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axxesload
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Need help :o

Post by axxesload »

I recently found an old Win98 PC down in my garage.It was kind of dirty, so i cleaned it and installed DOS 6.22 on it. It has a Pentium 3 in it,Soundblaster 16,An Ati 128????(couldnt find my model(here is a link to the images of it:https://uloz.to/!fW2gR69YUVhU/vga-rar)
I tried a bunch of games(Space quest i,ii;Prince of persia;space invaders;lemmings;.....
I tried 1 or 2 settings in the config.ini file but it did nothing at all :(
Feel free to ask me anything about this problem,i got all time in the world. :D

I NEED TO PLAY DOS GAMES ON DOS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!
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Rwolf
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Post by Rwolf »

Well...that linked place is not in english, and a 16MB RAR file is a bit much for an simple image IMO.

I assume you mean the computer runs (since you installed DOS), but you don't get the game to run - possibly not recognizing the soundcard, which some games require?

Soundblaster cards use drivers and (autoexec) environment settings to help games use them. set blaster= type, interrupts, dma etc; for which you need to compare the hardware jumper pins and manual (sometimes readable in silkscreen)
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Quadko
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Post by Quadko »

Not sure what a config.ini file is, by the way. Not Dos, maybe one of the games' files, or just a typo? Ini files (in the windows directory) were windows 3.x & 9x application and system config files.

Dos config files were:
config.sys
autoexec.bat

If you turn sound off in a game, the game should work. Once you confirm the game works without sound, it's easier to play with the sound config until it works. (Games like Space Quest had a setup/configuration app, as I recall, while Prince of Persia just figured it out.)

What happens when you try to run something, does the computer freeze, or plays without sound, or??? You might try *really* old games, like the text mode Rogue or Kroz games, before trying more advanced games.

Also, did you install these games off of floppys or a CD, or just copy them over? Sometimes advanced games like the ones you list are very picky about where they are installed; simpler are less picky.
axxesload
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Post by axxesload »

I downloaded a game compilation with a LOT of games and i used a floppy disc to transfer them to my pc.The problem is not in the sound card but in the vga card or somewhere else,because i cant even get the games to run at all.BTW I meant config.sys not INI-my bad.
If I try loading a game,there is just a blinking underscore and the computer otherwise freezes and im forced to restart it.
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Quadko
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Post by Quadko »

That does sound bad! That behavior definitely means a crash, but it might not be video card related - anything in the game's startup code that caused a crash might look like that.

Various Brainstorming:

From what you said (ATI, PIII etc.) certainly VGA should work, but you might try text mode, cga, and ega games if you want to narrow in. I'd expect the text mode games should work fine, but no idea about the others, but could be good to verify.

Did/does Win98 work on that box still, or you installed dos right away because it wouldn't boot?

You could need to clean the vga (sound, etc.) card edge connector off with rubbing alcohol, or see if it fits in another slot (if it's isa/pci), maybe use canned air to blow out the slots, or it could be bad memory (I've got a computer like that, bad memory in upper slots, small games work, other things go wonky), and even could still be sound card related if games are just crashing during game initialization.

If it is bad memory, maybe small ".com" games would work and larger ".exe" games would fail, since Dos seems to be working.

Could even be trouble with the floppy disk or drive, and the game files were corrupted when copying them over. You might look for a dos CRC or similar file verifier utility and run it on the game files on the dos computer and the one before you copied it to a floppy.

Any chance you have another VGA card available to swap out?

Does that Dos computer have a CD drive, and could you transfer files using a CD burner instead of floppy?
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Rwolf
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Post by Rwolf »

Bad memory is often identified using the free memtest86 program; boots off floppy and run a few laps, verify that the hardware works. Always good to check functionality on unknown hardware.

Two versions of it exists, the free one, 'memtest86+' is at the below address
http://www.memtest.org/
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