DOS Games Discussion

I'm trying to play Tie CD through Dosbox and dfend and everything works fine except no sound and major lags. I have an old, 433 mhz with 256 MB of RAM but it has XP which is why I'm using Dosbox. That and I have a usb controller.

It is moving very slow with no sound.

Please help if you can.

Thanks.

why are you running XP on a >1ghz PC? That sounds like trouble on its own...

Wardrich is right, on a 433MHz you can forget it.
Can't you use a Dos bootflop? You can find Dos bootflops on internet with USB support.
I just hope that your HD isn't NTFS but FAT32, otherwise, now yeah, forget it.

And your 256Mb RAM that's really the lowest, your progs must be running in swapmemory, slooooooooooooow.

Another solution would be a dual-boot with XP-W98SE.

But I played the game on a 333 mhz a long time ago and it was fine.

And it is a fat32.

Also, you can't tell me my CPU can't run the game and here's why:

When I first got it, it ran perfectly fine. No dosbox or anything. The only reason I got dosbox was so I could use my usb controller. Before it, I had to use my mouse.

So, what's the real problem here?

Again, thanks for any help.

Anonymous wrote:But I played the game on a 333 mhz a long time ago and it was fine.

Sure, I believe you, but you weren't running XP on it.

I even played XWing and TIE smoothly on my old 486/DX2/66MHz. In MSDos 6.22 of course.

You really would be much better off with W98SE or W2K instead of XP.
Your 433MHz is a:
Real fast W98SE PC,( Or WinME)
A reasonable W2K, (but in fact that needs a 800MHz to run fast)
And a fu**ing slow XP.

Also there is the fact that you only have 256Mb RAM, that means that 90% of your RAM memory is taken by XP, your progs run in swapfile, and that is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

Your problem is that you maybe can run the game directly in XP, must be that you have just enough RAM to run it. But when you use dosbox that one needs a lot of extra RAM, and goes in swap, that slows your PC down.

So how do you explain the game running fine before I used dosbox?

So all I would need is some extra ram? If that's the case, I'm sure I have some somewhere.

Nope.
You have a second big problem besides the lack of RAM: CPU power.
Your CPU can't handle XP+dosbox+game.
Dosbox emulates a Dos5 PC in your XP pc, plus it must run the game.
That will ask too much from your poor 433MHz CPU.

Dosbox needs a lot of free CPU ressources, you don't have that.
Sorry.

But as you're on FAT 32 you could try a W98SE bootdisk.
You can find those on internet.(With USB support)
With some editing of autoexec.bat and config.sys you even should have sound.(But that depends of the kind of soundcard you have).

You also can find dos bootflops that can handle FAT32 and USB.

Is there a way to simply use the usb controller and not run the game through dosbox? Like I said, it ran fiine by itself.

I do appreciate your help.

Can you explain the bootflops/disk thing as well? Sorry but here I am thinking I know cpu's and these are things I am unsure about.

Problem with using directly USB controlloers in old dosgames is that they can't see/access those. USB is a post-Dos peripheral device.
So you need a go between, in this case Dosbox does that.
It emulates an old game-port and redirects it towards the windows USB device.
I really don't know if even with the added USB support in DOS you would be able to use your controller, I fear that the game engine wouldn't be able to access that directly.( I'm not sure about this, trial and error will be for you).

Bootdisks can be found on internet, the only ones I can direct you to are those on HoTU:
http://community.the-underdogs.info/pub/index.php

As HotU is the only site we are allowed to post here, you will have to find better ones (and those exist, plenty of them) by googling.
Hint: input bootdisk.com in google, the first one is a good site, with many utilities. ;)
You can also look in other abandonware sites, the 'utilities' section sometimes have good bootdisks.

Remember: you need a bootdisk with FAT32 support, a classic MSDos bootdisk can only access FAT16.

Write the bootflop and reboot your PC with the bootdisk, your bootsequence (can be altered in BIOS) must be set to floppy first-HD second. (Eventually also CD).

Just ditch the XP and put 98 back on... Or buy a better computer. Those are really your only options.

Yeah, you are facing way too many performance issues running a new OS on an old comp with outdated hardware. If you have the knowhow, you could install a more powerful mobo, but that is not something I'd do myself, because you can screw over your entire computer in no time flat.

In closing, your options:

1) Buy a better computer
2) Revert OSs to 98SE or something in that range
3) Have your local computer supergeek install a new mobo for you

I'm still wondering what else you do on that computer, if you don't have the CPU to run something that's more sophisticated than something running on DOS.

MSN? Chat? Email? Surf teh internet? And plenty of programs that aren't too demanding? (TXT editors, do home work on it, copy music, whatever...)
Even word will work fine on it.
Possibilities enough to use an old compy.
Not all want to run the newest games on their PC.