Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Hi,
After a few minutes into a regular installation of tongue of the fatman, the game is freezing then I have to reset , when I run it in dos. It seems to be working fine in win 3.1 but I need to use dos to run it through game wizard 32, this is my purpose here.

I also installed tongue from the original disks.

When I installed the enhanced version with added sound effects and graphics it also froze in dos. When I ran it in windows it says :
"DMA buffer is too small. Set"DMABUFFERSIZE =023" in SYSTEM.INI in the (386Enh) section. Quit all apps and windows and restart your computer"
I went to 386 enh in win 3.1 settings and couldn't find any place to adjust the dmabuffersize.

Heard system.ini adjustments can be risky as well, and not sure if this will solve it running from dos without freezing in any case.

Nne of this matters as I need to run his through dos, as game wizard cannot work through win 3.1

What should I do to make any version of this game run properly in dos?

I attached a pic of my autoexec.bat. Any other pics or info you guys need?
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Rwolf »

Not GW related, but I just wonder if/why you need to run the sb16 diagnose and mixerset programs twice? (loading both low and high).

I don't know anything about the GameWizard setup as I've never used it, but there was a thread on Vogons forum (many years old now) involving another game, maybe someone there is more versed in its setup.

(The larger dmabuffersize setting is a line you need to add yourself in the file mentioned, under the 386enh section.)
Last edited by Rwolf on Wed Mar 25, 2020 7:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: Not GW related, but I just wonder if/why you need to run the sb16 diagnose and mixerset programs twice? (loading both low and high).

I don't know anything about the GameWizard setup as I've never used it, but there was a thread on Vogons forum (many years old now) involving another game, maybe someone there is more versed in its setup.
Hi thanks for the response. It really doesn’t have anything to do with game wizard, it is just freezing 2-3 mins into the game when run via dos.

Any idea why ? What should I check or do ? Thanks
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Rwolf »

So, how does your free memory look when you are booted up? Maybe only run one of the mixers, if you load them as TSR:s.
Not sure what the sb16 diagnostic program does, if it is indeed needed here? Test with different sound setups, no sound etc to pinpoint the issue.

For the SB16, is it a software (plug&play) setup, or does it have jumpers to set - make sure those are set the same as your Blaster variable settings.

(I'm thinking DOS 6.22 would be the latest to use, but really this game is so old it would not matter, except if there was a need for memmaker)
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: So, how does your free memory look when you are booted up? Maybe only run one of the mixers, if you load them as TSR:s.
Not sure what the sb16 diagnostic program does, if it is indeed needed here? Test with different sound setups, no sound etc to pinpoint the issue.

For the SB16, is it a software (plug&play) setup, or does it have jumpers to set - make sure those are set the same as your Blaster variable settings.
Free memory and system config pics attached

You mean test the sb16 program or game ? For program can you suggest which ones to test ?

The game doesn’t even have a sound blaster option but adlib and it’s working fine with it.

I wouldn’t know if it either one, the guy I bought my dos gaming PC from installed an older sb16 card and the program which is running fine now.

How would I know if it has jumpers to set or is software setup ? What do I do to make sure.

The game only has

Pc speaker
Tandy chip
Adlib card
Roland mt-32

Then sound efx or no
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: So, how does your free memory look when you are booted up? Maybe only run one of the mixers, if you load them as TSR:s.
Not sure what the sb16 diagnostic program does, if it is indeed needed here? Test with different sound setups, no sound etc to pinpoint the issue.
For the SB16, is it a software (plug&play) setup, or does it have jumpers to set - make sure those are set the same as your Blaster variable settings.
Also I tried lower sound and graphic options. They all freeze even at Pc sperker and 16 color.

Also I stopped the univibe earlier as you can see from rem next to univibe in an earlier pic since no game was loading with it, I did when I first got the PC. Also I did something to stop univibe from automatically coming back.
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Rwolf »

Ok, if the guy you got the PC from had the SB16 installed with these programs for you, then I guess it matches the hardware inside the PC.
(To know the model, you would have to open the PC to read the card model on the SB16, which is not required, if it works ok.)

