Welcome to the forums.

You probably don't have the DOS initialization software properly configured. To offer specific help, one would have to know the exact model of your sound card as well as the contents of your startup files (config.sys and autoexec.bat).

Thanks dr, both config and autoexec are empty (i manually filled autoexec with the blaster info that was in my audio properties from device manager)
Autoexec currently has the following: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P300.
My audio is SoundMAX integrated digital audio properties with this settings shown: SB I/O 220h SB IRQ 5 SB DMA 1 SB MIDI I/O 300

I suspect the dos initialization isnt properly configured, when i had an old compaq presario, i remember after i restarted in dos-mode, there was this blue box that had some autoexec data and info from the loaded soundcard, but this doesnt happen here. Maybe that's it?

Edit: Looking properly at everest, it shows my sound card model is Intel 82801BA ICH2 - AC'97 Audio Controller.

Icelordetherea wrote:

Edit: Looking properly at everest, it shows my sound card model is Intel 82801BA ICH2 - AC'97 Audio Controller.

This will probably not ever work in MS-DOS mode, unless there are DOS drivers from your motherboard manufacturer (and there probably aren't). It might work from a command prompt while Windows is running.

Wait, i need the board's DOS drivers, or the audio drivers for DOS?

You need your motherboard's DOS sound driver . If it exists and you run/setup it then you'll get audio support in DOS

The closest thing is this:
http://www.georgpotthast.de/dossound/

It's essentially for game programmers to use when creating a new title, but it won't work for existing games that expect a Soundblaster card.

If you're running your DOS games through Win98SE, you could try to use VDMSound for Win9x.
Havent't tried it myself, though, so it's just an idea. ^^
Win9x + VDMSound **ALPHA**

Ask all hardware and its configuration in Marvin.

SoundMAX is an AC'97 card and is therefore completely incompatible with DOS games. You're out of luck.

Your machine probably has enough power to run DOSBox though, but that would defeat the purpose of using Windows 98 and DOS in the first place.

You should get an older machine with a DOS-compatible sound card if you want to run these games on real hardware.

keenmaster486 wrote:

SoundMAX is an AC'97 card and is therefore completely incompatible with DOS games. You're out of luck.

Your machine probably has enough power to run DOSBox though, but that would defeat the purpose of using Windows 98 and DOS in the first place.

You should get an older machine with a DOS-compatible sound card if you want to run these games on real hardware.

If this is the case, then this is a saddening answer, but i guess it is what it is.

I wonder where i could get a really old machine that has dos-compatible card hmm.

Icelordetherea wrote:

I wonder where i could get a really old machine that has dos-compatible card hmm.

Machines with with MediaGX CPU are often SB16 compatible (but don't do Direct3D).
Their mainboards were used in internet boxes (set-top), too.

Or look for a thin-clint. xjas had success with AdLib support.
Re: VIA-based thin client rescue

Limited support is also possible with certain PCI cards (esp. these with SB-Link).
ISA sound cards are preferable, though. The AWE64's are cheap. Literally.

And -last, but not least- some notebooks from the late 90s also included SB Pro compatible audio.

PS: Did you try VDMSound yet ? The description at sierrahelp.com fits your needs, since you use Win98 anyway. They say:
"All the Win9x users out there that find that their sound cards don't have any DOS support can at last use VDMSound.
Chris Chua took on the Herculean task of writing a VXD driver for 9x, a lot of work, with almost no volunteers to assist him
either (since Win9x is basically a dead OS, which doesn't inspire many people to write for it.)

The functionality is the same as XP. All emulation DLL's are the same (except rebuilt as ANSI as opposed to UNICODE for Win9x).
The only "different DLL" is VDDLoader. At present, there is no GUI. The VDMS LaunchPad is only for the NT version of VDMSound.
It will not work in Win9x."

All may not be lost, depends on how authentic you want to be.
Depending on the driver you may get legacy sound blaster emulation within windows, so as long as you play dos games from within windows your ok.
If it doesn't have any legacy support the VDM drivers may do the trick.
Otherwise from SoundBlaster Live up till Audigy 2ZS cards have good emulation in windows, and ok-ish emulation if you boot into DOS mode.

but if you want the full authentic experience of booting into dos and playing a game then a system that has ISA slot is really what your after

keenmaster486 wrote:

SoundMAX is an AC'97 card and is therefore completely incompatible with DOS games. You're out of luck...

Trident 4DWave and VIA VT82C686B/VT1611A are two AC'97 solutions that support DOS, but I guess that doesn't help him/her much. 😉