Can't play in DOS
Moderators: Flumminator, Zomis
Can't play in DOS
I have rocksndiamonds on a dos machine and when I try running rocks.exe I get a black screen and have to reboot. After reboot I read stderr.txt and it says something about ./userdata/setup.cnf not being found. What can i do to fix this?
> I have rocksndiamonds on a dos machine and when I try running rocks.exe I get a black screen
> and have to reboot.
Hmm, which kind of DOS is this? For example, are you using
- plain MS-DOS (version?)
- other DOS versions like DR-DOS or FreeDOS
- the DOS that can be started from Windows 98 etc.
How much free/total memory do you have? The free amount of "DOS memory" (the memory under 640KB) should not matter that much, as the game uses a DOS extender, but you will need some MB to run the game.
Please describe your hardware and system a bit, as this has some impact on how the game runs on such an old DOS box.
> After reboot I read stderr.txt and it says something about ./userdata/setup.cnf not being
> found. What can i do to fix this?
That should not be the problem (the setup config file was initially not found; this should only produce a warning).
As I create the DOS version of Rocks'n'Diamonds by cross-compiling on a Linux box, I do not test every version (especially the last releases) under a "real" DOS. Please check if older versions of R'n'D run on your system, as they are better tested and require less resources; you can get older DOS versions of R'n'D here:
http://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/msdos/rocksndiamonds/
If any old versions runs on your system, please tell me which is the newest versions that works.
> and have to reboot.
Hmm, which kind of DOS is this? For example, are you using
- plain MS-DOS (version?)
- other DOS versions like DR-DOS or FreeDOS
- the DOS that can be started from Windows 98 etc.
How much free/total memory do you have? The free amount of "DOS memory" (the memory under 640KB) should not matter that much, as the game uses a DOS extender, but you will need some MB to run the game.
Please describe your hardware and system a bit, as this has some impact on how the game runs on such an old DOS box.
> After reboot I read stderr.txt and it says something about ./userdata/setup.cnf not being
> found. What can i do to fix this?
That should not be the problem (the setup config file was initially not found; this should only produce a warning).
As I create the DOS version of Rocks'n'Diamonds by cross-compiling on a Linux box, I do not test every version (especially the last releases) under a "real" DOS. Please check if older versions of R'n'D run on your system, as they are better tested and require less resources; you can get older DOS versions of R'n'D here:
http://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/msdos/rocksndiamonds/
If any old versions runs on your system, please tell me which is the newest versions that works.
> I am using DRDOS with 639k conventional memory, 65472k extended
Well, that should indeed be enough RAM. :-)
Hmm, no idea why it does not work. I thought that the included memory extender could have a problem with DR-DOS, but then it should abort at an earlier stage (and don't write a warning about setup.cnf, which means that it was already in the process of loading things).
At least versions 1.4.0 and 2.1.1 were definitely tested successfully under real (MS-)DOS...
Do you have the chance to boot from an MS-DOS floppy and then start R'n'D (from the harddisk)? Maybe there's some sort of problem with DR-DOS. (I only had a report from someone who ran it under FreeDOS, which worked.)
It could also be the graphics or sound hardware; as far as I know, the (relatively old) version of the Allegro game library I use for R'n'D does not support all graphics and sound cards (maybe especially newer ones).
Well, that should indeed be enough RAM. :-)
Hmm, no idea why it does not work. I thought that the included memory extender could have a problem with DR-DOS, but then it should abort at an earlier stage (and don't write a warning about setup.cnf, which means that it was already in the process of loading things).
At least versions 1.4.0 and 2.1.1 were definitely tested successfully under real (MS-)DOS...
Do you have the chance to boot from an MS-DOS floppy and then start R'n'D (from the harddisk)? Maybe there's some sort of problem with DR-DOS. (I only had a report from someone who ran it under FreeDOS, which worked.)
It could also be the graphics or sound hardware; as far as I know, the (relatively old) version of the Allegro game library I use for R'n'D does not support all graphics and sound cards (maybe especially newer ones).
Also thanks a lot for this report -- now I know that there are problems with DR-DOS (and I think now that it might indeed be the included memory extender that causes the problem when run in conjunction with DR-DOS).
I probably won't fix this problem, as the DOS version is only rarely used these days, but if you like, you can send me a little mail (to "info@artsoft.org"), so I can contact you if I should have found a different memory extender (or another solution) which you might want to test then.
Again, thanks for this compatibility report.
I probably won't fix this problem, as the DOS version is only rarely used these days, but if you like, you can send me a little mail (to "info@artsoft.org"), so I can contact you if I should have found a different memory extender (or another solution) which you might want to test then.
Again, thanks for this compatibility report.