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F15 Strike Eagle II crashes to dos after a few seconds.

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First post, by Nicolas 2000

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486 dx50, 16mb ram, 256kb cache, 1mb gpu, SB pro compatible, W95 but I worked from DOS.

I have a kixx cd rom verson of F15 II. Installed to C:\F15. I have the requested C:\Temp and referenced in autoexec.

Install went fine, so does starting and menus. Joystick detected.

The game itself loads and plays fine for just 1 to 5 seconds. Then it goes back to dos prompt. Visuals look ok, adlib sounds ok.

Any idea what causes this? Cdrom is F:, not D:. But cd is not inserted anyway. I do not yet have a mouse driver. My autoexec still needs finetuning, but what's in there seems to work.

Reply 1 of 4, by Nicolas 2000

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I found this after some googling:

Fixing random crashes
If experiencing, random crashes when playing the game, use one of the following workarounds:

Run loadfix before starting the game (included with DOS 5.0 or later)
Disable A20 gate
Load DOS low
Disable HMA

I'll try these as far as I understand them. Should I just use "loadfix F15" instead of "F15" to launch the game?

Sources also mention disabling internal/external cache and setting keyboard to US.

Reply 2 of 4, by MagefromAntares

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Hi,

All of those are possible fixes that might work, I think disabling the A20 line would be the least likely to affect it, because if it survives for 5 seconds then most likely that line being active doesn't bother it, but if you are already trying the other things that could be tried as well.

Also while Mobygames is not the most reliable source it mentions it on the specs page that this game is incompatible with DOS 4.0 or later https://www.mobygames.com/game/1737/f-15-stri … eagle-ii/specs/, and W95 comes with DOS 7.0 or 7.1.

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." - Dune

Reply 3 of 4, by Nicolas 2000

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Maybe the dos 4.0 remark is the other side of the "use loadfix" suggestion. I'll try it.

Reply 4 of 4, by Nicolas 2000

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"Loadfix F15" solves it. Fun fact: it was even stated in one of the many, many paper manuals that come with the Kixx bigbox version of the game.
I also use "keyb us" but I don't think it's necessary to run the game. It just helps to have the keys in an ergonomic layout.

Loadfix was not installed with my W95, but I found it on the W95 CD-ROM.

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