Privateer...almost there....

L

Little Mac

Spaceman
Well, after three days of attempts and reading almost every post I could find here on the subject, I have Privateer finally running on my machine...almost. You see after reading all of the posts here I was able to piece together a boot disk that enabled my P2-450, which normally runs either Windows ME or Linux, to boot up and run Privateer (floppy version)with full sound and voice (speech pack). Thank you all for your help, especially Stinger, you're a god. None the less, the only problem I have left is that when I start the game, it asks me to calibrate my joystick then, after I've finished calibrating it, I get an error message reading, "Joystick Calibratin incorrect, please recalibrate." I was able to bypas the initial joystick calibration screen by creating a false JOYA.DAT file by typing "DIR > JOYA.DAT" at the C:\PRIVATER prompt. This bypasses the initial screen and starts the game, but the cursor does not respond to the joystick and when I attempt to re-calibrate it, I receive the same error message. I'm using a Creative SB 64D PCI sound card that is integrated into the motherboard and a Thrustmaster Top Gun FCS joystick. Does anyone have any ideas on how to remedy this problem? For the purposes of full disclosure my AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS are listed below. Any help on this problem would be greatly appreciated. I'm so close to running this game I can taste it.

AUTOEXEC.BAT:

@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $P$G
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T2
SET SNDSCAPE=C:\WINDOWS
LH C:\DRIVERS\7505518\ENGLISH\DRIVERS\APINIT.COM
LH MOUSE.COM


CONFIG.SYS:

DOS=HIGH,UMB,NOAUTO
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM 16384 /I=B000-B7FF
FILESHIGH=30
BUFFERSHIGH=30
 
Two possibilities that I know of here:

1) The joystick doesn't like DOS; does it work in other DOS games under this configuration?

2) The sound card's game port is screwing things up somehow.
 
I think I've elimenated both of those possibilities. The first thing I did was to edit my boot disk to activate my CD-ROM drive and installed Privateer 2. It ran fine and the joystick worked perfectly. So then I checked out EA support and the Privateer FAQ and read this:

"I'm continually getting 'Bad Calibration Data' when trying to calibrate my joystick!"
It is very likely that you will need a speed adjustable game card. Due to the speed of your system hardware, the routine within Privateer that detects the position of your joystick may be getting erroneous data. Try making a fake JOYA.DAT file by typing "DIR > JOYA.DAT" in the C:\PRIVATER directory. If this does not allow you to eventually calibrate your joystick hardware, you will need to install a "Speed Adjustable Game card" that will allow you to control the speed of the joystick port attached to your computer. Once this card is in your machine, you can change the speed at which it operates so that it can calibrate within Privateer.

So I installed an old Thrustmaster ACM gamecard that is calibrated for Pentium computers and is recognized by my Windows ME OS. However, Privateer 2 doesn't recognize the joystick when it's plugged into the game card when I use the boot disk. This was after I ran the most updated config files I could find for the card (circa 1997). I even tried to run MOSLO on the Priv.exe file. That just locked up my computer altogether. Finally I tried to run MOSLO on the APINIT.COM file attempting to slow down the game port. This had no effect. I know that the port works because I ran the thrustmaster diagnostic tool (TMScope) on it with the joystick plugged into the gameport on the soundcard and it recognized the joystick fine.

I am therefore left with three theories:
1. Figure out a way to slow down the communication through the gameport on the soundcard.
2. Disable the gameport in DOS and figure out how to get DOS games to recognize the game card.
3. try to use a new joystick

I have no idea where to begin with 1 and 2. Also, I'm not sure if 3 will work because the joystick works fine through the gameport with Privateer 2.

Any ideas????
 
#1 looks like headache central to me.

I think #2 will work if you just disable the sound card's game port; not sure on that, though.

As for #3, well, try it. If it works, great. Keep in mind that you need an analog joystick, though; digital joysticks generally don't work in DOS (though some do).

Good luck.
 
I bought a $10 two button joystick and it made no difference, so I'm sure that it's not the joystick. Although I'm not exactly sure if it was an analog or digital stick, I doubt that a $10 stick would be digital. Then I called Thrustmaster and they said that the ACM gamecard doesn't work through DOS. I find that difficult to believe since it was originally designed for DOS and the TMS.exe utility that comes with the card recognizes the stick fine. However the stick is useless with both Privateer 1 & 2 and I don't have any other DOS games at my home at this time to do further testing with. I think that this still might be a conflict between the gamecard and the gameport on the soundcard. Then I called Orign Tech Support and they said that after creating the fake JOYA.dat file and starting the game once, I should exit the game and delete the JOYA.dat file. Then upon starting the game again, the manual calibration should work fine. I'm a little skeptical about this working so I've come up with a few ideas.

1. slow down the gameport
-do you think I could use moslo on the apinit.com file to slow down the entire card? Or will this make the sound and video for the game out of sync? Then could I run moslo on the priv.exe file and slow the game down as well?

2. Disable the gameport
-I need help on how to do this in DOS but it might resolve any conflicts between the gameport and the gamecard. Of course If anyone knows about DOS drivers for a Thrustmaster ACM card (ISA interface) that would also help.

3. Use older drivers for my soundcard
-If I use native DOS drivers for say a SB PRO/16 card, I might be able to get it working properly. However I'm not sure which ones to use and exactly how to edit my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files properly. Longshot?

4. Reload Win 98
- The Origin Tech Support guy said that I may have a conflict attempting to use a boot disk for Win 98 on a machine that normally runs Win ME. He said something about the ME kernel not handling boot disks properly. I am again skeptical, but if all other options have been exhausted I'm just about willing to try anything. I have a second hard drive to try this on so I don't screw up my present system.

I'm getting pretty frustrated here but if I/we can figure this thing out it might be very helpful to other people. Especially if I can do it without re-installing Win 98. I'm sure that there are other people out there trying to get Privateer to run on a Win ME system. As always, any and all help you could give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
Have you tried the two-button joystick on your sound card's game port?

As for the options listed:

1) Not sure if it's even possible
2) Same as for 1, though it's more likely to be possible
3) The PCI cards won't work at all with older legacy drivers.
4) This shouldn't even be an issue; don't bother with it.
 
Originally posted by Little Mac

1. slow down the gameport
-do you think I could use moslo on the apinit.com file to slow down the entire card? Or will this make the sound and video for the game out of sync? Then could I run moslo on the priv.exe file and slow the game down as well?
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Click to expand...

Sorry to bug in, but I see you are using apinit.com. Whenever I load this driver into memory privateer stalls after giving the "priv" command at the dos command prompt, whether a music card is selected or not. So I was wondering what music card you are using.
 
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