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Difficult games to get working

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Reply 41 of 78, by Cyberdyne

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red_avatar wrote on 2021-01-25, 13:29:
Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-01-25, 09:26:
In my experience Cutemouse is a nice "cute" little program, but if you want best compatibility use Microsoft Mouse driver Versio […]
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In my experience Cutemouse is a nice "cute" little program, but if you want best compatibility use Microsoft Mouse driver Version 8.20. It really works with everything. Jut try to load it in UMB if possible, because yes, it is a memory hog, a compatible memory hog.

Oh... my two sents.

Z aka. Zed crashes sometimes, tried different version and different machines. Still random crashes.

Chasm the Rift sometimes in some machines the display goes blank. When real gameplay starts.

Have not gotten to run DreamWeb on real hardware, well have not tried hard enough.

In te other hand I have always loved Apogee and ID software games, they will work on everything. Ok you need to TSR patch Biomenace, but thats it.

It's interesting to see what games cause problems for different people - some hardware/software I never deviate from so I never encounter certain problems. For example, I always use DOS 6.22 and I always use Creative Sound Blaster sound cards. The minute I tried a different card, I ran into tons of issues so I went back to Creative. Dreamweb for example was never a problem for me and I don't recall Chasm being a problem either.

Another thing I noticed, is that some problems are indicative of the abandonware versions floating around. Some of these versions stem from way back to the original release where the crack was sloppy or the version cracked was not the final released version (it was common for review copies to end up in the piracy scene). The UFO Enemy Unknown version that a lot of sites host, has sound issues yet when I install from my original floppies or CD I don't have such an issue. Z as well: the abandonware version had tons of stuff ripped and I noticed this caused instability but the original CD version is solid as a rock. So if you can, try the original CD first (archive.org has most CD images).

(Windows 9x) MS-DOS 7.10 also runs everything, i have not encountered any problems.
I do not like creative stuff, only use AWE for nice wavetable music and MT-32/GM emulation. IDK Monkey Island sound pretty nice.
I have never encountered problems with newer ISA based ESS cards. I have many of them.
OPL-SA3 cards are also good. Only crap software. Well my bro from my country Tiido fixed that.
I have never had problems with Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen. But well I only use Cirrus, S3 or Nvidia cards in my systems.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 42 of 78, by Joseph_Joestar

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Jorpho wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:14:

Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen seem to trip people up fairly frequently, but they worked well enough back in the day.

Fun fact: due to a coding oversight, Jazz Jackrabbit can sometimes sound worse on Creative SB16/AWE cards than on clones. Re: SB16 issues with Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball

I can confirm that this is the case with my AWE64 Gold.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 43 of 78, by 1541

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Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-01-26, 06:17:

I have never had problems with Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen. But well I only use Cirrus, S3 or Nvidia cards in my systems.

Issues to these games are known with the following graphic cards:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

💾 Windows 9x resources (drivers, tools, NUSB,...) 💾

Reply 44 of 78, by Cyberdyne

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1541 wrote on 2021-01-26, 06:58:
Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-01-26, 06:17:

I have never had problems with Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen. But well I only use Cirrus, S3 or Nvidia cards in my systems.

Issues to these games are known with the following graphic cards:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Exactamundo! I have one ET4000W32(DOS demoscene and Windows 1.x 2.x) and one Ati Rage II+DVD(early 3d acceleration and so on), but only for testing exotic things that only work with those cards.
Everything else is S3 Trios and S3 Virges mainly. Few fast Cirruses. And multitude on Nvidia cards from TNT2 ... Geforce MX ... FX 5 series. all have excellent retro VGA stats.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 45 of 78, by Cyberdyne

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-01-26, 06:28:
Jorpho wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:14:

Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen seem to trip people up fairly frequently, but they worked well enough back in the day.

Fun fact: due to a coding oversight, Jazz Jackrabbit can sometimes sound worse on Creative SB16/AWE cards than on clones. Re: SB16 issues with Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball

I can confirm that this is the case with my AWE64 Gold.

newer ESS cards and OPL-SAx cards have never give me any problem. I have never get into Cristal or any other cards. Ok I have few ALS100 because they have excellent pirated OPL clones and SB16 compatibility. Not the best overall sound quality. But that even adds to the nostalgia. My first speaker were like size of 4 packs of smokes. And first game I heard stereo was Wolfenstein 3D so quality was not really imperative. 6896kHz everybody.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 46 of 78, by thepirategamerboy12

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U.S. Navy Fighters from 1995 is a DOS PC game that I can't get to run on any of my computers at the moment except for my 486 with Cirrus Logic GD-542X graphics, which kinda sucks because the settings have to be turned down quite low. On everything else, when I go to run the EXE it just hangs at a blinking DOS cursor. It will also run on my Pentium 166 MMX machine if I take out the main S3 PCI card and replace it with a spare Trident one I have, but I'd love to get it working with the S3 somehow because I'm sure It'd perform a bit better.

