VOGONS


First post, by Shagittarius

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So I'm just fooling around trying to get this game to run in a DOS environment on my P90. After choosing sound hardware , even if i choose no sound, the game briefly enters a graphics mode then crashes out to a 40 columns dos prompt.

I'm thinking it could either be the pentium that is crashing it or QEMM. Yse I'm running QEMM, I've got SCSI controllers in this thing and I couldn't get EMM386 to give me enough free base mem.

Does anyone have this game on a Pentium system? Is it QEMM or just a pentium issue?

Just sort of curious if anyone knows anything or can test.

Note: I turned off the cache on the P90 and slowed it way down, so it doesn't appear to be a pure speed issue.

Reply 1 of 6, by Jorpho

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Shagittarius wrote:

Does anyone have this game on a Pentium system? Is it QEMM or just a pentium issue?

Just sort of curious if anyone knows anything or can test.

Um, stop using QEMM?

If you need QEMM for your SCSI controllers, then (for testing purposes) stop using your SCSI controllers. What exactly are you using them for? Even if you only have floppy access without SCSI, you can set up a RAM disk, copy the game's files to the RAM disk, and try running there.

Also, how exactly are you using QEMM? Many readmes back in the day cautioned specifically against using "stealth" mode.

You also might be able to try alternatives like UMBPCI.

Reply 2 of 6, by Shagittarius

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Your right, I totally should try this with a boot disk first. I will do that.

All the drives except for the floppies are SCSI ; HDs, CD-ROM, etc...of course only the CDROM causes memory usage...I guess I'm just being lazy but I had a hell of a time trying to get enough basemem free with the SCSI setup...

I was a QEMM hater back in the day believe me, I use to do customer support for a games company in the early 90s and most of my job was creating boot disks to avoid QEMM or showing people how to exit dosshells...well ok sometimes incompatibility with video cards with a lot of ram or improperly configured sound issue came up.

There was even one time where this guy called in about some issue and he heard me playing Doom while talking to him. He got excited and we talked about Doom for about 10 minutes then he was like, "Alright man, take it easy" and hung up, forgetting that he had called me to get help with one of our games.

I think I lost the thread here...anyways...What I'm getting at is the last version of QEMM seems to be pretty good for the most part, I've yet to come across anything that it crashes (maybe this one but we will see). I'm sure there are programs out there but it seems like I run into more issues with the Soundblaster 16 than with QEMM.

Last edited by Shagittarius on 2011-02-04, 22:18. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 6, by Shagittarius

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No dice with the boot disk same results.

Additional Note : Just read the manual and they even suggest using QEMM in the addendum.

I'm leaning towards Pentium issue so far with this. Can anyone verify?

Reply 4 of 6, by Jorpho

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It seems awfully unlikely for any program to have a specific problem with Pentium CPUs that isn't speed-related. (Have you heard of such things before?)

Are you sure your installation media is still good? Have you been able to successfully install and run the game from your disks on other computers (or perhaps even in DOSBox) lately?

Reply 5 of 6, by Shagittarius

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I guess I don't really know if some of the pentium patches for older games we're purely based on speed or something about the proc. architecture.

As far as your questions about the media integrity this is the same version i've installed in Dosbox and it runs fine although I guess it's been a few months since I installed it there. I'll try it again.

It's not really important , I just thought it might be a good mystery if anyone had the resources and was interested.

Reply 6 of 6, by Shagittarius

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Mystery Solved : It was all my fault.

Thanks for the advice on trying the media again, there actually wasn't anything wrong with the install but because I reinstalled I discovered that the batch file Prophecy installs outside of the chosen directory has 2 commands in it to make the game run.

First the game runs START.EXE which drops you into a 40 column mode, then it runs QUEST.EXE which actually starts the game.

Since I didn't pay attention and just deleted the batch file I didn't realize this was going on. Also my own stupid fault for not realizing there was a second executable to try.

I don't know what the START.EXE is actually for...the game runs fine using just QUEST.EXE.

Anyways, not much of a mystery, just me being lame. Thanks for your suggestions though.