Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

Serial-port sticks that need constant calibration...I've always had a special dislike of them...

Well, my game port Sidewinder looks fine in the control panel, does not need calibration often (go for weeks without calibration), but crashes VDMS for good in certain games (see showthread.php?s=&threadid=1328).

Regards,

gameport != serial port. 😀

Snover wrote:

gameport != serial port. 😀

Yeah, and I have problems with my gameport joystick and the joystick emulation in VDMS. So I turn it off in some games if I don't need it. Otherwise it simply crashes then entire VDM without further notice.

Regards,

Can you elaborate on this please? How does it "crash"?

MajorGrubert wrote:

Yeah, and I have problems with my gameport joystick and the joystick emulation in VDMS. So I turn it off in some games if I don't need it. Otherwise it simply crashes then entire VDM without further notice.
Regards,

vladr wrote:

Can you elaborate on this please? How does it "crash"?

Using Full Throttle as an example: I start the game and select "Play Full Throttle" from the opening menu. The game shows the opening screen with the sky and the mountains in the background and the LucasArts logo and play one or two notes of the music. After this I can see a glimpse of an error message, with names of registers and hex values and the VDM closes itself. The whole thing takes around one second.

The option to "Close the DOS window on exit" is not selected, but when the game crashes it seems that the whole VDM dies and I get back to the desktop. I have tried to see the error message running the game inside a .bat file with a pause command at the end, but the VDM dies without finishing the batch file.

If you want to see the full specs and some extra details of my tests, I have an earlier post in another thread: showthread.php?s=&threadid=1328 (must be careful so Snover won't acuse me of hijaking this thread).

Thanks,

Hmm, that means that NTVDM.EXE crapped itself big time. Does it happen with most or just with some of the joystick-aware games that you use? Also, can you tell if the games that have this problem are all protected-mode games?

Joystick emulation does the most basic of things, i.e. I/O. It doesn't do any DMA or interrupt things. Also, the error did not originate in VDMSound itself (all exceptions are handled, and do not reult in NTVDM.EXE closing, that is usually symptomatic of a "panic" in NTVDM.EXE itself). So very likely joystick emulation triggers behaviours (wakes up code) in the game that in turn NTVDM.EXE is unable to cope with. But this would only make sense if the games in questions were protected-mode (i.e. use DPMI, i.e. disabling DPMI in LaunchPad would make the game complain *or* start working with joystick).

Cheers,
V.

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut

The Admin really needs to stop encouraging people to ruin their lives...

🤣, yeah, study for your exams, school and getting a job is FAR more important then gaming 😜

Bah, I say! Bah!

Originally posted by Tagan 🤣, yeah, study for your exams, school and getting a job is FAR more important then gaming

Besides, there's plenty of time to ruin your life later on...trust me on this...

Snover wrote:

Bah, I say! Bah!

Ok, so I stop learning !...

vladr wrote:

Hmm, that means that NTVDM.EXE crapped itself big time. Does it happen with most or just with some of the joystick-aware games that you use? Also, can you tell if the games that have this problem are all protected-mode games?

Right now I can only remember Full Throttle. After I got these problems I disabled joystick emulation for all the other games. This game relies on DOS4GW, so I it needs DPMI, right? Anyway, it does not use a joystick, only keyboard and mouse, so I have no idea why would the game crash if joystick emulation enabled 😕. Could be some sort of test performed by the Scumm engine anyway?

Joystick emulation does the most basic of things, i.e. I/O. It doesn't do any DMA or interrupt things. Also, the error did not originate in VDMSound itself (all exceptions are handled, and do not reult in NTVDM.EXE closing, that is usually symptomatic of a "panic" in NTVDM.EXE itself). So very likely joystick emulation triggers behaviours (wakes up code) in the game that in turn NTVDM.EXE is unable to cope with. But this would only make sense if the games in questions were protected-mode (i.e. use DPMI, i.e. disabling DPMI in LaunchPad would make the game complain *or* start working with joystick).

I will test it without DMPI, just to see what happens.

