Privateer on Windows XP (alternative?)

M

matthijs

Spaceman
Hi guys,
Today I tried to run privateer on my windows xp machine and like everybody else failed at first. Also tried Dosbox but was horribly slow.

I then stumbled upon QEMU and got it to work pretty good without much effort. (At least think good ;), I don't know how it's suppose to run but I guess it feels slick).
Also, I'm not sure about joystick support as I don't own one so I didn't bother to look into that, and I couldn't get the speech to work (music works fine though).

Did a quick search on QEMU here and didn't find anything, so I hope I'm not typing this for nothing.

So here is a small how-to on what I did to get it running (and perhaps let anyone else answer the stuff I didn't figure out, or tell me it still runs like crap and I still have to buy an old pc somewhere):

- Get Dos 7.10 in IMG files

- Download QEMU for windows ( http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~kazuw/qemu-win/qemu-0.8.2-windows.zip )

- Obviously unzip somewhere

- Create a harddisk with qemu-img, I think I used:
qemu-img create harddisk.img 200M

- Then edit the qemu-win.bat and remove the last line and add this: (where DOS71_1.IMG is your floppy image of dos):
qemu.exe -L . -m 128 -boot a -fda DOS71_1.IMG -hda harddisk.img -soundhw all -localtime

- When you have to switch floppy's hit ctrl+alt+2 and type
change fda NEWIMAGE
Then to return to dos hit ctrl+alt+1, when you have remove the floppy type eject fda

- After installing edit qemu-win.bat again and change the last line to:
qemu.exe -L . -m 128 -hda harddisk.img -hdb fat:c:/Privateer -soundhw all -localtime
This way it mounts your local drive as D: in dos and you can copy privateer into the dos image

- (Not sure if this is necessary) Edit the config.sys and change the emm386 line into:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS71\EMM386.exe 16384 RAM D=48

- Then set your soundcard to soundblaster PRO/16 irq: 7 and speech to none.

I guess that's everything, I could of missed something (as I'm tired and desperately need sleep :p).
 
Hello there,
That's a lot of work you did, but I cannot understand why Dosbox worked "horribly slow ":confused:
I assume you tried increasing CPU cycles (Ctrl+F12) or changing Dosbox configuration file?
If not, I suggest you try Privateer Self-Installing Project http://privateer.syrkos.de/ for privateer-compatible settings.
It might be your system configuration but on my 2Ghz Celleron(which is already long way from high-end hardware;) )works just fine
 
This walkthrough should take you though everything needed to get privateer running smoothly in dosbox: https://www.wcnews.com/techsupport.shtml#p1

As the previous poster mentioned, there's no real reason why it shouldn't run smoothly on most PCs
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the suggestions! I just tried that self-installing package but I still have problems with several things.
My mouse isn't working and it's hardly possible to navigate through the menus with the keyboard, as events are processed with delays and sudden bursts in speed. Also the sound is very jerky! And the full screen option just crashes back to my desktop without an error or anything.

I just noticed that in qemu the sound effects aren't working, but I have hardly any knowledge of dos so I don't know what the problem might be. But (for my feeling anyway) qemu runs smoother than dosbox. (And my pc is only a 2.4Ghz p4 so not that much better then you Mike-L :p).

Ahh well perhaps someone might find this useful someday ;), I think ill try to get everything running because I even though the windows version is still alpha it works pretty well for me :).
 
If the mouse does not work in Dosbox , try setting "autolock=true" in .conf files.
That should help.

EDIT : I think I've found the reason why fullscreen mode crashes
in file "priv-fullscreen.conf"
[sblaster] "irq=5" should be changed into "irq=7"
 
That irq 5 -> 7 did fix the fullscreen mode, however the mouse still isn't working. Weird thing is it does detect the mouse clicks (also tried setting the mouse on and off in the settings but didn't help).
 
I played around a bit more with QEMU, as the sound effect where not working. It turned out to be a config mistake, however when I fire lasers (or enemy's do) it becomes very choppy. I searched around a bit and saw someone had the same problem: http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=1923

Anyone know how to fix this (as this post is very old already :))? I'm not sure if the problem is a dos/qemu issue or just a privateer config mistake...
 
Did you try different sound cards besides the Soundblaster Pro? You can try adjusting both your emulator and Priv installation between IRQ 5 and 7, but also try the regular Soundblaster or SB 16. The music card doesn't sound like it's involved, but you can also try setting that to General MIDI or WaveBlaster.
 
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