Some PC-98 games can't boot

[leoxxx]

Question

Freeze when screen display "F-DOS16".

Hard Rank.zip

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[leoxxx]

Freezing on dos 3.3 booting screen for me. I use a dos 6.2 boot disk fist, then insert the games disks, it is O.K. now (need sound.rom, but not to change the SW). Maybe something error for the dos 3.3. I create a dos 3.3d bootable disk, then copy disk A to the bootable disk, it's O.K. on np21/w now. T98-Next: Change sound86 I/O from 188 to 288 can run, but no bgm, only beep.(also try changing the SW) Anex86: Change sound to none can run.

[leoxxx]

I reset the ini file as well, so I don't know. Maybe some difference in the BIOS file you use.

AIDS is O.K. on np21/w. I changed the bios files.

[leoxxx]

Private school didn't work till quite recently. np2fmgen, SL9821 is known to work. Edit: DOSBox-X failed as you mentioned,

Boot sector loads disk sectors to segment 0x1000 until the boot code at 0x1FC0:0x0000 overwrites itself that way and the CPU is left executing a bunch of 0x00 0x00 (ADD [BX+SI],AL opcodes).

I did a test on real hardware to determine the memory address that boot code is loaded to and I determined it was 0x1FC0:0x0000 according to PC-9821 hardware. Is that always true? Maybe this game was written for an older BIOS that loaded it somewhere else? The game seems to assume 0x1000:0x0100 is safe to load some 64KB of data so maybe it was 0x0FC0:0x0000 on older hardware?

The disk image obviously contains a very customized MS-DOS kernel.

EDIT: I am able to boot this game perfectly fine if I direct the BOOT command to load to a lower memory address like 0x0FC0:0x0000 instead of 0x1FC0:0x0000.

I am testing with:

[cpu]
core=normal
cputype=8086
cycles=4000

[autoexec]
boot --load-seg 0x0FC0 "Private School (Disk A).hdm" "Private School (Disk B).hdm"

I just added --load-seg in the latest commit, it's not there prior to any commit from this morning.

Can you add it on menu? BTW, will Hard Rank be fixed in next release?

[Duglor]

Can you make a fix for Zai Metajo.hdi please? I have the same issues that you did here.

[leoxxx]

Can you make a fix for Zai Metajo.hdi please? I have the same issues that you did here.

The game is O.K. for me. machine = pc98 Please edit the config file as the above text to enable PC-98 mode.

[Duglor]

Do you have the 8.7 MG hdi called "Zwei Metajo" or the larger regular one? I have the larger one that just doesnt work on my lr-np2kai retropie.

On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 7:33 PM leoxxx @.***> wrote:

Can you make a fix for Zai Metajo.hdi please? I have the same issues that you did here.

The game is O.K. for me. machine = pc98 Please edit the config file as the above text to enable PC-98 mode. 1.png (view on web) https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/95ad9db6-6cc3-4184-acbd-93276a9d3f05

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/4842#issuecomment-2351302574, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AMVAIBYRUUESNLHXTSCYL3TZWTWYRAVCNFSM6AAAAABDYXMVIGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDGNJRGMYDENJXGQ . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @.***>

[maron2000]

If you want to talk about issues in np2-kai, this is the wrong place to discuss.

[leoxxx]

Do you have the 8.7 MG hdi called "Zwei Metajo" or the larger regular one? I have the larger one that just doesnt work on my lr-np2kai retropie. … On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 7:33 PM leoxxx @.> wrote: Can you make a fix for Zai Metajo.hdi please? I have the same issues that you did here. The game is O.K. for me. machine = pc98 Please edit the config file as the above text to enable PC-98 mode. 1.png (view on web) https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/95ad9db6-6cc3-4184-acbd-93276a9d3f05 — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4842 (comment)>, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AMVAIBYRUUESNLHXTSCYL3TZWTWYRAVCNFSM6AAAAABDYXMVIGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDGNJRGMYDENJXGQ . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @.>

Mine is 40.8 Mib. No 8.7Mib one. https://we.tl/t-eXzEiVWFSz Download this one, it will be expired in 3 days. As maron2000 said, you go to the wrong repo. https://github.com/AZO234/NP2kai You can go to this repo to commit your issue.