AO486 Compatibility List

[Stupid Dufus]

Pressing escape to drop to DOS and then typing "tdl" won't change anything. I meant you could type "tdl" to load it back up afterward if you needed. Sorry for the confusion there.

You'll need to edit some of the bat files to use dos32a, or you can run it directly from the dos prompt

Code: Select all

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

And then when you exit the game you can get back to TDL by typing "tdl"

[Caldor]

Ahh yes. If you are loading the game from a menu loader, making dos32a as part of the launch needs to be added to the games launch batch commands as Dufus explained.

[Captain FPGA]

Pressing escape to drop to DOS and then typing "tdl" won't change anything. I meant you could type "tdl" to load it back up afterward if you needed. Sorry for the confusion there.

You'll need to edit some of the bat files to use dos32a, or you can run it directly from the dos prompt

Code: Select all

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Ok!

Only tried it once this way so far for about an hour and a half. It worked just like you said. I'm on my CRT still but it was a breeze blind-typing into the command and forcing the game to launch with DOS32A that way.

Don't want to have to do that each time I wanna play Duke3D. I noticed tdl had an edit bat file when I push enter on the game (convenient), I couldn't really see a whole lot of the bat edit screen, just the word "UKE3D" and some text underneath? Let me guess, I would need to replace those words with:

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Is this correct? Also it looks like I would need to indent, is the indent thing the same as notepad or word document when I can just hit enter? I only looked at it. I didn't type anything yet. Wanted to make sure before I continue. The on screen text isn't all that readable on my PVM.

I'm using Flynns 300 pack.

Assuming I can get this working on the regular that will make me even more enthused about getting the midipi.

[flynnsbit]

Pressing escape to drop to DOS and then typing "tdl" won't change anything. I meant you could type "tdl" to load it back up afterward if you needed. Sorry for the confusion there.

You'll need to edit some of the bat files to use dos32a, or you can run it directly from the dos prompt

Code: Select all

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Ok!

Only tried it once this way so far for about an hour and a half. It worked just like you said. I'm on my CRT still but it was a breeze blind-typing into the command and forcing the game to launch with DOS32A that way.

Don't want to have to do that each time I wanna play Duke3D. I noticed tdl had an edit bat file when I push enter on the game (convenient), I couldn't really see a whole lot of the bat edit screen, just the word "UKE3D" and some text underneath? Let me guess, I would need to replace those words with:

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Is this correct? Also it looks like I would need to indent, is the indent thing the same as notepad or word document when I can just hit enter? I only looked at it. I didn't type anything yet. Wanted to make sure before I continue. The on screen text isn't all that readable on my PVM.

I'm using Flynns 300 pack.

Assuming I can get this working on the regular that will make me even more enthused about getting the midipi.

Based on your interaction here this might get over your head quickly just because of the complexities of dos. I am going to give you a couple of paths.

1. Simple way: change that 1_launch.bat script using the 3_edit.bat script and just change it to what you said. That will launch duke3d with dos32a each time. What that will remove is the ability to select the audio options for the game. you could run the game setup and set it how you want, and then with that launch script it would just launch the game.

2. If you want to keep it exactly like I have it, the 1_launch script is actually calling another script called run.bat. In that run.bat there are audio options and then you will see duke3d.exe called. Here is what that file will look like and it's path on e: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... 3D/run.bat

You can see in this file there are multiple references to "DUKE3D". Add DOS32A in front of each of those, save the file. and run it like you normally would.


3. You can permanently replace the DOS4GW stub in the DUKE3D.EXE file with DOS32A instead removing the need for any of the above. Follow these instructions: http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/util/1.htm

FYI, Everyone on the AO486 side is fully aware of the DOS4GW issue/bug in the core, it's a hard one to find. DOS32a is more stable but not always which is why it isn't default for everything. I only changed the games that didn't run at all to DOS32a so these games where it takes "an hour" or more would have never hit my testing.

Hope that helps.

[flynnsbit]

Ninja add. It might be simpler than option 2 above. As the batch script calls yet another batch script. How many batch scripts did I need

https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... DUKE3D.bat

Just add dos32a in front of DUKE3D in that file (E:\games\DUKENUKE\Duke3D\DUKE3D.bat) and I think that will do what you want...

