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Creating a boot floppy for "Pepper's Adventures in Time"

Bill-kun

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 2, 2020
Messages
686
Location
Michigan
I bought an original copy of Pepper's Adventures in Time (1993)! Its development name was Twisty History. This is one of the Sierra Discovery Series games, which also included, among others, Mixed Up Mother Goose, Mixed Up Fairy Tales, EcoQuest 1 and 2, the Dr. Brain Trilogy, and Quarky and Quaysoo's Turbo Science. (Out of all of these, it seems only EcoQuest 1 was voiced, sadly.) I remember seeing these in the Sierra catalogs, but by that time I guess I considered myself beyond their subject matter. In any event, we never got them during the first run. But that means that now they are games that are totally new to me! And they are all 256 colors, with mouse, sound card support, etc.!

All my disks for Pepper's Adventures in Time were completely readable and I've imaged them with DISK2IMG for safekeeping, and also wrote those images to backup disks. I installed it on my tall tower 386 via the backup disks, which has MS-DOS 6.22 (released in 1994) and 8 MB. of RAM.

Attached is my default memory configuration after booting up from the hard drive, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

After installing the game successfully, I can't get the game to run so far due to a memory error. I remember well that memory configuration was the crux of computer games in the early '90s.


You need 34000 more bytes of free memory available to run this game. If you have any resident software loaded please remove it and try again.
Script #: 0, IP: 0

Pepper's Adventures in Time uses the Sierra Online Game Install/Setup Program 3.580. I tried creating a boot floppy using the Sierra install program. After formatting the floppy, the install program says the formatting wasn't successful (even though as far as I can tell by reading the floppy afterward, it was).

Why do I get the unsuccessful format error? Is the installation program searching for stuff in MS-DOS 6.22 that was eliminated from previous versions of MS-DOS? How do I configure my memory so that the game will run? I at least have to have the mouse driver and SB16 drivers loaded in memory before running the game.

And if anyone has any pre-emptive advice for the same sort of issue for The Dagger of Amon Ra (CD talkie), please advise on that, too.
 

Attachments

  • AUTOEXEC.TXT
    2 KB · Views: 6
  • CONFIG.TXT
    712 bytes · Views: 7
  • MEM.TXT
    1.7 KB · Views: 5
Last edited:
Not sure about the formatting thing, but you have 66K UMBs available. So your conventional memory can be optimized quite a bit. Post your config.sys and autoexec.bat.
 
Here is what I would put on the boot disk:

config.sys (XMS + EMS)
Code:
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM HIGHSCAN X=CB00-CBFF
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\CD1.SYS /D:BANANA
DEVICEHIGH=C:\SB16\CTCM\CTCM.EXE

config.sys (XMS only)
Code:
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS HIGHSCAN X=CB00-CBFF
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\CD1.SYS /D:BANANA
DEVICEHIGH=C:\SB16\CTCM\CTCM.EXE

autoexec.bat
Code:
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $P$G

SET PATH=C:\;C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS;C:\PCTOOLS;C:\WP51;%PATH%
SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

LH MSCDEX.EXE /D:BANANA /L:R
LH C:\UTIL\DRHALO3\GMOUSE.COM

SET CTCM=C:\SB16\CTCM
SET SOUND=C:\SB16
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E

C:\SB16\CTCM\CTCU /S /W=C:\WINDOWS
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q

As far as your normal config, you can save some conventional memory by putting LH (loadhigh) in front of guest.exe and doskey.
 
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Thank you very much! That got it working on my 386!

I will copy and edit the files to try to get the game to run on the 286 at my parents' house, which has a Sound Blaster 8-bit, and on which the game would also not run. It may not run there anyway since I don't think that computer has more that 640 kB. of memory, but if not, that's a good prompt for me to upgrade the memory.
 
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Also could run memmaker, and see what it frees up. I sometimes go that route just because its easier.
 
I think so, I believe it requires a 386. Also QEMM if you want to try with an earlier machine, it has a similar utility.
 
Quarterdeck QEMM is also 386+, QRAM is the 8088-286 product.
 
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