(no subject)

[dolari]

Jenn: "So I'm looking for a PCI Sound Blaster Card that will work in DOS to play old DOS games."
Techie: "Dude, totally get the Audigy. It works like a charm, I'm playing DOS Mame right now with it in my system!"
Jenn: "There're three different types of Audigy cards, which one should I pick up?"
Techie: "They're all good, dude...."

(Picks up Audigy LS, finds no DOS drivers on disk, downloads Audigy DOS Drivers from obscure website and fails at it miserably.)

Jenn: "So, why isn't it working?"
Techie: "You got an Audigy, right, dude?"
Jenn: "Yeah, an Audigy LS."
Techie: "Awww...dude...that one won't work."

Anyone want an Audigy LS PCI Sound Card? Cheap?

Comments

[nathan-r.livejournal.com]

What's the opposite of customer support? Customer thwarting, perhaps?

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/knoppixmame/

How about trying that? :-D

[kisai.livejournal.com]

No PCI sound card has working DOS drivers, since no PC's ship with DOS.

There is a obscure hack for Win2K/WinXP to get sound in a DOS box though:
http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/

Keep in mind that lots of DOS games use obscure hacks to VESA/VESA2, Memory managers and junk so you will be unable to run anything made right around 1994/1995/1996 most likely, and definitely nothing that uses a 3D card in DOS.

Now on the other hand, if you have a real DOS OS (and not booting into windows), the last card to have real DOS sound drivers was the SB Live. The audigy is a super-SB-live, so there is a possibility of someone reverse engineering the drivers for it, but don't hold your breath.

If you are really trying to play a DOS game w/o windows, you need to find a 386 or 486 under 66Mhz for games made up to 1994, Pentiums are too fast

(suddenly dawns on everyone that the Pentium brand has been around for 10 years)

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>No PCI sound card has working DOS drivers, since no PC's ship with
>DOS.

>The audigy is a super-SB-live, so there is a possibility of someone
>reverse engineering the drivers for it, but don't hold your breath.

I beg to differ. The whole reason I bought an Audigy was that there were DOS Drivers on the CD which provded some really nice SB Emulation according to various sites. The problem here was me doing research on the "Audigy" and not the individual types of of Audigy, like the LS/MP3/Gamer. The MP3 and Gamer versions have the drivers, but the LS is a whole different chipset that never had DOS Drivers. This officially sucks, and makes me angry that marketing just didn't give it a different name like the Sound Blaster Boogertron or Sound Blaster Flapjack.

As for "real" DOS, I've been working with computers for 20 years, so I have copies of DOS 2.1 and 3.3 on floppy from my PCjr, 6.2 and 6.22 from my old 486, and Windows 95b from my Pentium (One of my little quirks is everytime I get a faster processor, I install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 just to see how fast it comes up). The idea was to SYS Windows 95b DOS onto a drive on it's own (all my 9X games work fine in XP)where I could have a Pentium 4 play them at full speed (well, the games with internal timers :) )

Anyways, the point is moot. I'm throwing my hands up at this, getting a faster motherboard/processor for this computer, giving the old mother board to my roomie, and taking his Ancient Motherboard with ISA slots and a SB Awe 32 and running that as a dedicated Dos Gaming Machine. :P

(And all this because DOSBox is great...but runs incredibly badly on my system)

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Well, that's great and all but...it's not Mame I'm trying to play. :) I'm trying to play 32 bit extended games that Windows likes to think are True Win32 games (which crashes HORRIBLY).

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I just need to talk to people who aren't stoned. :)

[amw.livejournal.com]

Dosbox is absolutely the shizzle, but you're right, it's gonna be another few years before our computers are fast enough to run the old games properly. I knew Creative were good with backwards compatibility, but i didn't realize they still provided drivers. Though fuck trying to get it to work these days, man. I've had two main soundcards in my life - a Logitech Soundman (SB16 compatible) and an AWE32... The Logitech was MORE compatible with an SB16 than the AWE32 was, it'd always work on SBPRO or SB16. The AWE32 hardly ever worked on SB16, never worked with Roland emulation, ugh. I'm so happy for plug n play today.

[kengr]

Want a PC-Dos 1.1 floppy? (it'll be 3.5", but *think* it's 160k 5.25")

[nekomimilian.livejournal.com]

So the LS is like the SB64PCI/SB128PCI which were actually ENSONIQ chipsets that didn't ever work. All the OEM models and retail models had incompatible drivers and even with different revisions of the card. I told people get the SB Live Value OEM (which was better than the retail card. The OEM has the S/PDIF) and just junk the SB64/128PCI
(The AWE32 IS the best DOS box sound card available. Especially the model you can stick 30pin simms on. 8MB RAM yay!)

I have an ISA modem in my PIII box because I know it's not a winmodem. Now consider I haven't used a modem since moving to the island. My PIII box is my "do everything box" ... I have a Pentium 133 that the PSU blew out when I was at the apartment that is my "play old stuff" on box ,but I wish I kept the AWE64 card I had, since the card in it is my original 386's (2X CD-ROM propietary era, and the only thing that runs the cd-rom)

Um... anyways. Past the Pentium/Win95 era. I'm actually surprised that create even makes new products anymore. It seems like a real killer sound card would be one that can process 7.1 Dolby Digital on the card, but alas, nobody seems to care too much about 3D sound in a game, only 3D video. Maybe when 3D video hits a wall they will do sound.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

::laugh:: Once I install it, won't I lose that 3.5 drive? :D

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>So the LS is like the SB64PCI/SB128PCI which were actually ENSONIQ chipsets
>that didn't ever work.

So I'm noticing. It seems the LS is specifically a "crapola chip." :P

>The AWE32 IS the best DOS box sound card available. Especially the model
>you can stick 30pin simms on. 8MB RAM yay!

Thankfully, I have just that card sitting on my roonmies old P2/233. :D looks like I'll be good to go once he trashes it. :D

[kengr]

Nope, that's a BIOS function. Besides, you *can't* install it. Hard drive support didn't exist until DOS 2.x :-)

All you can do is run it off the floppy. :-)