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[Scatty]

As for those bugs listed, I think raising the CPU cycles of DosBox should help with most of them. Though I have a different version of Master of Magic than this downloadable on Abandonia I also was encountering some of these problems earlier until I decided to raise the cycles to 27000, since then it happens only rarely that these bugs (especially the bug with Raise Volcano when the game stops responding) appear.

Hi guys,

I'm just about to start this great TBS. Did read the manual and the spellbook.
Got a lot of extra info (strategy guide etc.). Looks just great but having trouble with the setup. I usually tend to play all my old DOS-games on my old Pentium II - so the machine is too slow for DOSbox - but I don't want to screw up my other system with too many games. I have a separate DOS7-Partition on that Pentium II (derived from Win98SE - but with no Windows left in it. Added some stuff from DOS 6.22 to get a complete DOS7 running - works just fine). Win98 FE is running in another partition.

Finally managed to configure the memory to get the game started (that was quite a pain - I actually lack 1878 Bytes of conventional memory - and have done everything I know of to free up conventional memory - but even with just 579 KB of conventional free I can now start the game.

The problem with not getting more conventional memory may actually be due to me using DOS7. I also have another DOS partition with DOS 6.0 on that same machine - but haven't tried with that one yet because I put the game itself on a FAT32 partition where I have more space. That FAT32 partition is actually drive F when booting DOS7.

Only real problem left is the sound. I have a Soundblaster 128 PCI (16 Bit sound system). On the Soundcard it says that it's a CT4810 - but Everest Home Edition tells me it's actually an Ensoniq 5880 with a Creative Soundblaster chip. I've heard that Ensoniq cards - even though they run under the name of Soundblaster and come with Creative drivers - are not 100 % Soundblaster-compatible.

I have the Soundblaster DOS-Driver installed. In the Autoexec.bat ist says
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H7 P330 T6.

So I think the IRQ should be 7 and the DRM should be 1, base being 220.

But if I enter those settings in the game install screens and then start the game in native DOS then I get "Reconfigure hardware options" error. I do not
get that error when setting all options to "no sound". So it's definitely a sound problem.

If anyone has managed to get the sound in MoM to work under native DOS with this type of soundcard then I would like to hear from you.

Some more info on the system: Mainboard is a Gigabyte 2000 BX (the one with dual BIOS chip). The BIOS is actually somewhat buggy on that mainboard
but it has no onboard sound (which otherwise might interfere with the soundcard). The CPU is a 400 MHZ Pentium II (Slot CPU) - not overclocked.
The machine has 512 MB RAM. Installing so much RAM on that mainboard is a bit tricky but I managed to fool the BIOS into accepting the RAM (officially it would go up to 1GB of RAM but that would be even harder to do on that board and Win98 would not like that too much....). Apart from that the machine is running very well - even plays some H264 movies - which I did not expect when building this system from used parts. Graphiccard is an Ati 7000 - entry level AGP card with only 32 MB graphic RAM. Not too bad for old DOS games though.

I might end up playing the game without sound (as I do with most DOS-games) but remembering the good forum here on Abandonia I decided to post here before giving up on the sound installation.

[Scatty]

Just a site notice - if you're mostly using that Pentium II for Dos games, 512MB RAM is far too much and can cause troubles with some games, 128M is usually a normal maximum with 64MB RAM being the optimum.
Also by using EMM386=RAM HIGHSCAN in config.sys you should be able to free up a bit more conventional memory, though the HIGHSCAN setting often causes troubles with later versions of that program and Pentium class machines (those being hang-ups at loading after starting the PC). There're few other tricks also to shuffle loadable things around and optimize memory to be freed up at maximum possible size, one of them being loading MSCDEX.EXE with the /E switch for it to place most of loadable program code into extended memory, for example.

About the Soundblaster 128, try setting SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6 and if you have a plug & play setting program from the drivers CD with that soundcard, try running it and configure the plug & play settings to load at these values above during each start. However you would have much less troubles altogether if you get either Soundblaster Live! which does offer 99% compatibility with early Soundblaster standard (99% because of slight sound disagreements with very few games only) and Dos drivers for that, or a Soundblaster 16 PCI which is the standard.

However those two posts of you and me belong either into a separate thread in Troubleshooting than here.

[yoga]

Hi,

Well respected Scatty is absolutely correct.

If you may remove some chips of RAM -for example if it is possible to remove from 4 x 128 MB RAM configuration 3 chips x 128 MB , or from 2 x 256 MB RAM - 1 x 256 MB RAM) i think You will not have any problem..
The requirements of game are very simple..
Pls, slot 1 must be with RAM chip, not empty.

I played Master of Magic and this is very nice game.
Mind, that you must hurry to go to another word before opponent(s) seal the entrance..

