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New Computer old games

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by Larry41, 2004/02/29.

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  1. 2004/02/29
    Larry41

    Larry41 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Hi everyone. I'm new to this forum but have been watching and learning alot from your postings. I have a question. I just had a new computer built for me using win xp Home Edition. 1900 megahertz AMD which my builder says is running at 2600 meg. 128 kilobyte primary memory cache. 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache. 512 meg installed memory. 80 gigabytes HD.MSI MS-StarForce Ge Force MX 440 Display adapter. NVIDIA(R) nForce Audio.
    I have some old versions of games, DOS & Win95, which I can not get to download or run in xp.Is there a trick to get them in
    or am I out of luck in using them?
    Larry
     
  2. 2004/02/29
    noahdfear

    noahdfear Inactive

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    Welcome to WindowsBBS!

    Hope this helps.
     

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  4. 2004/02/29
    Larry41

    Larry41 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Thanks Dave, Let me digest this info and I'll post back with results.
    Larry
     
  5. 2004/02/29
    BillyBob Lifetime Subscription

    BillyBob Inactive

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    If the older games were already on the machine and XP was put over say 98 then the games will work fine. At least they do for me in XP Pro.

    But if you try to installed them later it could be a different story.

    When XP was designed, no way did it have DOS and Win95 stuff in mind at all.

    That stuff is supposed to be no longer usefull.

    But it seems that Larry41 and I have news for them. DOS. Win3.1 and Win95 games are just as good to day as they were when the were built.

    For good Rock Solid no nonsense DOS support it pays to stick with Win98.

    BillyBob
     
  6. 2004/02/29
    Larry41

    Larry41 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Dave I tryed the program compatibility mode but didn't help. I'm trying to run Doom2 an old dos game. I can get it up but the sound either doesn't work or very distorted.

    BillyBob Your right about old games, I've played Doom2 forever. About winxp. This is a new computer and never had Doom load or any earlier os. Being a dos game I suppose it will never run right witl xp. My old comp runs 98 and I did have some trouble getting it set up to run right. Once I did, it worked well.

    If there is any hope, let me know.

    Larry
     
  7. 2004/02/29
    BillyBob Lifetime Subscription

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    I have an ANCIENT DOS Pinochle game ( on Floppys ) that my Wife Loves and works just fine on her machine.

    It will not run on this Win98 machine UNLESS I make sure the sound is OFF.

    It just plain will not run at all in XP Pro.

    I do not know about XP home but in SP Pro there is no choice for 95 or DOS like there is in 98SE.

    However. It did work just fine ( in 98SE on here ) untill I went to onboard Audio. Since then if I try to use the Audio it wants to change into the MSDOS mode and/or just plain locks up

    I just did search of the Web and found a newer version for Windows.

    If there is any hope, let me know.

    It is questionable in XP.

    BillyBob
     
  8. 2004/02/29
    Larry41

    Larry41 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    BillyBob Thanks for the reply. I to am sorry to hear that I'll probly not play Doom on xp. Your right about the sound, It will work with it turned off. Unfortionedly I think thats a big part of the game (the sound). O well, guess I,m fire up the old comp 98 and use it. Thanks for the input.
    Larry
     
  9. 2004/02/29
    SVEN

    SVEN Well-Known Member

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    Pardon me for butting in here,

    I have Doom and also Doom II and I did not do anything special to install them on my XP computer. Just pop it in the CD drive and autorun will take over.

    I have one other game <FURY2 from MS, and to install this I went to compatibility mode and let the Wizard install it. It will ask you what program you want to install and just answer the 1 in the CD drive and follow the prompts.

    Hope that helps someone.
    Regards
    Sven
     
    SVEN,
    #8
  10. 2004/02/29
    Larry41

    Larry41 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Sven
    When I put in Doom cd into cd drive. it does nothing. Auto play is engaged. I can go to D drive and load it, but like I said before, It won't run right with sound on.
    Sound is distorded and game slows down to a craw. Even tried to down load from cd to hd and run it that way but didn't help.
    Larry
     
  11. 2004/03/01
    Zander

    Zander Geek Member Alumni

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    Years ago I had a computer (win98) that my kids played Duke Nukem on a lot. OK, Dad played it too. :) Anyway, I bought a Sound Blaster Live soundcard for it and after that the game would run but when there were certain sounds in the game it would crash back to the desktop. It was never a problem before the new soundcard. If I turned the sound off the game ran fine just as the games you guys have mentioned here. I ended up finding the answer to my problem in one of the Creative groups in the google newsgroups. I had to add something to the command line of the shortcut that made a reference to command.com. Don't remember exactly what it was. I'm sure this isn't your problem but my point is that if you do a search at the Google newsgroups or just on the web with the name of your soundcard and the game you're trying to run you may find an answer to the problem.

    One more thing. I don't know if this comes into play with XP being that it handles calls to hardware differently but have you run the setup program of the game and made sure it's set to use the correct IRQ and DMA settings? I wonder how this works in XP being that there's no autoexec.bat to load the set blaster parameters.
     
  12. 2004/03/01
    BillyBob Lifetime Subscription

    BillyBob Inactive

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    One more thing. I don't know if this comes into play with XP being that it handles calls to hardware differently but have you run the setup program of the game and made sure it's set to use the correct IRQ and DMA settings? I wonder how this works in XP being that there's no autoexec.bat to load the set blaster parameters.

