Text Glitches in Old DOS games

[SubwayD]

I'm running a Windows 98 SE system for playing older games, but finding a few old DOS titles are giving me glitched out text.

This is what SimCity looked like at the menu screen:


Might be a per-game thing, but I get the sense it's indicative of a larger problem as I've seen the same problem at least twice now, coincidentally in the the DOS version of SimCity 2000.

Any ideas what might be going on?

[BC_Programmer]

They are DOS games, you should run them under Pure DOS. (Start->Shut Down, Restart in MS-DOS Mode)

EDIT: the reason they don't work when running under Windows is because they redefine the character set used for text mode, and that doesn't work when running under Windows.

[jannugimes]

What type of glitch is it

[DaveLembke]

As BC stated; The glitch is caused by this:

The reason they don't work when running under Windows is because they redefine the character set used for text mode, and that doesn't work when running under Windows.

[SubwayD]

As BC stated; The glitch is caused by this:

I've actually had this problem under a pure DOS environment as well. Hooked the system up to an old hard drive and did a full MS DOS 6.22 install from the ground up and the games still threw a fit.

It's odd and, under further inspection, seems to effect only old Maxis installers?

Weird and annoying, but not exactly a massive problem with the system.
Still, I can only wonder what might be the issue. It's probably something dumb like whatever clever text Maxis was trying to pull, it doesn't sit right with some component somewhere within my PC.
As it's been said, it's no doubt my fault for going a little too modern with the hardware for a dedicated 90s gaming system.

But, thankfully, I found the windows version of Simcity and Simcity 2000, so disaster (partially) adverted!

Thanks for your input, everyone.