Screamer1:) and TNT2 crash in SVGA

[Echelon]

Hi,

Last time I was in a nostalgic mood and I wanted to play the game Screamer back. But when I got to a certain point in the track of the 5th race of the first championship, my computer crashed back to windows, so I tried to play in DOS. There my computer crashed the same way, but now i could read the error message:

Dos/4GW error (2001): exception 0Eh (page fault) at 148:004ECE8F
TSP32: prev_tsf32 511C
SS 150 DS 150 ES 150 FS 1F8 GS 0
EAX 17D EBX FFFFFFFF ECX 0 EDX 4E6454
ESI EFEFEFEF EDI 79320 EBP 4E6484 ESP 594D54
CS: IP 148: 004ECE8F ID0E COD 0 FLG 10246
CS= 148, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF9B
SS= 150, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF93
DS= 150, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF93
ES= 150, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF93
FS= 1F8, USE16, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 4C1310, acc 8F93
GS= 0, USE16, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 13, acc 0
CR0: PG:1 ET:1 TS:0 EM:0 MP:0 PE:1 CR2:EFEFF003: 22067
Crash address (unrelocated)=1:0007AE8F
Memory allocation error (translated from dutch)
Cannot load Command.
The system has stopped.

So I tried to alter the settings in the setup menu, for sound and graphics. It turned out that, whenever I enabled SVGA, the game would crash at that certain point (right after the first checkpoint of the fifth race of the first championship) and when I enable VGA, the game works perfectly. This led me to the conclusion that my graphics card could be the culprit.
I'd like to ask anyone who has this game and a TNT(2) card also, to try and tell me if (s)he is having the same problem as I am. It would mean a great deal to me!
And maybe if someone knows something about these memory allocations, for example if you can confirm these are allocations in video memory etc., and/or what went wrong...feel free to reply.

Thanks in advance

System specs:
P3 550 katmai
SBlive
TNT2 M64 (Guillemot Maxigamer Cougar)
64 Mb RAM
AbitBE6-II

 

[Echelon]

how about people with a geforce (2)???

come on guys...help me out here, I'm pretty sure it's the video card
I just wanna know there's nothing wrong with my hardware
thx

 

[jpprod]

Crash like that is DOS4GW's memory manager error, meaning that something unexpected, like read or write outside allocated memory happened. It's DOS4GW's equivalent to BSOD actually

Anyway, I don't think it's the video card if the point of the crash can be so easily located, even if changing video mode affects to the problem. Have you tried the game without sound? SB Live's SB16 emulation isn't perfect.

 

[Echelon]

thx jpprod

I posted my problem on another thread here and someone else with a Geforce 2MX (is TNT2 based) also has the problem.

this is the link:
Link

When I play the game in windows, I'm not using SB16 emulation (and yes, I'm having troubles with that too with some dos games) and the game does crash, it also crashes when I disable the sound so it does not have anything do to with the sblive!

What could it be then jpprod? Do you know of any way to fix the problem?
I'm sorry, but what is DOS4GW anyway?

 

[jpprod]

DOS4GW is a memory extender. It allows DOS programs to run in protected mode, as in to conviniently use memory beyond the conventional area, 640 kilobytes, and to use virtual memory like Windows.

Seeing that error message really reminds me of the less-desireable side of DOS gaming. This sort of unhandled exceptions are extremely hard to diagnose in DOS programs.

If it's not the soundcard, it could be memory-related. You could try to boot to "clean dos", as in not load even HIMEM.SYS. BIOS settings, such as video shadowing could cause instability. Also it's possible Screamer 1 can't handle VESA 3.0 compatible SVGA adapters at all, in which case you're kinda screwed

 

[Echelon]

thx jpprod
So then, TNT2 works with VESA 3.0?? Can you tell me how vesa works? Maybe I can use another version of VESA with a similar program that Mem described??
I'm gonna try that clean dos boot thing and disabling video shadowing right away
Can't I use another version of DOS4GW..maybe a silly question?
Anyone else like to try Screamer on relativly new pc's (with or without TNT2 card)??
thx

 

[jpprod]

So then, TNT2 works with VESA 3.0?? Can you tell me how vesa works? Maybe I can use another version of VESA with a similar program that Mem described??

VESA is a video extension standard which enables different brands of SVGA-capable video cards to work without recoding. All new cards are VESA 3.0 compatible. There's an utility called Scitech Display Doctor through which VESA features can be disabled and enabled - it might help, get it over at http://scitechsoft.com. Note that the newest nVidia video chip supported is the Riva128, but I recall it works with TNTs though it doesn't recognize them.


Can't I use another version of DOS4GW..maybe a silly question?

You could try if DOS4GW isn't integrated into Screamer's EXE file, but is an external executable. If this is the case, there's a DOS4GW.EXE in the game's root directory.


Anyone else like to try Screamer on relativly new pc's (with or without TNT2 card)??

A long time ago I played a game called Screamer Rally on my K6/2-300/TNT system, and it worked perfectly in SVGA. It's a bit newer game than Screamer, though.

 

[Echelon]

thx a lot jpprod..I've worked with Scitech DD before..
I'm gonna try al these things and see if they'll work
In the meantime, maybe other people like to test the 5th race of the first championship of the game Screamer1, and tell me if it crashes or not. I'd like that, I really would
thx people..