The thing I was after was to verify the settings, since the original Soundblaster models could not be configured by software only, but used jumpers on the card to select things like IRQ, DMA and I/O Port ranges, which has to be checked against al other cards in the old PC:s, so the SB16 will not be in conflict with other cards using the same resources.

When you used the card here, in AUTOEXEC.BAT you set environment parameters describing the SB16 settings using the SET SOUND, SET BLASTER and SET MIDI lines, and then loaded two programs DIAGNOSE and MIXERSET to configure the board; this should only be needed once, but you loaded them twice, both in low memory (below 640kB) using the first two lines, and then a second time with LOADHIGH or LH command, which loads them between 640kB and 1MB, provided there is free space there. I think one time configuration is enough, so you could put REM (remark) before those two LH DIAGNOSE and LH MIXERSET lines, both are not needed. (I don't think they are programs that stay in memory after initialization, otherwise it could be a point of using the LH lines instead of the first two lines)

Note, you can use the DIAGNOSE and MIXERSET commands interactively too, from the command line (omit the parameters used in autoexec.bat) to see what they do (not much).

Here is a website describing a lot of settings for the SB cards in general.
https://retronn.de/imports/soundblaster ... guide.html

I don't have a SB16 setup nowadays; I had one long ago, but I have to dig it up to check; the MIDI line could refer to a synthesizer on the AWE32 card or the Waveblaster addon card for the SB16, not sure if it did anything on a vanilla card, but your SB16 could have a Waveblaster or similar perhaps.

You asked in a PM about the HIMEM & EMM386 function; it provides a few extra ways to access memory, in your case it provides the memory between 640kB to 1MB for loading resident programs and drivers into, like you use with the DEVICEHIGH (in config.sys)and LOADHIGH/LH (in autoexec.bat) commands.
Usually this is helpful to have more free memory below 640 kB for the main program you intent to run, like the game we discuss.

Here is a more extensive description (maybe too much so) of this memory manager program:
http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/emm386.exe.htm

If you want to try without it, just add a REM in front of the EMM386 line in config.sys and see what happens; without HIMEM you will fail loading the DEVICEHIGH drivers, and the LH commands too will not work. Just using DEVICE instead of DEVICEHIGH will get the drivers loaded, but at cost of lower memory available below 640kB for the main program FATMAN.

The FATMAN game should work with 512kB ram according to Mobygames tech specs, as long as MIDI is not used. It could be interesting to see if ithe game works at all, since it was so old as to *possibly* not handle memory above 640kB or above 1MB; you have 8MB in total.

(I have not tried the game myself, so I may look for that later if I can get one of my older PC:s running again. Nowadays I prefer DOSBox for these oldies.)
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by 486 player »

Add DMABUFFERSIZE =023 to emm386-line.
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: Ok, if the guy you got the PC from had the SB16 installed with these programs for you, then I guess it matches the hardware inside the PC.
(To know the model, you would have to open the PC to read the card model on the SB16, which is not required, if it works ok.)

The thing I was after was to verify the settings, since the original Soundblaster models could not be configured by software only, but used jumpers on the card to select things like IRQ, DMA and I/O Port ranges, which has to be checked against al other cards in the old PC:s, so the SB16 will not be in conflict with other cards using the same resources.

When you used the card here, in AUTOEXEC.BAT you set environment parameters describing the SB16 settings using the SET SOUND, SET BLASTER and SET MIDI lines, and then loaded two programs DIAGNOSE and MIXERSET to configure the board; this should only be needed once, but you loaded them twice, both in low memory (below 640kB) using the first two lines, and then a second time with LOADHIGH or LH command, which loads them between 640kB and 1MB, provided there is free space there. I think one time configuration is enough, so you could put REM (remark) before those two LH DIAGNOSE and LH MIXERSET lines, both are not needed. (I don't think they are programs that stay in memory after initialization, otherwise it could be a point of using the LH lines instead of the first two lines)

Note, you can use the DIAGNOSE and MIXERSET commands interactively too, from the command line (omit the parameters used in autoexec.bat) to see what they do (not much).

