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Is it hardware or is it software?

L

lyonadmiral

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I recently picked up NOS Casino Games for the 5150. Even smelled new as soon as I took the wrapper off. Booted up the disk and as you can see in the attached photo, this is what it does?

Now my 5150 is all stock IBM stuff except for the AST SixPack Plus and the RAMPage card in it. I've run Advanced Diagnostics in a loop on both the entire system and specifically the video subsystems, no errors detected. With that in mind, any idea what could be making the program go nuts?

According to the software, the minimum system requirements are DOS 2.1, 128k RAM, and a color display or color TV.

VCF Diagnostics.jpg
 
Kinda looks like it's trying an unsupported video mode. Are you able to support EGA?
 
That was my first thought, but the software is from 1982, EGA didn't exist. I suppose maybe it can be an issue with the CGA card or the display, but if it passes diagnostics, then it is working, isn't it?
 
Casino games uses 40-column color text modes for the most part. As your tests have confirmed that 40-column text modes work properly (try mode co40 from a DOS prompt if you did not test), then perhaps the disk is bad. Although it may be new old stock, bit rot can happen at any time and this game may have twenty years on it.
 
I supposed it could be bit-rot, but if it was, wouldn't the program just not run or run incorrectly? I'd love to know what part of the code makes the color graphics adapter go nuts, although there is one thing I'm going to try and that is put the computer in 40x25 mode instead of 80x25.
 
I'd try it on your AT or another system w/ VGA as well. Won't be as authentic, but you'll know if it's a config/hw issue on your 5150 or if it's the software.
 
I tried it on my AT with EGA, I even tried it on another 5150, same result, so I do guess it is the software, but after running a full scan on the disk, there is nothing wrong with the disk. The program is very simple its just a batch file that loads Advanced Basic and the four casino programs that are on the disk in .bas format.
 
[snip]
>According to the software, the minimum system requirements are DOS 2.1, 128k RAM, and a color >display or color TV.

Are you sure you don't have it set for TV output - eg composite, possibly interlaced? TV out was not stock for 5150 AFAIK, so maybe you have a wrong mode set somewhere?

Rick
 
So you don't have a problem on your system if you run "MODE CO40"?

A lot of these old games demand absolute compliance with the IBM CGA board. They won't work on EGA or VGA at all.
 
If the games are still in *.BAS format, I could probably update them to either a similar BASIC or QBASIC.

Host it, and PM me the files, and I'll take a look at the source.

Should be easy peasy!



~Paul
 
If you want folks to take a look at the software, why not SAVE "...",A one of the game sources and post it here for us? Guessing by looking at the screen is harder than looking at the source...
 
Yeah, just run the interpreter, load the program, then save again, with the ,A flag, so it's not tokenized gibberish, but real english BASIC statements.

I can't believe I forgot to ask for that. Good catch Chuck.



~Paul
 
BAS Files for Debugging

BAS Files for Debugging

I didn't do the SAVE, A, but if anyone has the inclination to get these on their PC and take a look at the source code I'll try to get them done in regular txt this weekend.
 

Attachments

  • Casino Games.zip
    65.2 KB · Views: 1
here's version 1.05 of casino games. It definitely has different files than your copy, so this may be something that they fixed along the way. I don't recall having any problems running it, but I used DOSbox. I haven't looked through yours to see what version # yours comes up with, but since there are physically less files, I will assume it is an earlier version.

Casino Games v1.05 (1982)(IBM) [Simulation, Cards].zip

========
Edit: FWIW, your version of casino games works perfectly in dosbox. I used GWBASIC to launch it.
Any chance you can scan the cover/box?
 
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