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Trying to get Space Quest III Pirates of Pestulon working on my Compaq Portable 1

AltairNic

AltairNic

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2014
Messages
59
Location
Canada
Hi There ! For some reason, I cannot get SQ3 working on my Compaq portable.
I have MS-DOS 6.22 loaded, no TSR.
I have 640kb of memory using a SixPack Plus card

When launching the game, I get a blinking cursor and that's it. No error, no sound. Unable to Control-Alt-Delete depending on the video setting I choose.
No sound card
No speaker.
Running from HDD.

Help ! :)
 
Was it installed on the HD from floppies? Do you happen to have another machine you can try running it on? To validate the install media?
 
What size hard drive do you have? It is possible that the hard drive is just too big for a game designed for DOS 2.1 to handle.

Are you running DriveSpace? Some games tried to write directly to specific sectors which won't work with compression.

Just some obvious confirmation points before spelunking to the more complex issues.
 
He says he has DOS 6.22 not 2.1. I haven't played much with DOS in years, so only have the basic comments.
 
tradde said:
He says he has DOS 6.22 not 2.1. I haven't played much with DOS in years, so only have the basic comments.
Click to expand...
Which is the point. DOS 6.22 can support 2 GB drives; DOS 2.1 was limited to 16 MB without a lot of effort. I have seen enough programs fail on oversize drives to verify that before looking at other problems.
 
Space quest 3 is fairly well behaved when it comes to hard drives. I can run it fine on Fat32.

Where I would start:
Is it properly configured for the system? On a standard Compaq Portable 1, that means it must be installed for CGA graphics and PC speaker sound. Incorrect settings might result in a hang, a blank screen, or garbage on the screen.

Are the files on the hard drive intact? If it was downloaded from somewhere, you might need to find a different source. Verify elsewhere that the files work, but test with CGA graphics.

Check your "files=" in your config.sys file. Perhaps try increasing the value. The default should be enough, but unpredictable things can happen when it is set too low.

If you have not already done so recently, sanity check the system by running some RAM and disk diagnostics. Sometimes a bad RAM chip can look like it is working fine until you run something specific.

If the hard drive is 32MB or less you might try booting a DOS 3.3 disk and see if that makes any difference. But it should work fine under 6.22, and SQ3 is not too much of a memory hog.
 
Doesn't the Compaq Portable 1 have both MDA and CGA modes? It seems like there is a keyboard combination that switches between them.
 
krebizfan said:
Which is the point. DOS 6.22 can support 2 GB drives; DOS 2.1 was limited to 16 MB without a lot of effort. I have seen enough programs fail on oversize drives to verify that before looking at other problems.
Click to expand...
Oh, I see. I missed the part of your statement where you said the game was "designed for DOS 2.1". Sorry about that. But would the game that was designed for DOS 2.1 really have that kind of check? Wouldn't that be a DOS system call? Just asking.
 
tradde said:
Oh, I see. I missed the part of your statement where you said the game was "designed for DOS 2.1". Sorry about that. But would the game that was designed for DOS 2.1 really have that kind of check? Wouldn't that be a DOS system call? Just asking.
Click to expand...
There is a DOS call that returns the version number. Most DOS programs only check that they are running under the MINIMUM compatible dos version. A program "designed for DOS 2.1", for example might halt with an error message if you try to run it under DOS 2.0. But such a program will usually work OK under later versions of DOS.

alank2 said:
Doesn't the Compaq Portable 1 have both MDA and CGA modes? It seems like there is a keyboard combination that switches between them.
Click to expand...
Not exactly. From the software's standpoint it all looks like normal CGA graphics and text modes.

What the Compaq Portable does is upscale the text mode resolution when you are using their internal CRT. It is not MDA, but uses a similar resolution.

The graphics modes are all normal CGA resolution.

The catch is, if you try to use an external monitor, the special text resolution will not display on the external monitor. So there is a key combination that lets you switch to normal CGA/composite/RGB resolution text mode. Graphics modes are unaffected.
 
tradde said:
Oh, I see. I missed the part of your statement where you said the game was "designed for DOS 2.1". Sorry about that. But would the game that was designed for DOS 2.1 really have that kind of check? Wouldn't that be a DOS system call? Just asking.
Click to expand...
Hard coding the maximum possible size of a drive was far too common. Getting a few details about the system eliminates many possible causes.
 
Thanks all for the suggestions!

Some answers:
My SQ3 files work under dosbox
Will try setting the files= parameter in config.sys with a different value.
Settings were indeed PC speaker and CGA

Will report back later today.
 
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