Searching for Extreme AND Pinball shows that it supposedly works with DOSBox 0.65. DosFreak has listed it as working fine with core=dynamic. Which core setting do you use?

I'm not sure what my last setting was (I'm at work and can't check right now), but I usually start with dynamic and fall back to normal if the game doesn't work, so I probably tested both. I'll recheck that when I'm home again.

The crash only happens in one specific situation on only one of the four tables, so it's rather unlikely to be found when just checking whether the game works. (I know *I* wouldn't find it in such a situation.)

However, since the crash happens always and is very easy to reproduce (you just have to know that the "d" key starts the dragon animation, which wasn't part of the official documentation iirc), I've got some hopes that it won't be too difficult to nail the problem. (Of course, there's still the possibility that I just have a bad file, so any verification of someone who has the original CD at hand would be welcome.)

It crashes for me as well, unless I disable sound, so this is probably some SB emulation problem.
(Did you choose "No Sound" in the conf file or in the SETUP.EXE for the game?)

I'm including a rarred log with debug info, though I think the 4 lines before DOSBOX crashes or hangs hold the key info and they are:
132453218: CPU:DOS rerouted Interrupt Called 3
132463700: MISC:Interrupt vector changed on 15 Int 15 Bios
132463700: MISC:Interrupt vector changed on 8 Int 8 Clock
132463700: SBLASTER:DSP:Reset

The debug was done using ykhwong's version

I'll see if messing with SB options help...

OK, anything in the SETUP.EXE that has "SOUND BLASTER" written on it is bad! 😉

Either select Sound Blaster Clone or Gravis Ultrasound to make the dragon work (tested)

Odd problem indeed...

Actually, if you choose Gravis Ultrasound, play any of the boards and then attempt to quit, DOSBOX will crash with the following message in the status window:

Exit to Error:CPU:GRP5:Illegal Call 7

the debug versions last lines are:
249790331: PIT:PIT 0 Timer at 18.21 Hz mode 3
249800765: PIC:0 mask D8
249800767: PIC:1 mask EC
249806210: INT10:Set Video Mode 3
249806210: VGA:Blinking 8
249892576: SBLASTER:DSP:Reset

So I guess Sound Blaster Clone is currently the only way to play with sounds (unless you don't mind the quitting crash)

Minimax: I rechecked, I'm using dynamic core. I tested all other core options too, none made a difference.

LoneLines: Hmmm, we seem to have two different problems.

I'm pretty sure that my crash isn't related to sound, because:
- sound plays fine in my version
- the crash also also happens with sound turned off (in the game's setup as well as in Dosbox)
- there is a screen artifact when the crash occurs (strangely coloured pixels below the dragon's head)
- I tried various sound settings in Dosbox and in the game's setup and none of them changed anything regarding the crash

You also mentioned that the game crashes on attempt to quit it when choosing GUS sound. I can't reproduce this problem here. For me, GUS sound works just fine. (It doesn't help against the "dragon crash" though.)

Can you check whether the *same* crash that's afecting me happens in your version? If you'd like to, please follow these steps:
- start the game
- choose the "Medieval Knights" table (it's the default table in my version)
- choose "begin"
- press space (not necessary, but that will scroll down the screen, so that you will be able to see the screen artifact later)
- press "d"
- You should now see (a part of) the dragon head in the upper center of the screen. It will move a little, then you will see the aforementioned screen artifact beneath it, the sound loops, the game freezes, and the Dosbox status window displays an endless sequence of illegal reads (like "Illegal read from 2000###, CS:IP, 150: 169###", the lines scroll too fast so I can't make out the exact numbers behind the #s.

Can you verify that this crash happens in your version too, even with sound switched off in the game as well as in Dosbox?

If I can do anything to help to nail this problem, just ask.

I don't get endless Illegal reads, only a few...

Are you using DOSBOX 0.65 out of the box or a modified version of it?

Are you sure choosing SOUND BLASTER CLONE doesn't work? I hit 'd' about 10 times while playing it managed to work fine...