[Captain FPGA]

Ninja add. It might be simpler than option 2 above. As the batch script calls yet another batch script. How many batch scripts did I need

https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... DUKE3D.bat

Just add dos32a in front of DUKE3D in that file (E:\games\DUKENUKE\Duke3D\DUKE3D.bat) and I think that will do what you want...

Hiya Flynn!

So just to be on the safe side, I moved my Mister operation to the master bedroom where my Plasma HDTV presides, that way I could read the words on screen.

I forgot how unmount and editing processes work so I had to re-read some notes within the forum. After going over such text I managed to edit the bat file. I put dos32a in front so it reads like this:

DUKE3D DOS32A

I vaguely recall seeing cd something on top of that or some shit. Not sure if I did it right though, when I booted the game up it still said DOSW40 something lol.

When you said put dos32a, I wasn't sure if I needed to make it lowercase or avoid putting the space. Duke3D is running now I'm 10 minutes in. Assuming it crashes after 2 test runs I'll go ahead and re-edit, write it this way:

DUKE3Ddos32a

If that fails then

DUKE3D dos32a

If you guys happen to post before then I guess yall can let me know which one of these is correct. Your input has been extremely helpful!

EDIT: Crashed! Okay fine I'll change DUKE3D DOS32A to DUKE3Ddos32a. If this or the 3rd option I wrote doesn't work I'll try to mess with the 1_launch or 3_edit.

[flynnsbit]

Ninja add. It might be simpler than option 2 above. As the batch script calls yet another batch script. How many batch scripts did I need

https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... DUKE3D.bat

Just add dos32a in front of DUKE3D in that file (E:\games\DUKENUKE\Duke3D\DUKE3D.bat) and I think that will do what you want...

Hiya Flynn!

So just to be on the safe side, I moved my Mister operation to the master bedroom where my Plasma HDTV presides, that way I could read the words on screen.

I forgot how unmount and editing processes work so I had to re-read some notes within the forum. After going over such text I managed to edit the bat file. I put dos32a in front so it reads like this:

DUKE3D DOS32A

I vaguely recall seeing cd something on top of that or some shit. Not sure if I did it right though, when I booted the game up it still said DOSW40 something lol.

When you said put dos32a, I wasn't sure if I needed to make it lowercase or avoid putting the space. Duke3D is running now I'm 10 minutes in. Assuming it crashes after 2 test runs I'll go ahead and re-edit, write it this way:

DUKE3Ddos32a

If that fails then

DUKE3D dos32a

If you guys happen to post before then I guess yall can let me know which one of these is correct. Your input has been extremely helpful!

EDIT: Crashed! Okay fine I'll change DUKE3D DOS32A to DUKE3Ddos32a. If this or the 3rd option I wrote doesn't work I'll try to mess with the 1_launch or 3_edit.

like this

Code: Select all

dos32a DUKE3D

dos32a goes in front of the exe you are calling.

[Captain FPGA]

Ninja add. It might be simpler than option 2 above. As the batch script calls yet another batch script. How many batch scripts did I need

https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... DUKE3D.bat

Just add dos32a in front of DUKE3D in that file (E:\games\DUKENUKE\Duke3D\DUKE3D.bat) and I think that will do what you want...

Hiya Flynn!

So just to be on the safe side, I moved my Mister operation to the master bedroom where my Plasma HDTV presides, that way I could read the words on screen.

I forgot how unmount and editing processes work so I had to re-read some notes within the forum. After going over such text I managed to edit the bat file. I put dos32a in front so it reads like this:

DUKE3D DOS32A

I vaguely recall seeing cd something on top of that or some shit. Not sure if I did it right though, when I booted the game up it still said DOSW40 something lol.

When you said put dos32a, I wasn't sure if I needed to make it lowercase or avoid putting the space. Duke3D is running now I'm 10 minutes in. Assuming it crashes after 2 test runs I'll go ahead and re-edit, write it this way:

DUKE3Ddos32a

If that fails then

DUKE3D dos32a

If you guys happen to post before then I guess yall can let me know which one of these is correct. Your input has been extremely helpful!

EDIT: Crashed! Okay fine I'll change DUKE3D DOS32A to DUKE3Ddos32a. If this or the 3rd option I wrote doesn't work I'll try to mess with the 1_launch or 3_edit.

like this

Code: Select all

dos32a DUKE3D

dos32a goes in front of the exe you are calling.

