Privateer -- different problem

G

Ghoster

Spaceman
I've browsed through the posts on this forum, and I've also been through Dejanews several times, and have yet to get Privateer running. I'm hoping someone here can figure out what this *nix type is missing...

I played Privateer on a friend's machine when it came out, and I loved it. When I found it on CD, I snapped it up.. but it hangs my system when I try to run it: after typing "priv" at the prompt, my machine goes dead in the ether. Three-fingering it produces no results, I have to hard-reset. This is true regardless of whether I 1)try to run from the CD or 2)copy everything to my hard drive, edit the priv.cfg file to contain a relative path to priv.tre, and run from HDD without loading realmode CD drivers. (Note that I can scavenge enough conventional memory that adding the CD drivers does not bring me below the doc-professed minimum of 580K.)

The machine in question runs Win98SE (and linux, but I doubt that's the problem) and is a homebrew Athlon 650 with 256MB RAM, Creative TNT2U video, Creative SBLive! Value sound, Creative DVD/DXR3 (CDrom functionality with generic drivers) and a 3Com 3C905B 10/100 ethernet card; input devices are a PS2 mouse and a Sidewinder FF Pro.

This system is happy to run cool while overclocked to 750MHZ (with the DRAM at 153MHZ, even!) but to rule out any oddities I've tried running it at the default CMOS settings, with the same results.

Here are examples of the config.sys/autoexec.bat I've used. I've tried several variations (including: reducing EMS ram to 7168 and below; not loading the SB16 emulation and installing privateer without sound; not loading mouse support; running from HDD without CD drivers; manually configuring filehandles and stack space) and for all configurations which give me enough EMS, fhandles and stack that privateer doesn't complain, it hangs.

Config.sys:
DOS=HIGH,UMB
Device=C:\WIN98SE\Himem.Sys
DeviceHigh=C:\WIN98SE\EMM386.Exe RAM 7168 /V FRAME=E000 /I=B000-B7FF
devicehigh=c:\win98se\command\ebd\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001

Autoexec.bat:
SET TMP=C:\WIN98SE\TEMP
SET TEMP=C:\WIN98SE\TEMP
SET PROMPT=$p$g
SET winbootdir=C:\WIN98SE
SET PATH=C:\WIN98SE;C:\WIN98SE\COMMAND
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WIN98SE
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
loadhigh=c:\win98se\command\mscdex /V /L:G /D:MSCD001 /M:5 /E
loadhigh=c:\win98se\command\mouse.com

Note: These are from a PIF file, but I also tried a bootable diskette with materially the same settings (and all the variations noted above) and results remain the same.

Any suggestions?

(ps. "clo" is a spamtrap -- to get to a mailbox that will be seen, use "olc".)

Thanks,
O

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Hmm... I'm not seeing any problems with your configuration here, although it could be made simpler. Have you tried using DOSEMU through Linux? I have no idea if that'll work or not; haven't had a chance to run it myself yet. Try setting FILESHIGH and BUFFERSHIGH to 30 (yes, I know you've already been through that; do it anyway) and also add NOAUTO to your DOS= line.
 
> [...]Have you tried using DOSEMU through Linux?

No; DOSEMU doesn't give raw hardware access, though, so I'm a little skeptical (to say the least) that it would be useful in the instant case.

Try setting FILESHIGH and BUFFERSHIGH to 30 (yes, I know you've already been through that; do it anyway) and also add NOAUTO to your DOS= line.

'K, I'll give it a shot when I get home from work.
smile.gif



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no go on dos=noauto, files/buffers=30 -- she still hangs.

I looked through dosemu, and it's not suitable -- for one thing, it barely supports vga, let alone svga, and even the vga runs in emulation. I suspect I'd also lose both sound and joystick (connected to the gameport on the soundcard) so I'm rather disinclined to pursue that route.

At least one poster to a.g.w-c (maybe it was Chris Reid?) mentioned Privateer "humming along" on an Athlon 700, so I'm pretty sure it's not simply the architecture.


Any other ideas?



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It's not the architecture; I use an Athlon 800 myself. And re: video emulation in DOSEMU, Privateer uses normal VGA, anyway. Go ahead and try it; if it works, great, otherwise, you've lost nothing. If that doesn't work, well... have fun playing the two text adventures that come with Privateer. (A hint on finding them: they start with TAB.)

Oh, and just for fun, how 'bout posting the output of mem /c?
 
Results of mem /c are pasted below. However, I have a new datum: on a hunch, I tried editing priv.cfg to contain a bogus path (=/foo/bar/baz/priv.tre), and then tried renaming priv.cfg altogether -- and both produced the same result (complete hang) as before. So whatever my problem is, it's apparently occurring *before* priv.cfg gets read.

I have a 40GB U66 ide drive, and the 'doze partitions are fat32; could that be my problem?

Here's the output of mem /c:
Modules using memory below 1 MB:

Name Total Conventional Upper Memory
-------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
SYSTEM 33,024 (32K) 15,392 (15K) 17,632 (17K)
HIMEM 1,120 (1K) 1,120 (1K) 0 (0K)
EMM386 4,320 (4K) 4,320 (4K) 0 (0K)
SBEINIT 4,480 (4K) 4,480 (4K) 0 (0K)
MOUSE 17,280 (17K) 17,280 (17K) 0 (0K)
MSCDEX 15,792 (15K) 0 (0K) 15,792 (15K)
OAKCDROM 36,064 (35K) 0 (0K) 36,064 (35K)
COMMAND 10,064 (10K) 0 (0K) 10,064 (10K)
Free 625,648 (611K) 612,496 (598K) 13,152 (13K)

Memory Summary:

Type of Memory Total Used Free
---------------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Conventional 655,360 42,864 612,496
Upper 92,704 79,552 13,152
Reserved 0 0 0
Extended (XMS)* 267,228,640 3,680,736 263,547,904
---------------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Total memory 267,976,704 3,803,152 264,173,552

Total under 1 MB 748,064 122,416 625,648

Total Expanded (EMS) 17,170,432 (16M)
Free Expanded (EMS)* 16,760,832 (16M)

* EMM386 is using XMS memory to simulate EMS memory as needed.
Free EMS memory may change as free XMS memory changes.

Largest executable program size 612,432 (598K)
Largest free upper memory block 11,040 (11K)
MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.


if I have time today, I'll get better acquainted with dosemu. (I'll also see if I can get vmware to run a DOS box. Performance will likely be 'orrible, though... even on my work machine, which is a twin Piii/750.)

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I concur; it must be happening before priv.cfg is loaded. As to your HD, that's not the problem; I'm running a 20.4 GB U66 drive on FAT32, so you're fine there. Additionally, your TSRs are frustratingly clean; no problems there. It's also not a problem with too much memory, as I'm also running with 256 MB PC-133 RAM with expanded mem limited to sixteen megs.

Now, there ARE two arguments for EMM386 here that I haven't seen before; what do /v and FRAME do?
 
/v == verbose. It blurts out what emm386 thinks it's doing as it loads.

frame: adjusts the EMS page frame. Normally, emm386 would put the page frame (64K contiguous) at C800h. The statement I have in this version of config.sys moves it; I think I can remove it safely.



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