Jones in the Fast Lane

(recorded from a real MT-32)

Jones in the Fast Lane Updates

Jones in the Fast Lane CD's original requirements:

MS-DOS 5.0 or Windows 3.0 or greater
286 or better
2x CD-ROM
2 MB RAM
VGA
Adlib, Roland MT-32 (and LAPC-1), Sound Blaster, Tandy / PCjr
Mouse

Audio Problems
- Poor quality or no sound
- Unable to initialize your audio hardware

Extras
- Jones in the Fast Lane Manual (PDF file) [2.43 MB]
- Jones in the Fast Lane Quick Reference Card (PDF file) [2.60 MB]
- Find it on eBay
- Google

Audio Problems

Audio problems are common in the later Sierra DOS SCI games. There's no single fix for all these games. You can try the Windows version, if running on 32-bit Windows.

Problem - Poor Quality / No Sound (Win9x and XP):
The game has no sound or the music is of poor quality.

Solution 1 (preferred):
Play the game in DOSBox. It also will work with the MT-32 sound module, if you are fortunate to have one.

Solution 2:
Use VDMSound. The game work well with VDMSound. The sound will be as good as your audio hardware, and as with DOSBox, it works with the MT-32 sound module.

Solution 3:
Play the game with FreeSCI, a third party Interpreter for Sierra's early SCI games.

Solution 4 (DOS/Win9x):
Install DOS drivers for your soundcard. Without DOS drivers installed you won't have sound in a DOS window in Windows 9x. If you can't find DOS drivers for your soundcard, there is an alpha (developmental) version of VDMS that you can try.

Problem - Unable to initialize your audio hardware:
On starting the game you get the message:

Unable to initialize your audio hardware

Normally, this error is timer related. It only occurs on computers faster than those of when the games were originally released, however, Jones in the fastlane CD in both DOSBox and VDMSound both may give this error. Setting the game to run without sound (digital audio) will allow it run with only music and no speech. VDMSound just locks up upon execution, regardless of which audio option is selected.

Using DOSBox will usually allow you to avoid the Soundblaster initialization error message, but changing cycles in DOSBox with Jones in the fastlane CD has no effect. GOSiERRA v3 gives the error: "Can't be. The file, you specified, is not a Sierra driver" and no other AudBlast.drv seems to work.

Solution:
Play the game in DOSBox. Jones in the Fast Lane CD (with voices) works well with DOSBox using Soundblaster as sound and music devices. Even the Windows version can be played in DOSBox if you install Windows 3x in it, first.

MOUNT the Jones CD or a folder that you have copied all of the files to as a CD. You have to INSTALL the game. Even if you play the game from the hard drive - just mount the directory with all the data on it as a CD and run the game using the batchfile on the 'C:" drive.

You can use a custom dosbox.conf file to automatically mount your drives and launch the game. Just add the following to the [autoexec] section at the bottom of the dosbox.conf file (this assumes that you have the game in "C:\Sierra\Jones" and your CD is "D:\". If you have the game someplace else, change the paths to match yours):

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

mount C "C:\Sierra\Jones"
mount D D:\ -t cdrom -ioctl
c:
PAUSE
jones

The PAUSE command is important to add a delay, otherwise you will get the Soundblaster initialization error, again. If you copy the CD to your harddrive in say "C:\Sierra\Jones\CD", change the line that mounts the CD to match (i.e. mount D "C:\Sierra\Jones\CD" -t cdrom -ioctl).

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