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Starflight 1 and 2 on DOS 7.1

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First post, by carlostex

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Starflight seems to suffer a problem where it refuses to load by asking user to "Place disk with STAR2A.com into any drive and press any key."

Searching the web, i found the following explanations, from an archived oocities page:

Hello.

One bug I encountered with StarFlight on a Pentium PC running Windows 95 is that every time I attempted to save my game I received the message "Please insert the disk with the correct STARA.COM." This happened whether I was running it from floppy disk or the hard drive. Here's the solution: In Windows '95, right click on all the StarFlight .COM files, one at a time. Select "Properties" from the context menu and then click on the "Program" tab. Click the "Advanced..." button, check the MS-DOS Mode box and then select "New Configuation." Click on the "Configuration" button and then turn on "Direct Disk Access."

Windows '95 will restart in a special MS-DOS mode whenever you run starflt.com. It will warn you that "Locking files" can cause damage if handled improperly, but if you only use this mode to play Starflt, and restart after you're done, everything should be OK.

I'm not running Windows 95, but i'm indeed running DOS 7.1. Another user reported:

I am just starting the original Starflight game on an ancient 286 with only CGA -- but it has DOS 6.22. I was unable to save a game; I always got a message asking me to "insert disk with STARA.COM" on it, in an endless loop. I saw James Hanback's similar problem in Windows, and at his suggestion I turned off SmartDrive (a DOS cacheing program) by commenting out the line in AUTOEXEC.BAT. It seems I have to do more than that; taking out everything that is a TSR. I am not even able to use SFWHEEL.COM, the DOS program which bypasses the authorization codes, because that acts like a TSR too. This could bear more careful examination of what is compatible and what is not, but for the moment by taking out every TSR I can definitely save and resume the game.

I tried running with a minimum configuration, pressing F5 during boot, but still the same issue arises. Very annoying, because this is my main system where i'm supposed to play everything EGA and VGA. Any Starflight fans out there?

I tried using the LOCK command to enable direct disk access but still no go. I'm out of ideas.

Reply 1 of 2, by Jo22

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carlostex wrote on 2020-04-28, 00:09:

Any Starflight fans out there?

Yes, me, for example. 😉 I played Starflight 1 since the late 90s, when I found that MegaDrive cartridge..
So far, I've tried many different versions. All-in-all the Atari ST version seemed to be most interesting so far, in visual terms (GUI/art).
The Macintosh version also isn't bad, since it was drawn for a monochrome screen.
That being said, I really like the PC version, too, since it has that old-school/retro-futuristic look to it that I like.
It plays nicely in DOSBox and on my PC/XT clone with green/amber monitor, running MS-DOS 6.2x.

Starflight 2 is something I still have to try out in the future.
So far, I've only had a quick look at the screen shots at Mobygames.

Edit: Oh, and I still use the code wheel. Well, more precisely, a copy that I made myself.. 😅
(I've got the original wheel, star map and floppies in storage, since I don't like to wear them out.)

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 2, by carlostex

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It seems that it cannot be played in DOS 7.1. Most certainly because i use a FAT32 partition.

I think i'm going to try to create a RAMdisk. Another option would be having a secondary FAT16 partition.

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