I fired up my Pentium 166 for testing and game/app installation purposes. Somehow, my largest executable dropped from 624k to 584k, which is both strange and annoying. I also was having a DMA conflict with my CT2760 AWE32. I then remembered the 2nd PicoGUS I ordered was in this machine, and I adjusted the DMA on the card which fixed my sound issue, and then had to tweak the crap out of my start up files to get back to 624k. It doesn't make any sense, but I succeeded.

After that, I decided to test KQ5 CD again. I wanted to see if the lockups were happening the exact same way as on my 486, and it has been a few weeks since I last tested (and failed to fix) KQ5 on my P166. I used no slow downs or any weird tricks. The game ran fine. I walked in and out of the outside of town screen. I clicked on everything I could think of to trigger the narrator. I spoke to almost everyone, multiple times. I walked around to almost all of the available screens in the first area. One of the reasons I put my 486 back together was this game and because it was locking up on this P166. All I did was to remove the MPU-IPC-T and replace it with the PicoGUS (and change the DMA,) and tweak my config.sys and autoexec.bat. I think I also changed my RAM stick. I can't remember exactly because I was testing all of my RAM sticks, but I am pretty sure I have a 128MB stick in there which is recognized as a 64mb stick (I believe the maximum size allowed per slot on this Gateway board.

I cannot figure out what was making it lock up and what was done to fix it. I did end up changing my CDROM driver from qcsdrom.sys back to vide-cdd.sys, because the former driver had problems with some discs (like Blood - the discs appeared empty until changing the driver.) So speed could not possibly be the issue since it is still locking up on the 486 and running properly (for now) on the P166. Also, the P166 is using MS-DOS 7.1, and changing back to MS-DOS 6.22 on the 486 did nothing to fix the issue.

I used to have more 72pin RAM, and my original 4DPS has 32mb of RAM, but as of right now, I have only 1 16mb FPM stick and an 8mb FPM stick, and cannot locate any other FPM sticks. So the only thing I can think of to try is removing the 16MB stick and trying with the 8MB stick, to rule out a RAM issue with KQ5 and the 486.

I was just poking around online and came across changing the audioSize parameter in the KQ6 resource cfg to fix random sound freezes. The KQ5 resource.cfg file doesn't have this on my or Scythifuge's standard install resource.cfg but it is in mockingbird's resource.cfg. I believe the default is 8K when not specified. Initially I assumed the parameter isn't supported in KQ5 because the installer didn't put it there.

So I added the audioSize parameter to resource.cfg and set it to 16K and 24K as suggested for KQ6 and did not experience any crashes in 20 minutes of gameplay. I removed the audioSize parameter and crashed in about 1 minute outside of town as usual.

I'm not 100% sure that it's fixed because it could be a fluke but I'll keep on playing and see what happens. It's possible that the default 8K is sensitive to the system configuration so messing with startup files or hardware could avoid triggering the crash. But it would be worth checking if setting audioSize in resource.cfg to 16K or 24K on the DX2/66 also fixes the issue.

Also what is supposed to be the default save directory? My game can't save I assume because of some issue with the default save directory

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-28, 06:39:

So I was just poking around online and came across changing the audioSize parameter in the KQ6 resource cfg to fix random sound […]
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So I was just poking around online and came across changing the audioSize parameter in the KQ6 resource cfg to fix random sound freezes. The KQ5 resource.cfg file doesn't have this on my or Scythifuge's standard install resource.cfg but it is in mockingbid's resource.cfg. I believe the default is 8K when not specified. Initially I assumed the parameter isn't supported in KQ5 because the installer didn't put it there.

So I added the audioSize parameter to resource.cfg and set it to 16K and 24K as suggested for KQ6 and did not experience any crashes in 20 minutes of gameplay. I removed the audioSize parameter and crashed in about 1 minute outside of town as usual.

I'm not 100% sure that it's fixed because it could be a fluke but I'll keep on playing and see what happens. It's possible that the default 8K is sensitive to the system configuration so messing with startup files or hardware could avoid triggering the crash. But it would be worth checking if setting audioSize in resource.cfg to 16K or 24K on the DX2/66 also fixes the issue.

Also what is supposed to be the default save directory? My game can't save I assume because of some issue with the default save directory

This is interesting. I will explore this. It has gotten to the point where I MUST fix this issue on my 486, given that it is the "oldest" machine that I have, and thus it MUST work. Speaking of KQ6, I wonder if the audioSize fixes the scratchy lockups I am experiencing on a real SB Pro2 plus two different clones, with Thunderboard being the only option that works.

