Matrix Games Forums

Okay, Ive been trying to get this game to run all day and no matter what I do, it wont run, I just get error messages saying its performed an illegal operation. The precise error message is as follows:
Invalid Instruction:
:4835 or
:02AE

and then it boots me back to the exec file. Im currently running a Gateway Pentium 3 running at 733 MHZ, with 128 MB of RAM and it is a Windows 98 OS. It says I only have 528K of DOS memory, is there anyway that I can increase it to 640 or whatever so I can run the game? Anyone with any information thatd like to help me out, Id love to hear from you. Drop me an email at
paspunxra@yahoo.com
I havent played this game since the original was released in the early 90's and Id like to get back into the swing of things. I hope that i have provided enough information to anyone with the ability to give me a hand. Thank you
Steve

I use also Win 98, but never had that kind of problems. I only had the usual "low mem problem" with garbled text etc. I did solve that by going here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

and downloaded DOS-bootdisk for Win 98. That solved all my problems, so you might also find it helpful to boot your comp to "pure DOS" and then launch PacWar. But then you need also DOS-based mousedriver, like CTMouse. There is also lot of other related help on that page.

Cheers,

M.S.

(In reply to your PM)

Its been years seens I was using W98, but you could try opening the propeties of the pac.exe file and fiddle with the memory settings.

Find the pac.exe

select it and send to desktop as a shortcut

select shortcut on desktop

Select and open properties

Look for Memory tab

auto and auto
expanded (EMS) = none

Extended (xms) = 2048 <---- to setup exsended 2kM for drivers etc

Check the Box Uses HMA so dos drivers if any load are put in HMA not low Memory area

and Auto at bottom

Also:

In the SCREEN Tab, set it to startup/run Windowed, that way it will run in a dos box and the mouse driver etc should be already loaded (your playing it in a window still in win9x/xp vis a vis running
in ms-dos mode

On my 98 (used be 95) I ran Pacwar fine with 95 and 98, on my XP it runs fine too.

The reason I say to use a shortcut for Pac.exe is if start it through matrix menu I think it uses some Dos memory, you really only need start it with pac.exe The Menus just a front end.

This is probably a good time to re-post some of the techniques for modifying the CONFIG.SYS file to get as much free DOS memory as possible.

In Windows 95 or 98 surprisingly good results can be had by deleting everything else from CONFIG.SYS and only using the line:
STACKS=0,0

For those who have no need to network their computers, you can also add the line:
LASTDRIVE=n
(where n is the letter of your highest drive)

The reason this works so well is that it causes the computer to use "protected-mode" drivers for things like the mouse and the CD-ROM. Protected-mode drivers can go anywhere in the computer's RAM assigned to Windows. "Real-mode" or DOS-based drivers must go into the 640K DOS memory or "upper" memory below 1024K. Real-mode drivers usually end with ".com" or ".sys", while protected-mode drivers end with ".drv" or ".vxd".

However, many people out there, especially those in countries other than the USA, need to load special drivers into the memory area under 1 MB. (e.g. KEYBOARD.SYS) For those, here are my recommendations to use at the beginning of CONFIG.SYS:

DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=EMM386.EXE NOEMS HIGHSCAN
DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO
SWITCHES=/F

Some explanations: Use of the NOEMS switch will provide you with more High Memory to load drivers and TSR's into. It does mean that you will have no "Expanded" memory, but every programmer in his/her right mind uses "Extended", or XMS, memory instead. If you have another ancient program that requires "Expanded" memory (e.g. Great Naval Battles I), use DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE AUTO RAM MIN=0.

HIGHSCAN Specifies that EMM386 use an additional check to determine the availability of upper memory for use as UMBs for drivers and other TSRs. On a very few computers, specifying this switch may have no effect or cause EMM386 to identify upper memory areas as available when they are not.

DOS=AUTO specifies whether MS-DOS should automatically load Himem.sys, Ifshlp.sys, Dblbuff.sys, and Setver.exe device drivers if they are not explicitly loaded in your Config.sys file. The default setting, AUTO, automatically loads these device drivers. The AUTO setting also automatically uses the BUFFERSHIGH, FILESHIGH, FCBSHIGH, LASTDRIVEHIGH, and STACKSHIGH commands.

SWITCHES=/F doesn't buy you any more memory, but it does make the computer boot faster.

You can get the High Ram simply by in properties editing the second High memory area to 2048 creating 2048 High Ram area for Dos

In the PROPERTIES of pac.exe or the shortcut to Pac.exe

Ie: Extended(XMS) set to 2048 and put a check in uses HMA,
and set game to start as WINDOWED not Full Screen.

Windowed starts it in a Windowed DOS box using That not Ms-dos bootup mode which uses the dos config file, and it will auto expand to full screen, all drivers it can that are needed if any dos drivers use the HMA in the defined 2048 XMS memory area in the properties.

My win 98 and XP dos box report 634K as largest executable DOS program useable within the Dos-box not to be confused with win 95/98 "bootup in dos" mode.

I just tried an managed to load up PacWar on XP using Dosbox. Other than the turns taking awhile to run everything seems to be fine, especially the text.

I run PW on XP without dosbox just fine. If anyone is interested, I can write down the procedure.

Nah, we'd rather each ask you individually.

One good thing about the dosbox though is it seems to solve the EGA video bios issue that many of us encounter. Not sure if it would work otherwise on the desktop and I'm sure it won't on the laptop.