Game not running right (ariobros)

[No More Pirates]

#12341

I got the game from hear
https://dosgames.com/game/ario-bros/

But its running way to fast. I did a video of it so please see it hear
https://streamable.com/vup92v

BTW the site where I got it from, there forum dose not work. keep getting error messages all the time

[No More Pirates]

#12342

PS

I just read the readme notes/ .TXT file in the downloaded file which quotes the following

**************************************************
ARIO BROS BY: DAVID TRETTER 1983

THIS GAME CLOSELY FOLLOWS THE ARCADE GAME AFTER WHICH IT IS MADE. IT
WILL RUN ON BOTH COLOR AND MONO SYSTEMS, WITH JOYSTICK OR KEYBOARD CONTROLS.
THE FIRST LEVELS ARE VERY SLOW, BUT IT GETS FASTER. IF YOU FIND ANY BUGS, CALL
DAVID TRETTER AT (301) 622-3976. NOTE:THIS GAME SHOULD BE COMPILED.

OBJECT: TO GET POINTS WHILE KEEPING THE PLUMBING CLEAR OF PESTS.

FOR KEYBOARD CONTROLS, YOU USE THE ASD KEYS TO MOVE AND THE SPC TO
JUMP. ON THE JOYSTICK, THE BUTTONS JUMP. YOU TEMPORARILY FREEZE PESTS BY
JUMPING UP AND HITTING THE LEDGE RIGHT UNDER THEM. THEN JUST RUN UP AND GET
THEM. THE SECOND GROUP OF PESTS NEEDS TO BE HIT TWICE, WHILE THE THIRD GROUP
JUMP. AFTER YOU GET A PEST, A SMALL COIN WILL APPEAR. GET THE COIN FOR
POINTS. THE BOX ON THE SCREEN IS CALLED POW. WHEN YOU HIT IT, IT IS LIKE YOU
JUMPED UP AND HIT THE WHOLE SCREEN AT ONCE. THE PESTS FREEZE, AND YOU GET
THEM. THE POW GETS SMALLER EACH TIME, SO DON’T WASTE IT. THE FIREBALL KILLS
YOU, SO WATCH OUT. IF YOU HIT THE FIREBALL, YOU GET A BUNDLE OF POINTS BUT
THEN IT STARTS TO SPEED. IT SOUNDS HARD, BUT YOU’LL GET THE HANG OF IT.

DAVID TRETTER
******************************************

[No More Pirates]

#12343

it says in the above test

*******************
IF YOU FIND ANY BUGS, CALL
DAVID TRETTER AT (301) 622-3976
****************************

I think its a America phone number. I am in the UK and dont have capacity to call outside of the UK

So if someone could do it for me and post back then I would appreciate it very much!

Thanks

[voxel]

#12344

Very old games sometimes only work correctly on a specific speed of cpu. If you want to play this you’ll need to find a way to slow down your cpu to the expected speed. In an emulator this is easy, on real hardware it’s more involved.

But obviously you should first try calling Dave on the phone number from 1983, maybe it’s still current.

[DJ_HiP]

#12345

The game was designed for a CPU that was between 4 and 12 MHz (IBM XT / 286), so there is no way to run it on a modern system natively.

You’ll either have to emulate it in Dosbox and bring the cycles down to somewhere in the 100’s or get an old IBM XT computer.

[No More Pirates]

#12346

im not sure what speed this processor is but its a pentium 4. is there any way I can slow it down in the BIOS?

Also did you not read my entire thread? I said i was in the UK and did not have capacity to dial outside of the uk even to europe never mind america. can you do this for me please? (if you are in america that is)
Thanks

[No More Pirates]

#12347

its a 775 socket MB. I dont know what speed it it. but I do happen to have 2 spare 775 processors

The first one is a celeron D 336 and is based on the prescott arch. So basically first gen socket 775 material 2.80GHZ. which I know dose run the MB

And the second one is a pentium D 945 is a pressler dual core 3.4GHZ. Which WONT run on this MB

So you bough think it is a processor issue and not a RAM or game issue then?

So if it supposed to run at 4 and 12 MHz. Then we are about 500 times faster then that! Again wonder if can change settings in BIOS

[rnlf]

#12348

I’m not sure if you’re trolling but on the off chance that you’re not:

There’s no way you’ll get your Pentium 4 to run that slowly. As others said: use emulation like DOSBox. It’ll run fine on your Windows and you can change the speed to whatever you want.

[DJ_HiP]

#12350

Further to this, unfortunately any phone numbers, fax numbers, BBS links and quite often email addresses listed in the old README.TXT files in these games are long gone and no longer valid.

On top of this, any support from the official creator or company has also ceased, so there simply is no way to provide feedback or seek help from the original source.

Just a part of the fun with dealing with very old sofware (and trying to emulate the hardware).

