Re: ZVG Experience - Proper place to post?

From: James Hagen <jamesjonhagen_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun Sep 11 2011 - 11:07:14 EDT

Wow, I couldn't get a Soundblaster Live card working in my DOS setup
for ZVG but then I had other cards on hand and quickly switched
over.... The card that worked at my end was a standard PCI
soundblaster ES1373 with a CT5803 chip.

Al, far as running this to an amplifone- Space duel seems to have an
issue (not seeing this on a WG6100) where the players ship will
intermittently, "jump" or move in different directions about 1/8" or
so. I thought this was simply a quirk with my setup, but I later
found out that others have seen this too. I'm curious to know if you
see that as well. Pretty sure other games were fine, I ended up
switching back to a 6100, had to get Space Duel running nice as the
entire setup is in a SD cab.

James H

On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 6:08 PM, Al Warner <al@alsarcade.com> wrote:
> The computer I used is a 2.8GHz Gateway Pentium 4 with 4GB of RAM and an
> 80GB drive, floppy, and a DVD Burner.  A friend gave me a Sound Blaster Live
> PCI card.  I found DOS drivers from a link on this page:
>
> http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/snddosdr.htm
>
> I loaded FreeDOS and was unable to get the soundblaster card to install
> properly.  Having not invested a lot of time in the install I figured it
> might be best to try regular MS-DOS.  MSDN still has 6.0 and 6.22 available
> for download but none of the 95s, 98s, or ME because of some licensing
> issue.  I decided to try 6.22.  Getting the OS installed was a little
> tricky.  I copied the disk images over to a CD and booted FreeDOS as a "Live
> CD".  Then I copied the files to the hard disk and made the diskettes with
> the included utility.  Then I installed DOS after deleting the "Non-DOS"
> partition with FDISK.  The way the BIOS was reporting only let me create and
> format a 500MB partition, but I decided that it really isn't a problem
> because the machine won't need much space anyway.
>
> Getting drivers loaded would have been easier if I had a floppy drive to
> copy things with but every driver I got had to be loaded onto a CD (I used
> re-writable discs) but since I hadn't gotten the CD working yet, I used the
> FreeDOS LIVE-CD trick to copy stuff.
>
> Since most people seem to have problems with sound, I tried the Soundblaster
> drivers first.  This time it worked great.  A standard install seemed to
> load perfectly.
>
> Next was CD support.  I found the OAKCDROM.SYS driver at:
> http://www.computerhope.com/download/hardware.htm and instructions on
> loading them at: http://www.computerhope.com/cdromd.htm .
>
> I figured I was in the home stretch.  I loaded the VectorMAME software on,
> loaded some ROMS into the ROMS folder and attempted to start STAR WARS (one
> of the games I own a real game of).  It was then that I got this mysterious
> error:
>
> Load Error: no DPMI - Get csdpmi*b.zip
>
> What?  All of the programs in the folder seemed to be doing this.  Wait.  I
> never set the ZVG port variable.  OK - I do that and... No Love.  Still the
> same error.
>
> A Google search takes me to:
> http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=8586.0 and that leads me to
> download csdpmi5b.zip from http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2misc/
> .
>
> I copy the EXEs from the ZIP into the same folder with VectorMAME and load
> Star Wars.  It comes up with sound and pressing the right keys starts a
> game.  I wanted to see if the Menu would load but it needed the ZVG
> attached.  I attached it and It seemed like it was running.  Without a
> vector monitor, this was where I stopped.  I'll hook it up to my Tempest
> monitor and see what happens.  I have to move stuff around for this step.
>
> I'm sure that if I wanted to spend more time on it, I could get this working
> better, but it should be fine for the intended use.  Now all I need is an
> Amplifone picture tube and my boards repaired and a cabinet to put this in.
>
> -Al-
>
> On 9/10/2011 9:27 AM, Al Warner wrote:
>>
>> I have been working on the PC side of getting a ZVG card working.  I think
>> I'm ready to try it with a vector monitor.  I've had some interesting
>> problems getting the software to run on my Pentium 4 under DOS.  It appears
>> that newer PCs left DOS behind and didn't look back.  I guess my question
>> is, where would be the best place to document the issues I had so that
>> others might benefit?  I have been an IT guy for 25+ years now but this was
>> an interesting challenge to get working.  If this is the right place, I'll
>> submit a detailed post.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -Al-
>>
>> PS - I hit issues I can't find references to in relation to MAME.
>>
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>
>
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Received on Sun Sep 11 11:07:17 2011

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