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Slow running Doom with no sound in Win95, great in Dos.

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pcm2a

Experienced Member
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Jun 24, 2013
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So on my IBM PS/1 I have abandoned Win 3.11 WFW for Win95. First I installed Dos 6.22, setup my sound card and cd rom, then installed Win95.

Now I'm looking at a nice Win95 install, with sound, and I fire up Doom. This is a 486DX2 50mhz with 36megs of ram. Doom loads up fast and then runs about the speed of a 10mhz computer, extra slow. There is also no sound. I have tried disabling the sound and it also did not increase the speed.

If I reboot into dos Start->Shut down->Restart in dos then the game runs at normal speed and sound works. I also lose networking support....

I know this isn't just a general Win95 problem since right beside it is my Compaq laptop with a 486CX 50mhz with 16mb of ram and it runs it perfectly. I know I'm just missing something silly.
 
Well yeah, I'm not running Doom95, but it is on my list of things to try. But on both machines I'm running Doom (Dos) inside Win95 and it works perfect on one. I'll work on Doom95 today and see what it does.
 
I'm not sure what a PIF file is. There is not one on the Doom directory.

I installed Doom95 on the IBM PS/1 and sound works, which is cool, but it's still the crazy slow speed.
 
I was running this from a command prompt, like c:\doom>doom.exe, not from some batch file or windows icon.
 
pcm2a said:
I was running this from a command prompt, like c:\doom>doom.exe, not from some batch file or windows icon.
Click to expand...
Sorry. You did mention running Doom inside Windows in one post.

Might be a hardware thing. The Compaq may just have a better cache setup and other enhancements. Give Trixters little test program a shot on each and see what the results are http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcf...olunteers-to-help-test-a-new-benchmark/page31

Be sure to post the results in that thread as well.
 
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Well I got some crazy results for you. Just to re-describe the problem, I have two Windows 95 machines and in Windows I'm trying to run Doom. On the IBM box that this performs poorly on I can reboot to Dos and it runs great.

I have ran the benchmark tool on the Compaq (Win95) and on the IBM (both Dos and Win95). The results are interesting....

Compaq - Windows 95:
MemoryTest=13101
OpcodeTest=19967
VidramTest=26679
MemEATest=33697
3DGameTest=50861
Score=161
CPU=Intel i486DX2
CPUspeed=50 MHz
BIOSinfo=\CL GE S CAB2/NPBDJCIDQTJHLBHRAKCDMDJW(C)Copyright COMPAQ Computer Corporation 1982,94 (08/28/94, rev. 0)
MachineModel=02FC
BIOSdate=19940828
BIOSCRC16=E955
VideoSystem=VGA
VideoAdapter=VGA, 256kb Video Memory (BIOS)
Machine=Compaq LTE Lite

IBM PS/1 - Windows 95:
MemoryTest=2236
OpcodeTest=19148
VidramTest=36585
MemEATest=19392
3DGameTest=9089
Score=54
CPU=Intel i486DX2
CPUspeed=50 MHz
BIOSinfo= COPR. IBM 1981, 1993 (12/16/93, rev. 0)
MachineModel=01FC
BIOSdate=19931216
BIOSCRC16=B7AC
VideoSystem=VGA
VideoAdapter=VGA, unknown Chipset, VESA, 256kb Video Memory (BIOS)
Machine=AT clone

IBM PS/1 - Dos:
MemoryTest=134
OpcodeTest=89
VidramTest=180
MemEATest=124
3DGameTest=66
Score=140
CPU=Intel i486DX2
CPUspeed=50 MHz
BIOSinfo= COPR. IBM 1981, 1993 (12/16/93, rev. 0)
MachineModel=01FC
BIOSdate=19931216
BIOSCRC16=3819
VideoSystem=VGA
VideoAdapter=VGA, Cirrus CL-GD5428, VESA, 256kb Video Memory (BIOS)
Machine=AT clone

Things I notice:
Compaq (Win95) and IBM (Dos) get comparable scores. Seems reasonable since both of those environments run real good.

Why are the numbers on the IBM (Dos) so small compared to the others? It still gets a good score.

In IBM (Win95) it does not print the right VGA adapter but it does in dos. In Display Setting it does show the correct Cirrius CL-GD5428 card. Maybe not important.

In IBM (Win95) the memory score is crap! 2236 vs 13101. I have 2 sticks of 16mb and 1 stick of 4, I'm going to take some out and see how it changes.

In IBM (Win95) the 3d game score is crap! 9089 vs 50861! I don't believe the compaq (laptop) graphics are more powerful. It runs better on the IBM in dos.

