Wow, i'm trying to do the same thing--with an MX300--but all drivers (reference) i downloaded are for Windows. Do you have the original driver CD?

P.S. After reading this, i think i better go all-ISA for DOS-only systems. I'll spare the MX300 for another Win9x-box which has nothing to do with DOS games.

Silent Loon wrote:

Is it possible to initialize the above mentioned cards (Aureal Vortex2, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) under plain dos without having installed win95/98?
If so - how?

Yes that can be done. at least with the Vortex-2. The driver normally uses the windows folder to look for it's configuration file au30dos.ini, but I changed that. see readme.

Silent Loon wrote:

Also it is said, that you can't use the wavetable header of the Santa Cruz in dos - is there a workaround for that?

Indeed it only does crappy FM-Music in pure Dos, no attempt at midi at all. The executable just has no options to emulate a MPU-401 port. Other then that I don't know, as I haven't used it much in Dos.

archsan wrote:

P.S. After reading this, i think i better go all-ISA for DOS-only systems. I'll spare the MX300 for another Win9x-box which has nothing to do with DOS games.

Is that such a big deal? it is about problems with Lucasarts/imuse music in a windows 9X dosbox. But there is a workaround and more importantly: the problem does not exist when playing these games in pure Dos.
.

Thanks for the info, gerwin. Will try it soon. What are - from your experience - the limitations of the vortex2 based cards in dos?

I ask because I'm thinking about building a system expecially for my 3dfx cards (voodoo5 agp) and the fastest option would be a board without ISA and a Duron Applebred 1800. Alternatively I have a DFI CA61 Socket 370 board with 3 ISA slots and a 1Ghz Pentium 3 cpu. (All those parts are lying around here, I don't want ot buy new ones.)

What about the a3d / eax support of the Santa Cruz?

gerwin wrote:

Silent Loon wrote:

Is it possible to initialize the above mentioned cards (Aureal Vortex2, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) under plain dos without having installed win95/98?
If so - how?

Yes that can be done. at least with the Vortex-2. The driver normally uses the windows folder to look for it's configuration file au30dos.ini, but i changed that.

Thx. I'll try this too when i've got time later today.

gerwin wrote:

archsan wrote:

P.S. After reading this, i think i better go all-ISA for DOS-only systems. I'll spare the MX300 for another Win9x-box which has nothing to do with DOS games.

Is that such a big deal? it is about problems with Lucasarts/imuse music in a windows 9X dosbox. But there is a workaround and more importantly: the problem does not exist when playing these games in pure Dos.
.

Yes i read that--let me correct myself: I'll spare the MX300 for another Win9x-box which has less things to do with DOS games.

OK, that thread's a wrong reason, but as you suggested before (IIRC), an ISA card will be better anyway for DOS compatibility (counting SB Pro), so i'm trying to get one of the better quality ISA cards, like an EWS 64 XL or a Soundscape, hopefully. I'll use the MX300 in the mean time.

Silent Loon wrote:

Alternatively I have a DFI CA61 Socket 370 board with 3 ISA slots and a 1Ghz Pentium 3 cpu. (All those parts are lying around here, I don't want ot buy new ones.)

Silent Loon, is that DFI board good? Does it support 1.4 Tualatin-S? I didn't know there is a s370 board with 3 ISA slots--must've missed this one out!
I think Vortex2 is a good match for Voodoo5 (same period), so i suggest you install one on whichever platform you choose.

Silent Loon wrote:

What about the a3d / eax support of the Santa Cruz?

A real Aureal Vortex 2 chip will do A3D (1.0-3.0) best, with the fastest hardware acceleration/less CPU use.

I don't know of any game using A3D 3.0, but AFAIK Santa Cruz/Sonic fury only support A3D 1.0.

The difference between standard 'positional' 3D audio and EAX Advanced HD (3.0+) or A3D 2.0 is huge. Pity there's only a handful of A3D 2.0 titles that really utilize their advanced features. Still, I'd vote for your MX300 over your Santa Cruz any day.

Sorry, the DFI is not Tualatin ready.

I wonder if the Duron 1800 will make a big difference to the 1Ghz Coppermine. Surely in synthetic benchmarks, but I plan to play Ultima 9 and older glide games with it (if possible all with 4xfsaa) and maybe it doesn't matter...

