danrevella wrote:

...the search engine dos not work if you are making use of expanded memory NOT managed by Emm386.exe.

Test with jemm memory manager.

many thanks for the info, BTW under dosbox we may only load jemm from the command line and the result is that GW even don't load; under other emulation system, booting with own HD c: the better choice is to use emm386 who give us the better compatibility with all.

Given other emulation systems, GW works under emm386 but not jemm? Do you have that result or is the "better choice" based on a guess?

I was not enough clear, please be patient, but I have got serious problem with english... 🙁
About Gw:
assuming utilizing only the last version (30a), no problem in emulation system when you use a real version of ms-dos, and you boot from a c: drive, in this case gw work with any memory manager, and even without a memory manager: f.e only 640kb without both himem.sys and emm386.exe, with dos games dos extender based it's even better to have NO memory manager at all, btw it also work with any memory manager installed: I have try with Qemm, memorymax (I'm non sure the name is correct..), and now with jemm, gw always works with full functions.
I have try: Pcem, Wmware, Bochs, Virtualbox, all from dos 3.xx till to win98se dos, always ok ***
But dosbox is different: if you inside dosbox are booting a real version of dos, all ok, but if you use only dosbox, in this case gw run in limitated mode: no save option and if you have setted dosbox to emulate Expanded memory, the search engine does not works.
BTW, I prefer utilize himem.sys and Emm386.exe for general better compatibilty with games, not for better compatibility with gw

*** except for the installation from an original (unregistered floppy image) --->extend bios int 13 is requested in this case, dosbox f.e. does NOT support format floppy track

Well, DOSBox doesn't emulate "full" DOS but a subset of functions needed for gaming. Some obscure DOS structures won't be there (unless you boot a real DOS), and some things may fail.

That's more or less the same reason behind Windows working on MS-DOS but having problems with DOSBox, DR. DOS or FreeDOS.

(BTW... have you tried Game Wizard on other DOS than MS-DOS?)

Ripsaw showed that the dosbox memory manager may be disabled and then JEMM may be loaded as a replacement memory manager. This may allow for the additional compatibility, particularly in the case of a non-gaming application such as GW (although whether it is non-gaming is subject to debate).

In addition, there is dosbox-x which has extended the capability of the dosbox memory manager, particularly in the availability of the upper memory and other memory areas. Codeholio is also extending the floppy disk emulation which may be of interest for the "format track" function.

Dosbox is a very powerful emulator, particularly in that the source code is clearly and expertly written. It allows for patches by developers who are interested in a particular problem. However, it is questionable whether your issues are gaming related or that you have time to extend the current emulation. 😀

About gw and other game-cheat utility:
I have no problems about dosbox, I have the same problems I get in the day when I was running dos in a real machine.
Simply these utilities sometimes don't work doing to the particular programming of the games: f.e. quake 1, it redirect the 8259 base pic from 08h to 88h so when you popup inside the game, the keyboard no longer work and you have to power off your machine.
But this is not a dosbox problem: this appears also on a real old computer.
I know I may use a win-cheat utility to bypass the problem, but I would like to find a solution in dos.

About the floppy full int 13 emulation this may be interesting in special way to convert real non-standard floppy in working images, in 1992 f.e. I have back-up most of my original games for future preserving using Teledisk, but today I no longer got an old computer floppy based, so I'm trying with emulators....
And about cheating, I think that is not a pity if I wanna cheat on a legal game I retain, and I use in single player mode... cheating many time is necessary... 😉
memory managers? UHMMM ...... in the 80/90 years I was playing all my games with no need of alternative version of himem.sys/emm386.exe... That was all I need to run my games, and I would like recreate under emulators my old experiences.

Format a floppy? At the moment I still have not found an emulator where a simple >format a: /U does works.... This means in my opinion that even if floppy disk is an old device, it's really complicate to full emulate it....

Gw under a non-MS-dos version?
I have try in freedos some years ago, it works apart for the installation from my original (unregistered version) who always fails coz it require a non standard format of a track on diskette realized with a combination of int 13h+int 40h, but this is not a problem in normal utilize of gw,even worse there's always FPE or Infinity Machine who may be used as alternative.

BTW my original question was: do you know any games where gw/fpe/infinity does fails to activate?

Again please excuse my terrible english, but now I'm too old to learn more..... 🙁

Thanks for your patiente.

Dan