The first one sounds like you're overspeeding. Try using cycles=...

[Moved]

Grats for the replay Zup. I navigated to the conf file and adjusted the cycles up and down. No change. I then dwnld the helpful FAQ file. Uh uh. Then, I searched the forum. I take it my total ignorance of the medium and the jargon, coupled with my impatience gets in the way of understanding. But I was unable to identify anything related to the issue at hand. I know you guys grow weary of catering to us complete noobys who haven't a clue, but I'd appreciate it if one of you could sort of nudge me in the direction of a possible remedy. It seems like a neat game, and I'd like to give it shot if I could get the sucka loaded. Thanks.

This error comes from a program compiled with the Microsoft Quick C compiler. As already mentioned, it is usually caused by the following construct which tests a computer's speed:

read hardware timer

idle loop a couple of thousand times

read hardware timer again

divide "a couple of thousand" by the difference of the two timer values to find out how many loops fit into e.g. one millisecond; later in the game the idle loop is run that many times per millisecond of the intended waiting time.

Now if the timer doesn't advance even one full tick during the loop (because the loop is over too quickly), the division will be by zero and thus fail.

Have you made sure

1.) that the conf file you're editing is the one that's actually being used? Change something with obvious effects (such as fullscreen=) to find out. Editing the wrong file once cost me an hour of head-scratching when I was new to DOSBox.

2.) whether the problem happens only with a joystick attached? Maybe the joystick timing loop is the culprit?

3.) that you went low enough with cycles= ? Try 300 or so for that genuine 1981 experience...

For programs compiled with Turbo Pascal there exists a fix for this problem, but unfortunately I'm not aware of a fix (except for slowing down your system) that works for Quick C programs. Yes, I know this post is not as helpful as you'd probably like it to be.

The fact that you took the time and interest to reply is appreciated. Much of what you say is a mystery. But you've given me the moxie to not give up. I will get this game running. If one person can do it, so can I. It's all a matter of taking the time and patience to search, study, experiment, and persist. ...And persist. Thank you.

I just tried the game and it worked (no changes to dosbox.conf)

could you asnwer the question do you have a joystick with no
and if it still doesn't work
post the contents of Silent.bat

Mine are:

1SS2 VGA IBM 720

Pardon my ignorance. My delay in repling was due to my being unable to locate and display the contents of slient.bat. Could you give me hand?

inside dosbox when in the ss2 directory type

1type silent.bat

Mission Accomplished!

...I'm up and roooling! What a cool feeling of connection! Althoug I'm sure many of the things I attempted had no effect in the eventual success (such as compatibilty: win95, 256 colors), the money move was loading silent instead of ss2:

mount C C:\dosgames
C:
cd ss2
silent (before, I put ss2)

When you realize I'm a 60 yer old guy who's attempting to capture a mispent childhood by getting into comp games, particularly dos stuff, you can imagine my elation--or maybe you can't. But it's real! Now if I can just get down the sound, gameplay features (joystk config, control keys, etc.), I'll go and slug back a shot of V8 juice, maybe even add a slice of lemon--that's what I call livin' large! Thanks so much Tea, Q-

No problem man, but the honor must really go to the DOSBox developers. When you know how to read source code a bit this thing becomes all the more amazing. That dynamic core is about as hardcore as coding gets (from my admittedly limited experience).

It's a journey I look forward to with great relish...😊