Sound for DOS games on modern hardware?

From: G Manuel <gmanuel_at_gmconsulting.net>
Date: Thu Jun 19 17:49:00 2003

Have you considered just running 2 sound cards in the system. I have a
system that I use as an audio mixer for MP3's that has 2 sound cards in it.
One I use to monitor and cue music while the other is the feed to the amp
and speaker system. It is running W98 and has one SB Live and one Generic
noname card (can't think of it off hand... it is SB compatible). Just set
the cards to different I/O and IRQ's and you whould be good to go. I tried
it by loading the DOS SB drivers in a custom config.sys and autoexec.bat for
Doom and ran it in a DOS window and it worked great.

Hope this helps,
Greg Manuel

-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-admin_at_classiccmp.org]On
Behalf Of Ethan Dicks
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:52 PM
To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: Sound for DOS games on modern hardware?


In a fit of nostalgia, I was wanting to cruise around "Wolfenstein 3D"
and "Spear of Destiny" - I still have my original *purchased* copies
from 10+ years ago (on-topic!). What I'm having problems with is
getting the sound to work. I've tried in two different machines,
the "odder" one being my A7V motherboard with a PCI Turtle-Beach
Montego Bay II card (it has no ISA slots). I've tried fiddling with
the "SET BLASTER" statement in the AUTOEXEC.BAT, but I can't come up
with a way to get either game to see the PCI sound card.

This is after booting direct to the underlying DOS in Windows 98,
so it's not a "DOS-in-a-Window" problem.

Are there any good sound card probe programs for DOS that could
go looking for my card and prove it can be found? I know the IRQ,
but being a non-Creative Labs card, I can't verify the I/O setting,
nor the DMA channel, and especially not the "T"ype for the BLASTER
environment variable.

Has anyone else tried running ancient software that wants to talk
to sound cards on modern hardware? I expect to have similar problems
with adventure games and the like, so I am looking for a general
solution. "Try an older computer" is not a helpful suggestion. I
am limited in how much physical space I am permitted to occupy at
my S.O.'s place. An additional computer would cause a lot more trouble
than it's worth.

-ethan
Received on Thu Jun 19 2003 - 17:49:00 BST