Taking screenshots on DOS \ VOGONS

Taking screenshots on DOS

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First post, by Nicknine

Posted on 2020-09-29, 05:36

Nicknine Offline

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Joined: 2013-04-25, 03:47

I'm having trouble with taking screenshots on DOS. So far I have tried Snarf, Screen Thief and PCXDump. They all work fine in real mode but both Screen Thief and PCXDump cause all protected mode games to crash while Snarf simply doesn't work in them. At the same time, Screen Thief and PCXDump work perfectly fine in protected mode under DosBox so it could be something about my hardware? Has anyone else run into an issue like this? Is there a solution?
PC Specs:
OS: Windows 98 (running in DOS mode)
CPU: Intel Pentium III @ 1.o GHz
RAM: 256 MB (SDR-133)
GPU: GeForce4 Ti 4200 (128 MB VRAM)

Reply 1 of 4, by konc

Posted on 2020-09-29, 07:39

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For what it's worth I can confirm that Screen Thief runs/works in protected mode on real hardware (a 386 and a PII)

Reply 2 of 4, by Nicknine

Posted on 2020-09-29, 10:19

Nicknine Offline

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Posts: 37
Joined: 2013-04-25, 03:47

konc wrote on 2020-09-29, 07:39:

For what it's worth I can confirm that Screen Thief runs/works in protected mode on real hardware (a 386 and a PII)

Damn, so it indeed must be my hardware being too new. I hope there's a workaround or something. I know I'm not the only one with this issue since I saw a user on another forum complain about Screen Thief crashing protected mode games.

Reply 3 of 4, by sledge

Posted on 2020-09-29, 11:09

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I've tried ScreenThief on similar machine (specs bellow) and it indeed does crash with protected mode games. When I try to unload it from memory (with /U switch) I get following error: "Can't unload Screenthief - Interrupts owned elsewhere". So maybe there is a hardware / software conflict? With /I switch its possible to select another interrupt from range 78h to E0h (according to built-in help), default is D8h. I've blindly tried few different values, but so far no luck.

OS: Windows 98 / DOS 7.1
CPU: Intel Pentium III 933MHz
RAM: 256 MB
GPU: GeForce4 MX440
SND: ESS ES1868

doshaven.eu / high-voltage.cz

Reply 4 of 4, by Nicknine

Posted on 2020-12-05, 01:57

Nicknine Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 37
Joined: 2013-04-25, 03:47

Update, it appears that this issue is caused by EMM386 memory manager (which sucks for me because SB Live DOS driver needs it). Not surprising, this wouldn't be the first time EMM386 is causing problems in games. I'll try some alternatives and report back.

UPD: Crashes with QEMM as well.
UPD 2: This is reproducible on 86Box so it's not just my Win98 rig.
UPD 3: Crashes with JEMM386 as well. I guess ScreenThief and PCXDump just don't play nice with memory managers. Great, so I have to play without sound to be able to take screenshots. I can't install SB16 as an alternative either since my motherboard doesn't have any ISA slots.

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