@llm:
See attachment.

Only two? How did you conclude that?

llm wrote on 2021-12-23, 07:18:

mkarcher wrote on 2021-12-23, 07:08:

llm wrote on 2021-12-23, 06:01:

(IDA Freeware 5 should give the same result):

Just a hint: IDA Freeware 5 is obsolete. Currently, IDA Freeware is at 7.6, see https://hex-rays.com/ida-free/#download . For reverse-engineering 16-bit DOS stuff, IDA 5 should be good enough, or possibly even better, though.

i've got a full version IDA 7.6/Hex-rays at work so i know that there are new versions 😀 - my private license 6.8 is just a little bit older

the IDA Freeware 7 is very downsized - can't handle DOS exe/com or binary files - only Win PE executables - so it can't be used for most DOS reverse engineering stuff

The last freeware I looked at was 7.0. That one still contained the "binary file loader", so it can trivially be used for loading ROM images, COM files and classic SYS files. It doesn't come with 16-bit library signatures, though, and already misses the MZ exe loader.

I just installed 7.6, and indeed it plain refuses to load binary files as primary files for the database (oh wow!). This can easily be worked around by loading a PE file and loading the binary file as "additional binary file" (and you can delete the segments of the PE file afterwards). I just tried that approach on a BIOS image, and it seems the auto-comments for the keyboard controller ports are significantly improved compared to version 5 series IDA (I typically use my private 5.7 commercial).

Still, if DOS EXE support or MS-DOS library detection is a requirement, the go-to version freeware version of IDA is still 5.

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2021-12-23, 10:14:

Only two? How did you conclude that?

there are only 2 different hashes for all the files - first column

If it's acceptable, I am going to upload each copy of ega640.drv I have. (and nothing more) Okay?

llm wrote on 2021-12-23, 09:53:

so there at least only 2 version in all your found drivers
D:\Other\g\kq7\INN\EGA640.DRV 1-9-1992 18:57:50

There was an EGA version of King's Quest 7? I thought that game was SVGA only?

@good_punk: I think it was the kq7 demo.

And, I uploaded all ega640 drivers I could find on my pc. And @LLM, you're right, there are only two different versions.

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2021-12-23, 13:23:

@good_punk: I think it was the kq7 demo.

Hm okay... I've downloaded a demo version of the game but when I set the driver to EGA640 and run with EGA in DosBox nothing is displayed... you only hear the voice. Might be a wrong version of the demo.

@good_punk: I double checked, that ega640.drv has nothing to do with King's Quest 7. It's part of a supplemental bit of software for something called the Imagination Network: https://www.sierragamers.com/imagination-1991/

Thanks for the clarification. 😀

@good_punk: you're welcome!

Okay, after digging a little deeper with the SCI Companion I've found out that game which still use the 2-Bit .cur files seem to be broken with EGA640.. as in not displaying any mouse cursor at all. Later games that use Views instead of .cur files to show a cursor are working.
I've tried to get an actual EGA .cur file from PQ2 and inserted that to PQ3 but that didn't help. And if I add view cursors the game obviously doesn't recognize those. So I've kind of hit a wall with getting PQ3, Larry5, PQ1VGA to work. (At least if I want to play the games with a mouse... but playing keyboard only sucks obviously ^^)

@good_punk:
Unless I misunderstood what you are trying to do you will need to convert the resources you're swapping between games to the appropriate version. You could try using this program for that: https://sourceforge.net/projects/scistudio/

Although it doesn't appear to have a version conversion feature it should be possible to open a resource and recreate it in a matter suitable for another SCI version. To be fair, I am not 100% certain about this, but I think it's worth a shot.

Not exactly. The older games use a completely different file format for mouse cursors. So I can't just take the images from one of the newer games to replace the cursors. I don't know why the old cursors are incompatible with EGA640 though... they work in the native EGA games just fine but maybe they just didn't bother implementing them?
If anyone has found an EGA640 game with the black/white cursors working I'd be interested to know, just to confirm my theory. 😀

@good_punk:
What exactly are you trying to do?

I have put the EGA640.DRV file in the directory of Larry5 and Police Quest 3 (They didn't come with one... at least not in my version) and changed the resources.cfg to use that driver.
When I start theses games the mouse cursor is invisible.

I've opened the resource files in SCI Companion and compared them to the games that work with a mouse cursor (in my case EcoQuest and Space Quest 5). I've found out that the difference is that Larry5 and Police Quest 3 use special cursor files for the mouse cursors (file ending .cur) that are only black and white. The two games that work don't have these cursors but are using normal views (images) for their mouse cursors that have colors and all.

So I think that older VGA games that still use the special cursor files don't work with EGA640.DRV

I tried the following:

Copy Leisure Suit Larry 5 specific files into a folder containing the just the SCI engine used by Eco Quest 2 (along with the configuration utility and drivers). The result (after manually setting a minhunk value in resource.cfg):

"Error on Explode
Script #: 0, IP: 0"

For what it's worth, judging from the font (and the cursor not blinking at the prompt) used for this message the EGA driver did initialize high-res EGA before the SCI engine crashed.

A few observations:
-SCI 1.1 games (LSL5 and PQ3) configuration utilities won't even start if EGA640.drv is present. The message:
"Error : Can't find text entry for 'EGA640.drv'. This can be caused by a missing INSTALL.TXT or INSTALL.HLP file: TEXTDICT.CPP(143)
Abnormal program termination"
-SCI 1.0 games (EQ2 (which support EGA640.drv) use *.v56 resources for cursors where SCI1.1 games (LSL5 and PQ3) use *.cur resources.

You appear to have these options:
-Convert a game from SCI 1.1 to 1.0.
-It should be possible to modify EGA640.drv to work correctly with SCI 1.1. Don't ask me how though.

Question:
Why do you want to run your VGA games in EGA?

I think it's the other way around. Larry5 and Police Quest 3 are the SCI 1.0 games and SQ5 is an SCI 1.1 game. So the 1.0 games use the .cur files and don't work properly where the 1.1 games work just fine. 😀
I don't know if it's possible to upgrade a game from 1.0 to 1.1 and regarding the cursors you would have to tell the game somehow which views are meant for which cursor. Couldn't find any way to do that with the utilities I have.

Question:
Why do you want to run your VGA games in EGA?

I find it fascinating that it's possible and how they look. And I want to make a youtube video about the whole topic of "VGA Emulation" for EGA cards. 😀

https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/Sierra_Creative_Interpreter
It seems every game from the SCI1.1 (1.001.xxx) list works perfectly if you add the EGA640.DRV and change the resource.cfg settings. 😀