If I remember it well:
1. Unpack DOS32A files into a directory on your disc
2. Set the evironment variable pointing to it, e.g. set DOS32A=c:\DOS32A
3. Now it should work. 😀

I guess that the originall commerciall version of DOS32A had some installer, which is not in the free version.

Mirek

OK, I managed to figure out what to do. So now I've changed the sttng.ovl file. Using vdmsound also lets me here what they're saying, and I'm using the command prompt (natch). Unfortunately, I have a new problem: every time I get up to the first place that I can control, the system tells me that "The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal Instruction. CS:0000 IP:0077 OP:f0 37 05 0c 02 Choose 'close' to terminate application". Either that, or it just freezes and exits. I've tried it without VDM and it still does this. What am I doing wrong now?

OK, I've figured out that it has to do with my mouse. Every time I move the mouse, that's when the errors appear. I think it may have to do with how slow th emouse is going, but I don't know. 😜
Anyway, is there any way to change the mouse speed or whatever in the game or with the game files? I'd use DosBox, but the game is just as choppy as before I moddified the files.

darkmage0707077 wrote:

The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal Instruction. CS:0000 IP:0077 OP:f0 37 05 0c 02 Choose 'close' to terminate application". Either that, or it just freezes and exits. I've tried it without VDM and it still does this. What am I doing wrong now?

Are you running the game natively? If yes, then go to DOS forum. This forum is only for running games in DOSBOX (I mean the emulator, not the DOS window in Windows).

Mirek

😳 Woops, got confused. I thought you meant play the game in the XP prompt, too. My bad. 😜
Anyway, found out my mistake on DosBox: I had it set with too slow a frame rate. So I went in and changed it to about 23000, with Dynaic core, and it works fine now.
Unfortunately, I now feel like the guy who won't shut up, because now it's giving me yet another problem: "exit to error: Cacheblock overrun" I've had this happen on other games but never thought much of it before. What makes this happen, I've tried it on other speeds and get thte same result, just at different times (the higher the rate, the sooner it goes). has anyone found a cure? Thanks 😵

darkmage0707077 wrote:

Unfortunately, I now feel like the guy who won't shut up, because now it's giving me yet another problem: "exit to error: Cacheblock overrun" I've had this happen on other games but never thought much of it before. What makes this happen, I've tried it on other speeds and get thte same result, just at different times (the higher the rate, the sooner it goes). has anyone found a cure? Thanks 😵

The dynamic core is still a bit buggy. If you use the DOSBOX 0.61 then wait for the next version or use a CVS build (dynamic core has improved a lot since 0.61).
If it happens even in the current CVS, then there is no solution (I guess you are already using DOS32A instead of DOS4GW - this was what occasionaly helped with running games using the dynamic core).

Mirek

Yeah, that's what I'm using alright.
Where do I get a current CVS version? I've looked everywhere and all I can find is v0.61.

Oh, and thanks for all your help, too.

CVS Builds (once a week)

I am amazed to see that there is life still in DOS/32A. For all those wondering about the installer: the real open-source release of the DOS Extender (codenamed Liberty Edition) did, and does in fact, come with a setup program, unfortunately the hacks who were supposed to maintain the project at sourceforge.net screwed it up. If there is any interest in getting the original release, I could post it here or upload to a site of your choice.

Sincerely,

- Narech Koumar (the guy who wrote the bloody thing)

DOSBox opened a new age for dosgaming and also for your extender.

It appears to be working much better with our recompiling cpu core that the original dos4gw. As people like more speed => dynamic cpu => Your extender

Feel free to add it. Maybe we can work something out. (put in one of our guides that people should try it if a game crashes or so...) As dos4gw had some nasty bugs... We ran into them as well 😀

The attached zip file contains the original DOS/32A Liberty Ed; unzip and run install.exe to install the DOS Extender.

Writing guides and explaining things is beyond me at this point, however
being a big fan of Classic gaming myself I could look into updating DOS/32A if there is sufficient interest. Any complaints, ideas and suggestions are welcome.

- NK

PS: I could run the debugger shipped with DOS/32A under DOSBox - very impressive work guys! However hardware breakpoints do not seem to work (no emulation for debug registers?)

Dosbox doesn't support DRx (simply ignores moves to/from it), but the
trapflag handling works pretty well with things i tried.

> I could look into updating DOS/32A if there is sufficient interest

I don't have any suggestions for improvements, but i think any
work done in that direction is highly appreciated (as several
games suffer from severe bugs in dos4gw).

Thanks for your work 😀

wd

Will make it a think on the things to try list if game doesn;t work after the next release.

Any information about applications that fail to run under DOS/32A (but do run with DOS/4GW) is highly appreciated down here. AFAIK at the moment Little Big Adventure is failing under DOS/32A but appears to run fine with DOS/4GW with one of the recent builds of DOXBox.

- NK

Fix for Dungeon Keeper with dos32a (mentioned in your docs somewhere):
in INT33H.ASM at _mus_int_pm, save the stack pointer like
mov dword ptr cs:[_sp_save_area],esp
pushfd
call fword ptr cs:_mus_off
mov esp,dword ptr cs:[_sp_save_area]
pop es ds
[.....]
iretd
@@done: mov cs:_mus_data,0
retf
_sp_save_area:
dd 0

Does overcome the bug in Dungeon Keeper.

Syndicate crashes with dos32a (so it does with CauseWay and
ZRDX, so it could be using something dos4gw-specific). Works
pretty well with dos4gw, but does odd things like loading
dos4gw.exe as overlay etc.

wd

Very good suggestion. I would advice against writing through CS: though, while it appears to work with DOSBox writing to code selector is not allowed in protected mode (gives GPF in DOS/NTVDM). Something along the lines below should do the trick:

mov ax,ds
mov ds,cs:_sel_ds
mov dptr ds:_sp_save_area,esp
mov ds,ax

I'm yet to test this under real DOS, however I have no doubt it will solve some of the mouse problems. I shall include this in an upcoming patch/release. Regards,

- NK

> writing to code selector is not allowed in
> protected mode (gives GPF in DOS/NTVDM).

Well you're right, i didn't think that far, but i guess you got the idea 😀
I tried Dungeon Keeper and some other games with your code,
under plain XP and with dosbox, runs fine then. Thanks!

I traced dos4gw to see how they do it, gave something like
pushfd
call far dword []
mov esp, ebp
pop ebp

wd

Hello, NOOB here...
I must be doing something wrong because when I follow your steps, the ones from the first post in this thread, all that happens is that DOSBox freezes.
I get to "DOS/32A -- Protected Mode Run-time Version 7.2
Copyright (C) Supernar Systems, Ltd. 1995 - 2002"

Then it freezes.
I'm using DOSBox 0.62, is that what is wrong as it is the latest version?
The game I'm trying to play is STTNG AFU and I get as far as to the first space combat situation then it crashes out to windows.

Grateful for some help...

Replace .\src\dos32a\text\client\int33h.asm with the attached file and rebuild the DOS Extender. Function "_mus_int_pm" is the one which has been updated (lines 184 thru 220). Note that the variable "_sp_save_area" can be lifted out into .\src\dos32a\text\client\data.asm .

Good luck,

- NK