check if DOSBox has write acces to your folders where the games are stored.

...How do I do that?

Edit: Yes it can read, write and execute files.

select a folder and press alt-enter
see if readonly is selected.

The only folder I'm using has full permission.

you may want to download the debugger version of dosbox (it's in the development forum)

to see if there are any weird lines in there. (at least copy the last lines after executing something to here
DOSBox debugger

Scrolling way too fast to actually copy the data, but after an attempt to load Keen 1, I get something similar to this:

1139872: CPU:Illegal/Unhandled Interrupt Called 6

right.
create a configfile with debugger version of dosbox
(start dosbox
config -wc dosbox.conf
exit)
look for the line log= inside the file
set it to
log=c:\keen.txt
save.
start dosbox
start keen
exit dosbox.
attach the logfile here.

The unhandled interrupt shows that dosbox is doing something.

Here's the logfile, I let the message run a bit before I close, but it's repeating the same message.

Just tried it with a different game and it spits the same error message. Encountered this before?

917687: EXEC:Execute keen1e.EXE 0
917687: FILES:file open command 0 file keen1e.EXE
917696: CPU:Illegal/Unhandled opcode 63

after 9 instructions it allready goes wrong.
That is really fast.

Anything at all I can do?

Do you know how to use the debugger? I think on the dev forum
there's a short explanation somewhere.

Switch to the keen directory, and type "debug keen.exe" or whatever
the executable is. Please make a screenshot of the debugger window.
Press f11 three times, watchingm the disassembly. Make a screenshot
again. Repeat this once, and press f5 then.
Please post the screenshots here (.png preferrably) and tell if the
game crashed differently.

you might want to run a systemcheck or filecheck.

the contents of keen1.exe:

1mitted
2epoll_ctl: Operation not permitted
3epoll_ctl: Operation not permitted
4epoll_ctl: Operation not permitted

(and the last line repeats itself on and on.)

wd wrote:

Do you know how to use the debugger? I think on the dev forum there's a short explanation somewhere. […]
Show full quote

Do you know how to use the debugger? I think on the dev forum
there's a short explanation somewhere.

Switch to the keen directory, and type "debug keen.exe" or whatever
the executable is. Please make a screenshot of the debugger window.
Press f11 three times, watchingm the disassembly. Make a screenshot
again. Repeat this once, and press f5 then.
Please post the screenshots here (.png preferrably) and tell if the
game crashed differently.

I didn't see a difference in the 'meltdown' except a pause function. It basically says all it's going to say in the .txt file I attatched.

Plus, it's too much work to take screens 😊

> It basically says all it's going to say in the .txt file I attatched.

Well the interesting part would have been the screenshots
showing the progressing trace. But feel free to do heavylogs.

I allready figured it out.
the exe is corrupt.
it contains some sort of log message repeated over and over again.
Looks like a drive corruption.

Yeah, I think it's because they were rescued from an old Win. XP partition that had been blazed for one reason or another, saved to my Linux partition, and transferred back to the new NTFS part.

Thanks so much for the help, I guess I'll have to find my old floppies.

didn't know that there were reliable and stable
ntfs writing tools under linux.
I don't dare to use them to be honest.

There are few alternatives:

1.Captive (windows ntfs driver wrapper). Worked OK even a while ago, they did update it with fuse support recently.

2.ntfs-3g beta - reverse engineered implementation which is a small fork of linux-ntfs project (probably purpose of it was to create more attention and gwt testing as it was loudly declared as *almost* fully functional ntfa driver). It's a userspace fuse driver and will probably be merged back into ntfsprogs. Developers paid much attention during the development not to corrupt data and did not implement any FS operation which isn't well understood, thought they are almost done:)

3. Commercial Paragon ntfs driver which is rumoured to sometimes cause corruption 🙄