Hi again, On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 4:58 AM, Michael Robinson <plu...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > I got my K6-2 500 with 504 megs of ram running XP SP3 well enough by > turning off the swap file. Don't let XP swap, Warcraft II works fine.
500 MB should be plenty for XP. Seriously, I know software is always increasing requirements, but it's not reasonable (IMO) to need more than that. While I can't say I've ever played Warcraft 2, I don't think it would need much RAM, relatively, compared to newer stuff. http://www.mobygames.com/game/warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness That says it is indeed a DOS (or Macintosh) game, surprisingly. So you only need Win32 for networking?? I think Mike Brutman said there was an experimental third-party build of DOSBox with NE2000 support. (Doesn't DOSBox support IPX??) Though if the game uses / needs Win32-specific stuff, you're probably out of luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_2 This says it works on other OSes too. (Battle.net is a separate version? Which one do you have and use?) Linux, Amiga4, etc. Even Saturn and Playstation consoles supposedly run it. So, worst case scenario, you can use or grab one of those if your PC isn't good enough. > The scsi hard drive, despite being a Seagate Cheetah, really slows the > system down. I don't let my Linux firewall allow this old machine to > access the Net, so there are a LOT of protection programs I don't need > to run. I don't need spywareblaster, clamwin, spybot search and > destroy, crap cleaner, or Windows defender for starters. In fairness, it's not MS' fault that so many viruses etc. target Windows. And yes, antiviruses make things worse a lot of times. It's more painful on older machines. > I'm not 100% confident in the method I used to bypass activation. Would > Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely > use 32 bit Windows XP at will? IIRC, Win2k didn't need activation and had smaller footprint, hence why many prefer it. But it wasn't ever targeted for home users, only pros. Still, you could probably find a copy on eBay. > I've been studying Windows 7 verses Windows XP and honestly, it's a toss > up. Both systems are bloated and complex. When XP came out, it had much higher requirements than Win9x. But it offered a lot more, including better stability. But of course the DOS compatibility is much lower. :-( Though XP is light years slimmer and more functional (for DOS) than later versions, even with the bloated SP3. So I would definitely not use Win7 in any capacity for DOS stuff unless you were willing to live exclusively inside emulators (DOSBox) or hypervisors (VirtualBox), aka slow and buggy. > A ROM based dos system is > more secure than even the typical Linux system and it's going to be > light weight. That's not saying much though, I can't compare Apples to > Oranges and be fair about it. Dunno. Again, you could probably try something else like FreeBSD with emulator, esp. without X11. That should be fairly slim on RAM usage. http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/RunningOnBochs?action=show&redirect=UsersGuide/RunningMinixOnBochs > The ipxwrapper hack seems to force one to use Windows NT 4.0 or newer. > If only someone would port ipxwrapper to freedos and write a program to > create a DOS executable out of a Win32 app like Warcraft II BNE. Add > network card support for many of the current network cards and on mobo > nics to that, there is suddenly no reason why Warcraft II can't be > played on old computers using a: free, lean, and nice operating system. The Battle.net version is supposedly is Win32 native and uses TCP/IP. So if you can find that, that might be better for you than trying to get a DOS game working on NT (who [server OS] was never targeted for games, hence why MS didn't fix bugs there for Quake [DOS]). You're right, with enough motivation (and preferably source code), a motivated person could fix any of these issues and make it more DOS friendly. See Hexen2 [Quake-based], which (thanks to hard work of Ozkan Sezer and others) was re-ported back to DOS/DJGPP and works fabulously. But that is unlikely to happen for most games, esp. for DOS. People would rather work on Linux or Windows native ports (or 64-bit) than anything else, apparently. > Warcraft II and Freedos's memory footprint is small enough, even if the > necessary WIN32 support is added most likely, that one should be able to > run the game using freedos in way under 100 megs. Note that most > network cards built into motherboards and many PCI network cards are > currently not supported in DOS and one has to take care of that somehow. > I think that running Warcraft II Battle.Net edition on a freedos system > is possible, but there are a lot of pieces to pull together and Blizzard > probably won't offer to help. I doubt it would work, but you could also try something like SanOS: " Sanos is a minimalistic 32-bit x86 OS kernel for network server appliances running on standard PC hardware. The kernel implements basic operating system services like booting, memory management, thread scheduling, local and remote file systems, TCP/IP networking and DLL loading and linking. You can use Sanos as a small kernel for embedded server applications written in C or as a JeOS (Just enough Operating System). Sanos has a fairly standard POSIX based API and an ANSI Standard C library. A win32 layer allows the Windows version of the standard HotSpot JVM to run under Sanos, essentially providing a JavaOS platform for server applications. Sanos is open source under a BSD style license. Please see the COPYING file for details. " http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/ N.B. Blizzard has other fish to fry than porting to DOS, and they probably make more money that way too. Sadly, that's the name of the game these days. > Come on Blizzard, these games are not earning you revenue anymore and > they are very popular. It annoys people when a company crushes efforts > to create open source clones of it's popular software and this can > incite boycotts. I am a legal owner of Warcraft II BNE, two copies > actually. I should be able to play Warcraft II on systems that > are current and supported as well as open. They will probably just suggest you run WINE. If your computer is too old, they probably don't care. (Heck, most Linux distros don't work on older machines anymore. Same with Windows. It's all constant upgrading for newer features, more power, etc. Stability and backwards compatibility is not as important.) > I'm sure ReactOS will work just fine on old hardware if it is > stabilized, but it isn't stable right now and the developers have > not released since October or longer. The only way to get free > Windows NT it seems is to support the ReactOS project. Sadly, I > can't. Even if they make their fundraising goals and can hire > competent programmers to help move the project along faster, > there is no telling when stability will be achieved. I sympathize, but it's not realistic to hold on to such extreme hopes, esp. for one particular game (though maybe you have others). Games just aren't engineered to be portable or last a long time, apparently. You'd think they'd be more conscious of this, but alas no. There is more of a rush to market than an attempt to create a stable long-term platform. I know it's not saying much, but I suggest you find other games that you like that are better supported. Heck, even GoG.com sells lots of old DOS stuff (DRM-free) that usually works in DOSBox. Or stick to the super portables like Nethack or Quake or Freecell or similar. ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Master Java SE, Java EE, Eclipse, Spring, Hibernate, JavaScript, jQuery and much more. Keep your Java skills current with LearnJavaNow - 200+ hours of step-by-step video tutorials by Java experts. SALE $49.99 this month only -- learn more at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122612 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