Thanks,

Yes, DOS4GW is DPMI, i.e. potential trouble under Windows NT.
Anyway, the game *may* be using joystick (try Ctrl+J and the like).

Without DPMI the game will probably refuse to start. But you can test non-DMPI games with joystick emulation enabled, you shouldn't have *any* problem.

Cheers,
V.

vladr wrote:

Yes, DOS4GW is DPMI, i.e. potential trouble under Windows NT.
Anyway, the game *may* be using joystick (try Ctrl+J and the like).

You are right, Ctrl-J let's you calibrate the joystick, even if my translated manual says nothing about joystick controls in the game.

I also found an article on LucasArts site (http://support.lucasarts.com/trg/tgd.asp?id=233&g=4&s=10)that could be related to the error message I see just before the game crashes. They say it can be a problem with DOS4GW, but I tried all known versions of it, the ones that came with the game and the ones mentioned in a thread on Deep Thought) and it did not fixed the problem, so it looks that the game does something really weird with DOS4GW.

Thanks,

vladr wrote:

Also add the "FILES=..." line in C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG.NT; though VDMSound sets it for the game's CONFIG file, rumor has it that Windows always fetches "FILES=..." from C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG.NT.

Cheers,
V.

No, I think that VDMSound/LaunchPad generated configuration files *.NT the "FILES=" settings are honored. I just did a LaunchPad Dos Environment Config.sys section setting of FILES=80, and I had the ability to open 77 files. (The other three are default opened/owned by DOS).

I have attached a very old program, OPENFILE.EXE which attempts to concurrently open as many files as it can to prove the point. It was written in very old Turbo Pascal years ago when DOS 3.3 brought sanity to the "FILES=" issue; here is the simple source. This should let you check it on your PCs...

1Program Test;
2
3uses Extend;       { <--- This is the magic line that does everything }
4
5const MaxCount = 255;
6
7type FileArray = array[1..MaxCount] of text;
8
9var Count: integer;
10    F: ^FileArray;
11    I: integer;
12    Num: string[6];
13
14BEGIN
15new(F);            { Use heap because of large size of this array }
16writeln('Opening files...');
17I := 0;
18repeat
19  inc(I);
20  str(I,Num);
21  assign(F^[I],'junk' + num + '.txt');
22  {$I-}
23  rewrite(F^[I])
24  {$I+}
25until ioresult <> 0;
26Count := I - 1;
27writeln('Successfully opened ', Count, ' files at the same time.  Writing to each file...');
28for I := 1 to Count do
29  writeln(F^[I], 'This is a test.');
30writeln('Closing and erasing each file...');
31for I := 1 to Count do
32  begin
33  close(F^[I]);
34  erase(F^[I])
35  end;
36writeln('Done.')
37END.

I think that the max "FILES=" limit for NT/W2K/XP NTVDMs is 253 anyways... My compliments on VDMSound/LaunchPad/etc.

dvwjr

I forgot to attach the file I mentioned above...

OPENFILE.EXE

dvwjr

Can anyone help me, I've got a brand new XP machine and I can install and play AitD 1, but without sound or music. Whenever I use VDMSound on the main exe, it says, "CD not found" and sends me back. Which is weird, cause I could get sound on the demo that way. Could you guys please give me a hand. Thanks

SparkT

Did you forget to enable cd-rom support in the properties for the VDM Shortcut (.VLP)?

OK, I fixed AitD 1 by using Dosbox instead of VDMSound. Now that I don't need it, I want to completely remove VDMSound, including the shells as they seem to be slowing my system down. Any idea how to do that. Also, I'm now on AitD 2 and whenever I try playing it through dosbox, it locks up after the I-Motion logo pops up. Anyone else have this problem?

SparkT

I don't know why VDMSound should slow down your system when it isn't running. Oh, well... Did you check Add & Remove programs? There should be an entry for uninstalling VDMSound there.

I didn't see it in Add/Remove. Maybe I've just got too much crap on my hard drive now or something. Also, any tips on getting AitD2 to work in Dosbox? Thanks for taking the time to help me by the way.
SparkT