So the two big things I see so far are the 3d benchmark and the memory speed.
 
Memory test update. I started off with the original stick of 4mb of ram and I added two 16mb sticks. I just removed the 4mb stick, I figured it was the oldest.

I reran the test and got 15989 for the memory test, beating the compaq by 2000. The gaming score increased to 12313 still falling way short.

Now on to debugging the graphics problem. I'm going to try installing Direct X, but I'm not sure what good that would do. DX5.0 resolved nothing.
 
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I 'm not a big fan of IBM personal computers, especially for gaming. I do dabble with and play games on my 486 clones, and Doom always seems to run real good for me. WIN95 can be finicky at times. If you can run Doom fine, as you say, under DOS, and it's sluggish under Windows, then you ought to give the Doom95 port version a try. There's a few bugs and tweaks in WIN95 that you may not be aware of. Check this link out: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom95
 
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Caluser2000:
I haven't tried commenting them out in the autoexec and config. You think the sound card being loaded could be botching it? I'll test that tonight.

Agent Orange:
On the other page that was suggested, tried and was just as slow. Sound did work.

Tomorrow I may erase everything and try Win95 osr2b, that's what's on my laptop. The ibm I put 2.5c. Maybe that's the problem.
 
pcm2a said:
Caluser2000:
I haven't tried commenting them out in the autoexec and config. You think the sound card being loaded could be botching it? I'll test that tonight.

Agent Orange:
On the other page that was suggested, tried and was just as slow. Sound did work.

Tomorrow I may erase everything and try Win95 osr2b, that's what's on my laptop. The ibm I put 2.5c. Maybe that's the problem.
Click to expand...

I'm not up to speed tonight, but I re-read the top of the thread and it looks like you're trying to run DOS Doom from inside WIN95's DOS prompt. Am I correct? If so, go with the WIN95 version for Doom and see what happens.
 
Dos doom (from prompt) and doom95 is what I tried. Cant wait to get home and try some more stuff out.
 
pcm2a said:
Caluser2000:
I haven't tried commenting them out in the autoexec and config. You think the sound card being loaded could be botching it? I'll test that tonight.
Click to expand...
From what I recall, and that's from a looong time ago, loading real mode drivers can cause some performance hits while in Windows 95 itself. Obviously when you've started direct to the dos prompt you're not affected at all.

Call it a shot in the dark.
 
I commented out all soundblaster and cdrom lines, which basically left a stock dos/windows configuration (himem.sys, etc). Sound and cdrom do still work in windows!

This had no effect on games. Very cool though.

Update:
I've now created a dos 6.22 boot disk that also loads in my sound card and cdrom, should be handy. I've formatted and without installing dos first I'm installing Win 95 OSR2b. Worth a shot to see if anything is different.
 
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pcm2a said:
I commented out all soundblaster and cdrom lines, which basically left a stock dos/windows configuration (himem.sys, etc). Sound and cdrom do still work in windows!

This had no effect on games. Very cool though.

Update:
I've now created a dos 6.22 boot disk that also loads in my sound card and cdrom, should be handy. I've formatted and without installing dos first I'm installing Win 95 OSR2b. Worth a shot to see if anything is different.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear that you've had some joy with that thing. If it were mine, and I knew all the hardware works in DOS, but takes a dump in Windows, I would start researching the availability of drivers for that sound card and CD-DOM. Willing to bet a-nickel-to-a-hole-in-a-doughnut that you have a driver problem. :nervous:
 
pcm2a said:
I commented out all soundblaster and cdrom lines, which basically left a stock dos/windows configuration (himem.sys, etc). Sound and cdrom do still work in windows!

This had no effect on games. Very cool though.

Update:
I've now created a dos 6.22 boot disk that also loads in my sound card and cdrom, should be handy. I've formatted and without installing dos first I'm installing Win 95 OSR2b. Worth a shot to see if anything is different.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear that you've had some joy with that thing. If it were mine, and I knew all the hardware works in DOS, but takes a dump in Windows, I would start researching the availability of drivers for that sound card and CD-ROM. Willing to bet a nickel to a hole-in-doughnut that you have a driver problem. :nervous:
 
The results of my next test are in:
- Fresh Win95 OSR2B install (no installation of dos first)
- Once in Win 95 there were no sound drivers installed or cdrom drivers
- Can't blame anything on sound or cdrom this test
- Doom runs terrible
- Reboot to Win95 dos mode, doom runs great

Maybe something is broken with the onboard graphics with this old pc. If I had an ISA video card I could test that out.
 
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