As rnlf said, your current computer is upwards of 1000x too fast for this game and there is nothing you can do about it at a native level. All that is possible for these old games is to emulate the environment (dosbox etc) to slow the virtual CPU down to an acceptable level.

[No More Pirates]

#12355

If you have ever sen the 8 Bit Guy on YouTube then you will see he mails back to them quite often

I read on duckduckgo that it is possible to slow the clock speed down of the CPU.

Failing that then should I look for a new motherboard with 8086/ 8888 or 284 processor?

[DJ_HiP]

#12356

Obtaining such hardware now will be extremely expensive and may not even be possible!

As we’ve said a few times, Emulation is the only real way to achieve what you are trying to do.

[TigerQuoll]

#12357

Definitely 110% agree with the recommendation to emulate. DOSBox is great, and it will run on something as humble as Windows 9x (allegedly).
And if you’re willing to get a bit more technical PCem or 86box are arguably even better (but with more demanding system requirements).

Close second best option is a program called Moslo:
http://hpaa.com/moslo/moslo.asp
It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, but it’s something you can run from the command line in native DOS or from inside Windows to eat up your computer’s cycles and slow down games. It may make your system unstable, or not play nice with certain programs, but it’s been a pretty standard option for decades and on paper does exactly what you’re after I think. There seems to be an evaluation copy for free on the website, and maybe there are other free programs that do the same thing to be found elsewhere.

You can also slow down CPUs with certain BIOS configurations, but there’s a limit to how much they can slow it down (probably not 500%!), and also may make the system unstable. You really have to know what you’re doing as well.

If you want to get into real hardware, that’s awesome – it’s great fun. But it’s a whole thing, and you need a lot of patience and technical know-how.

You’ll need way more than a motherboard – you’ll want a controller card, graphics card, RAM (if it doesn’t have it already), floppy drives, hard drives, power supply, ribbon cables and probably more. Very very little new, or even 20 year old, hardware will work with a motherboard that age – you will need to be building a whole computer from scratch, with all secondhand parts, being very careful you get stuff that is compatible and suitable for your needs. Or get a prebuilt vintage system that is either overpriced or highly sketchy.

There are also a few brand new laptops with 386 and even older CPUs in them coming out of china at the moment. I’ve seen them around on ebay. You could try your luck with one of them, but you might just be buying a very expensive paperweight.

Again I really want to stress the point: I highly recommend trying DOSbox or even moslo before getting into the more hardcore options.

[No More Pirates]

#12358

I saw on ebay a while ago someone selling the mother board bases for 8088/ 8066 CPUs. bread boards i think they called them. they where about just over a fiver! But you had to get all the components for them

[No More Pirates]

#12359

September 10, 2026 at 7:06 am #12357 Reply

Definitely 110% agree with the recommendation to emulate. DOSBox is great, and it will run on something as humble as Windows 9x (allegedly).
And if you’re willing to get a bit more technical PCem or 86box are arguably even better (but with more demanding system requirements).

Close second best option is a program called Moslo:
http://hpaa.com/moslo/moslo.asp
It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, but it’s something you can run from the command line in native DOS or from inside Windows to eat up your computer’s cycles and slow down games.
************************
Do you think it will install on DOS 6.22?

[No More Pirates]

#12360

i have uploaded an attachment of the BIOS
Hope this helps!

Attachments:

1. 

   image-for-dos-club.jpg
   

[TigerQuoll]

#12362

Without seeing them, I guess the boards you saw are those barebones hobby kits that sometimes show up for building a motherboard from scratch. Very rewarding if you have the skill and time, but will require you to source all the components (chips, resistors, capacitors etc) yourself, and expect considerable electronics, soldering and diagnostics skills. In the end it might cost you more than a proper secondhand motherboard.
Even if it’s not one of those, you should be highly suspicious of any motherboard you get for a fiver.
Either way you still end up with just a motherboard and will need all the other components.

Your BIOS seems pretty standard. As others have said, throttling a pentium 4 down to XT speeds is just not feasible through the BIOS. You could conceivably disable all sorts of caches and advanced features for optimizing speed, but you’d be lucky to cut its cycles in half, let alone get overall performance down to the speed you’re targetting. It’s like trying to tweak the engine of a supercar to make it perform like a moped – that engine simply doesn’t want to go that slow, and you’ll probably end up with all sorts of unintended side-effects in the process.

As for moslo:
The basic version of moslo is supposed to work on practically any version of DOS. Just download it and give it a shot!
If it’s not right for you, or you don’t like that it’s just an evaluation copy, do a search for “MS-DOS slowdown utility”. There seem to be a number of them floating about. Just pick one that sounds good and try it out! They should all come with documentation explaining how to use them.
These programs can’t break your computer – at worst they might make it act a bit weird while they are running.