Ahh.

So the last one I tried was DUKE3Ddos32a. That worked! The game ran without crashes for an hour and 45 minutes. However, just to be on the safe side I'll go with dos32a DUKE3D. When you said in front I didn't realize that meant in front of the exe and not the bat, I am a novice when it comes to this.

Anyway I'll go on ahead and mount the shit with said call in the DUKE3D.bat. Now that I know exactly what to type this should be a breeze. Sorry you wound up explaining a lot.

EDIT: It's been implemented. Gonna leave my Mister on with Duke Nukem 3D running while I take a nap. I feel like it's safe to assume this is the fix based off what I red, still it will give me peace of mind to make certain, after all, I have been dealing with this issue for a few months.

EDIT 2: Sadly it crashed. Setting it back to DUKE3Ddos32a until I hear back from ya. Also for what it's worth, not sure it contributed to the crash but, I applied dos32a DUKE3D to Duke Nukem Atomic City exe as well. Perhaps I had the right command but it's only meant for the original?

EDIT 3: It crashed and I'm stumped. I already removed the dos32a for a duke atomic.

[Captain FPGA]

Pressing escape to drop to DOS and then typing "tdl" won't change anything. I meant you could type "tdl" to load it back up afterward if you needed. Sorry for the confusion there.

You'll need to edit some of the bat files to use dos32a, or you can run it directly from the dos prompt

Code: Select all

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Ok!

Only tried it once this way so far for about an hour and a half. It worked just like you said. I'm on my CRT still but it was a breeze blind-typing into the command and forcing the game to launch with DOS32A that way.

Don't want to have to do that each time I wanna play Duke3D. I noticed tdl had an edit bat file when I push enter on the game (convenient), I couldn't really see a whole lot of the bat edit screen, just the word "UKE3D" and some text underneath? Let me guess, I would need to replace those words with:

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Is this correct? Also it looks like I would need to indent, is the indent thing the same as notepad or word document when I can just hit enter? I only looked at it. I didn't type anything yet. Wanted to make sure before I continue. The on screen text isn't all that readable on my PVM.

I'm using Flynns 300 pack.

Assuming I can get this working on the regular that will make me even more enthused about getting the midipi.

Based on your interaction here this might get over your head quickly just because of the complexities of dos. I am going to give you a couple of paths.

1. Simple way: change that 1_launch.bat script using the 3_edit.bat script and just change it to what you said. That will launch duke3d with dos32a each time. What that will remove is the ability to select the audio options for the game. you could run the game setup and set it how you want, and then with that launch script it would just launch the game.

2. If you want to keep it exactly like I have it, the 1_launch script is actually calling another script called run.bat. In that run.bat there are audio options and then you will see duke3d.exe called. Here is what that file will look like and it's path on e: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... 3D/run.bat

You can see in this file there are multiple references to "DUKE3D". Add DOS32A in front of each of those, save the file. and run it like you normally would.


3. You can permanently replace the DOS4GW stub in the DUKE3D.EXE file with DOS32A instead removing the need for any of the above. Follow these instructions: http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/util/1.htm

FYI, Everyone on the AO486 side is fully aware of the DOS4GW issue/bug in the core, it's a hard one to find. DOS32a is more stable but not always which is why it isn't default for everything. I only changed the games that didn't run at all to DOS32a so these games where it takes "an hour" or more would have never hit my testing.

Hope that helps.

Upon trying step 2 (adding DOS32A in front of every word that said duke3d), I may have broke something. Now my Daemon Tools won't mount the Top 300 ISO.

Haven't booted up the Mister yet to see if any damage was done to my AO486 core but, I'll take a look at it in a few minutes. Perhaps you didn't mean I should place dose32a in front in every instance? Perhaps you meant the DUKE3D part with caps and not the cd run part or maybe it's the opposite and I should've made every part that said "cd duke3d" into "cd dos32a duke3d"?

I'm starting to wonder if I should get someone on Discord to this right once and for all and to prevent myself from doing anymore further damage.

Also when I tried it with the new run.bat I edited, dos32a did run but it couldn't locate duke3d.exe.

[Captain FPGA]

Figured it out finally.

