VOGONS


First post, by Bub and Bob

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🙁 Hi,

I have a major problem with vdmsound. I can't get any games to work.
They have previously worked fine, but since yesterday when I updated my agp drivers and bios to the newest versions, problems with vdmsound started.
I was playing Bubble Bobble 96 and Eye of the Beholder III, but now they won't start.
It seems I'm better playing with computer than fixing it.
I have also DosBox and it works fine.

Bubble Bobble 96 problem :

It loads the game to the point where You make choice between games (bubble bobble or rainbow islands), then the computer doesn't take any commands from keyboard and there is no sound.

EotB 3 error text:

invalid parameter (transcripted to english) - co80
Mel Fatal Error #: 25 Trap #:16
Mel Version 1.8.5, 03/08/93
Error Message: MIDI Detect Fail

My computer :
Athlon XP AMD 2800+
Hercules Radeon 9800 Pro (with newest drivers)
Sound Blaster Audigy Live! (with newest drivers)
Memory 768 mb
Windows XP SP1 (latest updates) with directx 9.0b

Would anybody please help!

Reply 1 of 5, by mirekluza

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Rank DOSBox Moderator
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DOSBox Moderator

There is one wise saying in English: "If it isn't broken, do not repair it.". From my experience I can tell you it is a piece of real wisdom.
Ok, it is good to change video drivers from time to time, but e.g. various BIOSes are certainly things which should be left alone unless there is a *real* reason for their update ....

Mirek

Reply 3 of 5, by mirekluza

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Rank DOSBox Moderator
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DOSBox Moderator

It is difficult to say what is a problem and how to solve it. I can give you just one advice: reinstall (at least VDMSound, when it does not help then the whole Windows - yes, it takes time 🙁 ) and pray and hope...
If reinstallation does not help then it is probably really something wrong with the new BIOS ...

Mirek

Reply 4 of 5, by Guest

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Good news!

I managed to solve the problem. The problem was with I/0 access with NTVDM.EXE file. Bios update or some virus declined all necessary I/0 rights to the NTVDM.EXE file so it corrupted the vdmsound. If any of you gamers have this same problem, download program called Porttalk from "www.beyondlogic.org/porttalk/porttalk.htm" then copy porttalk.sys to your windows/system32/drivers directory and click on porttalk.reg file and reboot machine. Then create bat-file with following line:
(your harddrive):\(porttalk directory)\allowio ntvdm.exe 0x378

Then simply click this bat-file every time you start windows then vdmsound works perfectly! 😀
Case is sol-ved.

Reply 5 of 5, by vladr

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Rank Oldbie
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Oldbie

no. that program actually renders vdmsound completely useless, it opens up the ports to talk directly to the harwdare and bypasses the emulation. works for adlib if you have an adlib chip on an isa board, but will almost surely foobar your computer if you try to open up other sb ports or all ports and have ntvdm talk directly to hardware that only drivers are supposed to talk to. so tht .sys is EVIL.

your bios upgrade probably aded new settings to your bios menus, see what's new and potentially configurable.

v.