@5u3, Ok, one of the monitors is an Asus VW2270. The other I don't have with me as it's currently at my workplace so I'm unable to get the model number yet. I did test another monitor as well which works great, an Acer S230HL. The acer surprisingly looks better in dos than any other monitor I've used.

Mixer settings are all good and yes AWEUTIL /S is being loaded. Sound has worked great in all games so far except Keen 4-6. Do you have any particular games you'd like me to test?

@borgie83: Glad you found a solution to your display problem; now you know which LCD monitors to avoid for DOS games 😀 . As far as your Keen 4-6 sound problem, try Bio Menace (same engine as Commander Keen) and/or Catacomb 3-D. Both have Adlib sound and should work with your CT3900.

@leileilol: I remember trying out Keen 4 with a SIIG-branded ES1370 AudioPCI sound card in my Athlon XP rig back in the early 2000s, and it was very funny indeed 😁 . The Athlon XP rig is gone now, but I still have the ES1370 card; I'll probably do something with it........... eventually 😅 .

@Jorpho: I have tried EMS Magic before, and while it did create a usable EMS page, it took a good chunk of conventional memory (about 71k) and it didn't solve my problem with Sound Blaster emulation in a DOS window (no digital audio, only FM and MIDI music work 😐 ). Still, I decided to keep it, just in case.

LCD monitors are simply not good for older games. I have one and it occasionally wigs out for no reason, including issues like what you described. Ususally all I have to do to fix it is turn it off then back on while the game is running, but I'm not sure if that'll work in your case.

Bottom line, stick to CRT.

Commander Keen will sitll have stutter and corruption no matter if you use an LCD or CRT.

In my experience, yes CRT monitors are great when it comes to very old games but if you use the right LCD monitor there is no issues at all. The Samsung 931BW I mentioned earlier works great with all games that I've tried so far. No scrolling issues etc with games like commander keen and jazz jackrabbit just to name a couple.

I think that given how a lot of CRT monitors are starting to die these days it's best to find a modern LCD monitor that works great than keep hunting around for CRT monitors. Most people don't have the desk space for several CRT monitors anyway.

I'm going to take a couple of my retro rigs to centrecom (pc shop in Australia) and try out a few of their monitors. If I find one that works with all the games I try I'm going to purchase a few in one hit and put them away as eventually modern monitors will give more trouble than they're worth with older games.

Once I have noticed some color issues in Commander Keen on Matrox Millennium with LG L1510S LCD monitor and...decided to fix it by self-made TSR 😀
Works with all Keen games, also fixes blue tint in password\difficulty screen in Prehistorik 2, sure other apps\games using VGA mode 0xD (320x200x4bpp planar) AND color border (not usual black) can be fixed.
100% works on my Matrox, maybe works with Voodoo Banshee\3\4\5 and Intel 740 (not tested), uses ~400 bytes of conventional\UMB memory.

^ really nice! thanks for sharing this!

I love it when people roll up their sleeves and fix stuff, well done!

Thanks for the patch. If I understand correctly, it unprotects CRTC registers 0-7 every time int 10h is called?

bjt wrote:

Thanks for the patch. If I understand correctly, it unprotects CRTC registers 0-7 every time int 10h is called?

Not every, only if mode 0xD is requested, then it sets correct horizontal retrace end values. It does leave CRTC regs unprotected, but I don't think that it is a problem, because if application requests this EGA\VGA mode it should not write CGA CRTC values, right? 😀

by the way - new version! \o/

..and the new version! 😀
Uses only 128 bytes(!) of conventional\upper memory and combines border and noborder versions in one COM file! so read KEENFIX.TXT or use "/?" key for additional info 😉

^ awesome!
thanks for sharing!

wbc wrote:

..and the new version! 😀
Uses only 128 bytes(!) of conventional\upper memory and combines border and noborder versions in one COM file! so read KEENFIX.TXT or use "/?" key for additional info 😉

Thanks so much for this! I had an issue with DN2 and Bio Menace that seemed to cause the horizontal retrace to get missed sometimes. I'll try it and let you know.

Didn't seem to work for me. On Bio Menace, I can still see map tiles off the right edge. It's humorous in game because some of them say "Edge Of Map". 😜

SaxxonPike wrote:

Didn't seem to work for me. On Bio Menace, I can still see map tiles off the right edge. It's humorous in game because some of them say "Edge Of Map". 😜

But that's a well known bug in the Galaxy engine. You can see it in Crystalus in Keen 4 as well.
I didn't think that patch was supposed to fix this. Was it?

keenmaster486 wrote:

SaxxonPike wrote:

Didn't seem to work for me. On Bio Menace, I can still see map tiles off the right edge. It's humorous in game because some of them say "Edge Of Map". 😜

But that's a well known bug in the Galaxy engine. You can see it in Crystalus in Keen 4 as well.
I didn't think that patch was supposed to fix this. Was it?

Hmm, I misread then. At any rate, I found the solution was to just run from real DOS. I'm thinking my issue is just due to GeForce FX drivers.

I know that this is a really old thread but I was having the same issue using the vga port on my benq projector. a VGA to HDMI adapter instantly fixed the problem so I can confirm that it is a hardware display issue.

This keenfix program is really good, thank you for making it. The source code is also nice to have for educational purposes at least. Not everyone is able to fix these kind of bugs.

Just tried the latest version on my Matron Millennium. It does correct the off-colors but does nothing to address the jerky scrolling. Is this expected behavior?

the scrolling troubles on Matrox/ATi cards is because most VGA cards latch CRTC start address at VSYNC leading edge and Horizontal Pixel Panning (0x3C0 reg 0x13) at trailing edge, and faulty ones allow it to change at every scanline, hence the issue :) afaik it needs binary patching to fix it and most other software is still being affected because it's a hadrware quirk.