Between the tutorials on the tube and here for some reason I was having trouble figuring out why it not let me use cd games DOS dir (under the dos command), figured out all I had to do when it came to Flynns Top 300 pack was type

Code: Select all

sb -r duke3d.exe

After the Duke3D address. I conducted stress tests on the game at that point to make certain it won't fuck-up. I must've left my Mister on for 10 hours with Duke Nukem running with only one break in the morning that lasted an hour. First 2 tests were leaving it on then power cycling, the next two were leaving it on then resetting. Only did the second one because it did lock-up on me after first reset. I chalked it up to a fluke, tried it one more time on for 2 hours then reset, let it play for another two hours then BOOM! By the time I flipped back to my Mister input the game was running like a beauty.

Thank you guys for all that you have done for me. My next quest is to see if Descent 2 is working. I left an image for Duke Nukem, hope it helps others who run into the same problem.

[dguasch]

Hello, I am trying to play Pinball Dreams but I get the black screen error, I have read that it has to be executed with boot1_opensource.rom. Where is it downloaded from and how is it executed? Excuse my ignorance and thank you very much.

[dguasch]

Hello again,
I answer to myself:
"Where is it downloaded": in the gitlab repository MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/releases/bios
"How is it executed": replace the boot1.rom file
Correct me if i'm wrong.
Thank you

[breiztiger]

Yes that is

[Caldor]

Ok!

Only tried it once this way so far for about an hour and a half. It worked just like you said. I'm on my CRT still but it was a breeze blind-typing into the command and forcing the game to launch with DOS32A that way.

Don't want to have to do that each time I wanna play Duke3D. I noticed tdl had an edit bat file when I push enter on the game (convenient), I couldn't really see a whole lot of the bat edit screen, just the word "UKE3D" and some text underneath? Let me guess, I would need to replace those words with:

cd games\dukenuke\duke3d\duke3d
dos32a duke3d.exe

Is this correct? Also it looks like I would need to indent, is the indent thing the same as notepad or word document when I can just hit enter? I only looked at it. I didn't type anything yet. Wanted to make sure before I continue. The on screen text isn't all that readable on my PVM.

I'm using Flynns 300 pack.

Assuming I can get this working on the regular that will make me even more enthused about getting the midipi.

Based on your interaction here this might get over your head quickly just because of the complexities of dos. I am going to give you a couple of paths.

1. Simple way: change that 1_launch.bat script using the 3_edit.bat script and just change it to what you said. That will launch duke3d with dos32a each time. What that will remove is the ability to select the audio options for the game. you could run the game setup and set it how you want, and then with that launch script it would just launch the game.

2. If you want to keep it exactly like I have it, the 1_launch script is actually calling another script called run.bat. In that run.bat there are audio options and then you will see duke3d.exe called. Here is what that file will look like and it's path on e: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... 3D/run.bat

You can see in this file there are multiple references to "DUKE3D". Add DOS32A in front of each of those, save the file. and run it like you normally would.


3. You can permanently replace the DOS4GW stub in the DUKE3D.EXE file with DOS32A instead removing the need for any of the above. Follow these instructions: http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/util/1.htm

FYI, Everyone on the AO486 side is fully aware of the DOS4GW issue/bug in the core, it's a hard one to find. DOS32a is more stable but not always which is why it isn't default for everything. I only changed the games that didn't run at all to DOS32a so these games where it takes "an hour" or more would have never hit my testing.

Hope that helps.

Upon trying step 2 (adding DOS32A in front of every word that said duke3d), I may have broke something. Now my Daemon Tools won't mount the Top 300 ISO.

Haven't booted up the Mister yet to see if any damage was done to my AO486 core but, I'll take a look at it in a few minutes. Perhaps you didn't mean I should place dose32a in front in every instance? Perhaps you meant the DUKE3D part with caps and not the cd run part or maybe it's the opposite and I should've made every part that said "cd duke3d" into "cd dos32a duke3d"?

I'm starting to wonder if I should get someone on Discord to this right once and for all and to prevent myself from doing anymore further damage.

Also when I tried it with the new run.bat I edited, dos32a did run but it couldn't locate duke3d.exe.

Does sound like you have done it wrong. You only need dos32a in front of the duke3d.exe file, and you have to make sure its on a command line that does not contain the path to the exe file.