Reply 50 of 78, by clueless1

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thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-01-26, 15:04:

U.S. Navy Fighters from 1995 is a DOS PC game that I can't get to run on any of my computers at the moment except for my 486 with Cirrus Logic GD-542X graphics, which kinda sucks because the settings have to be turned down quite low. On everything else, when I go to run the EXE it just hangs at a blinking DOS cursor. It will also run on my Pentium 166 MMX machine if I take out the main S3 PCI card and replace it with a spare Trident one I have, but I'd love to get it working with the S3 somehow because I'm sure It'd perform a bit better.

Do you have an option to disable BIOS SHADOW settings in your BIOS? That is a potential solution to the blinking cursor issue. And yes, I agree that this issue makes USNF a difficult game to get working. I have the same issue on my Packard Bell with no BIOS SHADOW setting in my BIOS to tweak.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 51 of 78, by thepirategamerboy12

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clueless1 wrote on 2021-01-27, 10:22:

Do you have an option to disable BIOS SHADOW settings in your BIOS? That is a potential solution to the blinking cursor issue. And yes, I agree that this issue makes USNF a difficult game to get working. I have the same issue on my Packard Bell with no BIOS SHADOW setting in my BIOS to tweak.

I'll have to give that another go, though I seem to remember that being mentioned in the game's documentation and after trying that it still didn't work.

Reply 52 of 78, by red_avatar

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Jorpho wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:14:

In addition to what has been mentioned, Zone 66 and Beneath a Steel Sky come to mind. (Beneath a Steel Sky runs perfectly in ScummVM, of course.)

The only problem I ever had with Beneath A Steel Sky was the fact that the sound was very very quiet. I had this on every system I tried but they all had either a SB16 or a AWE64 so always Creative. I had to lower MIDI music and set wave volume to max and 4x the sound to make the speech loud enough on my 5W speakers back in the day. For the rest, I never had any problems getting it to run but I often saw it mentioned in magazines as a game that people needed help getting to work.

So far I've tested some 400 games on the new system and only a handful have problems - it's mostly graphical glitches happening in games like Superfrog where the graphics get oddly corrupted but the games that don't work on the Valuepoint, work fine on the HP Vectra so as long as there's overlap, I'm happy. Ultima 7 is also perfect in speed on this 486SX 25 - and I do mean perfect. On my 486SX 33 (IBM Aptiva I got in 1994) it was slightly too fast and on my 386 it was too slow (or rather, lots of stutters while moving).

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 53 of 78, by sf78

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Dynamix flight sims from the early 90's required insane amounts of conventional memory + EMS. Aces of the Pacific required 610k, but I did manage to launch it with around 607k. The most I could get out tinkering with Autoexec/Config was around 614k without a boot disk. For some reason, later DOS/4GW mode games gave me much more trouble, they usually just exited to DOS with a random error not explaining what went wrong.

Reply 54 of 78, by red_avatar

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sf78 wrote on 2021-02-02, 11:32:

Dynamix flight sims from the early 90's required insane amounts of conventional memory + EMS. Aces of the Pacific required 610k, but I did manage to launch it with around 607k. The most I could get out tinkering with Autoexec/Config was around 614k without a boot disk. For some reason, later DOS/4GW mode games gave me much more trouble, they usually just exited to DOS with a random error not explaining what went wrong.

There's a replacement DOS extender called DOS32A that may help here. In early DOSBOX days, DOS4GW games were very unreliable and DOS32A used to be a great substitute which used less memory and was far more stable.

https://dos32a.narechk.net/index_en.html

With my current system (DOS 6.22), the SB16 I have is a Vibra which means its drivers are TSR allowing me 610K to be free with MS mouse (I ditched CTmouse - far too many incompatibility issues), CD drive (using VIDECDD.SYS) and sound all installed (and even doskey and a few other small tools).

I should try Aces of the Pacific - see if I run into any problems.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 55 of 78, by dr.zeissler

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Glitchy-Stuff:
- JimPower (glitchiest sound/freezing thing I ever had)
- Turrican2 (If you know what files are missing on installation and have the right hardware it works)
- Pinball-Illusion (works if you always delete the cfg first and unload the cute-mouse before starting)
- AlienBreed-TA (sound and joystick-issues on faster machines)
- Pinball-Dreams1 (works on SB only on IRQ7 and not for SB-Pro. Fast Machines do make problems too)
- Pinball-Dreams2 (has issues on i440 and other newer Chipsets and machines abobe 300Mhz (Celeron) or P3 above 300 (but works on older Chipsets and Katmai500) If you do not have the requirements you get a sweeping noise in the music.
- Pinball-Fantasies (see above: sweeping noise)

PS: unloading the cute-mouse-driver is recommended for some demoscene-stuff as well. place cute-mouse at last in autoexec.bat so unloading will work.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 56 of 78, by red_avatar

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dr.zeissler wrote on 2021-02-02, 14:43:

PS: unloading the cute-mouse-driver is recommended for some demoscene-stuff as well. place cute-mouse at last in autoexec.bat so unloading will work.

This is why I stopped using it. I only realized later but it caused some games to not run or crash because once I swapped over to Microsoft Mouse driver, these games all started to work fine again.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 58 of 78, by clueless1

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Interesting, I've been using CuteMouse v1.9 for years and have never had a compatibility issue with it. I guess it depends on the game/app.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks