SYSTEM SPECS!@#$

I gave u my specf.

Athlon XP 1,67
640 RAM
SB Live!
Windows XP

....

Video card?
Motherboard?
There have been posting guidelines always, and they're on the top of every board and the bottom of all of my sigs.

Let me make it easy for you:

1. Motherboard
2. Processor type and speed
3. Amount and type of RAM
4. Video board w/ RAM amount and type
5. Sound board
6. Operating system
7. Game name (and version, if applicable)
8. Description of problem (be detailed: saying "it's jerky" doesn't help, saying "the player sprites seem to be jerky when I'm pressing any of the arrow keys" does)
9. Reproducibility of problem (always, only once, always but only on a specific level, etc.)
10. Sound mode used
11. Video mode (Software, OpenGL, Direct3D, or Glide, and resolution)

Originally posted by Unregistered I gave u my specf.

Not in this thread, and there's no way to tell one "Unregistered" from any other "Unregistered" even if we did a search for those specs.

If you're not going to register, you need to place your system specs in every thread in which you are active. If you were registered, we would be able to identify you and pull specifications up from your profile (after you typed them in, of course).

By the way, so far, the only people I've heard of running this title were doing so by booting off a floppy (poor-man's "Dual-Boot").

Now I am registered, so you could watch my spec. Is it OK?

Originally posted by Pashitos Is it OK?

Looks fine. I kind of figured you had FAT32 on your drive as Pandora (apparently) will refuse to install on an NTFS partition.

From what I have read, this one may not run with sound in XP. Does the game have the option to run with no sound or speaker sound for audio? If so, try using that option to see if you can at least get the video side of things to work.

It seems to me, that Pandora (running for the very first time) is trying to detect sound from the beginning, from the very first screen. So, I can`t bypass this detection, not with my knowledge of computer related stuff. And game ... what`s the word for game being stuck? (Not really a good english speaker/writer I am)

Any suggestions now?

The word you're looking for is "freeze" (verb) in its infinitive form. I think.

Thanks for The Word, guys. Hoping to get some help on the game also:)

Originally posted by Pashitos It seems to me, that Pandora (running for the very first time) is trying to detect sound from the beginning, from the very first screen. So, I can`t bypass this detection,...

Try it without VDMSound. XP still has basic Soundblaster emulation, it may or may not detect that. If the install program is like the one from "Under a Killing Moon", you may have to install it under another OS, then copy the files back to your XP machine. Even then you might have to manually edit the configuration files.

No guarantees on any of this...

I've had 'some' luck with Pandora,

First you need to edit the sound.inf file to turn of sound card verification (add ",1" to the end of each digital soundcard line)

Next edit your config.ini and manually insert the information for a soundblaster 1.0 or pro (sadly only these two 8-bit cards will work).

Use soundblaster FM as your midi as well (although FM does not work this must be set to soundblaster (or adlib essentially) - only the soundblaster drivers work others lock up)

If you are asked to set your soundcard information after this, cancel out.

Now, the built in sound blaster emulation in winXP will work at this point, but not nicely, so I recommend VDMS Launcher.

Oddly enough when usingVDMS make sure it is emulating a SB16 *NOT* a Sb1.0 to match you config file (why? I don't know but it works much better this way), turn OFF midi and adlib support.

Turn on MSCDex, VESA, and DOSX support.

Give it some XMS, but no EMS.

You may also want to cap cpu usage to low, if the movies are choppy.

Now run the game (I recommend running tex4.exe rather than "pandora directive.exe" but either will work)

NOW - the end result of this is that pandora should start, BUT the problem is the interface moves incredibly slow. I can't figure this one out. Movies and sounds play fine for me (Minus MIDI), and VR movement is quick, but the actual Look, Get, ... Interface moves slow. You may consider this playable, you may not.

As a side note, much of this also works with Under a Killing Moon, but it still has some movie and sound troubles.

WireKnight wrote:

I've had 'some' luck with Pandora,

WireKnight, I have to admit that your luck is better than mine. Running on Windows 2000 I cannot get Pandora to work even with sound disabled, or without VDMS, although it runs under Windows 98 of FreeDOS. It seems that the game sets the video mode in some strange way that presents only a black screend and locks the machine. Alt-Enter does not work, and my only way out is to press the power button and pray for Windows to detect it and shutdown. I believe this is somehow related to VESA modes under 2000, and NOLFB did not help either.

BTW, I've noticed that you have a GeForce4. Which driver version are you running?

Regards,

Originally posted by WireKnight Next edit your config.ini and manually insert the information for a soundblaster 1.0 or pro (sadly only these two 8-bit cards will work).

Thanks for the input, WireKnight. If/When I get a chance to try this out, I'll post my results.

Hey MajorGrubert,

Okay - while it is true that it may be a VESA Problem, I would still suggest that it is probably Sound Card Related

Even with Sound Disabled, Pandora still attempts to search for a sound board (why? I don't know)

Try these settings in your config.ini:
[DIGI_CONFIG]
BoardNum=1
IoAddr=0x220
DMA=1
Int=5
Volume=100
ReverseStereo=No

[MIDI_CONFIG]
BoardNum=1
IoAddr=0x388
DigiDrums=Yes
Volume=75

And under [system] set Pass=1

And make sure you edit the sound.inf file to disable verification of digital boards.

I too fought with it for a while, thinking it was a vesa problem...but it turned out to be sound.

