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IBM Thinkpad 390 & LucasArts Games (SCUMM)

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First post, by Tyrantulas

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I have an IBM Thinkpad 390 that I'm working to repurpose as a DOS gaming laptop. The biggest downside of this machine is the NeoMagic NMA2 (NM2200) which from my checking does not have "REAL" DOS drivers... but it has advertised SB Pro/Adlib compatibility, so it's not terrible terrible.

Now that doesn't mean that I can't fire up Duke3D, configure the sound card, and get both digital sound effects and music. Heck, I can even get my MT-32 to communicate correctly. (using SoftMPU, of course).. but when I launch a LucastArts SCUMM game with the sound on, I just get a black screen until I reboot the machine. I can launch the game with the T (text) command line switch, and the games will play just fine without audio.

I thought that maybe my original discs that came with the LucasArts Archives Vol 1 might somehow be different versions... so I went looking in "the usual places" and found the disk based version... and these play fine.

For additional testing, I loaded up DOSBOX and verified that all these games play without issues in the emulated enviroment.

What am I overlooking? What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for your assistance!

Reply 2 of 4, by Tyrantulas

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dionb wrote on 2020-04-14, 21:04:

One thing I recall with SCUMM is that autodetect can be flaky. Maybe you could try to manually setting MIDI at 0x330. Might just help.

I have MIDI set to port 330 in BIOS, and in SoftMPU. If I go into a game like Duke3D's setup, I can point it at 330, and I see activity on the MT-32's display. So I'm fairly certain that is configured properly.

For further clarity, the sound card is set to port 220 & IRQ 7... DMA 0.

Is there a way to change the MPU port address in these older LucasArts titles? I know you can in Fate of Atlantis... but even if I manually address the port at the command line, I still get a black screen.

Reply 3 of 4, by dionb

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330 is pretty standard, if you're doing that manually, it's not what I though it was.

Looking at those settings, DMA 0 is somewhat excentric. Would it be an option to try DMA 1?

Reply 4 of 4, by Tyrantulas

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dionb wrote on 2020-04-15, 06:49:

330 is pretty standard, if you're doing that manually, it's not what I though it was.

Looking at those settings, DMA 0 is somewhat excentric. Would it be an option to try DMA 1?

Same issues using DMA 0,1, or 3

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