Ty.

yoga

[hunvagy]

Also, you could tug most every driver you load into high memory with LOADHIGH in the autoexec and LH in the config.sys. I hope I didn't mix those two up, it's been a loong time

[The Fifth Horseman]

You might try running the game itself with loadhigh. It helped me with another title I had an issue like that with just yesterday.

[Scatty]

Originally Posted by hunvagy

Also, you could tug most every driver you load into high memory with LOADHIGH in the autoexec and LH in the config.sys. I hope I didn't mix those two up, it's been a loong time

DEVICEHIGH for config.sys
LH is the same as LOADHIGH though and can be used both in autoexec.bat for loading TSR's (Terminate and Stay Resident, programs that stay in memory after being run once) and for starting some normal programs.

[Smiling Spectre]

1. DOS 6.22 have GREAT program - Memmaker.exe (it need several other modules, I cannot remember exact names, but all of that in DOS-directory anyway). This program allows you to get maximum lower memory, configuring everything in optimum settings and moving to high memory.

2. As I vague remember, there is a bug in himem.sys of Win98 (i.e. DOS7). It takes about 200Kb instead proper 10-20. It is usually "fixed" by replacing it with "proper" DOS 6.22 version. But you can check yourself with MEM /C command (if I remember keys of MEM right) - if himem.sys significantly more than 20Kb, something is wrong. Also you can see with MEM all this TSR-modules that can say to you what is not needed here.

3. There is usually not enough to have SB card in system. Usually there is DOS-drivers with it, that must be activated for card's work. Usually such drivers have some sort of tuning utility to make everything right.

Oh, quite a lot of replies in that short time! Did not expect to get
that much attention...

First of all I have become a bit more careful in trying out things because
DOS7 crashed when changeing the sound settings with the Install.exe once
more.

Nonetheless I have started playing the game (more on that later).

I need more information about a few things before trying out further
sound settings.

I read somewhere else, that the install.exe can sometimes screw up the configuration files of MoM - by failing to properly overwrite them when changeing settings. I think this is what may have happened when DOS7 crashed after trying to change those setting again.

So I decided to delete the MoM folder, clean up that partition (by running Norton Speeddisk to overwrite the empty space) and reinstall. But before reinstalling the game I realized I do have enough space in my DOS7-Partition to install the game there. Now I have to say I mostly do not like installing games directly in my OS-Partitions. I usually prefer installing them in separate data partitions - but sometimes games do not like that.

So figuring that installing in Drive F might cause some problems with the game being so finicky about hardware settings, I decided to install it directly in the DOS7 partition. That partition is 300 MB large and I had only used 80 MB prior to installing MoM - so it would not hurt much to put it there - spacewise.
I think that putting the game in an extended partition may actually have used up a tiny bit of conventional memory too - usually not a problem but with MoM, where every byte seems to count, it might make a difference.

What I did this time was to install without sound right from the start - just to see whether the game would run without issues that way. It does. The feeling when running the game without sound directly from the DOS7 partition is clean. No error messages. And it runs fluently. I will make an Image of that partition with the game running like it is now (just for safety - in case I screw up anything later).

Now what I need to know is where the game puts the info about the sound setup after running the Install.exe and doing adustments. I might want to
make backups of those files and then be able to make changes by shuffling the files instead of going to the install.exe every time.

What I have seen are the two following files: config.mom and install.dat.
Does anyone know whether these two files contain the whole settings? So for instance if I back them up with my settings without sound if anything goes wrong with new settings I could replace them with the backed up versions. Would that get me back to a clean situation? Or are there any more files to be considered?

The next thing that I suspected is that having the Creative DOS-Drivers installed might actually conflict with the game sound-settings. I think the game uses it's own sound drivers (not sure though). So having sound settings in the Autoexec.bat might actually cause problems. I now put "REM" in front of those two lines with the Soundsettings in the autoexec.bat. Also I suspect that these soundsetting might be another reason for why DOS7 crashed when trying to change settings with the install.exe again. I did not get that "insufficient-memory" error any more when setting up the game without sound this time - even though I still only have 579 KB of free conventional memory.

Regarding your hints about moving stuff to higher memory by activating EMS plus RAM plus Highscan and using Loadhigh and Divicehigh - I've already done all of that.

The one thing I did not do is trying to use another Himem.sys file. Presently I do not have DOS 6.22 installed anywhere. I had it installed some time ago but did not like it (I prefer DOS 6.0 and DOS 7.1). I still have a few old hard disks lying around - so if everything else fails I might do an install of DOS 6.22 on one of them but the BIOS of my Pentium II always takes a bit of time of adjusting to a differetn hard disk (giving me wide range errors for a while even if the disk is recognized properly). Lately I did not have them so often as I used to when putting the system together initially. So that is not one of the urgent things I'd try out. But I DO have DOS 6.0 installed in another partition. And I have the Device=Setver.exe (loaded high actually with memmaker) in my config.sys anyways - so trying the Himem.sys from DOS 6.0 might be an option. But I would first like to know what others have to say about that.

