MechWarrior 2: Resource Forum

Hi folks,

Great forum, I'm so glad I found an active community for this awesome game!


The problem is when I try to get into combat in any way (Instant action, campaign with either economy or no economy) When the game tries to load up the PC will spontaneously reboot. I've tried this on a couple of PCs that I installed DOS on, same problem. So I'm stuck surfing the UI...

I'm so obsessed with this game I bought a contemporary PC and installed DOS on it to run the MW2 series.

My system specs:
DOS 6.0
MW2 Mercenaries - full retail version (installed the DOS version) 1.0 I think (I've never patched it)
Dell - Pentium 4 (2.8Ghz, yes you read that right)
Nvidia 5600 GPU
2Gb RAM
6Gb HDD
PCI 128 Soundblaster card

Mech2 and GBL both run without issue on this PC

Mercs is the problem.

I can run the game, see the beginning CG movie and get into the UI for the game no problem. When it's time to get into the actual combat, it just reboots!

The problem seems to be the PCI soundcard. It can emulate a DOS soundblaster using a TSR named SBPCI.COM.

I have narrowed it down to the soundcard because if I disable it in Autoexec & Config.sys the game actually runs! But without sound. I really want sound.

I've surfed the web for expertise on the SBPCI utility to no avail. There is a .ini file that supposedly allows you to change the IRQ of the PCI card but whatever I input the utility ignores and uses IRQ 4 at address f000. This IRQ is for the PCI card. It successfully designates IRQ5 & DMA1 for the soundblaster parm that the game sees. The Mercs sound config utility can actually see IRQ5 & DMA1 and can even successfully test it during configuration.

I've used MSD to figure out if there are IRQs or free memory regions I can use and there are but I can't configure SBPCI to listen to me.

The problem seems to be when Mercs tries to display game graphics and use sound at the same time (This happens at all three resolutions in the game) This is stumper since Mech2 and GBL work fine with the same exact hardware.

Has anyone run into the same thing?

Thanks again so much for the great community resource!

The PCI sound cards often caused problems with DOS games. You may be better off using an ISA card. Try getting a SB16 or SBpro on Ebay. However, I cannot guarantee this will work.

I still have my 200MHz Pentium stored somewhere, but haven't looked into it for years. Emulation works quite well these days.

Believe me, I would LOVE to use the ISA soundblaster cards. The PC is too new to have ISA interfaces on the mobo.

Also, dosbox runs mercs terribly. My gaming machine is a quad core with an ATI HD 5890 so there's plenty of horsepower.

The DOS machine above runs mech2 and GBL BUTTER SMOOTH. You can see it when you track a laser bolt either coming or going. That's why I'm unwilling to go back to dosbox. At least for the mechwarrior 2 games.


One thing I heard was that an SB LIve card actually gives native SB support in real mode DOS. No emulation like the PCI28 SB is doing. I've never heard this before but wanted to see what other people's experiences have been. Anyone?

What is wrong with Mercs in DosBox on your quad core machine?

Alternatives include running Mercs in Windows XP (32-Bit) Win95 compatibility mode, using VMWare or Virtual PC, or putting together a system from the era of MW2, using components from that era (200MHz PC, ISA sound card). MechVM can help setting up MW2 on Windows XP.

Problem solved!

I'll post the solution here in case anyone wants to go the pure hardware route to getting MW2 Mercs up and running

I replaced the SoundBlaster PCI with the SBLive! and it works great. The SBPCI uses emulation in DOS apparently and consumes an extra IRQ. SBLive actually supports DOS natively so no extra IRQ is taken. That solved the problem

All I had to do was re-reun setsound for the 3 MW2 games and they all worked perfectly!

Also since the GPU (Geforce 5600) blits like a mutha the game runs super smooth. The only thing I noticed is that in Mercs if there are too many things going on screen the game will disappear all 3D objects until the particles/lighting/etc settle down to a more manageable level. I solve this mainly by not using missiles which create a lot of visual eye candy. Projectiles and lasers work much better!

Finding the DOS drivers for either the SBPCI or the SBLive is pretty difficult though. There is one place I did manage to find them. It's here: http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/snddosdr.htm

I hope this helps someone someday!