EDIT: It seems as if it will make a difference - according to this site:

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/3dfx-voodoo5- … marks-ultima-ix

...but it also seems as if the difference is not so much when FSAA is enabled...

here is a set of drivers i found on the net. i haven't tested it yet. i hope this helps.

to gerwin:

Do you have any experience with the ensoniq audio pci (the predecessor of creatives soundblaster 64 / 128 pci series)? Would it be of any advantage to have this card together with a vortex2 in a pci-only system, regarding its compability with "later" dos games (games that allready require a CD-drive f.e.)?

Silent Loon wrote:

Thanks for the info, gerwin. Will try it soon. What are - from your experience - the limitations of the vortex2 based cards in dos?

The Vortex-2 limitations in Dos: It is not 100% SB-Pro compatible. I can not recall many problems, but I do remember it failed at Psycho Pinball. Its OPL-3 emulation is obviously not the real thing. Finally there is no supported 16-bit mode like WSS, so 8-bit is the maximum in any case.

Silent Loon wrote:

Do you have any experience with the ensoniq audio pci (the predecessor of creatives soundblaster 64 / 128 pci series)? Would it be of any advantage to have this card together with a vortex2 in a pci-only system, regarding its compability with "later" dos games (games that allready require a CD-drive f.e.)?

Not really, I only used the Creative Labs clones of the Audio-PCI for quite a while. In a few windows Direct-X games I noticed some clicks and pops in the sound (ghost recon), which was the reason I replaced them with SB-Live's at the time. These SB-Live's had exactly the same Dos emulation.
But about the Audio-PCI: I understood it emulates a Soundscape instead of a SB16, but is otherwise the same as the Creative clones. If I had to choose I would slightly prefer SB16 over Soundscape compatibility.
All these cards share the EMM386 requirement and the poor FM and Midi output. What I do remember is that the 128-PCI/SB-Live were suprisingly reliable in a windows 9X dosbox.

PS. I tried the Audio-PCI Dos driver (APINIT) on a Creative card once, but it gave an error...

re: Vortex2 on DOS-only

Yes, of course.. now that i look carefully at the driver files i've downloaded, the workaround is that easy. Either set winbootdir to a directory (e.g. SET winbootdir=C:\WINDOWS ) and put these Aureal DOS driver files there, or edit that path variable name in the au30dos.com file to your own as gerwin did. Now if only i had a bit more time to play with my MX300 on my 'temporary' DOS box this week...

to Silent Loon, though slightly offtopic:

... but I plan to play Ultima 9 and older glide games with it (if possible all with 4xfsaa) ...

I was interested in a V5 for the said reason, but after seeing benchmarks like the one you gave above, i wouldn't expect to run games with 4XFSAA on it, even on a 3GHz Athlon--the V5 is already the bottleneck for FSAA anyway.

Only if you had another newer machine with a GF FX or 6 series: have you tried running your old Glide games with glidewrapper? With newer-gen cards, you might be able to run with 4XFSAA (and or with higher res than previously possible with older titles) at higher framerates. Of course not every title works flawlessly with glidewrapper, but if your titles work with it, then maybe you don't have to restrict yourself to PCI-only for something you want to also play DOS games on.

For example, i'd be very happy with a 1GHz Coppermine and 3 ISA slots, which will house an SB AWE64G for SB16 (or an SB16 with OPL if you want), an Ensoniq Soundscape for later DOS games supporting 16-bit SS, and an EWS 64 (you've got one, right?) for its MIDI features and interface. Then i can even still put the MX300 in for Windows A3D games.

I know 4 soundcards in a system may sound too much, but since I don't need them all to work together at once, i can setup boot menus to initiate the combinations i need. Maybe you only need one ISA card beside your Vortex2, which would make things a lot easier.

I don't know if this scenario will be feasible for you or not--ditch it if it's not. It's just an idea to share. 😀

I had issues with Vortex2 installed parallelly with Yamaha YMF719E-S (in pure DOS) - couldn't route Adlib sound to OPL3 w/o fully unloading Vortex driver.

In this post there is a patched version of the original Vortex TSR with disabled adlib emulation. I have patched 'modified pure DOS' version from gerwin's post above the same way; sharing it in case if anyone else wants similar configuration.