Getting a Soundblaster Live is an option in the longrun. I was considering that already but I'm a bit low on the money side presently so I'm postponing buying hardware for now - even if it is used. Yet the info that a Soundblaster Live should have a higher Soundblaster-compatibility is new for me - I did not know that.

As for the 512 MB Memory I have - I also use this PC for the internet, rather
than my faster system - because I like to clean up in DOS-mode after having been on the web. Even though I have XP installed on the other machine, I still prefer Win98 for surfing the web since the DOS-cleanup that I use is much more effective than anything you can do with Firewalls and Antivirus programs on XP. Also Win98 has a much lower footprint when it comes to making images of the OS-partition. My Win98-partition-Images are usually just about 1GB each - that's not so hard to tug away on an external harddisk - and is also fast for recovery. So those 512 MB RAM are actually being well employed - when running Win98-stuff.

There is another question though. In the MoM Install.exe there are three Sounblaster cards to choose from: Soundblaster 16 (original), Soundblaster Pro (early version) and Soundblaster Pro (later version). I don't know which one of those would be closest to the Soundblaster 128 PCI that I have. Also the Installer.exe has the option to set MIDI for Music (then supposedly using base 330 instead of base 220). I'm not sure whether that would be a good idea or not. It would still require choosing one of the Soundblaster cards for the FX-Effects. So MIDI wouldn't help with those.

Also Scatty, could you give me more info on why choosing Interrupt 5 would help when the Creative DOS-Driver installer usually tends to set the Interrupt to 7 for my card. Also you were refferring to the line in the Autoexec.bat. I'm not sure whether the game is using it's own sounddrivers or is making a call on the Creative DOS-Driver. Of course if I need to have to use the Creative DOS driver I would have to enter the same values in the MoM Install.exe as I have in the Autoxec.bat (this is what I did first - using Interrupt 7 and DRQ 1 - but getting the error "Reconfigure hardware Options"). I had the two lines in the autoexec.bat untouched when trying to install with sound enabled. I have remmed them out now. Another thing to consider is whether I would have to change the interrupt settings in the BIOS as well when changeing them in the autoexec.bat. Remember that I'm also running Win98 in a separate partition on that machine. So changeing interrupts would also affect Win98 - and I might end up continuously having to change the interrupt settings when changeing between the OSes....

[Scatty]

God you're piling yourself a mountain of complexity. An entire book here...
First of all, the file MoM saves it's settings into is config.mom. Install.exe doesn't corrupt anything, something's wrong - run it again, re-configure and save again.
Second, if you set an incorrect IRQ or DMA the game does crash because of hardware conflict with the soundcard settings. Nothing to worry about there, boot up the system again.
Third, the game shouldn't care at all where you install it since it's a Dos game and doesn't require a CD when installed and running, so juggling with the partitions isn't necessary. It does help though if you run it on earlier Dos version than 7.1 since this one is less compatible with the earlier ones. Particularly 6.22 is the best for any Dos games, earlier again like 6.0 and 5.0 are worse due to lack of good programs and older, less efficient versions of memory managers to load.

Another thing is that without Dos drivers for the soundcard to load and stay in memory most games don't recognize any Soundblaster, so you have to load those up at booting. Why I proposed IRQ 5 and DMA 1 instead of the ones you use is because both settings (the ones you use and ones I proposed) are standards for Soundblaster settings in Dos, so if one setting doesn't work, try the other one.
Having Windows 98 being actively used and a disagreeable BIOS that isn't very configurable also causes often lots of troubles between Dos, soundcard settings and games which don't find any normal settings to use. A clean Dos system is much better for Dos games than Windows 98 unless one has a very good knowledge about old systems and how to work on all of their hardware / software settings. That said, the system you mention doesn't seem to be very optimal for Dos games but heavy-aligned towards Windows 98 instead.

The game does use MIDI music so choose Soundblaster MIDI (OPL2 / OPL3) for music. The installer usually automatically sets the default adress for MIDI which should usually work, too, since it changes only in rare cases.
About which Soundblaster to choose, the models of Soundblaster cards from earliest (worst) to latest (best) in ascending order - Soundblaster, Soundblaster 2.0 (few games only differenate between the two), Soundblaster PRO (earlier), Soundblaster PRO (later, with Stereo), Soundblaster 16. Those are the Soundblaster standards used in Dos games, so obviously choosing Soundblaster 16 is the best option if you have that or a later Soundblaster card.