So something like:
CD C:\Games\Duke3D
DOS32A duke3d.exe

Then it should work.

Btw, Descent 2 requires FPU and a Pentium CPU so it wont be able to run on the AO486 core and if it does run it will be a laggy mess.

[Neocaron]

OMG I finally manage to get Alien Trilogy working, if you guys want to try and experiment some settings for better perfomance, be my guess! My heart stopped when the intro started with the music and the beautiful CGI, not a single itch... But before you try anything, the only way for this game to work, is to download the 2.0 patch, that fixes the 8mb of memory error which prevents from installing the game. It's on the archive place.
Currently 4 things to note:

-The game runs but there is no music in game (it reads the music from the cd, so if anyone knows how to fix this)
- It's slow, like 5 to 10 fps max for me (I want to know if it's the same for you and what we can do about it if anything)
- There is a 16bit mode possible with the patch, but I don't know how to start it despite the explanation of the devs in the patch note (so if anyone can figure that one out)
- Last, you need to replace all the dos4gw in the patch folder and game folder with dos32a (I haven't tried any other version of dos, so you can try your luck)

Overalll I'm really happy about this one! Alien Trilogy is a great Doom clone but with it's own twist. Just love it. The Psx version will probably be better, because it was at the time, but I'm still really happy it's working!

[Neocaron]

Got more news, for the rts fans out there Caesar III is also working on Windows 98 natively, the FMVs are very slow and broken though, but in game at 640p, it's very close to be fully playable! Sounds works as well, I just have this weird anoyance with the cursor when in full screen, but other than that, it just works!

By the way I have a question, how do you activate debug mode for the ao486 core?

[Caldor]

OMG I finally manage to get Alien Trilogy working, if you guys want to try and experiment some settings for better perfomance, be my guess! My heart stopped when the intro started with the music and the beautiful CGI, not a single itch... But before you try anything, the only way for this game to work, is to download the 2.0 patch, that fixes the 8mb of memory error which prevents from installing the game. It's on the archive place.
Currently 4 things to note:

-The game runs but there is no music in game (it reads the music from the cd, so if anyone knows how to fix this)
- It's slow, like 5 to 10 fps max for me (I want to know if it's the same for you and what we can do about it if anything)
- There is a 16bit mode possible with the patch, but I don't know how to start it despite the explanation of the devs in the patch note (so if anyone can figure that one out)
- Last, you need to replace all the dos4gw in the patch folder and game folder with dos32a (I haven't tried any other version of dos, so you can try your luck)

Overalll I'm really happy about this one! Alien Trilogy is a great Doom clone but with it's own twist. Just love it. The Psx version will probably be better, because it was at the time, but I'm still really happy it's working!

AO486 supports CD images, and they images can have audio tracks, but it does not support playing CD audio yet. Nice to hear Alien Trilogy is working though. I enjoyed playing that on my old Pentium 100mhz back in the day

[Neocaron]

AO486 supports CD images, and they images can have audio tracks, but it does not support playing CD audio yet. Nice to hear Alien Trilogy is working though. I enjoyed playing that on my old Pentium 100mhz back in the day

Yeah one of my idea as a solution for the music, is to mount the cd on deamon tool with analog audio activated on windows 98 (daemon tool works like a charm), but I have one hurdle and I wish I could get some idea to ge around it... For this to work I need ms-dos to start games in ms-dos windowed mode, but so far any game I tried to boot with dos 6.22, 7, even 8 are hanging at the start command.

If I manage to get Alien Trilogy to work in windowed mode, I'm pretty sure the music would be run by the deamon tool analog audio emulator with probably a performance penalty but it should work... Any idea on how to get that working? I remember as a kid being able to start these dos games and run them while windows 98 was running as well so it should be possible. And in my case Windows 98 as been very stable and usable, combine with QEEM. I can even play some native app like Caesar III.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated

[Caldor]

AO486 supports CD images, and they images can have audio tracks, but it does not support playing CD audio yet. Nice to hear Alien Trilogy is working though. I enjoyed playing that on my old Pentium 100mhz back in the day

Yeah one of my idea as a solution for the music, is to mount the cd on deamon tool with analog audio activated on windows 98 (daemon tool works like a charm), but I have one hurdle and I wish I could get some idea to ge around it... For this to work I need ms-dos to start games in ms-dos windowed mode, but so far any game I tried to boot with dos 6.22, 7, even 8 are hanging at the start command.

