I installed Jack the Ripper yesterday, the old DOS game from Gametek on one CD-ROM, (not the futuristic Ripper with Christopher Walken.) After some fussing I got it up and running only to immediately stumble upon a game stopping bug. This is pretty much a text game with lots of frills, ie music and graphic stills. There is a pull down window, the "notebook" where you paste text clues. At the top of that window is a button called "Master" that calls up a list of "spare pages". When I click on that button I am instantly knocked out of the game. Not only that but it also reboots my system (Win 98se, playing in DOS via an f8 cold reboot).

I've tried it on my WIN 95 system with the same results except it freezes up instead of rebooting. Once on my Win98 box I got the following error message instead of a reboot: "EMM386 has detected error #7 in application at mem address 0005:0062. EMM386 halted." A Google search basically said that was a fault of the application not the system. So this is a bug in the game??? That is unrecorded since 1995???

I tried the one patch for this game but it just modifies the bat file that starts the game and doesn't address this bug at all.

This is a longwinded way to ask if anyone else has ever had this problem with this particular game and if so did they ever figure out a work-around. I'm pretty sure I need to access those spare windows via that "Master" button in order to play the game to the end but so far I am mystified.

Thanks,

Mike

I have ths game. Haven't played it yet but it sounds like maybe you need to increase memory for a workaround...just a thought
Ifnerno

Hi Mike

Just loaded it on both my W98 and W95 machines - no joy for me either - drops me back to desktop with both systems. And I can't even get the ding dang sound to work on my W95 with the ISA SB16 card (have no idea why - system works lovely with Flight of the Amazon Queen). Didn't get any of the errors you got - and it also rebooted my W95 when I tried in DOS - hmmmmmmmmm Looks like the mystery is afoot Watson

I wondered the same thing, Inferno, and I found a memory.txt in the install folder that says to erase the NOEMS in the EMM386 line if you have problems, which I did. This tells me this game wants Expanded memory and not Extended memory. I had 624K free in conventional with the NOEMS and the game ran fine except for the wierd bug. I erased the NOEMS in my EMM386 line and got, I forget, but around 592K free conventional memory. The game runs fine either way actually, and I can play and play until I hit that one button then blooey, reboot city...

Syd, the game runs the sound from the cd-rom like an audio cd. I had one set up on one of my systems where it wouldn't play sound either. I think it was on my Win 95 box with an f8 boot to DOS. (I have an ISA SB16 card with installed drivers.) I suspect there is a driver or setting I don't have set right in that mode for reading sound off the cd-rom. I do get sound in the "restart in Dos mode" on Win95 so it's using a Windows driver to read the cd-rom. In Win98se f8 boot I get sound but I have an emulation program on that system that always comes through. It's interesting, though, that you get similar problems at the same place. But you get thrown to desktop? I either freeze or reboot.

What is really odd is I can't find this documented anywhere. You'd think there would be a patch to address what appears to be a very nasty programming bug. I know people have played this game.

Mike

Oh yeah, I also tried to install it in DOS 6.22 but something won't let me install the files. I get an "invalid /y switch" which is a DOS 6.22 command to force copying over existing files or something like that. I can do a regular copy command and copy all the files into a folder in DOS 6.22 and can even run the opening animaation with sound!!! but then it goes to black with only a mouse cursor. I have 616K free memory in this setup. Will keep at it and see if I can find a solve.

Looks like I'm going to have to play around some more with the game and see if I can get it to work with sound. I had the game as a floater a while ago and swear I got the sound working, then but I got bogged down with other things so just sent it to the next person on the list without playing it. I later found the game in some bargin bin clearance sale somewhere and bought it.

The only time it rebooted was when I restarted in DOS mode - otherwise I just got dropped back to desktop. And I did the same thing you did with the NOEMS. Edited it out but it made no difference other than dropping the memory.

I tried this game as a floater so I no longer have it. I did get it to work on my Dell Optiplex in DOS mode. I don't remember exactly how I set it up, but if it requires expanded memory, use a line with
EMM386.exe RAM
instead of
EMM386.exe NOEMS

Also, the game uses CD audio files for sound. So you probably need an audio cable running from your CD drive to your sound card. Or you can try just plugging your headphones (or speakers) into the jack on your CD drive (if your CD drive has a headphone jack). I'm not sure if ALL sounds are CD audio though. You might miss some midi sound effects that way.

