Betrayal at Krondor

May 31, 2004 8:21 PM

I just tried to download Betrayal at Krondor from the nifty Home of the Underdogs, a repository for lots of fun old games. Unfortunately, after downloading the zip file of the game, I can't get it to run. Attempting to run krondor.exe gives me the error message "You do not have enough memory to run Betrayal at Krondor. Try using the Make Boot Disk option from INSTALL." Somehow, since I'm running a newish machine, I doubt that a lack of memory is the problem. But what could it be? Any suggestions?
posted by UKnowForKids to computers & internet (7 comments total)

It's probably refering to base memory but I'm not sure how to fix it.
posted by holloway at 8:43 PM on May 31, 2004

BaK was an old DOS game. DOS games had weird memory requirements because (as I remember it) only the first ~likely of memory was directly addressable, and therefore coveted by games, cause it was the quickest. To get it to run, you need to mess with the memory settings in the shortcut that you use to run the game. If you right click on the .exe file, you should be able to tweak stuff on the "Memory" tab. Exactly what'll work, I'm not sure but that's where you need to start.
posted by freshgroundpepper at 8:47 PM on May 31, 2004

??? strange, after the tilde I had "640 K" that somehow got replaced by the correction of my misspelling of the word "likely", oh well, you get what I was going for...
posted by freshgroundpepper at 8:48 PM on May 31, 2004

Try grabbing DOSBox, a DOS emulator. BaK is supported in the current version.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 8:58 PM on May 31, 2004

For old DOS games (Including Master of Magic, my favorite PC game of all time), do this:
Find either or both (I forget which one you have to do or if you have to do both- I haven't done it in a while) of these filles: command.exe - usually in c:/windows/system32
This if the file that actually runs the dos-shell (it's either this file or the actual BoK.exe file)
Right click on the file for properties and click on the memory tab. Depending on the DOS program, you're looking for either either the Expanded (EMS) Memory or Extended (ETS) Memory. I know Master of Magic is looking for the ETS memory. Change both memory options to the max values or the auto value. This will cause your available memory to be used to run these DOS programs

*This is all due to DOS-specific RAM from back in the day. Be default, WindowsXP and former OS's are not made to use this type of memory sinse you don't have of this type of RAM on modern PC's. And the only reason I know this is because of my obsession to get Master of Magic to work.
posted by jmd82 at 9:40 PM on May 31, 2004

Oops, correction: You're looking for command.com not .exe
posted by jmd82 at 9:41 PM on May 31, 2004

DOSBox works like a charm. Thanks a bunch!
posted by UKnowForKids at 12:42 AM on June 1, 2004