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Last Half of Darkness + Covox Speech Thing + DOSBox 0.73

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First post, by HunterZ

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I can't seem to get Last Half of Darkness VGA's Covox Speech Thing support to work in DOSBox 0.73? It says that you need to load STDRIVER.SYS in config.sys and then load SPEECHV3.EXE before running the game.

First, I tried ignoring all that and telling it to try using the Covox Speech Thing anyways (with disney=true in dosbox.conf of course), but it gave me an error message saying the driver was not available and/or the speech program was not loaded.

I tried creating a fake config.sys with device=c:\covox\stdriver.sys in it, but that didn't make a difference either.

I then downloaded some Covox Speech Thing drivers I found (which included the .sys and .exe files mentioned by the game). I tried using a utility named LOADSYS.EXE to load STDRIVER.SYS since DOSBox can't load .SYS drivers any other way as far as I know, and then I loaded SPEECHV3.EXE. The game still gives the same error message 🙁

Reply 1 of 3, by Miki Maus

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

Games that run on Disney Sound Source should run without problems on simpler Covoxes; however, not all software made for simple Covoxes will run on Disney Sound Source, as it requires additional command bytes to be sent to additional control port to operate.

Don't know if it also applies to DOSBox emulation. 😐

Reply 2 of 3, by ripsaw8080

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The driver creates a device named "ST"; might not be well supported in DOSBox even if you use a program to load such a driver. DEVLOAD.EXE hangs trying to install it.

However, I tried the game when booting MS-DOS 5.0 in DOSBox, and the device driver and Smooth Talker TSR work OK that way; so it seems the problem lies with getting the device driver to work, not with the disney/covox hardware emulation.

Reply 3 of 3, by HunterZ

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So I decided to try making an HDD image and installing FreeDOS on it inside of DOSBox 0.73 for kicks. First, I had to use h-a-l-9000's DOSBox megabuild 4 in order to make an image. Then, it turned out to be a huge pain because you can't seem to mount directories on the local system nor ISO images while booting a "real" DOS. I finally ended up using an ODIN FreeDOS floppy disk image with a minimal amount of stuff to make the HDD image bootable with FreeDOS. I set up the config.sys to load STDRIVER.SYS and then loaded SPEECHV3.EXE from the command line. Finally, I ran LASTHALF.EXE and selected Covox. I ended up hearing a laughing sound after choosing PC speed, then DOSBox 0.73 spontaneously closed itself. Oh well.

Edit: With the megabuild 4, no sound is heard and it also crashes/closes.

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