VOGONS


First post, by Paladin PIP

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Iv'e been collecting games for an age and eon and never had problems like I have with this batch, philips fighter duel, as an example, in dos 6.2 it will just go to a blank screen on startup , I have about 10 games so far that do this, if it didn't have ems or expanded it would crash or complain, so I don't think its memory. My mouse, cdrom, and sound are good across all the dos games, running native on K6 300mhz with sis 5598 svga, with 4mb vid memory. 64mb ram. The Normality game is another weird one, the game runs great untill the F10 key exit screen, then the monitor goes off with a 5 sec off message, like the entire video feed has been cut, there is nothing flashy or fancy about the exit screen, its a static screen that says save or exit. If anybody has an idea on what causes this I would appreciate the help, it is really really irritating.

Yes they all run in Dosbox the images and CDS are good, some cds are actually original copies from thrift stores, but I like running Dos programs native.

Reply 1 of 5, by Peter z80.eu

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I guess your problem is related with your graphics card or a memory resident, loaded program which influences the graphics card (e.g. ANSI.SYS).
I've tested the game with MS-DOS 6.22 and loaded HIMEM.SYS, OAKCDROM.SYS and MSCDEX.EXE, and for testing purposes, also MOUSE.COM Version 8.2 .
The original game needs the inserted CD-ROM, and Fighter Duel is started usually inside the FDUEL directory with FD, nothing else.
The attached pictures should show what will happen, first it's just the company name as graphics screen, then an opening picture of the game itself is shown, and finally you will reach the game menu, mouse click or keyboard with the TAB key and followed ENTER can be used then. Using ENTER (RETURN) without anything else will start the game.
Without a joystick and just with the mouse, it's almost unplayable. Also, very funny if the plane stalls (goes down to the ground), it just bounces. For me, the game seems to be not sooo funny, but anyway, it worked.

Hardware used was a 486DX100, 16MB Extended Memory, an IDE CD-ROM, a CL-GD5434 and a SB16. Nothing special I guess.
There was for about 250ms a black screen, but vanishes very quickly and showing the attached screens.

Reply 2 of 5, by Paladin PIP

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Thankyou, I do have the original cd for this game, it will load the startup screen, after using univbe.exe which made shattered steel work too, but fduel still crashes after starting.

Reply 3 of 5, by Paladin PIP

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Actually most of the intrplay games give an error with Emm386 has detected an error at (corrupted graphic symbols) at memory F000:94B9. I have switched Dos versions from 5 to 6 to 7, rearranged the programs in the config files, and used different memory managers, this code remains the same no matter what. Is there a Dos program that can probe this memory address directly without crashing to see what this is. Something is allergic to EMS memory I think . I have tried all the common memory map programs, this region of memory block does not show up. I saw something about debug being used but did not understand what they were getting at.

Reply 4 of 5, by JSO

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Try eatxms or lower your ram amount. Maybe those games can't handle over 8 MB's of RAM. Common issue back then.

DOS IS THE POWER OF OUR CHILDHOOD MEMORIES!

Reply 5 of 5, by Paladin PIP

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Solved, close, thread, the problem was an intentional error by bios setting the crystal option rom in the hma 1mb boundry so almost all expanded games would fail. Almost wonder if Bill gates paid off the board makers of the time to frustrate people into not using Dos anymore. After a bios upgrade the error went away. The memory also would not show up being used by the sound chip as a side effect. So less conventional memory. And the crystal chip holds the interupt hard and can't be turned off. I installed a sblive ct4780 and changed the irq and ports around the crystal now all the games launch. Bios error + bad sound chip + weird SIS graphic chip thet needs univbe to work right. Intergames are very picky and test hardware reallly well, almost better than the commercial Dos checking utilities.