As for my Geforce Drivers Windows lists them as :
Version - 3.1.0.0

If I remember correctly they were beta when I got them, haven't checked for new ones.

If you get past this leave another post and I'll tell you how to hex edit tex4.exe to fix the mouse problem that you will encounter.

Those are old drivers I think!

Here are current drivers!
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_43.45

WireKnight wrote:

Hey MajorGrubert, […]
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Hey MajorGrubert,

Okay - while it is true that it may be a VESA Problem, I would still suggest that it is probably Sound Card Related

...

I too fought with it for a while, thinking it was a vesa problem...but it turned out to be sound.

Thanks for the help, WireKnight, but your solution it did not work for me. I edited config.ini and sound.inf as you said, but the game still gets locked in a black screen right after being launched.

I even tried to run the game out of VDMS with sound disabled, but the results are the same, so I have this strong feeling that my problem is not related to sound.

As for my Geforce Drivers Windows lists them as : Version - 3.1.0.0 If I remember correctly they were beta when I got them, ha […]
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As for my Geforce Drivers Windows lists them as :
Version - 3.1.0.0

If I remember correctly they were beta when I got them, haven't checked for new ones.

My drivers are newer: version 4.0.7.2 (or 40.72 as vNivdia calls them). I found an older driver at their site (30.82) and tried to install them after removing the current drivers (removing the device and erasing the .inf files from the current driver, so Windows would not find them in the next boot), but the older drives did not recognize my card. I did a quick check in the .inf file from version 30.82 and the device id for my board is not listed there, probably because it's a newer model with AGP 8X.

The story so far: I still believe there is a problem with either the drivers or the Windows 2000 VDM, that seems to be somehow different from Windows XP. I did a few tests under Windows 98 and the game runs ok without sound (not to mention the tests under the Win9x version of VDMSound, but this is another problem). I will try to install XP in the weekend and do another test and see if I get something different.

Thanks,

It should, shouldn't it?

XP has increased DOS video support than 2000, I think. (I don't remember where I heard this)

I doubt it. It's possible, but I doubt it.

In any case there are newer drivers out now, 43.45. 40.xx had some issues with DirectDraw programs.

Originally posted by WireKnight Try these settings in your config.ini: [DIGI_CONFIG] BoardNum=1 IoAddr=0x220 DMA=1 Int=5 ... And […]
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Originally posted by WireKnight Try these settings in your config.ini:
[DIGI_CONFIG]
BoardNum=1
IoAddr=0x220
DMA=1
Int=5
...
And under [system] set Pass=1

Finally got around to testing this. First off, manually editing the CONFIG.INI like this works. Runs much like "Under a Killing Moon". Poor, "stuttery" audio, lethargic response (mouse movement isn't smooth, auxiliary panel takes twice as long as it should to open or close, etc...), but it works. In any case, the autodetect software for audio configuration appears to not work at all.

Tried to run with VDMSound, and it worked so long as I didn't choose SB16. Realized the problem was that DMA must be equal to your high DMA (default=5). Guess that should have been obvious but normally there are two DMA settings when "true" 16-bit support exists, and I kept using a 1 (the 8-Bit DMA) just out of habit.

Unfortunately, both card selections have their downsides. The 8Bit works fine ("stuttery" with native XP emulation, but smooth with VDMSound), but has poor, noisy output. SB16 is MUCH better and very clear...so long as the sounds it plays are very short and nothing else is happening (FM music seems to make it c...r...a...w...l...). So the best choice seems to be SoundBlaster Pro with VDMSound.

SB16 caused these messages with VDMSound:
@W - 02:15:08.469 - SBController
HandleTransfer: DMA updates too infrequent (unable to keep up with desired transfer rate), requesting boost
Cranked DMA up to 7/30, no help.

AdLib/FM music sounds really poor and extremely sluggish (regardless of card choice). Caused these to appear in the VDMS.LOG:
@W - 02:15:08.287 - AdLibController Attempted to read from write-only port (IN 0x389)
, but they're not significant IIRC.

Using General MIDI or "Roland Sound Canvas" for music results in no music. No errors, no warnings, no nothing...

Choosing "Roland MT 32" or "Roland LAPC-1" for music results in an instant crash and places this error the VDMS.LOG:
@E - 02:36:29.974 - SBController Attempted to write to an unknown mixer register (register = 0x83,value = 0x0b)
<NOTE: This is the same as the error I got when I used SB16 with a DMA of 1>

On top of all that, it always generates this error when I quit (with, or without VDMSound):
DOS/4GW Professional error (2001): exception 0Dh (general protection fault) at
2FF:036DFEC8
TSF32: prev_tsf32 6B14
SS 307 DS 307 ES 307 FS 307 GS 307
EAX FFFFFFFF EBX 374E82C ECX 13190 EDX FFFFFFFF
ESI 374E832 EDI 374E832 EBP 376B624 ESP 376B5D0
CS:IP 2FF:036DFEC8 ID 0D COD 0 FLG 13286
CS= 2FF, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CFFB
SS= 307, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CFF3
DS= 307, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CFF3
ES= 307, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CFF3
FS= 307, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CFF3
GS= 307, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CFF3
CR0: unavailable
Crash address (unrelocated) = 1:0007FEC8

BTW, does anyone have details about all the configuration options within the CONFIG.INI? I'm especially interested in this entry:

MPEG=Off