7 Terrible Things About PC-DOS Gaming

I still have the same problems with quite a number of DOSBox settings for some old games even today.

Sometimes DOSBox is more of a bugger than DOS ever was.

Settings to DID's Inferno, anyone?
 
Glad I didnt jump ship from Amiga to PC until Win95. I can cope with not being a real man ;)

You still had to get dirty with DOS occasionally. I remember a friend telling me what to type to get Quake1 working properly, as DOS was better than win95 for it until GLQuake. IIRC I had to resort to DOS for Command and Conquer and Privateer.

Soon after, 56K modems dropped to below £100. Got one, and then you could get help online for this sort of stuff.
 
My first PC was a 486 so im not overly old in those terms (has all the Commodores up to that point; C16 +4, C64, Amiga) Anyway I remember having to do this stuff and for some reason my PC 'tower' was combined with the monitor...

I assume for space saving, but i had a monitor and the other parts all together.. .so when i wanted to change RAM things went overly pear shape for a while :D But it was a challenge and something you just got on with
 
Ah halcyon days! I remember the contents of my trick HIMEM.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT almost verbatim :D

DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE EMS I=B700-B7FF
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=30
STACKS=0,0
BUFFERS=20
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDDRIVER.SYS /D
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5 /WIN95
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS

@Echo off
SET SOUND=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET PATH=C:\Windows;C:\
LH C:\Mousedriver.com
LH C:\Windows\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000

:D
 
npjnpj said:
Settings to DID's Inferno, anyone?
Click to expand...

I don't know, but you should up the processor cycles to make the game run twice normal speed, so it performs the same way it did in Oceans marketing videos back in 1995 or whenever it was released. Yes, they sped up the video 2x to make the game look smoother and faster than it actually was. :rolleyes:
 
JonnyT said:
Ah halcyon days! I remember the contents of my trick HIMEM.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT almost verbatim :D

DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE EMS I=B700-B7FF
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=30
STACKS=0,0
BUFFERS=20
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDDRIVER.SYS /D
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5 /WIN95
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS

@echo off
SET SOUND=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET PATH=C:\Windows;C:\
LH C:\Mousedriver.com
LH C:\Windows\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000

:D
Click to expand...

You remember all that!? WOW! You're a robot, dude! :) :)

Either that or getting it to work was such a time consuming and painful process that it got etched into your mind (and your nightmares) forever.
 
JonnyT said:
Ah halcyon days! I remember the contents of my trick HIMEM.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT almost verbatim :D

DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE EMS I=B700-B7FF
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=30
STACKS=0,0
BUFFERS=20
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDDRIVER.SYS /D
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5 /WIN95
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS

@echo off
SET SOUND=C:\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET PATH=C:\Windows;C:\
LH C:\Mousedriver.com
LH C:\Windows\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000

:D
Click to expand...

Best post ever.....relating to the pains of DOS gaming :D

I've just remembered those situations where you'd do all of the above, think everything was perfect, restart and find your 590kb had turned into 578. The reaction was not pleasant.
 
luckily i didn't have too many problems with mine.

i got pretty good at modifying my autoexec and config.sys files to maximise my base memory, after figuring out how to get everything to run in upper memory and creating enough space for it all :P

luckily my dad was into networking, so i had enough networking hardware to networking the whole town together.
use to play network games a lot with mates, every other weekend we used to take out pcs round and hook up a network for some gaming.

usually i had to spend some time configuring everyones pc's to get them linked, but after awhile we got so used to it, it was pretty much plug and play
 
Liampope said:
You remember all that!? WOW! You're a robot, dude! :) :)

Either that or getting it to work was such a time consuming and painful process that it got etched into your mind (and your nightmares) forever.
Click to expand...

I think more so the latter :D

Windows 95 was not quite the saviour it's made out to be, as others have mentioned you still have to exit to pure DOS mode for certain games - EF2000 being a prime example.

I remember being ridiculously excited because I found a command-line utility on the Creative Labs website which enabled you to load the .SYS drivers from the command line rather than having to load them in CONFIG.SYS, meaning that you could 'cleanse' them out of CONFIG.SYS and have a 'pure' startup into Windows 95, and then when you exited to MS-DOS mode you could call the drivers in AUTOEXEC.DOS and still have a functioning games PC. The name of the utility: CTLOAD!

(How sad am I?! :D)
 
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Populous II was a bit of a nightmare as I recall, I was never able to get it to run with both Sound AND 256 colour mode, as I couldn't free up enough conventional memory. Even bareboot (holding down SHIFT during POST) wasn't good enough by the time I'd loaded the mouse driver etc :/
 
I think I managed to get Populous 2 running with sound, 256 colour AND CD-rom (I had the CD-rom Bullfrog collection*), but it was a pain in the neck.


*I've still got the discs somewhere, Populous 1 and 2, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, and something else I think.
 
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