Onboard sound for DOS games - Win98SE

[Bovon]

I got a couple of old DOS games I like...one is the original Wolf3D.. In my (now) backup machine running Win981st, and a Creative Labs ISA video card, I can run these games withing Windows just fine and the sound works. Now that I have a later board (Iwill KK266) with Win98SE..the game runs ok..just no sound.

Is there a workaround for this?...

In the old machine, I did not have the sound working in a pure DOS environment.. there is nothing in the autoexec or Config.sys to run sound at DOS..it just runs under Windows... but this onboard sound doesn't work like that..

Any help?..

[pyssdogg]

make a dos boot disk

add the SET BLASTER command to the autoexec.bat file

and a DEVICE entry to the config.sys file

[Bovon]

Why a DOS boot disk?.. I have pleanty boot disks, but play these games inside Windows..not from DOS.

In Win98 with a sound card, there was nothing added to DOS to have sound in the games.

[richard_cocks]

bovon - I had the same problem using normal cmd prompt, then found "dosbox" a dos emulator which seemed to give me at least some sound (for some reason I can only get roland emulation working and not sound balster so it still sounds awful heh)

but then my card is a weird non-creative one.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

[Bovon]

Let me back up and punt one time... Either I am not understanding the responses, or I have not made my situation clear...

I have onboard sound..supposedly sound blaster compatible. I have a couple of older DOS type games, one golf and one Wolf3D.

I do not play these games in any DOS environment.. I simply run the executable from within Windows 98 SE (old machine had 98 1st ed if that makes any difference). The games come up the same way when executed from withing 98 SE...just no sound, nothing..nada.

I can disable the onboard sound, install a sound card and go from there ...but its just not that important.. I only play one of those games maybe once a month or so...when I'm bored...

I suspect it may be some kind of setting from control panel >> multimedia perhaps, but I can't seem to find the right one to fiddle with..

Thanks for the thoughts however.

[rraehal]

Bovon,

Your sound card will most likely work with your DOS apps. It most likely is not configured properly.

There are a few things to check.

First Go Into Device Manager. Look in the Multimeda(Sound, Video, Game Controllers). You should find a device for your sound card that emulates the sound driver in the DOS environment.

Second, look in the C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file. You should see a line like this: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1... or similar.

The Blaster line should match the settings in the device you found in device manager.

If both of these are present, you should be able to configure your games with those setting to use sound. Even if you are not running the APPS directly from DOS, they still need to real mode DOS drivers/support to play sound. Older Games like Wolf3D can not use the Windows 98 vxd drivers.

Maybe you can tell us what Kind of Motherbaord and sound card you have so we can givew more specifics.

[Bovon]

Originally posted by rraehal
Maybe you can tell us what Kind of Motherbaord and sound card you have so we can givew more specifics.

Now that I have a later board (Iwill KK266) with Win98SE..the game runs ok..just no sound.

I have onboard sound..supposedly sound blaster compatible.

Ok. I'll look into the adding the statements to the autoexec.bat and config.sys and see what happens. Its just strange as heck that all this was not necessary in my backup machine...which is a socket seven AT board with a Creative Labs CT4520 ISA sound card. There is nothing (nada) in the autoexec.bat or config.sys in that system..which is Win98 1st ed.

This machine has Win98SE (and Win2K) installed and onboard (built in) sound by a chip on the motherboard. Why should onboard sound require statements in the DOS envirnment when a sound card does not?..

[rraehal]

Back in the early days of sound the BLASTER environemt variable was needed for sound cards to work.

This is the full syntax:
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

A = The I/O port of the sound card
I = The IRQ of the sound card
D = The low DMA setting of the sound card
H = The high DMA setting of the sound card
P = MIDI Port I/O address
T = I have no idea any more (Haven't used it in so long)

When Windows 95 came out, manufacturers started to make a DOS environemnt emulator drive of sorts. It is an additional driver to the Windows sound card. If you look in Device Manger for both cards you may find the driver on your backup system and not the main system. It depends on the sound card and its drivers as to whether or not the DOS additions are there.

[rraehal]

I found a picture that shows what I am trying to say.

The emulation windows driver controls sound in DOS. Other devices from different manufacturers have this ability.

That board has a C-media CMI8738 sound card.
Here is a driver for that sound chipset:
http://www.cmedia.com.tw/8x38/95-98-...WIN9x_1096.zip

It may add the DOS support so you do not need to manually configure it.

[Edit]
Here is a link provided by ASUS with pure DOS drivers:
http://www.asus.com/pub/asus/misc/audio/cmdos.zip - It may explain the configuration of your CARD as well.
[/Edit]

Sorry I missed the board type in the first post.

[richard_cocks]

Originally posted by Bovon
Let me back up and punt one time... Either I am not understanding the responses, or I have not made my situation clear...

I have onboard sound..supposedly sound blaster compatible. I have a couple of older DOS type games, one golf and one Wolf3D.

I do not play these games in any DOS environment.. I simply run the executable from within Windows 98 SE (old machine had 98 1st ed if that makes any difference). The games come up the same way when executed from withing 98 SE...just no sound, nothing..nada.

I can disable the onboard sound, install a sound card and go from there ...but its just not that important.. I only play one of those games maybe once a month or so...when I'm bored...

I suspect it may be some kind of setting from control panel >> multimedia perhaps, but I can't seem to find the right one to fiddle with..

Thanks for the thoughts however.

yeah dosbox runs from within windows, like the command prompt but more powerful and seemed to give me my sound back.

[Bovon]

Thanks guys.. I'll try these suggestions maybe tomorrow. Today I have my hands full with Win2K 'messing with me'...may be an upgrade of Windows Media Player to Ver 9.0.. I now read where others have been having problems with that upgrade..

Thanks...

[richard_cocks]

oooh, I don't touch any wmp over the one that I have which came with win2k that is 6.4, I found the wmp7+ series to be horribly full of bloat, but taht's now off topic.

[Bovon]

Well rraehal...I am batting 0 still. I got the later drivers from the URL (not the ASUS set) and did a driver update only...that didn't get it, so I did an install of the application... no help there either. It has updated the drivers, which were 2000 version, now 2001 I think. I added the line, SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6 to the autoexec.bat file...no help. I changed that to a line that I had tried previously from an earlier cmedia setup,
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 T4, plus:

C:\PCIAUD\SETAUDIO
C:\PCIAUD\C3DMIX /MFF000 /FFF000 /WFF000 /L00100 /E00100 /A00100 /C00100 /P00000 /400000 /R0f0ff /D040ff

still no help. I have tried that link you posted from ASUS,
http://www.asus.com/pub/asus/misc/audio/cmdos.zip, and get a 404 error.

Soooooooo... I am still right at where I started at...sound in Windows, but nothing in the DOS games...

Any more suggestions?..

[Bovon]

I meant to add a screenshot of my Device Manager but forgot it..not that it will tell you much of anything.

[rraehal]

It looks like the DOS Mode MPU-401 emulator is for the music in DOS games and the C-Media PCI Audio Legacy Device should be the sound blaster compatible portion of your driver set.

Look at the properties of the Legacy device. What are the IRQ, IO, DMA's etc. Those setting should match the BLASTER line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. You might also try to manually set the setting in a DOS game by picking a sound driver in the application/game setup and manually assigning the hardware settings in setup.

I know to make sound work In Warcraft 2 you had to run SETUP.EXE from the WAR2 directory and select the sound options. Sometimes the autodetect worked, but not always.