Ah that explains why I could hear music when I loaded it in before - my other computer has an AWE sound card and I had the connection wire from the card to the rom drive connected - whew - for a minute there I thought I was losing it. The sound card I have now isn't connected - hence no music. I'll try plugging the earphones into the front jack and check it out - plus changing the memory line.

Thanks

I tried the EMM386.exe RAM line and got the same result. Also tried just a straight EMM386.exe but it made no difference. It's almost like the application is making a call for a file that isn't there or is somehow courrupted. Also, I've been launching from windows by clicking on Jack.bat and STILL get the bug but now I get dumped to desktop and get a nifty windows "illegal operation" error message. Clicking on "details" gives me a different memory address for the error everytime, like 0000-0002 or FFFF-FFFF, etc.

I played about 1/2 an hour into the game and filled up my "notes" page pretty fast. Saved my game, clicked on "Master" but the same thing happened, got kicked out of the game/or freeze.

The patch Jack.fix is odd too. It's a zip file and extracts to 3 files. "patch.bat" "jack.bat" and a VESA driver. "jack.bat" is a little bigger than the original "jack.bat" but when I click on "patch.bat" it want to access my a: drive. When I copy it to a floppy on A: drive and then click on it says it has copied files to my game directory and to type Jack to start the game. But the only thing it has done is actually ERASE the jack.bat file. This is reproducable. Weird.

Are you playing in Windows? I couldn't get it working in Windows. It would freeze pretty quickly. I had to boot to DOS mode to get it working.

Jenny100,

For some reason on my WIN98 system I can launch the game from Windows by clicking on Jack.bat or straight from DOS. Doesn't work on the Optiplex w/WIN 95 though. I have to launch from DOS.

Wow, I never thought that I would see the day when a game would cause more problems than Synnergist!!! I'm not saying Jack the Ripper is there quite yet, but it sounds like a contender.

I think in order to get the sound running in pure DOS mode, you need to download SB16 drivers that are just for this type of thing. They'll let you listend to music from your cd-rom in DOS. These came with the normal SB16 drivers download. I remember the readme that came with the DOS drivers had instructions for how to do this, but I didn't bother because I thought it wouldn't be needed. I guess I better think again!

Maybe specifying an exact memory range when you run emm386.exe would do the trick? I remember Synnergist making me do this.

I just thought I would chime in here with some comments that will be of no help to anyone, but I will post anyway. I also have this game and initially ran it on my 120 mHz computer with Win 95 and have not tried it on my newer one. Even with the old computer, although I got the game to run, the game seemed buggy in some ways and I can remember calling technical support and their telling me that the game needed a patch, which they never did send me. I shelved the game after that and forgot about it. However, I have seen reviews of this game where the reviewer presumably played the game in its entirety without problems so it must be playable in some fashion. I am wondering where you got the patch for this game as I might try to load it and see what happens.

lakerz,

I'll have to check out the readme. I didn't set DOS 7.0 in my WIN 95 up because all the games so far have run with sound out of that pure DOS there. I did try this game in DOS 6.22 as the manual talks about leaving WIN 3.1 and going to DOS. I even found mouse drivers for WIN 3.1/6.22 with an install program but still can't get it run at all in DOS 6.22.

As for the memory address, I'd need to know where to desginate the memory and there's no documentaion. But I don't think it's a memory thing. The game runs fine except for this single issue, unlike Synnergist which wouldn't even launch.

Marian,

I got the patch from here on Gameboomers in the Patches Scroll. It's called Jack.fix. As if erasing the .bat file is a fix. I did read on a newsgroup about someone waiting for a patch from Gametek that never came. So you weren't the only one. Harriet on JA reviewed this game. Maybe I'll query her.

Thanks, Mike. I may just try to install the game this week out of curiosity in the ongoing saga of getting it to run. Talking to Harriet is a good idea; I was thinking that if we could find someone who ran the game without problems it might provide some illumination on what's up.

Are you sure you aren't confusing the CD player for DOS with the drivers? There's a separate CD player for playing music CD's which is similar in function to the Windows CD Player in Start\Programs\Accessories\Entertainment.

That's interesting. I wonder if it's a Win 95 vs 98 thing or an Optiplex thing. I didn't try Jack the Ripper on any other computer besides the Optiplex.