First post, by RetroMaster137
Hope it's in the right section, I'm a new user.
For reasons difficult to describe, I'll be deliberately experimenting with NTVDM, so please don't point me to DosBox. If something is just "not possible", so be it. Years ago I'd deal with it in its default setup, and I just learnt about VDMSound and related compatibility patches today.
My specs... AMD A8-6600K APU; Quad-core CPU @3.90 GHz; On-board "GPU" AMD Radeon HD 8570D
- What is the "best" NTVDM version? Windows XP pre-SP2?
- This PC is so "new" it doesn't play any "PC speaker" sound, is there any way to redirect that to DirectSound or so?
- I found that some new GPUs lack a couple features, such as an "interrupt #10 vector" or something like that. This PC is just 6 years old I think, maybe too "new" for this, how do I know if I lack any of that?
- Under NTVDM, Pinball Fantasies always played at like 5 FPS on every PC I tried years ago, and today on my PC as well. I'd understand it for some sections (the menus do mid-frame palette swapping; NTVDM doesn't emulate that and instead blinks both palettes in full screen), but the tables are simply unplayable. Is there any "magic setup" to get a decent gameplay, with or without palette effects?
- On some PCs, No$GMB's debug window displays at a slightly larger resolution, and displays the current GB frame at the top-right (white on startup). On other PCs (same WinXP edition!), GB frame from top-right doesn't display, and the resolution doesn't change (so the bottom is invisible). It used to work in an old DELL Pentium 3, it doesn't on my PC. It's fine in DosBox though, and I remember seeing it work on VirtualBox time ago (need yet to re-check). I have vague memories of it giving different results according to Screen, not PC (so I wonder if No$GMB simply sets a non-standard resolution that the system rejects), but I could be wrong... instead, what if is anything related to GPU interrupts or VESA? Speaking about VESA, Kgen98 requires VESA 2.0 (NOT 1.2 as far as I know!!) in order to switch to 16bit color mode, so it can play the mid-frame palette swapping tricks (ha!). Any hopes for getting this to work? I understand there's a lot of patches and re-versions of said patches, videoprt, vgafix, winxpfix, nolfb... the list is big. Big enough that I'm lost past the VDMSound project. What can I try? Definitely not SolVBE though, VESA version won't work, and already doesn't work in regular 8bit mode.
Thanks for your patience!
EDIT: (Discarding specifics such as SoundBlaster emulation for both cases) Am I correct to think that, DosBox is an interpeter, and NTVDM just executes the raw code but captures/handles I/O?