I ran Crystal Dream II on 1.4 Ghz!!!
category: general [glöplog]
"Crystal Dream II" was one of my favorite DOS demoscene. I used to have a 233 Mhz computer, until CD2 will not run when I upgraded to 500Mhz computer with ASUS P2B motherboard and Yamaha DS-XG (PCI) sound card (SB-Pro compatible).
I run "setupds.exe /s" to initialize the sound card in DOS. I can still run many old DOS demos with it, except those demos with run-time errors like "Crystal Dream II". Good system, but as a gamer, a 500Mhz is still not enough to run today's games in smooth framerate :p , so I upgraded to 1.4 Ghz with ECS K7S5A motherboard. I ALMOST lost DOS sound compatibility. Because I have DMA channel problems between the motherboard and the sound card, I have to also run "dsdma.exe" to emulate DMA stuff, but I have to use EMM386.EXE in order to use "dsdma.exe". Rats! But still, I can run "Second Reality" and "The Fulcrum". *phew*
Then I decided to try to get Crystal Dream 2 running with many possibilities. I thought all hope was lost. Using prog like "tp7p5fix" won't work, and trying to patch run-time fix won't work (since CD2.exe has compressed data).
Then at last, I tried Mo'Slo 1.32 (a program that slows the CPU speed down by percentage), and I can't believe it worked! I got moslo132.zip from http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html at the bottom.
What I did was I unzip the moslo.com to CD2 directory, then reboot/restart my computer in to real DOS mode, ran ONLY himem.sys using step-by-step configuration at bootup. Execute the program that enables sound in DOS (but don't do 'set blaster=' command). Then I go to CD2 directory, and type "moslo /12 cd2.exe" to run the demo at 12% of 1.4Ghz (which is 168Mhz). It sucessfuly ran, with warning about low memory (bleh, lies lies). You can setup the sound card's address, IRQ and stuff in the CD2 configuration.
Since I can't get sound without using EMM386.EXE (which CD2 forbids), I ran on the little PC speaker at 44Hz and the demo ran just fine! Oh how I missed this demo after 2 years (/^o^)/ I love that fractual zoom thing. I know it's not real-time, but computers today can do fractual zoom in real-time now. Such great real-time fractual zoom program at http://xaos.theory.org/download.html. It's called XaoS - an real-time fractal zoomer. Awesome program, and it's free, too ;)
Anyway, back to CD2. If I switch to my old ASUS P2B motherboard, the sound would probably run fine without DMA problems.
Another alternative way I did to get CD2 running is disable L1 and L2 cache in BIOS setup to make the computer real slow, and do the same procedure to run CD2 (without moslo).
I hope this information helps. I was darned that I can now run CD2 again :)
Other specs in my computer are Geforce3 (vendor: Gainward), 256MB DDR RAM, and I can boot between Win98 or DOS version 7.0 (I think) that came with Win98. I will not switch to winXP due to loss of real DOS mode.
I run "setupds.exe /s" to initialize the sound card in DOS. I can still run many old DOS demos with it, except those demos with run-time errors like "Crystal Dream II". Good system, but as a gamer, a 500Mhz is still not enough to run today's games in smooth framerate :p , so I upgraded to 1.4 Ghz with ECS K7S5A motherboard. I ALMOST lost DOS sound compatibility. Because I have DMA channel problems between the motherboard and the sound card, I have to also run "dsdma.exe" to emulate DMA stuff, but I have to use EMM386.EXE in order to use "dsdma.exe". Rats! But still, I can run "Second Reality" and "The Fulcrum". *phew*
Then I decided to try to get Crystal Dream 2 running with many possibilities. I thought all hope was lost. Using prog like "tp7p5fix" won't work, and trying to patch run-time fix won't work (since CD2.exe has compressed data).
Then at last, I tried Mo'Slo 1.32 (a program that slows the CPU speed down by percentage), and I can't believe it worked! I got moslo132.zip from http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html at the bottom.
What I did was I unzip the moslo.com to CD2 directory, then reboot/restart my computer in to real DOS mode, ran ONLY himem.sys using step-by-step configuration at bootup. Execute the program that enables sound in DOS (but don't do 'set blaster=' command). Then I go to CD2 directory, and type "moslo /12 cd2.exe" to run the demo at 12% of 1.4Ghz (which is 168Mhz). It sucessfuly ran, with warning about low memory (bleh, lies lies). You can setup the sound card's address, IRQ and stuff in the CD2 configuration.
Since I can't get sound without using EMM386.EXE (which CD2 forbids), I ran on the little PC speaker at 44Hz and the demo ran just fine! Oh how I missed this demo after 2 years (/^o^)/ I love that fractual zoom thing. I know it's not real-time, but computers today can do fractual zoom in real-time now. Such great real-time fractual zoom program at http://xaos.theory.org/download.html. It's called XaoS - an real-time fractal zoomer. Awesome program, and it's free, too ;)
Anyway, back to CD2. If I switch to my old ASUS P2B motherboard, the sound would probably run fine without DMA problems.
Another alternative way I did to get CD2 running is disable L1 and L2 cache in BIOS setup to make the computer real slow, and do the same procedure to run CD2 (without moslo).
I hope this information helps. I was darned that I can now run CD2 again :)
Other specs in my computer are Geforce3 (vendor: Gainward), 256MB DDR RAM, and I can boot between Win98 or DOS version 7.0 (I think) that came with Win98. I will not switch to winXP due to loss of real DOS mode.
> I will not switch to winXP due to loss of real DOS mode.
just fyi, win2k and xp allow multibooting.. so you just install dos 6.22 and then you install xp, and your dos is intact with no stupid 7.0 'enhancements'.
just fyi, win2k and xp allow multibooting.. so you just install dos 6.22 and then you install xp, and your dos is intact with no stupid 7.0 'enhancements'.
Yeah, I forgot about multibooting, but still, I didn't want to switch to higher WinOS (... yet). I'll upgrade if it's the time; OS takes money$money$money. I can still use partition FAT32, right? Or do I have to split something?
> no stupid 7.0 'enhancements'
I didn't find any problem with 7.0. I'm happy with it as long as it's just MS-DOS :)
Plus, I still use DOS-box to manage my files, instead of just clicking and clicking on GUI icons. I didn't like the DOS-box in Win2k and XP for many reasons though.
My bad, I have version DOS version 7.10, not 7.0 :D
> no stupid 7.0 'enhancements'
I didn't find any problem with 7.0. I'm happy with it as long as it's just MS-DOS :)
Plus, I still use DOS-box to manage my files, instead of just clicking and clicking on GUI icons. I didn't like the DOS-box in Win2k and XP for many reasons though.
My bad, I have version DOS version 7.10, not 7.0 :D
Cesar: thats real cool man. I envier you alot. wish I could see cd2 again, and again and again... woo! The Decalogue just came on my playlist right now :p Perfect timing! hehe =)
activator: just disable your L1 and L2 cache, and you can see most old demos
Xaos rules!