Here is a website describing a lot of settings for the SB cards in general.
https://retronn.de/imports/soundblaster ... guide.html

I don't have a SB16 setup nowadays; I had one long ago, but I have to dig it up to check; the MIDI line could refer to a synthesizer on the AWE32 card or the Waveblaster addon card for the SB16, not sure if it did anything on a vanilla card, but your SB16 could have a Waveblaster or similar perhaps.

You asked in a PM about the HIMEM & EMM386 function; it provides a few extra ways to access memory, in your case it provides the memory between 640kB to 1MB for loading resident programs and drivers into, like you use with the DEVICEHIGH (in config.sys)and LOADHIGH/LH (in autoexec.bat) commands.
Usually this is helpful to have more free memory below 640 kB for the main program you intent to run, like the game we discuss.

Here is a more extensive description (maybe too much so) of this memory manager program:
http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/emm386.exe.htm

If you want to try without it, just add a REM in front of the EMM386 line in config.sys and see what happens; without HIMEM you will fail loading the DEVICEHIGH drivers, and the LH commands too will not work. Just using DEVICE instead of DEVICEHIGH will get the drivers loaded, but at cost of lower memory available below 640kB for the main program FATMAN.

The FATMAN game should work with 512kB ram according to Mobygames tech specs, as long as MIDI is not used. It could be interesting to see if ithe game works at all, since it was so old as to *possibly* not handle memory above 640kB or above 1MB; you have 8MB in total.

(I have not tried the game myself, so I may look for that later if I can get one of my older PC:s running again. Nowadays I prefer DOSBox for these oldies.)
Nothing changed when I put REM over the emm386

So do I put REM over the Device ?

What else should I do ?

What do you make of the other users suggestion to put dma 33 in the emm line ?
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: So, how does your free memory look when you are booted up? Maybe only run one of the mixers, if you load them as TSR:s.
Not sure what the sb16 diagnostic program does, if it is indeed needed here? Test with different sound setups, no sound etc to pinpoint the issue.

For the SB16, is it a software (plug&play) setup, or does it have jumpers to set - make sure those are set the same as your Blaster variable settings.

(I'm thinking DOS 6.22 would be the latest to use, but really this game is so old it would not matter, except if there was a need for memmaker)
Nothing changed when I put REM over the emm386

So do I put REM over the Device ?

What else should I do ?

What do you make of the other users suggestion to put dma 33 in the emm line ?
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Post by Rwolf »

I think the DMABUFFERSIZE parameter is applicable for Win3.x configuration only; I don't see it mentioned for the DOS5.0 version of EMM386.exe as a parameter.

looking up some more webpages; this was long ago: ok - for DOS EMM386 the parameter should be D=<some buffer size>; e.g. 64

https://www.cubic.org/docs/configuring.htm


(I remember having to configure DOS for some very memory hungry games, it was a chore to fiddle with all these things then, and I'm glad I don't have to do it now. E.g. the initialization code for my ms mouse driver was large to support all kind of mice, but shrunk once it had identified the right one; so I loaded this first in UMB to let it use a large chunk, which it then released so I could load smaller drivers after it; if I had it loaded last, it would not fit during initialization, bleh.)

As i noted in my PM - the REM is to be put *in front* of whatever stuff you want to comment out (and not load)
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Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: I think the DMABUFFERSIZE parameter is applicable for Win3.x configuration only; I don't see it mentioned for the DOS5.0 version of EMM386.exe as a parameter.

looking up some more webpages; this was long ago: ok - for DOS EMM386 the parameter should be D=<some buffer size>; e.g. 64

https://www.cubic.org/docs/configuring.htm


(I remember having to configure DOS for some very memory hungry games, it was a chore to fiddle with all these things then, and I'm glad I don't have to do it now. E.g. the initialization code for my ms mouse driver was large to support all kind of mice, but shrunk once it had identified the right one; so I loaded this first in UMB to let it use a large chunk, which it then released so I could load smaller drivers after it; if I had it loaded last, it would not fit during initialization, bleh.)

