What games are you trying to run? I believe AWEUTIL /S is necessary to initialize at least the codec and FM parts of the card, so it's normal that you need it. I think the driver installation automatically writes it into the autoexec.bat. The card needs a TSR to support MPU-401, also possible with AWEUTIL, which in turn won't work in games using DOS extenders (which should support the EMU8k chip directly anyway though).

The only games I've tried are Wolfenstein 3D and Day of the Tentacle. The odd thing is that I didn't need aweutil initialized earlier today. This is why I'm unsure what's going on.

samaron wrote:

Earlier today everything worked fine, but suddenly after I shut off the computer for an hour or so, the music in games didn't work. Then I had to add the line "C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND\AWEUTIL.COM /S" for the music to work, which wasn't necessary earlier.

Were you previously restarting your computer from a "cold boot" ? Or were you rebooting into MS-DOS mode from the Win9x GUI?

It was done from a "cold boot" you could say. I have disabled the GUI, so the computer never boot into windows unless I want to. I mainly use DOS, and all reboots were done by either pressing ctrl+alt+delete or hitting the reset button.

This isn't the first time stuff like this have happened. The 3Dfx game Shadow Warrior used to work in DOS, but now I can only start it from Windows. Odd thing that some things just stop working all the sudden.

Shadow Warrior is a 3DRealms game, not 3dfx.

That 'aweutil /s' command reinitializes the card and normally is not needed. It is rather required to clean things up if lousy programmers forgot to perform AWE32 cleanup when some game or other application using AWE32 stops.

It's only the CTCM.EXE that's really needed to use AWE64 Gold in DOS mode.

What kind of music you don't hear if you don't AWEUTIL /S? FM or sample-based?

Don't you suspect your GUS MAX which is known to create conflicts with Sound Blasters? Is the GUS working normally?

I use aweutil /s by default on AWE32/AWE64 to unmute the FM routing through the EMU8K. Unless any other application/game/drive enables the output the FM part stays silent.

And I use mixerset to initialize the mixer settings/gain of the card in autoexec.bat.

Ok, there's someone recommending AUTOEXEC.BAT settings for AWE64:

SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0 SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6 SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND SET CTCM=C:\WINDOWS C: […]
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SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET CTCM=C:\WINDOWS
C:\WINDOWS\CTCM.EXE
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\SB16\AWEUTIL /S
C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q

I use only CTCM.EXE for CT4390 and CT4540. Moreover, DIAGNOSE /S command hangs for me (on a Win98SE system).

on a pnp card diagnose /s calls ctcm.exe

bristlehog wrote:

Shadow Warrior is a 3DRealms game, not 3dfx. […]
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Shadow Warrior is a 3DRealms game, not 3dfx.

That 'aweutil /s' command reinitializes the card and normally is not needed. It is rather required to clean things up if lousy programmers forgot to perform AWE32 cleanup when some game or other application using AWE32 stops.

It's only the CTCM.EXE that's really needed to use AWE64 Gold in DOS mode.

What kind of music you don't hear if you don't AWEUTIL /S? FM or sample-based?

Don't you suspect your GUS MAX which is known to create conflicts with Sound Blasters? Is the GUS working normally?

I meant that when I try to start the game in 3Dfx mode, it doesn't work. Gives an error "3Dfx content not found! Exiting..." or something like that. Worked before for some reason.

In Wolfenstein 3D I would only hear sound effects like doors opening or shooting the gun. Bumping into walls and music didn't work.

The GUS MAX I have in the computer is set to base address 220 and IRQ and DMA 7. Disabled gameport and CD audio. Works perfectly and doesn't conflict with the Soundblaster card in any way.

I tried the recommended autoexec.bat setup. Didn't look like I wasn't far off from getting it right. I downloaded the utilities and set it up just the same, and everything works fine now. Even better actually, as the sound was a bit low because I didn't have the mixer earlier. Thanks for the advice!

Another small question: How do I change the MIDI port address? The default is 330, but I want to set it to 300 for compatibility purposes. Changing the SET BLASTER line doesn't really do the trick, as the CTCM program overrides it apparently.

samaron wrote:

Another small question: How do I change the MIDI port address? The default is 330, but I want to set it to 300 for compatibility purposes. Changing the SET BLASTER line doesn't really do the trick, as the CTCM program overrides it apparently.

CTCU.exe, if I'm not mistaken.

That 'SET BLASTER' command is not for configuring the card. It's for telling the applications how the card is configured.

The SET BLASTER= line in the above example does nothing as for ISA-PnP Soundblasters CTCM sets/overrides the BLASTER environment after it configured the resources of the card successfully. You can find the desired configuration setting in ctpnp.cfg that should be where the CTCM environment variable points to.
After a successful resource setting CTCM writes back ctpnp.cfg if it's attributes are not set read only.

If the desired configuration is not valid, CTCM follows the rules of ISA-PnP configuration, trying the profiles subsequently which is 1...n, 0. The profiles are saved in the EEPROM and can be configured using CTCU, where profile 0 is the read-only safe profile.

It is recommended to set PnP OS = Yes in BIOS.

btw this PnP SB questions come up over and over again somehow...

Got everything the way I wanted to now. Thanks for the help!

I couldn't find CTCU anywhere. I tried installing the drivers and software from Creative's website, as used in a instruction video I found on youtube. Turned out that it didn't work because the software insisted I were running Windows 95. I got everything installed by setting the version manually with the setver command, but CTCU refused to work. So I just set everything back the way it was and traced down the configuration file and edited it manually. Now the MIDI port is set to 300, ready to accept a Roland MIDI card.

Sort of a related question...

I just picked up a 64 Gold. If I take the ISO of the install CD that's on the drivers site, will that install DOS drivers as well? I tried running the install.exe from the iso in dosbox and it gave me a setup program for the creative apps that come on the CD but didn't bring me to a driver setup installer.

samaron wrote:

Got everything the way I wanted to now. Thanks for the help!

I couldn't find CTCU anywhere. I tried installing the drivers and software from Creative's website, as used in a instruction video I found on youtube. Turned out that it didn't work because the software insisted I were running Windows 95.

Yes that's a annoying thing.

However I found that if you create a MS-DOS 7.1 only partition from a W98SE boot disc, then the installation works just fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N3uYnXIer8

This video is quite long but covers building a test bench and installing the AWE64 Gold drivers from the Creative site under MS-DOS 7.1.

I found that installing MS-DOS 7.1 manually (and not just disabling the Windows part of an existing W98SE installation) is a cleaner solution with less issues. So personally I try to keep DOS and Windows strictly separate.

Now on the Create site there are specific drivers for W95/W98 DOS as well. You need to grab those and not the ones for DOS 6.22.