Freedos usb stick?

[Daniel3D]

- so whats the problem?

I think mainly my poor understanding of DOS

[llm]

and i've never tried stunts with freedos

[llm]

i've tested freedos + stunts on real hardware - worked out of the box for me

my howto:
1. download Rufus: https://rufus.ie/
2. download FreeDos: http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FULL.zip
3. extract zip
4. start rufus and install the FD12FULL.img on a FAT32 USB-Stick that is bootable
5. copy over the stunts folder
6. boot you pc with the usb stick and play stunts!

the Rufus builtin FreeDos Option didn't work for me - im getting out of memory messages on starting stunts

[Daniel3D]

I've done that and just did it again to be sure.
Boot's fine,
First try a packet file error.
With loadfix I get an io error. I starting to suspect it's a CPU that is not DOS compatible.

[llm]

I've done that and just did it again to be sure.
Boot's fine,
First try a packet file error.
With loadfix I get an io error. I starting to suspect it's a CPU that is not DOS compatible.

That loadfix program? https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/LOADFIX
Its definitly not needed for Stunts which is not in any form memory size problematic
A not DOS compatible CPU is also very unlikely

Stunts is a very simple, clean plain dos program without any bad programming as in some other old games

[llm]

sorry i usually use the execombiner executeable because this stunts_k.com-Neverlock thing is not even part of the original release
its some sort of crack program (that can be problematic) i do not trust this program and its not needed when the loader.exe get replaced with the original exe

i've attached my executeables - game.exe is directly created with the restunts-execombiner tool (based on the original stunt files)
game_ad/pc.exe is adlib or speaker sound driver directly integrated with the restunts-drvcombiner - all in MCGA mode - already cracked

just start game.exe or game_pc.exe in the stunts folder

there is no loading or runtime patching happening, game.exe is the pure original game executable (and because of that much easier to reverse engineere)

[Daniel3D]

Does it matter which version of Stunts I use with these files?

[llm]

I don't know, these exe were created using files from stunts 1.1 from kalpen: http://stunts.kalpen.de/downldst.htm, i would try it first with that version (im currently not at my computer)

[Daniel3D]

Works with all versions except 1.0 in dosbox.
Works with fresh freedos (game.exe at least) on my laptop. (1 of them)
ill have to work on the sound

the funny thing is that i had the errors with the original executable to.
I checked that.

[llm]

You need to use commandline parameters with game.exe

/ssb - use soundblaster (ad15.drv) instead of pc speaker
/sXY - use driver XY15.drv instead of pc speaker (e.g /sad for soundblaster)

So game.exe /sad or game.exe /spc

At least game_pc.exe should give you pc speaker sound

[Cas]

All 80x86 and AMD64 compatible CPUs are compatible with Stunts. I think the problem lies in the UEFI/BIOS installed in your computer main board. Stunts executables has a very normal behaviour for a 1990 DOS program, but this is not the same as what computer designers and DOS makers would consider normal.

For example, when protected mode came up, CPU manufacturers expected new OSs would run natively in it, but instead, drivers like HIMEM.SYS were created to make it possible to access extra memory by jumping back and forth between real mode and protected mode, so DOS could continue to run in real mode. People don't like changing and try hard to continue to do things their old way.

When OSs finally started to migrate fully to protected mode, CPU and OS design forced programmers to not "misbehave" anymore in some aspects. It was common in DOS to access memory that was not reserved for your program, to tweak things in the system without asking the OS to do it for you, etc. Now memory protection made that impossible. Also, you couldn't modify the memory were your executable code was loaded because the OS made it write-protected. So, looking at Stunts code or many other DOS programs of the time, one could say now the code is "misbehaved", but of course, this wouldn't be the way of seeing it back in 1990. These strategies were considered optimisations back then. Self-unpacking provided a way to take less precious disk space, self-overwriting made the code more obscure for automatic unassemblers, making the program less hackable. Loading external binary files on top of part of your code manually would make your programs load much faster than having to request the OS to link your code in memory to a library. And CPUs were not that fast, so that was important.

Of course, if I knew exactly what's going on, I'd be able to give you an easy fix for your computer. I don't. I just suspect from the behaviour that it's this. I'm having the same problem on my current desktop computer. I'm not surprised because I've experienced similar things in the past. One thing I can say for sure: if you try the same on an older computer, it'll work. Newer computers are very real-mode-unfriendly. Not CPUs... computers, like... the mainboard, the interface, the firmware, etc.

[llm]

@Cas

Protection like you described is a hardware thing that needs the correct cpu mode and configuration done by the OS, wich is not the case here, the original stunts code works just ot of the box, only this crack stunts_k.exe wich is not part of the official release got problems, it seems to work under real microsoft dos so i think that freedos is doing something different - for example freedos still can't run win 3.11 in enhanced mode due to diffenences in memory managment etc. I think that is the reason and the solution is to use the original game exe and not depend on some cracking loader stuff

[Daniel3D]

I'm a bit confused. (Don't worry, I'm used to it)
The cracked executable gives problems, that's understandable.
Restunts game.exe runs fine everywhere (dosbox, freedos and MS-DOS)
The original executable stunts.com won't run in freedos or MS-DOS either.

That is my experience, so there's a difference in the way the program is executed.

.... I'll get back to this....

[llm]

Im also confused...

Is stunts.com part of the official disk images: http://stunts.kalpen.de/downldst.htm, the first two zips with original package disks?

[llm]

ok stunts.com is part of the official package