Hard-lock on Certain "The Learning Company" games \ VOGONS

Hard-lock on Certain "The Learning Company" games

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First post, by Sneakernets

Posted on 2010-05-25, 20:40

Sneakernets Offline

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Hi,

I have a problem that's been plaguing me a while- I'm trying to set up some old games for elementary students, which includes the games "Treasure Cove!" and "Reader Rabbit 3". These games are IBM Compatible and supposedly Adlib/Soundblaster Compatible. However, when I load the games, they all freeze in predictible places. For Treasure Cove, The game locks up on the name selection screen. For Reader Rabbit 3, it's anywhere in the menu, even when quitting the game. Note that BOTH games hard-lock when attempting to quit.

The frustrating part is that this started to happen after I installed an authentic SB16. The older card was a Soundblaster Clone that didn't run any games BUT these two games in question. when I installed my SB16, the situation reversed. Everything plays flawlessly EXCEPT these educational games, the reason for the PC I'm building to exist in the first place!

I distinctively remember a workaround for this in either the Creative SB16 Manual, or the Game manuals, but they are long since gone, and no copies of the manuals for both games exist on the Web. What exactly is going on? Booting in DOS doesn't help either, and I have up to 522+ K conventional memory.

My system Specs:
Win 3.11 WFW/DOS 6.22
Intel Pentium 150 MHz
Creative Sound Blaster 16
S3 Trio Video adapter
64 MB RAM
2 GB HD

Reply 1 of 11, by Davros

Posted on 2010-05-25, 21:46

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what is your set blaster line ?

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Reply 2 of 11, by robertmo

Posted on 2010-05-26, 05:59

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have you installed dos drivers too, or just win drivers for sb16?

Reply 3 of 11, by swaaye

Posted on 2010-05-26, 16:38

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Do the games support SB16 specifically? SB16 has problems with backwards compatibility with older SB models.

You could dig up a Sound Blaster Pro and that would run just about anything.

Reply 4 of 11, by robertmo

Posted on 2010-05-26, 17:42

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swaaye what old sb games have problems with sb16?

Reply 5 of 11, by Davros

Posted on 2010-05-26, 21:18

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I dont know if you can do this with a sb16 but my clone card an aztec sound galaxy could be set up as an adlib, soundblaster, sb-pro and a sb16

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Reply 6 of 11, by Sneakernets

Posted on 2010-05-27, 17:55

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BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6

I don't know if I have the latest drivers or not, but I am sure they are close to the most recent since I downloaded them and installed them a few months ago from a dos driver pack. If you know any more recent ones, please let me know!

But I think that the games in question do not require drivers at all, they are one of the many "Driverless" games out there... Therefore, it might not work at all.

I don't have access to a SBPRO either. SB16 or AWE64GOLD is all I have.

Reply 7 of 11, by robertmo

Posted on 2010-05-27, 17:58

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post the content of your autoexec.bat and config.sys after you boot into dos

Reply 8 of 11, by Sneakernets

Posted on 2010-05-27, 18:32

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I dont' think that will help; the game doesn't work even if I bypass those files. But, I will get them when I have access to this computer.

Reply 9 of 11, by Davros

Posted on 2010-05-27, 20:56

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try h5 then try h6

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Reply 10 of 11, by robertmo

Posted on 2010-05-28, 06:52

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these files are needed, so it is obvious it won't work without them...

Reply 11 of 11, by ratfink

Posted on 2010-05-28, 06:54

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Does the game have a setup.exe that sets the sound card resources the game needs to point at?

Does the card have jumpers for irq/etc? Have you run diagnose.exe?

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