HenriWintermans wrote on 2023-06-14, 02:44:

My problem is the following: when using DOS, there seems to be an issue with how games run. At first, I thought it was almost as if keys were sticking, but it is more like everything temporarily slowing down upon keystrokes following each other too close, which is kind of a necessity for playing most games.

Are you using a non-US keyboard layout? In certain cases, keyb.com can apparently cause slowdowns like that. There are some ways around it, as described here: Re: Moving Mouse dramatically slows down CPU

Intel Triton 82430TX chipset
256 MB PC133 SDRAM

Way too much RAM. The 430TX chipset can only cache up to 64 MB. Anything beyond that will actually make your system run slower. Not sure if that's related to your keyboard issue, but it might be worth checking as well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-14, 04:45:

Are you using a non-US keyboard layout? In certain cases, keyb.com can apparently cause slowdowns like that. There are some ways […]
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HenriWintermans wrote on 2023-06-14, 02:44:

My problem is the following: when using DOS, there seems to be an issue with how games run. At first, I thought it was almost as if keys were sticking, but it is more like everything temporarily slowing down upon keystrokes following each other too close, which is kind of a necessity for playing most games.

Are you using a non-US keyboard layout? In certain cases, keyb.com can apparently cause slowdowns like that. There are some ways around it, as described here: Re: Moving Mouse dramatically slows down CPU

Intel Triton 82430TX chipset
256 MB PC133 SDRAM

Way too much RAM. The 430TX chipset can only cache up to 64 MB. Anything beyond that will actually make your system run slower. Not sure if that's related to your keyboard issue, but it might be worth checking as well.

Thank you so much for the tips! I am using the default US layout, so it's not that. As for the RAM, I do have two 32 MB PC100 sticks, so I can experiment with those, return and report!

I tried with both 32 MB sticks, but unfortunately, the issue persists.

HenriWintermans wrote on 2023-06-14, 05:19:

Thank you so much for the tips! I am using the default US layout, so it's not that. As for the RAM, I do have two 32 MB PC100 sticks, so I can experiment with those, return and report!

The keyboard slowdown issue can sometimes happen even with an US layout. To check this, download and start NSSI, go to Benchmarks > CPU Performance, and hold down a key while that is running. If the CPU performance score gets significantly lower while a key is pressed, then your motherboard is affected.

As noted in the thread linked above, it might be possible to fix this by running xkeyb from FreeDOS beforehand. I've never personally tested this since my motherboards aren't affected by this issue.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-14, 05:45:

HenriWintermans wrote on 2023-06-14, 05:19:

Thank you so much for the tips! I am using the default US layout, so it's not that. As for the RAM, I do have two 32 MB PC100 sticks, so I can experiment with those, return and report!

The keyboard slowdown issue can sometimes happen even with an US layout. To check this, download and start NSSI, go to Benchmarks > CPU Performance, and hold down a key while that is running. If the CPU performance score gets significantly lower while a key is pressed, then your motherboard is affected.

As noted in the thread linked above, it might be possible to fix this by running xkeyb from FreeDOS beforehand. I've never personally tested this since my motherboards aren't affected by this issue.

Thanks for not giving up on me, I will try all of these things. Another thing I noticed when I just tested Lotus 3 again: after quitting the game, shift was "stuck", not physically, but when I tried to type .., it came out as >>. I hit shift a few times and it went back to normal.

NSSI: without pressing a key, it's between 181777 and 184740 Dhrystones. It goes to around 150000 when I'm randomly pressing keys, and if I keep doing it, or if I keep one button pressed for a few seconds, it eventually starts beeping through the PC Speaker, and drops down to around 15000-30000 for a split second. Seems like the issue is as described in the thread you linked, the keyboard buffer overflowing. I'll try xkeyb and see what happens.

After loading xkeyb, the issue does NOT occur in NSSI. Half success! Now let me check a game...

Well, checked Lotus 3 again, since it was the main offender. I didn't experience the sticky arrow keys during the game on one try, but after quitting the game, shift was "stuck" again until I hit the left shift key a few times. Also, the music and the game overall slowing down when two buttons are pressed in the same time still happens.

For something simpler, Digger did not show any issues.

Although the problem is not 100% solved, using xkeyb definitely made things a whole lot better! I should probably check more games to see if this specific issue might be with this one, it's really peculiar.

The readme of Lotus 3 mentions issues with certain keyboards on certain systems, although it is somewhat vague about it. It suggests using a mouse, etc., or even redefining keys. The arrow keys in the menu still cause the menu music to slow down if I go between options too fast, but I redefined the in-game keys to I-J-K-L instead of the arrows, and I feel like it made some difference, although it still wasn't perfect.

I would say that the main issue went away with the use of xkeyb, and the rest of it is probably due to the game itself. Thank you so much for the help!

HenriWintermans wrote on 2023-06-14, 07:05:

I would say that the main issue went away with the use of xkeyb, and the rest of it is probably due to the game itself. Thank you so much for the help!

Cheers!

BTW, if you haven't attempted this already, try running xkeyb after a reboot, right before starting a game. It might have more of an effect that way.

P.S.

Some older games are speed sensitive and may require slowing down the CPU to 386 levels to work correctly. You can use SetMul and/or disable the L1 and L2 cache in the BIOS to achieve this.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-14, 07:07:

Cheers! […]
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HenriWintermans wrote on 2023-06-14, 07:05:

I would say that the main issue went away with the use of xkeyb, and the rest of it is probably due to the game itself. Thank you so much for the help!

Cheers!

BTW, if you haven't attempted this already, try running xkeyb after a reboot, right before starting a game. It might have more of an effect that way.

P.S.

Some older games are speed sensitive and may require slowing down the CPU to 386 levels to work correctly. You can use SetMul and/or disable the L1 and L2 cache in the BIOS to achieve this.

I loaded xkeyb into autoexec.bat, and started the game right after booting into DOS, so I guess that's as good as it gets there. I also see Lotus 3 on that list, although it says a P2 350 is the limit that it's still okay with, but I guess that's not carved in stone. I definitely might experiment more with this in the future, but I'm going to go to bed now, as it's after 1 AM here 😀 Also, in the end, if a single game doesn't work well on this system, I'm fine with that. All the more reason to fire up one of the 486 machines every now and then!