Psyringe + LoneLines: I hope you 2 can work out the cause of this. It might be a good idea if you both posted the size and date of some of the major EXE files. To make sure that you are running the same version of the game.

Are you using DOSBOX 0.65 out of the box or a modified version of it?

Out of the box. Since this is one of the differences of our environments, I'll try to run the game with ykhwong's build and see whether this changes my game's behaviour.

Are you sure choosing SOUND BLASTER CLONE doesn't work? I hit 'd' about 10 times while playing it managed to work fine...

I'm sure "SB clone" doesn't help against the crash (for me). We may have different versions of the game, or ykhwong's mod may behave differently with this game than the regular version of Dosbox.

In the meantime, I found a very crude workaround: If I restrict the game to 4 MB of RAM, then the dragon animation isn't loaded, and the crash doesn't happen. (There will also be other animations missing, but the game is perfectly playable, just lacking some eye candy.)

Interesting observation: When I press "d" in this memory-restricted environment, then the *sound* of the flame-breathing dragon plays perfectly. That's another clue that (with my version in my environment) the problem seems to be graphics-related, not sound-related.[/quote]

I use ykhwong's version just for debug, I tested the game on DosBOX 0.65 out of the box, core = normal, cycles = auto.

When I chose Sound Blaster Clone, lowest sound quality, I got all animations and sounds fine (including the dragon)

Are you playing the CD version or the floppy version of the game, that may be the difference between the 2 versions we are testing...

I have the exact same problem. Selecting 'no sound' and the dragon pop still causes it to lock up in 0.72. What info do you need from me that would be helpful?

I should also note that I have tried disabling sound completely in the dosbox config file as well.

First of all post full system specs, how you installed the game, mountings etc.
and then try to be elaborate on how to reproduce the problem (i don't have a
single clue on how to "activate" a dragon).

For what's it worth, using Soundblaster clone at reduced cycles - roughly 15000 - makes the game stable for me.

As far as system specs go:

XP Pro
Xeon Dual Core 2.4ghz
2 gig ram
Sound Blaster Live Sound card
Nvidia GeForceFX 5200 Video Card

Hardware wise, I've done a lot of trial and error on this one too. I've swapped to using the onboard sound card, tried a different video card (ATI) and I've even run dosbox inside a Windows 2000 virtual machine (VirtualBox) with this game, all with the same results.

I've tried both disabling the sound through the game's setup.exe, by selecting 'no sound' and by turning off sound card emulation through the config file for dosbox.

To mount and start the game on my XP machine, I do:
mount c d:\dosbox
c:
cd extreme
extreme

With the Windows 2000 virtual box I do the same, except the mount is c:\dosbox instead of d:\dosbox.

To activate the dragon you can follow the steps posted earlier in this thread by Psyringe:
- start the game
- choose the "Medieval Knights" table (it's the default table in my version)
- choose "begin"
- press space (not necessary, but that will scroll down the screen, so that you will be able to see the screen artifact later)
- press "d"
- You should now see (a part of) the dragon head in the upper center of the screen. It will move a little, then you will see the aforementioned screen artifact beneath it, the sound loops, the game freezes, and the Dosbox status window displays an endless sequence of illegal reads (like "Illegal read from 2000###, CS:IP, 150: 169###", the lines scroll too fast so I can't make out the exact numbers behind the #s.

Ooops, some additional notes:
Selecting sound blaster clone and lowering cup usage to 1375 still resulted in the same problem. Also, on both the xp and the 2000 install, the dosbox directory being mounted is *not* the same as where DosBox is installed to. DosBox itself resides in Program Files on both machines.

Thanks, i can reproduce it that way as well.

As it happens under bochs in the same way, maybe somebody can try it
on a real pc (with an sb/sb16) to see how it behaves there.

I know for certain that the game works flawlessly on real PCs with sound blaster cards. I used an SB 128 on a Windows 98 machine long long ago and it worked great.

Just making a quick note that sadly this problem still exists on 0.73. Doh!