As i noted in my PM - the REM is to be put *in front* of whatever stuff you want to comment out (and not load)
Hi why 46 as opposed to the suggested 23 which the windows error message gave.

Rem was put like this

Rem ( rest of text)

Should I put the rem if I am putting a different buffer number?

Can anything go wrong if I’m playing with these setting ? Could it lock me out or freeze? Etc
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Post by Rwolf »

The windows buffers refers to what windows needs; but I did not see any error referring to the buffers in DOS, you only mentioned a freezing, so it may be a different problem altogether. The default EMM386 buffer size in DOS I think is either 16 or 32, so any change should be an increase if it is too small; try with 32 and if it won't work then try 64. I don't think you will get a lockup unless you mess up very badly.

In these experimental cases, if you risk lockup, you could always us a boot floppy to try out the settings, keeping the backup settings either on the harddisk or a separate floppy. I assume you have a floppy drive & disk available?
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: The windows buffers refers to what windows needs; but I did not see any error referring to the buffers in DOS, you only mentioned a freezing, so it may be a different problem altogether. The default EMM386 buffer size in DOS I think is either 16 or 32, so any change should be an increase if it is too small; try with 32 and if it won't work then try 64. I don't think you will get a lockup unless you mess up very badly.

In these experimental cases, if you risk lockup, you could always us a boot floppy to try out the settings, keeping the backup settings either on the harddisk or a separate floppy. I assume you have a floppy drive & disk available?
If there is no correlation between the windows dma and dos buffering I’d rather not risk it. I don’t have a lot of spare floppies and wouldn’t want to be in that situation.

Can you test this on your old PC first ?

In anycase what should I look into next?

Ps I never got an buffer error in dos. Just in windows it says set dma to 23.

Once again is there any value in tweaking the dos buffer? Also there is a place that says Buffer as you can see in the previous photo above, and it says "Buffers = 15". If I ever were to change it what line would I add and how would be it be structured exactly, would it be "...EMM386 d=32" or "Buffers = 32" thats it ?

Anyways, not sure this is worth doing, will it change the freeze or fix any issues? I can't afford issues since I dodn't have a lot of spare disks to back up everything?.. In any case what should I do next ? This or something else?
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Post by Rwolf »

The BUFFERS=15,0 and EMM386 d=32 are two separate items; they are similar looking but are applied to different things.
BUFFERS determine the number of read-ahead disk sectors e.g. from the harddisk.

However what I see in online docs, the DOS 5 version of Buffers should use 15,1 when you only have 512kB ram; the second parameter being zero as seen in your screenshot is only valid for DOS 6 and above, so this should be changed to one.
More buffers eat more memory, so again it depends on the amount of memory you have available, how many buffers you can use, more critical in low memory cases. I suspect you can increase the first parameter if you need to, but it is not neccessary, as it will only affect how speedy the harddisk reads will appear.

http://www.easydos.com/buffers.html

You wrote in the last PM that you hang the game only when shooting; this can mean a sound effect is triggering the problem; try to verify the soundblaster settings - can you find some Creative Labs test program to play sounds from your music card from DOS? Also MIDI music, if the settings are correct you should be able to play MIDI too, that would be useful to be sure you have the proper setttings.


ps. The computer I'm trying to use, a 386sx HP vectra, had been in storage for a long time, and it seems the power supply was broken, so I'll have to fix that first; this will take some time unfortunately. ds.
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Tongue of the Fatman is freezing - Running on real dos 5.0 old pc (not emulation)

Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: The BUFFERS=15,0 and EMM386 d=32 are two separate items; they are similar looking but are applied to different things.
BUFFERS determine the number of read-ahead disk sectors e.g. from the harddisk.

