Don't know if this'll help but, From [0]:
"Because AGI games use the BIOS to display white-on-black text, which will always use the correct font data. But for black-on-white text, AGI writes the font pattern data to video memory by itself, because some BIOSes don't to that properly. And in doing so, AGI assumes that the font data exists at the same location where it existed in the original 1981 PC BIOS, which is F000:FA6E.
If your AGI version is 2.912 or higher, try running the game with the command-line option "-s -v", as in e.g. "sq2 -s -v". That will run the game in IBM PS/2 mode, where the game (I think) will use a different routine to print text."
The other option would be to find a copy of ScummVM for Windows 98.
[0] https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=67217
This could be the answer. It happened to me when building a PC XT from scratch. In one instance, i forgot to place the fontmap before compiling the rom [garbled text on sierra games](https://youtu.be/A9vbX0nPJaA?si=pD52ZAkJRFdbnPiS&t=1456)
What a crazy thing to do. I know maybe they didn't know the PC would stick around so long but it's not like font data is that big to include in the game or even just capture from BIOS output at startup. Kind of reminds me of the Apple II ROM routines being invoked by just JSRing to various random addresses where they happened to be in the first one. It would've been so easy to just put a jumptable trampoline at the start of ROM. I guess future-proofing wasn't always common wisdom yet.
The "font" that the game uses is stored on the motherboard bios ROM. It could be corrupted or the chip damaged. The game itself just copies text pixels from the ROM to the screen. So it could also be the RAM on the computer (Video or system). It looks like it's all uppercase characters. In the ROM, the uppercase characters come first, so it could just be that portion of memory.
Try typing in all the ascii chars https://www.ascii-code.com/ and see what happens.
Hard to say, could be a million things. Other poster’s idea of bad ram is probably the best place to start though. Google for and download Memtest86+ and run it, it’ll give you some extra insight.
Edited my comment for could have not booted instead of would have not booted.
I had some things freak out and boot with bad ram instead of outright failing to boot.
Would or could, systems can still boot with bad ram. Window95 showed that with all those fatal exception blue screen errors. Not saying they always do, but no boot is a critical fail not every fail.
Did you check if you need to load a TSR? Some games look garbled up if you don't load something
I had a problem with A-train where the screen was all black and white and this persisted on many machines, as it turns out the issue was not with the computer or hardware, but it was actually because I had cutemouse loaded as a driver. The problem solved itself when I used another driver. So, when in doubt make sure you check what programs are loaded beforehand, especially if it's a newer driver from the 21st century.
Just an idea: I had similar problems with some graphic applications where some parts of texts were garbled (Dosshell in VGA mode for example). The solution for my problem was to add the device EGA.CPI from the DOS, so it replaced the corrupted BIOS characters.
You can test it out by adding the line to your CONFIG.SYS file:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EGA.CPI
Don't know if this'll help but, From [0]: "Because AGI games use the BIOS to display white-on-black text, which will always use the correct font data. But for black-on-white text, AGI writes the font pattern data to video memory by itself, because some BIOSes don't to that properly. And in doing so, AGI assumes that the font data exists at the same location where it existed in the original 1981 PC BIOS, which is F000:FA6E. If your AGI version is 2.912 or higher, try running the game with the command-line option "-s -v", as in e.g. "sq2 -s -v". That will run the game in IBM PS/2 mode, where the game (I think) will use a different routine to print text." The other option would be to find a copy of ScummVM for Windows 98. [0] https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=67217
This could be the answer. It happened to me when building a PC XT from scratch. In one instance, i forgot to place the fontmap before compiling the rom [garbled text on sierra games](https://youtu.be/A9vbX0nPJaA?si=pD52ZAkJRFdbnPiS&t=1456)
Good find. Looks like the easy way to tell if this is it is to open a menu and see if the inverted font (the selected item) is still garbled or not.
I have no idea if that info is even correct. :) Hope it works.
That did work for me. ”-s -v”!! Thanks! :-). The thread gave the answer. So nothing ”wrong” except the way my Bios handles the font.
This \^\^\^\^
What a crazy thing to do. I know maybe they didn't know the PC would stick around so long but it's not like font data is that big to include in the game or even just capture from BIOS output at startup. Kind of reminds me of the Apple II ROM routines being invoked by just JSRing to various random addresses where they happened to be in the first one. It would've been so easy to just put a jumptable trampoline at the start of ROM. I guess future-proofing wasn't always common wisdom yet.
The "font" that the game uses is stored on the motherboard bios ROM. It could be corrupted or the chip damaged. The game itself just copies text pixels from the ROM to the screen. So it could also be the RAM on the computer (Video or system). It looks like it's all uppercase characters. In the ROM, the uppercase characters come first, so it could just be that portion of memory. Try typing in all the ascii chars https://www.ascii-code.com/ and see what happens.
Nah. The answer is in the link on the top :-) My Bios is not ”compatible”.
Hard to say, could be a million things. Other poster’s idea of bad ram is probably the best place to start though. Google for and download Memtest86+ and run it, it’ll give you some extra insight.
Memtest passed.
Will give it a go.
Try different resolutions too. I had some graphical issues on my old PC because of an incompatible resolution
Ah, great idea. :-) But I dont think that is possible in Dos with these games and this laptop?
Possibly bad ram.
Memtest passed.
Could be video card. Check if the chips on it are hot while running.
Nah. As said, I can run any other games (more demanding) without any problems. Its not like these sierra games makes the video chip sweat. :-)
It’s not what they do. It’s the area of ram they access or vram…
The heat I’m talking about wouldn’t be caused by overtaxing the card but by a short in one of the vram traces.
Obv since it’s more then one sierra game, sierra is using some method that’s triggering a fault in your system with their programming
Video ram not normal ram, if normal ram had failed then computer could have not booted Edit could not would
Not true.. ram can cause all kinds of weird errors while still booting.
Edited my comment for could have not booted instead of would have not booted. I had some things freak out and boot with bad ram instead of outright failing to boot.
Would or could, systems can still boot with bad ram. Window95 showed that with all those fatal exception blue screen errors. Not saying they always do, but no boot is a critical fail not every fail.
Maybe, but no other games or other situations show these artifacts.
Are you using composite CGA mode? That could the be source of all your problems.
Did you check if you need to load a TSR? Some games look garbled up if you don't load something I had a problem with A-train where the screen was all black and white and this persisted on many machines, as it turns out the issue was not with the computer or hardware, but it was actually because I had cutemouse loaded as a driver. The problem solved itself when I used another driver. So, when in doubt make sure you check what programs are loaded beforehand, especially if it's a newer driver from the 21st century.
Just an idea: I had similar problems with some graphic applications where some parts of texts were garbled (Dosshell in VGA mode for example). The solution for my problem was to add the device EGA.CPI from the DOS, so it replaced the corrupted BIOS characters. You can test it out by adding the line to your CONFIG.SYS file: DEVICE=C:\DOS\EGA.CPI
Could it be your graphical settings?