Jarod

[color=black]Few days all of my old DOS games became unplayable. Anything was OK I got FX as well as MIDI than after one reboot it stopped working (I didn’t do anything special like installing / uninstalling some apps etc.). Ale game ware configured like this I/O 220 IRQ 5 DMA 1 MIDI 330. My SETBLASTER variable in autoexec.bat looks like this: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 so its pretty OK. First thing after that failure I tried to change all of SETBLASTER variables. There was no change, and it still didn’t fix it. I also tried adding T and H variable to no effect, except it was time consuming and I got pissed off . After few minutes of thinking I got idea to change I/O port for my SB in device manager to 0220 but to no effect. It’s stills say “sound blaster not responding on port” for sound effects and “no MPU-401 device found” when trying to test under sound configuration program (setup.exe setsound.exe etc.).There is no MPU-401 interface in device manager but I don’t remember is that normal for kX drivers.[/color]
[color=black]My sound card is SB Live! 5.1 Digital (print on card says SB220, but kX says it’s SB222). Unfortunately I don’t have original CD with drivers to compare / test and those on creative website don’t work. I’m using Windows 98 SE with SP 2.01 and kX: 5, 10, 00, 3537 – debug. I’m also little puzzled by this: Irq: 0x16(22) (under “about kX drivers”). What those numbers mean? (x16 refers to hex notation? But it don’t get why there is 0 and what is 22). Help me guyz I have to save the Earth form aliens .[/color]

Mata Hari

For if all else fails, this will always work: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/


On the real problem... I didn't even know kX had any dos support at all...
(you do know it's a musicians choice of driver rite?)

Jarod

[color=black][/color]

[color=black]DOSBox doesn’t run under win 98 and even if it would it supports only FM Synthesis for MIDI. I run those games in DOS box window (a real DOS box not the one you ware talking about) not in pure DOS environment (is there a way to actually do that?) that’s different.[/color]

Doug W

I have been wanting to use an old DOS tracker program IMPULSE TRACKER and so at times I have looked into getting the SBLive working in pure DOS, rather than DOS emulation. I think that I am just going to give up and put my AWE64 back in one of my older computers and set it up there.

There are 2 solutions I have read about concerning running the SBLive in Real DOS. The first solution, I have tried briefly but kept getting a "Could not initialize SBLive" message. If you get it working let me know:

1.
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/other.php
Download sblive.zip

2.
Never tried the next solution:
http://www.computing.net/windows31/w...rum/11093.html

Good luck

++++EDIT++++

Well I thought that I should try both these solutions myself to see what would happen and no luck whatsoever. I am back to my AWE64 for DOS programs.

Doug W

Tried it one more time and had success. Was able to get things working using 1 from the last post

1.
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/other.php
Download sblive.zip

I changed the SB IRQ to 9 in the Autoexec.bat as below. I rebooted and hit F8 and chose COMMAND PROMPT, then I was able to play the DOS based tracker program which detected the SBLive as a sound blaster 16 card. I switched my speakers to the front (green) speaker out and could play music.

SET BLASTER=A220 I9 D1 H5 P330 t6

When I started the program from a W98 DOS box, it detected the soundcard as a Sound Blaster Pro-Port 220, IRQ5, DMA1 and played fine from the Rear (black) speaker out.

I suspect this solution may allow you to play your DOS games also.

Jarod

[color=black]I just tried both of your s suggested solutions. 2nd solution doesn’t detect my SB at any port when launching install.exe so I moved to the 1st one. After about 1h of struggling I managed to make sbinint.exe detect my sound card but that is about it. All games hung up immediately after launching :-(. Any way thx for suggestions. [/color]

JGSF

Why all this trouble to play DOS games?

Why don't you just get an old 486 or something... ? It's dirt cheap.

Maddogg6

Just to be clear - these numbers need to match up with how the card is seen in BIOS correct?

So you *may* need to disbale plug an play OS in bios and set the cards resources manually - then adjust the above setting in autoexec.bat to match the cards actual DMA/IRQ/IO - I forget what the t and H are for...

Jarod

[color=#000000]I have old Pentium 60 and 200 MMX as well SB 64V PCI witch is really combination for old DOS stuff. All I wanted is to solve this mysterious failure ;-). [/color]

Jarod

What numbers? If you mean variables after SET BLASTER that depends. When considering DOS its best not to set same values because it can cause trouble but that really depends on specific situation.
What the point of manually changing resources in windows when u can just change them in autoexec.bat to those that are already there? And again anything depends from OS soundcard etc. For example when I activate on board AC97 crapcard I can set any I/O (or even IRQ or DMA) in sound configuration program for any dos game and it will detect it. My SB Live! behaves completely different. It’s just don’t work at all (I am still speaking about DOS games run under win 98) no matter what values are in SET BLASTER variable. It makes no difference if they match (or don’t match) those values seen by windows. Remember that emulating is something like creating virtual soundcard. U can change variables in SET BLASTER and on overall your soundcard doesn’t really change them in windows. T variable is used to “tell” what type You are emulating (search in google because I only remember tjat T3 is SB Pro 2.0 and T6 is SB 16 32/64 AWE). H stands for high DMA (16 bit DMA). Sometimes it’s same as normal DMA (D variable) sometimes you need to specify it independently (like D5 H7).

Mata Hari

it runs under anything which is supported by SDL (like linux, OS X, OS/2)

It supports MPU-301 & Gravis Ultrasound (and a few of others, like sb16, adlib, tandy-3)

I know that, and in a pure environment, yes... pickup the live dos driver (google)...

dj_stick

i used to use a program called abandonloader. You could try that

__________________

Doug W

dj,

I just downloaded abandonloader and VDM sound as suggested by the program and it works great with kX,my SBLive and Win2K at work and my old DOS program Impulse Tracker!

I don't think that a version of VDM is available for Win98SE though.

I'll try Abandonloader on my Win98SE puter at home and see if that works on my DOS tracker without VDM.

Thanks,
Doug

Jarod

[color=#000000]I didn’t used it very much and I didn’t notice that there is VDMS.ini. Thx for advice [/color]

[color=#000000]I already did that. It doesn’t work[/color]

Jarod

[color=#000000]This program doesn’t really have much to do with sound emulation in direct way but I like it anyway. It makes configuration etc. match faster and simpler :-)[/color]

Doug W

Jarod,

It turns out the using my tracking program in a 98Se DOS box worked sporadically-I often got "Insufficient Memory" messages, so I messed around with a 98SE boot disk and got the SBLive working pretty well for my DOS tracker.

I would think that it would also work with your DOS games. Let me know if you are still around and want more info.