Re: Old Games

["Neil" <dreaded.neil@phreaker.net>]

>
This as a question nor really on the subject of lprogramming but more holw
to get old games to work. To any of you have any tips/ideas for running old
DOS games. Specifcally the game I am trying to run is The 7th Guest, which
I have had for years but have never been able to get to work. Do any of you
know how to make a decent DOS boot disk which enables the CD drivers to
work and have a decent amount of base memory (640k) left. Also can there be
problem trying to play old games on a relativly new machine??
<

First, I'm thinking that you might need to download the drivers for your
mouse/CD-ROM that should have come with the hardware but never seem to
anymore. Load EMM386 (part of Windoze) as well. On your boot disk (or
pif/.lnk file), you should probably remove everything else but what you
absolutely need from autoexec.bat and config.sys, then keep trying
different combinations until it works. I think that loading stuff into high
mem where possible can help free up the extra conventional that you'll
likely need. Something like:

--autoexec.bat--
REM - JUST A FEW PREFERENCES
SET PATH=.;C:\LCC\BIN;C:\DJGPP\BIN;C:\BCC55\BIN;C:\NASM;[. . .]%PATH%
SET DIRCMD=/p/a/oe/v
REM - THIS IS GOOD
LH EMM386.EXE ON
REM - FOR MY CD-ROM; PROBABLY SIMILAR TO MOST
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /M:10 /D:MSCD000
REM - THIS IS PRETTY NORMAL FOR A MOUSE DRIVER
LH C:\MOUSE.COM
REM - MORE PREFERENCES
PROMPT $p # $

--config.sys--
REM - DEPENDS ON YOUR COMPUTER
LASTDRIVE=D
REM - PROBABLY NEED THIS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\Himem.Sys
REM - FOR MY CD-ROM (OTHERS WOULD BE DIFFERENT)
DEVICEHIGH=C:\ATACD\ATAPIMGR.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\ATACD\SR_ASPI.SYS /A /D:MSCD000 /Q
REM - FOR MY BORING SPEAKERS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\cs4232c.exe /A
REM - THIS IS GOOD
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.Exe
REM - THIS IS USUALLY A GOOD THING
DOS=HIGH,UMB
REM - WHATEVER (DOESN'T REALLY MATTER)
FILES=9

Sometimes if you still can't get enough memory, you might be able to
sacrifice some of the hardware that you dont really, absolutely NEED (like
speakers and mouse). Hope this helps a little (I know that that game is
really hard to get running; had the same problems setting it up on a few
other computers).

-[ Neil-Edelman -- dreaded.neil@phreaker.net -- ICQ UIN: 705130
-[ http://neil.freeshell.org/
-[ "Nature makes frequent use of [the infinite] everywhere" -Georg Cantor

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