If I manage to get Alien Trilogy to work in windowed mode, I'm pretty sure the music would be run by the deamon tool analog audio emulator with probably a performance penalty but it should work... Any idea on how to get that working? I remember as a kid being able to start these dos games and run them while windows 98 was running as well so it should be possible. And in my case Windows 98 as been very stable and usable, combine with QEEM. I can even play some native app like Caesar III.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated

Yeah, that should work. Last I tried using Windows 98 in AO486 it was very unstable though, so I have been avoiding it since. I have gotten Daemon Tools to work under Windows 95 and it does support audio CDs, but I have not tested that part of Daemon Tools in AO486 yet.

As for DOS games under Windows 98. That should also work, but depends a lot on the game. Some games wont be happy to have Windows loaded into the memory and I do think with the games that are already pressed on performance like Duke Nukem 3D, they probably wont be happy about trying to run under Windows. I have been wanting to try again with Windows 98 to make a new installation and see if it might have gotten more stable since last I tried, which must be more than 6 months ago now.

[Neocaron]

AO486 supports CD images, and they images can have audio tracks, but it does not support playing CD audio yet. Nice to hear Alien Trilogy is working though. I enjoyed playing that on my old Pentium 100mhz back in the day

Yeah one of my idea as a solution for the music, is to mount the cd on deamon tool with analog audio activated on windows 98 (daemon tool works like a charm), but I have one hurdle and I wish I could get some idea to ge around it... For this to work I need ms-dos to start games in ms-dos windowed mode, but so far any game I tried to boot with dos 6.22, 7, even 8 are hanging at the start command.

If I manage to get Alien Trilogy to work in windowed mode, I'm pretty sure the music would be run by the deamon tool analog audio emulator with probably a performance penalty but it should work... Any idea on how to get that working? I remember as a kid being able to start these dos games and run them while windows 98 was running as well so it should be possible. And in my case Windows 98 as been very stable and usable, combine with QEEM. I can even play some native app like Caesar III.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated

Yeah, that should work. Last I tried using Windows 98 in AO486 it was very unstable though, so I have been avoiding it since. I have gotten Daemon Tools to work under Windows 95 and it does support audio CDs, but I have not tested that part of Daemon Tools in AO486 yet.

As for DOS games under Windows 98. That should also work, but depends a lot on the game. Some games wont be happy to have Windows loaded into the memory and I do think with the games that are already pressed on performance like Duke Nukem 3D, they probably wont be happy about trying to run under Windows. I have been wanting to try again with Windows 98 to make a new installation and see if it might have gotten more stable since last I tried, which must be more than 6 months ago now.

Well my experience on Windows 98 has been pretty stable, if that is any indication, not blazing fast, but stable.
Maybe I shoud try with windows 95, I used Daemon tool 3.47 if I recall correctly. But all the games I tried stalled in dos windowed mode (totally unrelated to daemon tool) so that had been frustrating. I also managed to install windows ME for the fun of it, using the upgrading path, it's the only way to get the video drivers to work.

[Caldor]

Yeah one of my idea as a solution for the music, is to mount the cd on deamon tool with analog audio activated on windows 98 (daemon tool works like a charm), but I have one hurdle and I wish I could get some idea to ge around it... For this to work I need ms-dos to start games in ms-dos windowed mode, but so far any game I tried to boot with dos 6.22, 7, even 8 are hanging at the start command.

If I manage to get Alien Trilogy to work in windowed mode, I'm pretty sure the music would be run by the deamon tool analog audio emulator with probably a performance penalty but it should work... Any idea on how to get that working? I remember as a kid being able to start these dos games and run them while windows 98 was running as well so it should be possible. And in my case Windows 98 as been very stable and usable, combine with QEEM. I can even play some native app like Caesar III.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated

Yeah, that should work. Last I tried using Windows 98 in AO486 it was very unstable though, so I have been avoiding it since. I have gotten Daemon Tools to work under Windows 95 and it does support audio CDs, but I have not tested that part of Daemon Tools in AO486 yet.