Maybe KQ5 is working on my tweaked P166 because it is powerful enough that the audioSize doesn't matter, but I am just speculating. I am also going to try to hunt down a different version of the KQ5 CD.

EDIT: swapping out the RAM stick on my 486, did not work.

Unfortunately, I can reproduce the lockup with audioSize of both 16k and 24k. At 16k, I thought it was fixed as I could walk back and forth in and out of the outside of town screen, and I spoke with everyone and triggered many narrations. However, it locked up on the bees screen. At 24k, the lockup happened even quicker, whoch is basically how the lockup has been working - randomly.

Damn it...

How did you add the parameter to resource.cfg?

Also mockingbird's value is 45K which may be worth a try as well

The audioSize parameter was not the fix, however I did dertemine the root cause of the freezing. Turns out that moving the mouse while sound is playing is causing the freeze. I can reliably make the game crash on the first screen by using the talk action on Cedric and moving the mouse around. It also explains why it was so common for the river outside the town to crash - It's constantly playing sound in the background while you move the mouse around. Most screens only have background music.

I don't have a solution yet but at least it narrows down where to look. I'm using a PS/2 Microsoft Intellimouse 1.2A with CuteMouse 2.1b4. I will try some alternate mouse drivers.

Edit: Testing different mouse drivers

When using the talk action continuously on Cedric in the first screen and moving the mouse in circles
CuteMouse 2.1b4 - Crashes in about 3 seconds
Logitech Mouse 7.30 - Crashes in about 15 seconds
Microsoft Mouse 9 - So far have not been able to make it crash

I think back in the day, the microsoft mouse drivers were by far the most commonly used

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-29, 00:05:

<snip> CuteMouse 2.1b4 - Crashes in about 3 seconds Logitech Mouse 7.30 - Crashes in about 15 seconds Microsoft Mouse 9 - So far […]
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<snip>
CuteMouse 2.1b4 - Crashes in about 3 seconds
Logitech Mouse 7.30 - Crashes in about 15 seconds
Microsoft Mouse 9 - So far have not been able to make it crash
<snip>

I've been through that with Monkey Island Talkie Edition. You're going down the wrong path... There was an older version of CuteMouse that solved the symptom, but the issue was still there: Your system is unstable (freezing in Doom after an hour of gameplay revealed that -- this was only possible because I was using a Cyrix 5x86 that could be multiplier toggled to either a 1:1 486-DX/33 or a slow pentium).

It could be memory timings are too tight, it could be a bad L2 cache chip, it could be a lot of things. But your system is unstable, and the issue is unrelated to the Sierra engine in your case.

Almost certainly true in one way or another, I wouldn’t expect this system to be perfectly hardware compatible with every game even if it’s running stable in everything else.

In this case I’m happy to run a less sensitive mouse driver just for this game since everything else runs fine. I ended up settling with CuteMouse 2.0a4 since it also works and has a smaller memory footprint. If I see other instability I will investigate further.

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-28, 06:39:

I was just poking around online and came across changing the audioSize parameter in the KQ6 resource cfg to fix random sound fre […]
Show full quote

I was just poking around online and came across changing the audioSize parameter in the KQ6 resource cfg to fix random sound freezes. The KQ5 resource.cfg file doesn't have this on my or Scythifuge's standard install resource.cfg but it is in mockingbird's resource.cfg. I believe the default is 8K when not specified. Initially I assumed the parameter isn't supported in KQ5 because the installer didn't put it there.

So I added the audioSize parameter to resource.cfg and set it to 16K and 24K as suggested for KQ6 and did not experience any crashes in 20 minutes of gameplay. I removed the audioSize parameter and crashed in about 1 minute outside of town as usual.

I'm not 100% sure that it's fixed because it could be a fluke but I'll keep on playing and see what happens. It's possible that the default 8K is sensitive to the system configuration so messing with startup files or hardware could avoid triggering the crash. But it would be worth checking if setting audioSize in resource.cfg to 16K or 24K on the DX2/66 also fixes the issue.

Also what is supposed to be the default save directory? My game can't save I assume because of some issue with the default save directory

Regarding saves, if you can't save maybe you're playing from the CD or it's trying to save to the CD, which obviously wouldn't work.

Default directory is also the default save directory: C:/SIERRA/KQ5 (or KQ5CD).

Spikey wrote on 2025-12-31, 15:38:

Regarding saves, if you can't save maybe you're playing from the CD or it's trying to save to the CD, which obviously wouldn't work.

Default directory is also the default save directory: C:/SIERRA/KQ5 (or KQ5CD).

I figured it out, I forgot I moved the game directory and it was still looking in the old spot that didn't exist. I hit change directory and typed in the new path and it's all hunky-dory.