Even before I started the restoration project, I had assembled a Big Boxes collection focused on the late '80s and early '90s. I got them because I found them beautiful and because they inspired me. But now that I had an actual PC I could try to use them.
I was happy to see every single one of the floppies and CDs worked!
Released in 1995, Command & Conquer is pushing it for a 486 DX2-66. It only ran well after the upgrades mentioned later in this series.
At the same time I was installing games, I finally took the time to frame that Strike Commander poster I had for decades.
Originally announced for 1993, Strike Commander was released in 1993 after two years of development which Chris Robert qualified as his "Apocalypse Now".
All games installed smoothly but not all of them ran well. A 486-DX2 66Mhz is a very fast processor compared to the 386 some of these titles targeted. Vogons has a convenient list of all sensitive games. Here are some of the problems I ran into.
Released in July 1989, this game embodies the prehistoric aspect of DOS gaming. The game does not have a setup utility program. Instead it is configured via command line parameters.
The game was released in two versions, EGA (INDY.EXE) and VGA (INDY256.EXE). Both crashes on a 486.
Run time error R6003 - integer divide by zero
LucasArts fixed the problem via a patch[1] to let it run on fast CPUs. There are many threads on Vogons pertaining to patching many Lucasarts games[2][3].
The Secret of Monkey Island suffers the same problem as INDY3. On top of that there is no support for Roland MT-32 MIDI playback. The patch[4] fixes both these problems. On a SC-55ST one must also enable MT-32 emulation.
When MONKEY.EXE finally runs, and the legendary intro starts in MIDI quality, it is an indescribable feeling!
From the day it was released, Strike Commander was in a league of its own. Eight floppy disks, 40 MiB HDD (at a time when most computers had 100 MiB HDDs), mandatory 486-66Mhz. It was hard to run.
The eight floppies installation went smoothly. The Flightstick Pro was ready (I did consider going full ThrustMaster but these have aged poorly). But thirty years later this SC.EXE still gave me troubles with the dreaded #Error 1910.
I originally blamed it on the Dynamic Disk Overlay (DOO). To remove it, I had to whip the whole machine and the two HDDs. I reinstalled the whole system. Disconnected the D drive. Disconnected the sound card, Disconnected the network card. Took it down to just the CPU and some cheese instead of the RAM. Nothing worked.
It turned out the problem was the CONFIG.SYS's FILE/BUFFERS setting were too low!
FILES = 100 BUFFERS = 50
All of this trouble was forgotten when I finally saw the game run at 30fps in full detail.
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| Strike Commander in 1993 magazines | Strike Commander on my 486 SLC 25Mhz |
| ^ | [1] | Lucasarts Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade patch for 486 |
| ^ | [2] | LucasArts Patches |
| ^ | [3] | Secret of Monkey Island 486 patch |
| ^ | [4] | Gaming Wiki: The Secret of Monkey Island |