As for DOS games under Windows 98. That should also work, but depends a lot on the game. Some games wont be happy to have Windows loaded into the memory and I do think with the games that are already pressed on performance like Duke Nukem 3D, they probably wont be happy about trying to run under Windows. I have been wanting to try again with Windows 98 to make a new installation and see if it might have gotten more stable since last I tried, which must be more than 6 months ago now.

Well my experience on Windows 98 has been pretty stable, if that is any indication, not blazing fast, but stable.
Maybe I shoud try with windows 95, I used Daemon tool 3.47 if I recall correctly. But all the games I tried stalled in dos windowed mode (totally unrelated to daemon tool) so that had been frustrating. I also managed to install windows ME for the fun of it, using the upgrading path, it's the only way to get the video drivers to work.

Not sure its relevant for AO486 and Windows 98 but I remember that VDMS sound was a great way back in the day to run DOS games under Windows. I think it worked very well under Windows XP as well. It helped make DOS under Windows support DOS audio cards.

Reading up on it, it might have only been XP, and probably also Windows 2000, because it seems to be Windows NT specific:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=2389

[HarborSeal]

I installed The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel on both the Top 300 and the My Menu shareware VHD's. The keyboard and mouse both lock up and don't work once the game starts. I tried changing memory managers, changing cache usage, etc, and I wasn't able to find a solution.

The game features an excellent MT-32 soundtrack.

[held]

The ExoDOS collection uses IRQ7 as default which is the only reason I switched to using it as default. You can pull my configs from archive.org if you want a boot disk configured for CD support and maximum memory free. I think the version I have out there with misterfs, ctmouse, doskey, cdrom drivers, and assign loaded is around 626K free of conventional memory. You may ne able to grab some ideas out of that. Just search for ao486. If you don't want to whole pack, I have the boot OS separate from the games vhd so you could just grab that. It's a 100MB vhd.

ExoDOS is using IRQ7 because of DOSBox's defaults

Code: Select all

BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 T6
ULTRASND=240,3,3,5,5

[jd213]

I'm pretty DOS-illiterate, but I wanted to try the DOS version of Dracula's Shadow (Castlevania II inspired fan game from the 2000's, there's also a Windows version but it only works in windowed mode on my Win10 machine for some reason, the F12 key is supposed to make it fullscreen but nothing happens when I press it).

I tried the version on flynsnbit's 2000-19 VHD with each of the memory modes from the "IDE 0-0 BOOT-DOS98" VHD, but no success.

Have skimmed through this thread but not sure what else I should try.

[Malor]

My go-to emulator for difficult DOS games is DOSBox-X on Windows. It has both MUNT and Fluidsynth built-in, though you still have to provide the ROMs for the MT32, so you can have MT32 or General MIDI without needing an MT32-Pi. It's highly compatible with almost everything. The latency will be somewhat worse than the Mister, but it might be acceptable. It may be somewhat noticeable on a Castlevania-type game.

I'm not super-fond of the AO486 core. A lot of stuff works, but many games don't.

[dougan78]

@jd213 for Dracula's Shadow the F12 Full screen thing only works when you are in game afaik. You need to be in the game walking around for any of the keys mentioned on the start screen start working. It is quirky that way. Good luck.

[jd213]

Ah, that worked for a split second but it crashed immediately after going into fullscreen. Thanks anyways, one of these days I'll make a partition for DOS/Win98 on a PC I built with older parts.

[akeley]

I seem to recall some folks saying that latest ao486 is "unstable" (ie crashes more than previously), but can't find this thread again. Just saw my Doom install crash on the latest, while it works fine on older versions, so was wondering if anybody else saw similar symptoms?

[scanline_samurai]

Has anyone figured out a way to install The Elder Scrolls: Arena on ao486? I can't get the installer to work, the "install game" button is greyed out, and trying to just run the exe from the CD just gives me "Not enough EMM"

[thera34]

Has anyone figured out a way to install The Elder Scrolls: Arena on ao486? I can't get the installer to work, the "install game" button is greyed out, and trying to just run the exe from the CD just gives me "Not enough EMM"

Ignore the greyed out menu item, just go on and Configure Game (sound effects and music to your preferences, I go with SB for effects and MT32 for music). Then Exit. It will create (by default C:\ARENA_CD) folder with arena.bat.
The EMS part is that you will need to use either EMM386 or QEMM memory managers for the game to work. Both easily usable from top 300 pack iirc.

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