For months now, I have been struggling with getting Tradewars working again under linux. It was working but, sometime back in June, the EXTERN program began crashing my DOS maintenance BAT. By "crashing," I mean it was
closing the dosemu window entirely, without a visible error message.

I tried running EXTERN under dosbox, as well as BIGBANG, and get the
following error:

File Error (1) - (filename).DAT : Invalid Function

filename = the name of the DAT file that the programs are presumably
attempting to access at that moment (it varies, depending on the program
and function).

I thought that upgrading to the latest version of debian caused this, as
that version of dosemu did cause other issues with other programs. I downgraded dosemu to the previous working version and, although all the
other BBS issues went away, the TW issue is still happening.

I do not remember doing anything special to the dosemu settings to get this running... did any of you all that have tradewars working?

Some other things I tried... I went back to the OS/2 box I migrated the BBS from, and the EXTERN program runs fine there. I copied all of those files - DAT, EXE, and the whole directory structure - from the OS/2 box to the
linux box and the problem immediately returned, as in first time I ran
EXTERN.

As stated, I tried BIGBANG-ing the universe over again, and that program crashes, too. I have NOT yet tried a fresh install... I need to locate my registration info before I do that.

I even tried copying a fresh-from-OS/2-install copy over to a DOS-formatted device (thinking maybe I was running into an upper/lower case issue),
mounting that device to linux, and running TW from there. Same issue.

Tradewars was the one door I liked playing myself, so I would like to get
it running again. Thanks for any assistance.

Mike

P.S. FWIW, I am running TW under a DOS BBS that is also running in dosemu,
the same one it ran under when it was on the OS/2 box, and not under SBBS or Mystic. However, any input may still be relevant. :)

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Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Sat Sep 23 2017 07:49 am

For months now, I have been struggling with getting Tradewars working again under linux. It was working but, sometime back in June, the EXTERN program began crashing my DOS maintenance BAT. By "crashing," I mean it was
closing the dosemu window entirely, without a visible error message.

I tried running EXTERN under dosbox, as well as BIGBANG, and get the following error:

File Error (1) - (filename).DAT : Invalid Function

filename = the name of the DAT file that the programs are presumably attempting to access at that moment (it varies, depending on the program
and function).

I thought that upgrading to the latest version of debian caused this, as that version of dosemu did cause other issues with other programs. I downgraded dosemu to the previous working version and, although all the other BBS issues went away, the TW issue is still happening.

I do not remember doing anything special to the dosemu settings to get this running... did any of you all that have tradewars working?

Some other things I tried... I went back to the OS/2 box I migrated the BBS from, and the EXTERN program runs fine there. I copied all of those files - DAT, EXE, and the whole directory structure - from the OS/2 box to the
linux box and the problem immediately returned, as in first time I ran EXTERN.

are you using tw2002 and trying dpmi and non dpmi versions?
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are you using tw2002 and trying dpmi and non dpmi versions?

I am using tw2002. I did not realize there were dpmi and non-dpmi versions
of EXTERN and BIGBANG, which are the components that are failing. Are
there?

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Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Dumas Walker to MRO on Sat Sep 23 2017 07:09 pm

are you using tw2002 and trying dpmi and non dpmi versions?

I am using tw2002. I did not realize there were dpmi and non-dpmi versions of EXTERN and BIGBANG, which are the components that are failing. Are there?

dont know, you tell me. give it a try.
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are you using tw2002 and trying dpmi and non dpmi versions?

Took a look at the TW2002 docs... it mentions the dpmi version, and talks about who should and should not use it, but it does not explain how you run which version. So, to answer you question, I have no idea which version it is. :)

File Error (1) - (filename).DAT : Invalid Function

The error I am getting is a TP error and means an invalid OS call. Found that info in a list of TP error codes on the interwebs.

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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Dumas Walker to MRO on Sun Sep 24 2017 09:51 am

are you using tw2002 and trying dpmi and non dpmi versions?

