DOS ain't dead

We all know that old good Duke Nukem 3D was ported to windows and the new engine got the name Eduke32 and it was in several directions extended.
And know the Eduke32 was backported to DOS.
So there is a possibility to play in DOS all the fantastic total conversions of Duke3D.

Binaries and more info here and here

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DOS-u-akbar!

Nice, but does it work for you?
I got only instant crash in MS-DOS 6.22, log file is empty :(

I:\DUKE3D>EDUKE32.EXE                                                         
Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV
General Protection Fault at eip=0000d12a
eax=ffcb8000 ebx=00000001 ecx=ffcb8140 edx=00400000 esi=00e0ea88 edi=0000000c
ebp=00e0e7b8 esp=00e0e6c0 program=I:\DUKE3D\EDUKE32.EXE
cs: sel=00a7  base=00400000  limit=00e1ffff
ds: sel=00af  base=00400000  limit=00e1ffff
es: sel=00af  base=00400000  limit=00e1ffff
fs: sel=008f  base=000185f0  limit=0000ffff
gs: sel=00bf  base=00000000  limit=0010ffff
ss: sel=00af  base=00400000  limit=00e1ffff
App stack: [00e0e860..00d8e864]  Exceptn stack: [00d8e7b0..00d8c870]

Call frame traceback EIPs:
  0x0000d12a
  0x0021553a

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Hello RayeR,

> > I:DUKE3D>EDUKE32.EXE
> Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV
> General Protection Fault at eip=0000d12a
> eax=ffcb8000 ebx=00000001 ecx=ffcb8140 edx=00400000 esi=00e0ea88
> edi=0000000c
> ebp=00e0e7b8 esp=00e0e6c0 program=I:DUKE3DEDUKE32.EXE
> cs: sel=00a7 base=00400000 limit=00e1ffff
> ds: sel=00af base=00400000 limit=00e1ffff
...

Works for me on FreeDOS + JEMMEX --- I managed to get to a "Found no recognized game data!" error message. The error message you mentioned suggests that eduke32.exe was doing something that the resident DPMI server (whatever that might be) did not like.

Thank you!

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https://gitlab.com/tkchia · https://codeberg.org/tkchia · 😴 "MOV AX,0D500H+CMOS_REG_D+NMI"

I tested MSDOS 6.22 and 7.1 with and without memory managers, also safe mode and both DPMI ring 0 and 3 but all crashes. Under Dosbox it runs from the same game directory (also got some resource snd not found but it doesn't matter).
As this Eduke32 doesn't support modern PCI soundcards like Q2DOS it's useless...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> I tested MSDOS 6.22 and 7.1 with and without memory managers, also safe
> mode and both DPMI ring 0 and 3 but all crashes. Under Dosbox it runs from
> the same game directory (also got some resource snd not found but it
> doesn't matter).
> As this Eduke32 doesn't support modern PCI soundcards like Q2DOS it's
> useless...

How to re-compile with support for modern PCI cards? There is a library somewhere; I know Kruchkrau (sp?) DOS port of Mplayer which has WSS library and supports some modern IDH soundcards (unfortunately not my latest, which is Ice Lake i5 10th gen). I think there is a code repository where these modern PCI sounds cards can be incorporated into projects such as EDuke32, but not sure how or if the code is compatible.

Even latest version of MPXPlay 1.64 does not support modern PCI in Kaby lake, Sky lake and Ice Lake SOC chips. I should ask Mplay author, but I get silent output even on my i7 5500, and -scc option doesn't enable sound on laptop. I think the problem is to enable headphone or speaker output is failing...

QDOS does not support modern sounds cards, either?

> How to re-compile with support for modern PCI cards? There is a library
> somewhere; I know Kruchkrau (sp?) DOS port of Mplayer which has WSS
> library and supports some modern IDH soundcards (unfortunately not my
> latest, which is Ice Lake i5 10th gen). I think there is a code repository
> where these modern PCI sounds cards can be incorporated into projects such
> as EDuke32, but not sure how or if the code is compatible.


Q2DOS uses Ruslan Starodubov's audio library, taken from Mpxplay, see https://bitbucket.org/neozeed/q2dos/src/master/dos/3rdparty/libau.src/src/ and https://sound-dos.ucoz.ru/load/source_code_sound_lib/1-1-0-7. This is IMO the best option for supporting modern PCI cards in DOS.

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Glory to God for all things

Yes, the DJGPP sound library from Q2DOS could be used but it will require rewriting some eduke code, not just a recompile. But first it would need to do some bugfixes to make it more stable under real DOS.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Yes, the DJGPP sound library from Q2DOS could be used but it will require
> rewriting some eduke code, not just a recompile.

It's obvious that it requires more than just a recompile, but the task is reduced to writing a new "PCM" sound driver based on that library, without changing/rewriting any of the existing code. If you are interested in the project (personally, I'm not) you can find in https://gitlab.com/NY00123/eduke32-dos/blob/master/source/audiolib/src/drivers.cpp/ the functions that need to be implemented.

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Glory to God for all things

> But first it would need to
> do some bugfixes to make it more stable

Patches are most welcome

> under real DOS.

Where else would it function? It _is_ meant
for running under real dos.

> It _is_ meant for running under real dos.

But my real experience is that it can run only in Dosbox. Even if I use DOS in safe mode - any TSR/drivers loaded it still crashes. Q2DOS, QDOS, Hexen... run fine on the same PC. Maybe old sound library is crashing when trying to detect SB? Is there some cmdline switch to disable sound?

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > It _is_ meant for running under real dos.
>
> But my real experience is that it can run only in Dosbox

Sorry, I thought that you were talking about sndpci module.
Apologies for misunderstanding.

> But my real experience is that it can run only in Dosbox.

It's my experience too.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.