Monkey Island Ultimate Talkie - black screen on start in real DOS 6.22 \ VOGONS

Monkey Island Ultimate Talkie - black screen on start in real DOS 6.22

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First post, by Lostdotfish

Posted on 2025-04-07, 10:20

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Just wondering if anyone has any experience with MI Ultimate Talkie edition?

I built the files using my GOG copy of the special edition and everything seemed to complete without error. Upon transferring the files to my retro PC running real DOS 6.22 - the game fails to start, displaying only a black screen and needing crtl+alt+del restart after failing to launch at all.

The system is a Super Socket 7 MVP3 chipset with K6-2+ (but I have also tried it in a 430TX system with a Pentium MMX 200 and get the same issue).
I have a YMF 7xx card on SB duty and a PicoGUS in MPU mode for an external real MT32.

I have tried

- slowing the system down by disabling L1 and L2 caches
- reducing RAM installed
- different DOS memory configurations (Expanded, Extended and Conventional only)
- different GPUs (4200 ti and fx5200)
- removing the soundcard / PicoGUS

I have also tested the ultimate talkie edition files in DOSBox - and the game launches correctly under DOSBox

Bit stumped as to why it fails to load - anyone ever had a similar issue?

Reply 1 of 11, by keropi

Posted on 2025-04-07, 12:04

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it is known that the game has issues with mouse drivers (ctmouse is one of them)
can you test without a mouse driver loaded and without a mouse connected?
for my MVP3 and 386DX systems I have to use DRMOUSE.COM from DR-DOS to have the ultimate talkies not freeze (and I am glad it did because I found about DRMOUSE that is both small and super-compatible!)

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Reply 2 of 11, by Lostdotfish

Posted on 2025-04-07, 13:05

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keropi wrote on 2025-04-07, 12:04:

it is known that the game has issues with mouse drivers (ctmouse is one of them)
can you test without a mouse driver loaded and without a mouse connected?
for my MVP3 and 386DX systems I have to use DRMOUSE.COM from DR-DOS to have the ultimate talkies not freeze (and I am glad it did because I found about DRMOUSE that is both small and super-compatible!)

I'll give that a go. I am using CTMOUSE.

Reply 3 of 11, by Lostdotfish

Posted on 2025-04-07, 13:56

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Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-04-07, 13:05:

keropi wrote on 2025-04-07, 12:04:

it is known that the game has issues with mouse drivers (ctmouse is one of them)
can you test without a mouse driver loaded and without a mouse connected?
for my MVP3 and 386DX systems I have to use DRMOUSE.COM from DR-DOS to have the ultimate talkies not freeze (and I am glad it did because I found about DRMOUSE that is both small and super-compatible!)

I'll give that a go. I am using CTMOUSE.

No change - even with a completely clean boot of DOS 6.22 (no drivers, no memory management etc) I still get the black screen of nothing.

Reply 4 of 11, by Lostdotfish

Posted on 2025-04-07, 13:58

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Ah progress...

If I start "monkey t" text only mode - the game starts

"monkey t r1" and I have midi soundtrack....

need to test the Soundblaster now...

edit

"monkey a t" and I have OPL music from my YMF 7xx card...

Reply 5 of 11, by Lostdotfish

Posted on 2025-04-07, 14:44

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more progress...

pulled the YMF card out and put a AWE64 in

I can now start the game with voice and midi out - but speech cuts off after the first word... time to dig out yet another soundcard maybe...

Reply 6 of 11, by davidmorom

Posted on 2025-04-07, 17:39

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A K6-2+ is quite a bit overkill for this game, that suffers from the typical fast CPU issues, even with caches disabled. What frequency are you running that CPU at? Beside disabling caches, can you try lowering the CPU multiplier?

Reply 7 of 11, by Shagittarius

Posted on 2025-04-07, 18:04

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Could be speed, or its a conflict with the IRQ.

Reply 8 of 11, by Lostdotfish

Posted on 2025-04-07, 18:58

Lostdotfish Offline

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davidmorom wrote on 2025-04-07, 17:39:

A K6-2+ is quite a bit overkill for this game, that suffers from the typical fast CPU issues, even with caches disabled. What frequency are you running that CPU at? Beside disabling caches, can you try lowering the CPU multiplier?

I'm going to test on my 430TX board when I get a moment (with a 200 MMX)

I thought that ultimate talkie isn't as speedy sensitive - as it's built from the special edition files.

The VGA standard version of the game runs just fine by the way.

Reply 9 of 11, by fix_metal

Posted on 2025-04-08, 00:51

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Do you have any LH statements in your config sys? That might be the issue. I've spent an hilarious amount of time finding the right combination on my PC to actually make any software run properly...
Also, is the BLASTER variable set?

Reply 10 of 11, by Linoleum

Posted on 2025-04-08, 02:17

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Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-04-07, 13:56:

Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-04-07, 13:05:

keropi wrote on 2025-04-07, 12:04:

it is known that the game has issues with mouse drivers (ctmouse is one of them)
can you test without a mouse driver loaded and without a mouse connected?
for my MVP3 and 386DX systems I have to use DRMOUSE.COM from DR-DOS to have the ultimate talkies not freeze (and I am glad it did because I found about DRMOUSE that is both small and super-compatible!)

I'll give that a go. I am using CTMOUSE.

No change - even with a completely clean boot of DOS 6.22 (no drivers, no memory management etc) I still get the black screen of nothing.

I had the same problem on one of my systems.. I believe only one of the many ctmouse (1.9, 2.0, 2.1) versions worked as well as gmouse.

P3 866, V3, SB Audigy 2
P2 300, TNT, V2, Audigy 2 ZS
P233 MMX, Mystique 220, V1, AWE64
P100, S3 Virge GX, AWE64, WavetablePi & PicoGus
Prolinea 4/50, ET4000, SB 16, WavetablePi
486DX2 66, CL-GD5424, SB 32, SC55
SC386SX 25, TVGA8900, Audician32+

Reply 11 of 11, by ludicrous_peridot

Posted on 2025-04-12, 10:33

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Hi. The game works in DOS 6.2 for me. I only tried it on Celeron machine from sig and it works with just r1 atribute given, but requires slowdown utility. I am using cpuspd22 these days universally. And I am using CTMOUSE

I never experienced black screen with it, instead it would hang at first digitized sound unless running with slowdown. I found, however, during building it that I needed a particular version of sox utility in order to correctly process the sound files, as otherwise the resulting digitized sound files did not meet size expectations of the scripts and they failed before completion.

I am including a photo of how the dir looks for me; note I have German language path installed side by side.

The attachment IMG_20250412_122420_291.jpg is no longer available

My understanding it's built from Indy Atlantis and DotT era SCUMM exe, so it is as speed sensitive for sound as other games. E.g. on the same machine I have to use slowdown to play Sam and Max and DotT, and I am using CTMOUSE with them as well.

GA-G41M-Combo G41/ICH7 - Core 2 Quad Q9550 - DDR3 1033 - Radeon RX570 - YMF744 (Cobra) - X3MB (Buran)
Beetle/M/i815+ICH2 - Celeron 566Mhz - Opti 924 (Typhoon Media)

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