Setting interrupts, ports

  • Thread starter Thread starter NetMax
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NetMax

I'm trying to install older games (Transport Tycoon, SimCity2000, Descent
& Descent 2) on my P3 866MHz XP pro system. As soon as they auto-detect
the sound card, it crashes, and I can't find where comparable settings
are in XP to manually edit the game configuration files. All I find is a
single interrupt (11) and memory block E000-E03F. The games want
interrupts, ports and dma for sound and music.

This must be a common problem, but an hour searching the web hasn't
produced any pointers for me. If there a semi-reliable method to get
these old games to operate?

TIA
 
The games have to use a soundcard emulation, eg. SoundBlaster 16. Using a
shortcut to start the game you can set some compatibility options that might
help. There are also a couple of configuration files which you might be able
to customise to make the games run;

%SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT
%SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\CONFIG.NT

This is the default emulated soundcard setting (taken from Autoexec.nt):

REM The default value is A220 I5 D1 T3 and P330. If any of the switches
is
REM left unspecified, the default value will be used. (NOTE, since all
the
REM ports are virtualized, the information provided here does not have to
REM match the real hardware setting.) NTVDM supports Sound Blaster 2.0
only.
REM The T switch must be set to 3, if specified.
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T3

There may also be relevent settings in the CONFIG.NT file. There are more
explanations about the options within the comments of those files. I
believe you can also set each game's shortcut to use different startup files
with custom settings.

For non-DOS games you can try running in compatibility mode (set in
Properties on the game shortcut). I believe that the same configuration file
settings apply if you need them.

There is no MSDOS in XP so any DOS only games have to be able to run in XP's
emulation mode, either from a command prompt or using a shortcut.
See Windows Help for the how-to use/setup compatibility modes. Even the game
setup file can be run in compatibility mode if that can help install a game.

Some games you might have to run from an MSDOS boot floppy disk. In that
case you can't install them onto an NTFS or FAT32 partition. You'll also
need to get MSDOS drivers for the sound card, mouse, cd drive, EMM memory,
whatever else.

I just now installed SimCity2000 (DOS version) on my computer. I have an
SBLive! card using Irq7. No crash/error on install. While installing the
game in a command prompt window (DOS emulation) the game allowed me to
select SB16 for sound and music. The SimCity config file shows that it found
the emulated SB16 is using IRQ 5, address 220 and DMA 1. When I started the
game the sound effects were there but no background music. I did install it
into a small FAT partition that I created just for old DOS games, in case I
needed to run any game from an MSDOS boot floppy.

Didn't play it for any length of time so I have no idea how stable it is,
but it does run under XP so there is hope. :-)
 
Thanks Ralf. Some good info for me to work with. The XP compatibility
mode was of no help previously, but I've had better luck not installing
and just executing previously installed versions (fixed Descent 2), and
for Transport Tycoon, I found here http://www.ttdpatch.net/ a
downloadable Windows version with patches for XP. For Descent 1, I
copied the cfg file details and it ran, but without sound.
Interestingly, changing the intr made no difference to either version of
Descent (good or bad). I'll work with your recommendations for the
others.

cheers
NetMax
 
I found this sound emulation utility that you might want to try out.

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/vdmsound/VDMSound-2.0.4-WinNT-i386.msi?download

I ran into this known issue with it (music) in SimCity 2000:

--quote--
GAMES THAT USE PARALLEL-PORT SOUNDCARDS OR THE SOUNDBLASTER DIRECT-DAC MODE
RELY ON VERY HIGH TIMER FREQUENCIES. WINDOWS IS UNABLE TO EMULATE
THESE FREQUENCIES PROPERLY, AND YOU WILL MOST LIKELY EXPERIENCE LOW
QUALITY, SLOW SOUND (10 TIME SLOWER THAN DESIRED).
--unquote--
 
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