bmmpxf wrote:
Now, all I need is to get Star Control I & II working, and I will be one *happy camper*. But so far, the advice given, unless I have misunderstood, has not worked. Help?
You might want to check this site:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/
and especially this FAQ.
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/faq/
You're probably not going to get it running natively at 100% perfection. These programs simply require too much "jumping through hoops".
You might try DosBox v0.55, I did some basic testing and it seems to be working for Star Control II. I placed my report in Vlad's compatibility database.
http://vdmsound.sourceforge.net/compat/
NOTE: I only did basic checks as I really don't "know" the game.
Consider that there were multiple version of these games available and you might find emulation to be your answer. Emulation itself has it it's own "hoops" to jump through, but the end results can be very good.
For Star Control I, it seems that the best version is a near-tie between the Amiga (computer) version and the Genesis (game console) version. No surprise there as the two have a very similar architecture.
Setting up the Amiga version can be time-consuming if you don't already have a working Amiga emulator. The advantage is that this is the "original". It has all the digital audio samples and digital music that's missing from the PC version (the PC version was limited to the Ad-Lib audio board). You can even run the game from it's "virtual floppies". That, however, is very slow and I recommend a "virtual hard-drive" install.
Setting up the Genesis version is much easier and has (basically)the same digital audio that the Amiga version has... It even has an "attract mode" that demonstrates a lot of the gameplay for you. I had heard a rumor that some of the gameplay was modified for the Genesis, but I can't confirm that...
(Note: There were also versions of Star Control for the Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC computers. These, however, were "crippled" when compared to the others due to memory/processor restrictions.)
For Star Control II, there was no Amiga version only the PC and 3DO console versions, The 3DO version had a lot of audio-visual enhancements that weren't in the PC version.
As you have discovered, running SC2 on modern PC is quite difficult. Vlad really had a time getting any audio to work on SC2. Unfortunately emulating the 3DO version isn't an option as there are no 3DO emulators ( I know abouth FreeDO at http://freedo.sourceforge.net/ , but that's still at a pre-alpha status).
(URL for FreeDo corrected).
Your best hope here is something else that you'll have to wait (quite) a while for..., but there's a port/remake of Star Control II in the works:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/urquanmasters/
Just to give you an idea, here's the Amiga version running in a window: