and the game froze only on later Doom II levels. I did a lot of optimizations but i don't remember what i did, i think the Doom README mentioned something about running under windows.

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Reply 16 of 16, by bjwil1991

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dondiego wrote:

Actually Doom 1.2 ran pretty well under win 3.1. You get faster disk access and you can use virtual memory, in fact i managed to run Doom on a machine with only 3 MB of ram (you know it ran on 4 MB machines with an adequate config or a clean boot pressing F5 when the starting MS-DOS message appears). That machine was an olivetti 386sx 20 and it was playable (with low detail and reduced screen size of course). Disk accesses were not frequent and the game froze only on later Doom II levels. I did a lot of optimizations but i don't remember what i did, i think the Doom README mentioned something about running under windows.

Would setting the DMABufferSize in the system.ini file do the trick? Batman Returns for DOS does the same thing, but craps out if the DMABufferSize is lower than the DMA size that's set in the config.sys file:

device=c:\dos\emm386.exe ram 16384 d=64

What I'm planning on doing would be to copy the himem.sys and emm386.exe from my Windows 98SE machine to the 486.

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