Gal 2.4 under vista

[AndreaV]

Okay, so I'm getting back into Traveller after a rather extended break and I go to fire up my trusty old mapping software of Galactic 2.4 (I'm an OLD traveller player) on my shiny new vista laptop. And it will not run. I've tried fiddling with the comptatability settings etc but no joy. Any one got any suggestions on how to solve this one or viable alternatives.

I've tried H&E but it keeps crashing when ever I try to display world details.

 

[Qstor2]

Okay, so I'm getting back into Traveller after a rather extended break and I go to fire up my trusty old mapping software of Galactic 2.4 (I'm an OLD traveller player) on my shiny new vista laptop. And it will not run. I've tried fiddling with the comptatability settings etc but no joy. Any one got any suggestions on how to solve this one or viable alternatives..

IIRC I dont think Vista has MS-DOS installed??


[QUOTE\]
I've tried H&E but it keeps crashing when ever I try to display world details.[/QUOTE]

That happens to me sometimes. I don't think H&E have been updated in sometime. Malefant in another thread somewhere said it often makes unrealistic data and average world tempatures.

Mike

 

[jfetters]

That might have been me - H&E is great when you need to gen up a sector or subsector, but the more detailed you get the weirder things become - like all worlds start to look similar from a statistical perspective and things like that. It's not totally useless, you just need to not get into too much detail when using it.

Regarding GAL under Vista - it won't work natively, as Vista does not support 16-bit apps, even under a VDM due to its kernel. You will need to get an emulator like DOSBOX in order for GAL to run, but even then it is a bit touchy...

 

[Thunderbolt]

I tried this scenario out on my work laptop (running Vista Business edition) and got a 'full screen not supported' error, thus proving what I already know, that Vista is a bag of rusty nails.

Since MS-DOS does not form part of NT based versions of Windows, you might need to consider something like DOSBOX (http://www.dosbox.com/). A guy at our office uses it to play Wing Commander.

A cooler approach, and one I might investigate myself would be run MS-DOS or an older version of Windows under Virtual PC. Virtual PC 2007 itself is free, so if you have some old disks lying around, you build yourself a little microcosm of the past inside a virtual machine !!

 

[jfetters]

Is there an echo in here?

Virtual PC would work fine for that as well. ALthough there is more setup time involved, the end result works in a much more straightforward manner.

VPC is supported under Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions, BTW.

 

[aramis]

IIRC I dont think Vista has MS-DOS installed??

Might not, from what I've read.

If you need DOS6.22 compatibility, DosBox is a free and decent choice. VPC is a paid choice, but works fairly well. Parallels also should work; they have a Vista version.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Is there an echo in here?
BTW.

I started my post, then did some research and came back to it. You beat me to the draw

Just to clarify, VPC is free, not paid for. You will however need a licensed OS to go inside the virtual machine.

Download VPC here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...02-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

 

[aramis]

DosBox implements compatibility with 6.22 but without needing an OS install.