Originally posted by Snover That card is not faulty if it works correctly in true DOS.

Well, I was treating it as a "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" kind of thing. If they were willing to replace the card, I would let them without asking question. It's a moot point since they won't be doing anything. What is strange is that I was under the impression that VESA had better support in NT than NVidia. From this example, it appears that support is just as "spotty" as NVidia. Of course, we would need more input from ATI+2000/XP users to verify this.

Well, I have thought about getting another ATi 128 pro. But I got this from ATI. "emulated DOS mode through Windows XP will not allow this product to work properly in a DOS environment."
So I don't want to get another card and experience the same.
It works fine in Windows.
John

Originally posted by gatticus So I don't want to get another card and experience the same.
It works fine in Windows.

Understood. Your best bet is a dual-boot setup and that wouldn't be easy. FWIW, I found the CD and I'm no longer able to run it with audio. I used to be able run with audio before replacing my audio card (although it never ran very well in XP).

The only proper operation I saw was in when it ran in Win98.

Here is the info from ATI:
Regarding Rage 128 compatibility with Age of Rifles.

The Rage 128 products have very limited support under Windows XP and there has only been one driver release for this card under XP. If the card is defective then a replacement should address any issues specific to the hardware however, if it is a software compatibility issue then replacing the card will not address this issue.

All VESA support has been implemented into the BIOS of the Rage 128 products so there is no additional software support available. If your problem is specific to a DOS application being run through emulated DOS in XP then this is a likely source of the problem. ATI does not provide any further DOS support for these products.

So it sounds like I need to get something other than an ATI 128 Pro.

john

Unfortunately you will not get any assurance from ANY company that ANY other video card that you stick in your computer will be more/less compatible than the card you have now in NTVDM in NT.

heh.

Gatticus, and all you AoR players out there trying to run this game unser modern operating systems,

I receive many such reports about Age of Rifles on my AoR Mailing List. Removing planes2.smk file could help. It helped in many cases.

Oh, there is software that can test your video card and tell you exactly what video modes are supported. It is called vgatest and surely can tell you if your video card supports VESA mode.

Hope you will get this great game running and enjoy it once more. Mail me if you still can't do anything or if you have any questions.

Regards,

I have removed that file. I ran vgatest and got Runtime error 200 at 031c:0091.

This game may not be able to run under my system. Windows xp home edition, ati 128 rage.
John

Well, in that case, only thing you can do is installing second operating system then. You can use some great software for this, for example Virtual PC (http://www.connectix.com) or VMWare (http://www.vmware.com). It's easier and more convenient than rebooting your computer and making a lot of mess on your hard drive.

I wish you luck then.

I recently wrote a manal for all you AoR fans out there trying to run Age of Rifles undet NT systems. You can find it at http://www.wargamer.com/aor/trouble.asp . Hope it helps someone.

Regards

Runtime Error 200 means that it is a Turbo Pascal game choking on your speedy CPU. There are some TP patchers floating somewhere in Deep Thought.

Originally posted by Cronos Oh, there is software that can test your video card and tell you exactly what video modes are supported.

Actually, he did that earlier with VBETEST. His card supports VESA quite well, just not when running XP.

Well, in that case, only thing you can do is installing second operating system then. You can use some great software for this, for example Virtual PC (http://www.connectix.com) or VMWare (http://www.vmware.com). It's easier and more convenient than rebooting your computer and making a lot of mess on your hard drive.

While it may be messy if done after XP is installed (pretty easy the other way around), it still out-performs VPC and VMWare pretty easily. They can handle AoR fairly well, but turn-based strategy games are about the limit for these two.

I recently wrote a manual for all you AoR fans out there trying to run Age of Rifles under NT systems.

Thanks for the link it's appreciated.

Originally posted by Snover Runtime Error 200 means that it is a Turbo Pascal game choking on your speedy CPU. There are some TP patchers floating somewhere in Deep Thought.

I wouldn't bother, VBETEST.EXE from the UniVBE DOS package does the job pretty well.

Originally posted by Schadenfreude Nicht Sehr Gut,You ever read of way to boot Win9x from a CD-ROM?

I split this off into a new thread:
Windows 9x-BootCD