    I am not real sure but 95% sure that it would come into play with XP. I am thinking that the game did work in XP when I had the plugin in card in this machine.

    But I do know that the Audio setup does come into play in 98SE as I switched back to my 98SE HD just to check.

    One 98SE had a SB plugin card. This one has onboard Audio.

    The SB card has an IRQ, IO and DMA settings. All of these can be ( are ) setup in the Autoexec.bat for use by DOS. The game works just fine there.

    The builtin Audio only had an !RQ and IO which are Totaly different. With just an IRQ and three IO settings. And no DMA.

    The SB uses IO 0220-022F.

    The Built in uses IO DC00-DCFF.


    98SE is one thing. But Windows XP does not know that DOS even exists.

    So all this is telling me that the OS itself. The brand, type and setup of the Audio system may well have the biggest bearing on how the older games work.

    So we are back to the COMBINATION of things again.

    My Wifes' combination works fine. My combination does not.

    BillyBob
     
    Last edited: 2004/03/01
  13. 2004/03/01
    shadowhawk

    shadowhawk Inactive

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    My machine runs my old Win3.1 Windows Entertainment Pack games fine except BlockBreaker lost its sounds.
     
  14. 2004/03/01
    Eck

    Eck Inactive

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    Most MS-DOS games will run reasonably well on XP using a program called "VDM Sound." There is a forum at vogons.zetafleet.com that has a link in the VDM Sound forum for a later beta vdmsound version than the one on the official vdmsound website:http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/. The beta version includes all updates and the Launchpad GUI which you would otherwise need to download separately. XP does natively include SoundBlaster Pro support at 220 5 1 330 388 T3, but it sounds yucchy when it does work. When using vdmsound (after you install it), set the games settings to SoundBlaster 16 settings for most games (although the Launchpad GUI enables you to emulate the other cards if the game won't run with the default SB16 settings. That's A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6, like the SB16. Usually you just have 220 7 1 to set in the game, but for general midi it's port 330 and for adlib it's 388. I play almost all my DOS games in XP with sound that is nearly always acceptable (usually), sometimes worse (rare), and sometimes better! You just right click the shortcut to the game and choose "run with vdmsound." Advanced configuring is available in the Launchpad GUI. Try it! (Doom works fine.)

    Dennis
     
    Eck,
    #13
  15. 2004/03/01
    Newt

    Newt Inactive

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    Whoof. Let me throw in a comment or two here.

    XP can, will, and does use the specialized config.sys/autoexec.bat setup values we all came to know and love in earlier versions. Just differently. It can even be convinced to use the various other values that sometimes showed up in system.ini/win.ini and similar places.

    You just have to attack things a bit differently since XP itself does not need or use those files. It simply can use them if needed with older apps.

    A good starting place is Troubleshooting MS-DOS-Based Programs in Windows XP

    A bit of duplication but also some extra Here including specifics on making a SoundBlaster 2.0 work.

    Note the use in both articles of Command.com. This is a must with some older 16 bit applications and if they are trying to run using cmd.exe (the 32 bit version XP uses for itself) they may well not work at all.

    If you don't mind some reading, this 4 page thread on another forum had quite a bit of good information and some excellent links.

    All of this will take some fiddling, some trial & error, and probably some swearing. If a particular game/app/whatever is worth the effort to you, chances are nearly 100% that you can make it work.

    Note the 'nearly' by 100%. Some DOS games were written by really brilliant programmers who managed to make DOS systems do things they really weren't designed to do. If this included the game making a lot of direct hardware calls and having the hardware perform unnatural acts, then XP may not allow it. The NT systems were business designed and one feature that was built into the first version to increase stability and has persisted thru XP and 2003 is an internal applet/utility called HAL (hardware abstraction layer). Basically, no NT OS will allow any application to directly manipulate hardware. The app may think it is doing so but in reality it is talking to the HAL and the HAL, in turn, instructs the hardware. If the programmer used a trick that the HAL cannot correctly interpret (even with the aid of compatibility mode, autoexec.nt, config.nt, and similar files) then the DOS app will either not run at all or will not run properly.
     
  16. 2004/03/01
    BillyBob Lifetime Subscription

    BillyBob Inactive

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    I lost the audio in the same two DOS games in both XP pro and 98SE when I went from a SB plugin to onboard audio.

    It it too late now but I will compare device managers between the two SE machine tommrrow.

    BB
     
  17. 2004/03/02
    BillyBob Lifetime Subscription

    BillyBob Inactive

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    Sound, video and game controller settings

    98SE machine with SB Plug in card.

    Sound Blaster Audio PCI
    IRQ 12
    IO EC00-EC3F

    SB Leagacy device
    IO 0220-022F
    IRQ 05
    DMA 01
    DMA 07
    IO 0330-033F
    IO 0388-0388

    98SSE with onbaord audio
    IRQ 11
    IO DC00- DCFF
    IO E000-E003
    IO E400-E403
    The usual SB references are in the Autoexec,bat.

    At this point in time I believe that this is why I lost the Audio in the two DOS game. The settings may be way out if range for them.

    I wiil no go see what XP has to say and be back.

    Under Sound, Video and game controller all I find is;

    "This device is working properly "

    The SB References are in the Autoexec.bat.

    BB
     
    Last edited: 2004/03/02
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