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Lemmings Chronicles - EMS driver? Wha?

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First post, by EdmondDantes

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Okay, so in this video I rant mostly about my Sidewinder (subject of a recent topic here), but near the end I also talk about an issue I've had running the game "The Lemmings Chronicles." After making that video, I tried using Dosbox to run it, and the game does work there, but it runs very choppily and pauses briefly every five seconds (Mazinkaiser is already vintage hardware, so Dosbox's slowdown effects are amplified), so I really need to run this game in a native environment to really enjoy it.

Here's the sitch:

When I first installed it, it gave me a runtime error. this it turned out I could get around by disabling the CPU Cache, so I install the game, and then... it tells me "Error: Can't find EMS driver!"

WHAT?! WHAT THE FLYING FLIP?!?! Now, I'm booting up with a config where I have Emm386 loaded and set to give me 8mb of RAM, so I know there's an EMS driver loading. So why isn't the game seeing it? Does it require a specific version of Emm386? Does it require a different EMS memory manager? Is it talking about something else entirely?

I tried reinstalling it, and this time letting it install with all-defaults, but that didn't help either. I've also tried adjusting the amount of memory, booting with different memory configurations, and even trying to run it in Windows 98 (which STILL gets the "can't find EMS driver" error).

So I'm turning to you for help, because I looked on Google, and I could find NOTHING on this issue. Apparently nobody else on the internet has ever encountered this problem.

So, what should I do?

Thanks in advance.

Reply 3 of 5, by Jorpho

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EdmondDantes wrote:

So I'm turning to you for help, because I looked on Google, and I could find NOTHING on this issue. Apparently nobody else on the internet has ever encountered this problem.

There are numerous hits for <"lemmings" "ems driver">, many of which seem to be relevant, including one here.

Perhaps it does require a specific version of EMM386. Are you using the one that came with Windows 98 presently? I would be inclined to suggest trying EMS Magic, but a better idea would be the EMM386 from MS-DOS 6.x.

konc wrote:

Are you sure that you've set EMM386 with the RAM parameter? I would bet my money on no 😀

As he says it's "set to give me 8mb of RAM", it does not seem that would fix the problem.

Reply 4 of 5, by konc

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Jorpho wrote:

As he says it's "set to give me 8mb of RAM", it does not seem that would fix the problem.

I wasn't being smart here, just not sure if by "RAM" the topic starter meant just "memory" or the RAM parameter for EMM386. It's not common for people to specify specific amounts of EMS memory (not to mention that even fewer ever learned the syntax for this), that's why I jumped in to make this clear. I do not have personal experience from the game though, this was just a thought, a probable one if I may add.

Reply 5 of 5, by EdmondDantes

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Good news guys, I got it working!

It turned out to be the stupidest thing. It just requires that the Emm386 (and maybe Himem?) I point to are the ones in my Windows directory. I normally copy them to C:\DOS and load those instead just to make things easier on myself. I dunno why this matters to the game, but once I did things the way the primadonna wanted, it all worked fine.

Here's a video with the full story (note, I'm posting this while the vid is still uploading, so if it doesn't work, just check back in an hour or two).

Linkie Linkie lets-a-go!

EDIT: It turns out the actual problem was simpler than that--somehow, my EMS boot configuration had gotten the NOEMS parameter written in it. So it literally was not loading EMS memory. -__- I have no idea what caused that, but it absolves Lemmings Chronicles of all blame.

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