Master of Orion 1 under NT4.0/Mast of Magic under same

[Greywar 0]

Hopefully some of you wiser heads out there can help me out here... I am trying desperatley to run Master of Magic/ Master of Orion on my NT4.0 machinge. The main problem i am running into is that both of them want me to have at least 1024 Kb f expanded memory. I have tried setting this inthe .pif file to no avail. No matter the setting, the game doesn't recognize it. When i use the MEM commandin the command prompt, the screeen shows me that i have no available expanded memory whatsoever!. I modified the config.nt file as well adding the EMM=RAM line also with no effect. There are days when i despise the sort of progress, that kepps me from using a 10 year old tiny litlle program on a supposedly "better" OS. Grrr.. Well, enough ranting i suppose. If any one can help me with this it would be greatly appreciated. I am a huge DOS game addict and i need my fix! Thanx

 

Michael R. Taylor

SGT US Army

Soto Cano AFB Honduras

[DosFreak 2]

This isn't going to help but: I have been able to get both games working fine under Windows 2000...without sound, of course, because NTVDM does not support sound. They SHOULD work fine WITH sound with this program: http://ntvdm.cjb.net/ (This program enables sound under NTVDM boxes for DOS games). I have not verified if they work with VdmSound but I do know that they work fine without any tampering with memory settings in Windows 2000. Just extract and run the .exe

 

Now as for NT4....that's a different story. I haven't tried those games under NT4 so I'll see if I can find the time to do so. I do not see why they would not work however.

 

The problem of why the games are not working could be as simple as your telling the game to use sound (which errors it out) or a messed up game.

[Greywar 0]

Thank you for taking a look at this problem for me, i appreciate it. I did install the NTVDM sound support. It did not fix the problem, but it does allow me to use sound in some other dos apps, so that is a nice change.... The problem with both MoM and MOO is the same,(they both use a virtually identical version of the same engine, namely expanded memory. Having played around and experimented with the memory settings for DOS programs in the NT .pif file. I have found that the settings in the .pif file have little to no effect at all.. for instance, if you set expanded memory to any setting whatesoever, the program completely ignores it... even when you go to the command line after setting your various memory options, the MEM command reveals that no changes actually take place. I hate to sound like a microsoft conspiracy theorist, but it seems as tho microcrap only put the memory setting windows in NT4 as a placebo to placate us old DOS folk and hoped that no one would look too closely. I am running NT4.0 with SP6 and all the latest updates. If anyone out there can help me out with whatever i am overlooking here.. I would greatly appreciate the enlightenment as this problem seems like such an easy fix on the surface.

 

Frustrated,

Michael R. Taylor

SGT, US Army

Soto Cano AFB, Honduras

[DosFreak 2]

That problem I can explain! The memory setting do apply! But ONLY for the .pif that the executable goes to. When you do a start/run/cmd it uses the _default.pif in the \winnt or \windows directory (for XP).

 

Simply modify the _default.pif and config.nt/autoexec.bat to alter your memory settings.

 

[DosFreak 2]

Quote:

Frustrated,
Michael R. Taylor
SGT, US Army
Soto Cano AFB, Honduras

Army on an AFB. I bet that's fun!
I'm currently in the AF station in the UK.

[Greywar 0]

Well, actaully i had already tried modifying the _default.pif file when i read about it in the NT help. I currently have it set to provide about 16 megs of expanded memory and I have set the EMM=RAM line in config.nt and yet it seems to do nothing. I just went through and double checked everything i just stated and then went to the command prompt and typed MEM again with the follwing result.

 

655360 bytes total conventional memory

655360 bytes available to MS-DOS

596416 largest executable program size

 

28311552 bytes total contiguous extended memory

0 bytes available contiguous extended memory

16619520 bytes available XMS memory

MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

 

as you can see, depite all the settings in the _default.pif file the computer still seems to think that all the extended memory is used.... also note that the total contigous extended memory number is no where near the 16Mb i had specified in the .pif it was these results that so initially confused me. I am completely baffled as to why NT seems to think that all available extended memory is gone. Also, older DOS progs are not too attached to *extended* memory, they are hungry for *expanded* memory of which i apparently have none despite the 16Mb specified in the *.pif

 

Contemplating urinating over my NT system,

Michael R. Taylor

SGT US Army

Soto Cano AFB

 

P.S. I love working for the AF actually.....

[vladr 0]

Have you tried to run the game using "Run with VDMS", from Explorer (right-click on the .exe) ? Does the memory problem still persist ? If so then you may have a messed-up NT4 installation; I have such an installation at work, where no matter what values I put for EMS it won't take it. I know (at least) MOO1 works fine under NT4, and the memory settings should also work fine, i.e. they are not "placebos". Have you removed any files, even if they looked totally useless, from the SYSTEM or SYSTEM32 directories since you installed NT ?

 

Vlad.

[Greywar 0]

I tried running it on the other two comps in our office both running nt$.0 sp6 and got the same results... however when I had the opportunity to abuse another offices computer with the same nt4.0 sp6 setup all the EMS hungry games worked great! Now I just have to figure out a good excuse to have the IT guy come over and reinstall NT Thanks for the suggestion....

[vladr 0]

In terms of NT4 machines that work and those that do not work with EMS: do those that do *not* work have the third-party '4NT' shell installed (as opposed to those that work with EMS)? Just a wild guess.