Took a look at the TW2002 docs... it mentions the dpmi version, and talks about who should and should not use it, but it does not explain how you run which version. So, to answer you question, I have no idea which version it is. :)

read the file_id.diz

File Error (1) - (filename).DAT : Invalid Function

never got error before.
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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: MRO to Dumas Walker on Sun Sep 24 2017 01:26 pm

So I went to BBSES.info and all that's there is you trashing your BBS.

"... Computer programmers don't byte, they just nybble a bit."

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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Roadhog to MRO on Mon Sep 25 2017 08:50 am

Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: MRO to Dumas Walker on Sun Sep 24 2017 01:26 pm

So I went to BBSES.info and all that's there is you trashing your BBS.

that's not me, that's from a tv show

i took down most of bbses.info's services months ago. [wish i did it sooner]
i still provide hosting and honor the deals i made with providing people services.
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read the file_id.diz

The file_id.diz does not mention dpmi so I guess I am running the non-dpmi version.

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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Dumas Walker to MRO on Mon Sep 25 2017 06:16 pm

read the file_id.diz

The file_id.diz does not mention dpmi so I guess I am running the non-dpmi version.

if it is a dpmi version you will have a D in the archive filename.
i suggest doing a bigbang on a compatible system and then copy the files over to your linux box.

also make sure you have everything setup correctly in the dos environment.
you could use dosbox to run it probably. dunno, i've only used dosbox to run problem doorgames in a windows environment.
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also make sure you have everything setup correctly in the dos environment.

I was wondering if anyone had any special settings they used. It was
running fine until I upgraded to the new release of debian linux. I
downgraded dosemu back to the previous version after a few programs gave me grief, though. Only TW kept behaving badly.

you could use dosbox to run it probably. dunno, i've only used dosbox to run problem doorgames in a windows environment.

Actually, dosbox is where I am getting the error message that I posted the other day. When it stops working in a dosemu session, it crashed the
session (the session closes) and I do not see the error message.

Since it is borked in both dosbox and dosemu, I wonder if it is not something underlying in how these dos emulators access the linux file system. Maybe something in the upgrade of the linux OS "underneath" is causing it.

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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Dumas Walker to MRO on Tue Sep 26 2017 06:13 pm

also make sure you have everything setup correctly in the dos environment.

I was wondering if anyone had any special settings they used. It was running fine until I upgraded to the new release of debian linux. I downgraded dosemu back to the previous version after a few programs gave me grief, though. Only TW kept behaving badly.

Since it is borked in both dosbox and dosemu, I wonder if it is not something underlying in how these dos emulators access the linux file system. Maybe something in the upgrade of the linux OS "underneath" is causing it.

maybe you just setup the game wrong. run it in a windows environment and see. ---
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maybe you just setup the game wrong. run it in a windows environment and see.

No I had it set up and working properly for years. It quit working when I upgraded to the most-recent stable release of debian.

The same setup still runs under OS/2, which is where it was originally.

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maybe you just setup the game wrong. run it in a windows environment and see.

No I had it set up and working properly for years. It quit working when I upgraded to the most-recent stable release of debian.

The same setup still runs under OS/2, which is where it was originally.

Maybe I'm lazy, I dreamed to make TWGS work on linux with wine or something. But for now it's just running in it's individual windows XT vm where only the 2002 and 2003 port open. It takes little resources so i like it like that.

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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: Roadhog to MRO on Mon Sep 25 2017 08:50 am

Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: MRO to Dumas Walker on Sun Sep 24 2017 01:26 pm

So I went to BBSES.info and all that's there is you trashing your BBS.

that's not me, that's from a tv show

i took down most of bbses.info's services months ago. [wish i did it sooner]
i still provide hosting and honor the deals i made with providing people services.

Is the torrent seedbox still running? That was a pretty cool service. I grabbed several torrents that looked useful at the time.

~KenDB3

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Re: Re: Tradewars under linux
By: KenDB3 to MRO on Sun Oct 29 2017 10:47 pm

Is the torrent seedbox still running? That was a pretty cool service. I grabbed several torrents that looked useful at the time.

if you go to bbstorrents you will see that it's not up :D
been down a long time.
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