Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri

[chluu]

Hi Guys:

I'm trying to work an old game that I've had for many years. It's always worked fine on my older socket 7 systems but for some reason, it will not work with my Intel 820 PIII667 system. I'm not certain if it's the processor, motherboard, ram, video card or a combination. I tried working the game with two other systems, an Intel 440BX with a 750MHZ Celeron (Cu Mine Core) and an AMD Athlon XP1600+ system with the same results. The introductory films play but the main screen wont come up and the game crashes, leaving me at the C:\ prompt (it's a DOS game). I've worked it fine in a DOS windows with Win95/98/ME but with my older socket 7 systems which I no longer have. I have tried the game with the other Windows version on my machine to no avail (currently using XP as the primary OS). Has anyone been able to solve this issue? I would appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Claude

 

[Zoron]

With some DOS games, it could be that the computer is simply too fast to run it. Old DOS programs were written for much slower computers than what we have today. I haven't played a DOS game since I had a PII 400, I now have an Athlon 1GHz. If the game constantly crashes on faster machines regardless of OS / hardware, then it is quite likely this game falls into the category of your computer being too fast to run it. (Bet you'd thought you'd never hear that huh?)

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[pike]

This game is very familiar to me. I will try to install it on my duron 750 and get back to you.

Are we really ready for "contact" ?

 

[pike]

Tried installing: no luck.
Damn onboard via ac 97 sound, dos'nt want to enable sound blaster legacy device in bios. Only via sound device is configured and of course the game does not recognize it. Sorry.
Will have to post myself for this sb legacy problem.
Danny

Are we really ready for "contact" ?

 

[knowan]

Several possibilities:

DOS Drivers: Now-a-days most sound cards, etc don't come with DOS drivers. Some DOS based games will crash if they detect "insufficient" hardware, especially sound. Examples are sound cards, mouse drivers and video cards (notably on-board video. Others should be fine).

CPU too fast: Try getting a freeware program called moslo and slow your processor down to 50% of its current value.

OS: It could be that the program is making a call that the OS (win XP) will not allow, and thus is crashing the program. Usually Windows will tell you an error code when this happens.

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Knowan likes you. Knowan is your friend. Knowan thinks you're great.

 

[chluu]

Well, I tried using the MOSLO utility to no avail. I'm convince it's an incompatibility with the processor since the game has run perfectly in a 440BX PII machine yet it wont function in a 440BX CuMine Celeron machine. Are there any utilities that will emulate an earlier Intel or AMD processor? The game worked fine on my old K6-3D 300 machine, even overclocked beyond specs to some 400MHZ.

Thanks,
Claude