First post, by Apreche
For quite some time I've been trying to get mechwarrior 2, the DOS CD-ROM version to work. I am closer than ever, but not quite there. Here is what I got so far.
1) DOSBOX isn't necessary.
2) VDMSound is good.
3) SAPUCDEX doesn't help.
4) NOLFB is necessary.
First, get a windows command line (cmd.exe) full screen. Run the installer off the cd. It should work perfectly. Next get the patch and update it to version 1.1 instead of 1.0. Next, run dosdrv (vdmsound). Next run nolfb. Now run mech2.exe. The game will start and run perfectly. However, it will hang up as soon as you get to a dropship screen.
My theory is this. The dropship screen is when the game loads the level from the cd-rom. However, the game does recognize the CD-ROM. If you try to play without the cd in the drive it will give you the old abort/retry/fail. I think what is going on is that the game uses on instruction to check for the cd-rom and its label. That instruction is executed correctly. However, the instructions it uses to load lots of data from the cd-rom do not work correctly. The dropship screen, if I remember correctly, is when the game tries to play the redbook audio on the cd. I think this might be a contributing factor to the crashing. sapucdex does not help this problem at all. I am going to try the same method with a no-cd crack later. If that doesn't work, I'm going to try emulating the game in linux instead of windows.
If you have any tips or tricks I haven't tried then that info would be greatly appreciated.
Here are the important specs of the system I'm using:
Abit NF7-S Nforce2 Ultra 400 Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
512MB DDR400 RAM
GeForce FX5900
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Windows XP / Gentoo Linux 2.6.0
2 Serial ATA 150 hard drive
1 Paralell ATA hard drive (UDMA66)
1 paralell CD-ROM drive, Plexwriter 8/4/32a
