MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi guys,

I'm experiencing issues running several games from exoflynn top300.
Some of the more demanding games (ultima VII and serpent Isle) have an erratic behaviour: sometimes they don't run at all (I see a resolution change on the display and then I'm back to the dos prompt). Other times I can get to the game main menu, but then mister completely hangs when main game loads.
Other games don't run at all (ultima VIII, gobliiins to name a few). After launching, I get sent right back to the launcher.
Other games run without any issues (es Lucas arts games).

I suspect this may be related to the fact that I'm hosting my roms folder on a network share on my NAS (mister connects to network via wifi). So, all my vhd files are stored on my NAS.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with a similar setup and can maybe confirm this?

Thank you!

vonblubba wrote: ↑Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:49 pm I suspect this may be related to the fact that I'm hosting my roms folder on a network share on my NAS (mister connects to network via wifi). So, all my vhd files are stored on my NAS.

I would try to connect the MiSTer to the network via ethernet. The WiFi is much slower and that could be the issue.

I found updating to be a lot more error prone over WiFi anyway...

Some of those games might require a different memory manager to launch so you can always try the other three options on boot. Priority of which to test are the order they are in the menu.

I wonder if there's any caching on the cifs client side you could tune.

Thank you all for your replies.
I'm pretty sure I'm using the correct memory managers.
I will definitely try with an ethernet connection (never had any issues with updating or with any other core though).
No idea about cifs caching, but it's definitely something worth checking.

A quick update. To help me pinpoint the problem, i moved the vhd images used by ao486 to the sd card. These are not the Top300 images, but a fresh install I made of MS-DOS 6.22.
Moreover, I did a fresh install of Ultima 7 serpent island from original floppy images.
Well, still no luck. Same issue, I see the screen change resolution and then I'm, back to dos prompt, no error message whatsoever.
On the bright side, I was wrong: it seems that cifs/network share has nothing to do with this. On the dark side, I'm really out of ideas here...

P.S.: I even tried the boot floppy that serpent isle installation program kindly offers to create for you: issue still there.

What if you run it without a sound card configured in the game's setup?

Bas wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 1:29 pm What if you run it without a sound card configured in the game's setup?

Without a souncard I get a black screen and nothing more. But that's something, I've got a different behaviour, it could really be something sound related. I'll check those settings, a little trial and error could help.
Thanks for the advice!

vonblubba wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 11:30 am A quick update. To help me pinpoint the problem, i moved the vhd images used by ao486 to the sd card. These are not the Top300 images, but a fresh install I made of MS-DOS 6.22.
Moreover, I did a fresh install of Ultima 7 serpent island from original floppy images.
Well, still no luck. Same issue, I see the screen change resolution and then I'm, back to dos prompt, no error message whatsoever.
On the bright side, I was wrong: it seems that cifs/network share has nothing to do with this. On the dark side, I'm really out of ideas here...

It doesn't look like I did anything special here, but here are all of the config files for U7 Serpent. You can try to compare those to yours.
https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... A/ultima72

Sound Blaster defaults to IRQ 5 so make sure your blaster environment variable is either set to:
A220 I5 D1 H5 T6
or A220 I5 D1 T4

If you don't want I5 you can set it to I7 but you need to use the SBCTL command from the repo.
sbctl.exe: set Sound Blaster configs. Supported: I5,I7,I10,H5,H1,T4,T6

You do have base enough memory available? I think U7 is picky about that.

Also, turn off all your memory managers, Look at CLEAN here
https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... CONFIG.CLN
or the HIRAM option.

Do all that, then try again. You started with one of the more picky DOS games to ever exist...

Don't load anything except a mouse driver and himem.sys, then it should work. This one should work:

https://www.area536.com/img/reviews/ultima8/ultima8.zip

Of course this is U8, but the OS and mouse driver should be fine for SI as well. You could just rip out U8, install SI and things should work. If not, I'd be happy to prep an image of it for you when I find some time.

Well, I'll be damned. @bas I extracted autoexec.bat and config.sys and mouse driver form your U8 vhd and copied them over to my vhd, and it works (even with soundblaster enabled). I looked at the differences between mine and yours and the only things I could spot were the mouse driver (I used ctmouse) and the cdrom driver. What baffles me is that not even the boot floppy created by the ultima installer worked (and there was nothing but the mouse driver loaded in there). So maybe it really was the mouse driver...

Thank you all guys, you saved my day!

The CD driver may be eating too much base memory. Those things were pretty hefty in the day and U7 is quite a stickler for memory management. Good to see it's working though, enjoy this amazing game!!