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DOS 7.1 AWE32

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First post, by dosfriend

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I am having a bad time initialising my AWE32 PNP using DOS 7.1

On autoexec.bat I have

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
and
C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE

But it fails to init the card at boot time. Also install.exe (Creative drivers) doesn't detect the card and the games can't use it either.
When it boots DOS 6.22 the card hasn't got this problems and works fine, even MIDI works without any issue.

Will really appreciate any help / thoughts about this.

Reply 1 of 23, by alexanrs

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DOS itself shouldn't make a difference, ate they loading exactly the same drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat? PnP on our off in BIOS?

Reply 2 of 23, by PhilsComputerLab

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Make sure you grab the Windows MS-DOS Mode drivers from the Creative site. They are slightly different and meant for DOS 7 and DOS 7.1.

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Reply 3 of 23, by dosfriend

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I've tried to install the Creative site drivers for this card (sbbasic.exe, ctcmbbs.exe), on a clean DOS 7.1 install, and the same error happens 🙁

Here are some pictures of the boot process:

2014-12-23-20-44-36-1184893.jpg

2014-12-23-20-45-35-1184895.jpg

Reply 4 of 23, by alexanrs

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This unofficial DOS is far from clean. Skip autoexec.bat and config.sys and try running CTCM.

Reply 6 of 23, by filipetolhuizen

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Back when I had a SB32 PnP, it only started working in DOS after I installed Win 3.x drivers.

Reply 8 of 23, by dosfriend

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Thanks for your replies 😀

I know that this DOS is not 100% official. Wasn't released as is by MS, but extracted from WIN98.
Anyways many people recommend to use it, and I found it useful. Things like FAT32 support and tab autocomplete are very nice to have.
Didn't extract DOS by myself but used the installation floppy images found here: http://ms-dos7.hit.bg/#msfv

The hardware and BIOS configuration are the same ones when booting DOS 6.22 without this driver issues.

I've tried with 95dosapp + ctcmbbs as you suggested, but throws the same error when launching CTCM (Please run Windows 95...).

Reply 9 of 23, by 5u3

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dosfriend wrote:

I've tried with 95dosapp + ctcmbbs as you suggested, but throws the same error when launching CTCM (Please run Windows 95...).

- Delete any CTPNP.CFG files laying around (there may also be copies in the Windows and root directories)
- Run CTCU once, select one of the profiles and save

This should get rid of the CTCM error message.

Reply 10 of 23, by Jolaes76

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Ctcm /t can override settings inherited from windows. There is a hacked version of ctcm.exe. somewhere around...

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 11 of 23, by dosfriend

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Deleted all CTPNP.CFG files I found (2 of them), rebooted and ran CTCU.
No luck with this, it still complains about Windows and can't get to the menu to select a profile.

On the drive there is no Windows installed, even 3.1. Just DOS 7.1 and the SB16 drivers you pointed out.

Running CTCM /T as Jolaes76 suggested it enabled the "Win95 test mode" and CTCM found the card.

Reply 12 of 23, by alexanrs

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You could also try using SETVER and fool the utilities into thinking they are in DOS 6.22.

Reply 13 of 23, by PhilsComputerLab

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dosfriend wrote:

I've tried with 95dosapp + ctcmbbs as you suggested, but throws the same error when launching CTCM (Please run Windows 95...).

Hmm that is very unusual to say the least.

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Reply 14 of 23, by dosfriend

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philscomputerlab wrote:

Hmm that is very unusual to say the least.

Thats right Phil. It's unusual, but it has some logic since I am using some sort of Windows-DOS and the driver thinks I am running it inside a DOS prompt window on Windows.

As Jolaes76 stated, using the /T parameter it tricks the driver, but I would like to have a better option than this.

Aren't you using DOS 7.1 on your machines?

Reply 15 of 23, by PhilsComputerLab

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dosfriend wrote:

Aren't you using DOS 7.1 on your machines?

Yes. But it behaves differently when you

a) Install Windows 98 SE and then use MS-DOS 7.1

b) Just install MS-DOS 7.1 from a Boot floppy + manually copying DOS files from Windows and Command folder

The proper MS-DOS 6.22 drivers should work with b)

d3HyRq8.png

For a) you need the Windows MS-DOS mode drivers:

5saDzXM.png

I forgot how the driver does the detection. It doesn't look at the version, so SETVER doesn't work. I believe it was an environment variable that you only get when you install Windows 98 SE from CD but not when you install it off a floppy disc + manually copy folders.

I PROMISE I will make a video about this. Had this planned for a long time because PnP card questions pop up all the time 😀

But the good news is that you got it working 😀

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Reply 16 of 23, by ik777

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philscomputerlab wrote:

I forgot how the driver does the detection. It doesn't look at the version, so SETVER doesn't work. I believe it was an environment variable that you only get when you install Windows 98 SE from CD but not when you install it off a floppy disc + manually copy folders.

Newer DOS SB drivers surely check your DOS version number regardless of real DOS version or windows part. I use PC-DOS 7.0 which is pure DOS but SB installer always claim
im using windows 95.

You first install setver in your CONFIG.SYS first for using installer "device=c:\dos\setver.exe"
and after load it see the SB installation file. If this is install.exe then type "setver install.exe 6.00"
then type install and proceed install.
The setver is TSR program and setting more files cause a little more Conventional Memory or UMB use. If you want delete it type setver install.exe 6.00 /delete .
But if you want more Conventional memory, just remove setver.exe is better.

Reply 17 of 23, by PhilsComputerLab

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There is more to it.

If you create a 7.1 installation manually (boot floppy, fdisk, format, copy DOS files over), the standard DOS drivers will work, despite version 7.1.

You only run into trouble when you have Windows 95 or 98 installed and then try to get Sound Blaster going under MS-DOS mode.

I don't about PC-DOS I'm afraid...

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Reply 18 of 23, by alexanrs

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Try erasing the contents of MSDOS.SYS then... It should prevent the creation of some Windows-only environment variables.

Reply 19 of 23, by 5u3

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Guys... As Phil already has pointed out, if you use the proper drivers from Creative's website, there is no need to muck around with SETVER or anything else. This has worked without problems for a lot of people.

Every time I ran into this "your configuration has changed" message at initialization it was either caused by rogue config files laying around somewhere in %PATH% or the PnP config needed to be rewritten by CTCU.