However what I see in online docs, the DOS 5 version of Buffers should use 15,1 when you only have 512kB ram; the second parameter being zero as seen in your screenshot is only valid for DOS 6 and above, so this should be changed to one.
More buffers eat more memory, so again it depends on the amount of memory you have available, how many buffers you can use, more critical in low memory cases. I suspect you can increase the first parameter if you need to, but it is not neccessary, as it will only affect how speedy the harddisk reads will appear.

http://www.easydos.com/buffers.html

You wrote in the last PM that you hang the game only when shooting; this can mean a sound effect is triggering the problem; try to verify the soundblaster settings - can you find some Creative Labs test program to play sounds from your music card from DOS? Also MIDI music, if the settings are correct you should be able to play MIDI too, that would be useful to be sure you have the proper setttings.


ps. The computer I'm trying to use, a 386sx HP vectra, had been in storage for a long time, and it seems the power supply was broken, so I'll have to fix that first; this will take some time unfortunately. ds.
Finally figured it out. When I turned off the sound effects it doesn’t freeze.

Adlib remained and is fine.

What should I do now ? To get the sound effects and adlib running together ?
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Post by Rwolf »

Since the game works in Windows, examine the settings used by the soundblaster in that environment; it is possible the DOS variables BLASTER or MIDI settings could be wrong - e.g. not matching how the card is actually configured; note that the FATMAN game should also have these same settings somewhere unless it is reading the variables from the DOS environment; I'm not familiar with how the game configures the sound settings internally.
Does FATMAN have a separate setup program for this? Some old games assumed certain values, or only worked with certain values for interrupt/dma/ports. Maybe the game only knows how to handle the older Soundblaster 1/2/Pro cards?

https://support.microsoft.com/sv-se/hel ... nformation

There is also a question of the type of SB16 you have; an ISA PNP type card may need another setup program, called 'Creative Configuration Manager', but that requires DOS 6. The SB16 was available as both a jumper configuration model and a couple of PNP models, since that type of motherboard was appearing during its lifetime. The model number CTxxxx is written on the circuit board, but may also appear during the bootup sequence; some addon hardware had an identification text showing at boot, like graphics cards usually do.
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Post by Chiphead »

Rwolf wrote: Since the game works in Windows, examine the settings used by the soundblaster in that environment; it is possible the DOS variables BLASTER or MIDI settings could be wrong - e.g. not matching how the card is actually configured; note that the FATMAN game should also have these same settings somewhere unless it is reading the variables from the DOS environment; I'm not familiar with how the game configures the sound settings internally.
Does FATMAN have a separate setup program for this? Some old games assumed certain values, or only worked with certain values for interrupt/dma/ports. Maybe the game only knows how to handle the older Soundblaster 1/2/Pro cards?

https://support.microsoft.com/sv-se/hel ... nformation

There is also a question of the type of SB16 you have; an ISA PNP type card may need another setup program, called 'Creative Configuration Manager', but that requires DOS 6. The SB16 was available as both a jumper configuration model and a couple of PNP models, since that type of motherboard was appearing during its lifetime. The model number CTxxxx is written on the circuit board, but may also appear during the bootup sequence; some addon hardware had an identification text showing at boot, like graphics cards usually do.
Sorry for the late response. Been crazy busy this last week.
Looked into this. It’s definitely a pre sb16 game and might be an issue of only working optimally with older cards. I will keep the info you suggested for other games.

Also I remembered it said sound effects mode on or off which could imply it’s either sound effects mode or the other music mode. Not both even though you can put it.

Maybe later versions released fixed this.

Off topic question?

I have some silver sharpies writing on the back of the floppy disks.

Sharpie. Can this be removed with alcohol and cotton swab rubbing and leave no stain? Thanks just need to know.
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Post by Rwolf »

I've not used the specific brand 'sharpie', so I can't suggest other than googling for proper removal methods; However the 5 1/4 inch floppies are sensitive to handle, and I would not recommend rubbing hard on them, like in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDlNc7-pTvk

https://www.hunker.com/13423867/how-to- ... t-anything
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