You should read this topic first: viewtopic.php?f=62&t=24769

Hm, so I guess the only solution is to invest in a aureal vortex card? Do all of them work, even vortex 2 (AU8830)? I'm not sure why that philscomputerlab video would state that a pentium4 is good for DOS as well as win98 if he just happened to be using the only sound card that would actually work with it.

edit: I suppose I read that wrong, apparently pci sound cards will work up to ICH5 which the board I'm looking at has?

Pretty sure you should be able to use a Yamaha YMF7x4 based card as well with the DSDMA driver (the only caveat is the few games that require EMM386 to not be loaded will not have sound).

See here for the review by Philscomputerlab:
https://youtu.be/vNCg_zy1_d4

In fact, people with the x58 chipset have it working just fine.. so your i865 should be no problem whatsoever.

Which games are you interested in ?
I have Asrock 775i65G v2.03 and can confirm that with DSDMA you can hear sound in (plain dos 7.1):
- Aladdin
- Doom, Doom II
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Dynablaster
- Electrobody
- Epic Pinball
- Flashback
- Golden Axe
- Happyland Adventures
- Prehistoric 2
- Lionking
- Prehistoric
- Prince of Persia
- Prince of Persia 2
- Project X
- Wolfenstein 3D
.... (the few I've tested just now 😀

config.sys

1dos=HIGH,UMB,noauto
2device=c:\drivers\jemm\jemmex.exe MAXEXT=16384 NOVME
3files=40

autoexec.bat

1cd c:\sound\yamaha
2call loadtsr.bat
3cd c:\
4ctmouse

loadtsr.bat

1setupds /s
2DSDMA
3SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

I'm using this board with Celeron 420 Conroe-L (1.6Ghz) and 1GB ram (for Windows XP).
For Windows 98 memory is limited to 512MB in config.sys

1device=c:\windows\himemx.exe /max=512384

No real specific games I want to play, although I did have issues with the colors in mortal kombat trilogy in win98 (windows version would not work for some reason) so I might try that in DOS. I play mostly action oriented games, not a lot of adventure. Most likely only playing late or very late dos releases that don't work well in win98. I would actually prefer using dosbox but I've found it impossible to get a good vsync'd image from it and apparently you need a gsync monitor for that.

I did order a couple sound blaster lives for use in windows 98 as well so I'm not sure which would be the more compatible in DOS.

Xenphor wrote:

I also have a socket 939 board that has a vt8251 southbridge which I've read doesn't support DDMA either. However, supposedly the vt8237 does support DDMA.

The VT8237 support proper DDMA either but you can use ESS based PCI cards in TDMA mode without any TSRs (Solo-1/ES1938 preferred due to the ESFM FM synth).

Kamerat wrote:

you can use ESS based PCI cards in TDMA mode without any TSRs (Solo-1/ES1938 preferred due to the ESFM FM synth).

I thought TDMA required the TSR, although it apparently can work without EMM386 to port trap.

gdjacobs wrote:

I thought TDMA required the TSR, although it apparently can work without EMM386 to port trap.

ESSOLO.SYS is there just for IRQ emulation. On my P4M900/VT8237S based system it doesn't even stay resident, it just changes the PCI IRQ of the card.

my experiences on i865 are:

- ESS-Solo1 works great under Dos (SFX/FM)
- ESS-Solo1 does not work with VXD-Drivers under Win9x, WDM-Drivers do work but require to deactivate the USB2.0 support, otherwise the ressources collide. I can't change the USB2.0 Controller resources on that MB.

zyga64 wrote:

... […]
Show full quote

...

config.sys

Copy code to clipboard

1dos=HIGH,UMB,noauto
2device=c:\drivers\jemm\jemmex.exe MAXEXT=16384 NOVME
3files=40

autoexec.bat

Copy code to clipboard

1cd c:\sound\yamaha
2call loadtsr.bat
3cd c:\
4ctmouse

loadtsr.bat

Copy code to clipboard

1setupds /s
2DSDMA
3SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

I'm using this board with Celeron 420 Conroe-L (1.6Ghz) and 1GB ram (for Windows XP).
For Windows 98 memory is limited to 512MB in config.sys

Copy code to clipboard

1device=c:\windows\himemx.exe /max=512384

Are these (himemx/jemmes) better then himem.sys and emm386.exe ?
What advantages do they have?

dr.zeissler wrote:

my experiences on i865 are:

- ESS-Solo1 works great under Dos (SFX/FM)
- ESS-Solo1 does not work with VXD-Drivers under Win9x, WDM-Drivers do work but require to deactivate the USB2.0 support, otherwise the ressources collide. I can't change the USB2.0 Controller resources on that MB.

Well I've received my asrock 775i65G R3.0 board and interesting you mentioned usb 2.0 since I've already had some issues w/ windows 98.

Since I'm using an SSD I was just going to use the same sata to pata adapter (recommended by philscomputerlab) that I used on my socket 939 VIA chipset which worked fine for that board. However, after I had installed everything and then later came back to the machine, it just wouldn't boot to Windows. I decided to install again but then the setup wouldn't initialize. I even restored an image I had made just after I got everything working and that wouldn't boot either.

I then had issues reinstalling from a usb key where it seemed that some of the ports were forcing usb 1.1 speeds no matter what settings I tried in the bios. This is after I had just successfully installed using the same exact key and got decent speeds. I was able to get that working eventually by using the ports closest to the onboard audio. After that I just decided to use sata instead and so far that hasn't failed to boot Windows yet. I'm surprised sata would be more compatible than pata on this board with Windows 98 but I guess it's the adapter that's causing the issues?

I suppose having sata working is good compared to the socket 939 board which didn't work. But since there are only 2 sata ports and I have no native IDE drives that kind of limits my options. That's assuming that there's nothing actually wrong with IDE on this board.

edit:
Noticed my sata adapter is rxd-629a7-7 and not the jp103-5 one even though that's what was shown in the auction pictures.

dr.zeissler wrote:

Are these (himemx/jemmes) better then himem.sys and emm386.exe ?
What advantages do they have?

I'm using himemx only for limiting memory to 512MB for Windows 98SE. Don't know about other advantages. For DOS I'm not using it.
Jemmex is himem.sys+emm386.exe in one executable, it also can limit EMS memory to 16MB, so i.e. Aladdin is working (Aladdin needs EMS memory, but if there is more than 16MB it falsely reports about "not enough EMS memory"). Plus - in this configuration (i865G+1GB) when I tried to run emm386.exe and next DSDMA - computer was restarting - didn't go to the DOS prompt. With jemmex everything is working fine.

...hmm, that gave me an idea to try himemx (limit memory to 16MB) with emm386.exe combination.

Of course I have many configurations in my config.sys (with himem.sys/himemx.sys/umbpci.sys/emm386/jemmex/etc.). And I'm checking which combination is working best for particular software.

Xenphor wrote:

I suppose having sata working is good compared to the socket 939 board which didn't work. But since there are only 2 sata ports and I have no native IDE drives that kind of limits my options. That's assuming that there's nothing actually wrong with IDE on this board.

Did you try running the SATA controller of your socket 939 board in RAID mode? At least the VT8237S southbridge got working drivers under Windows 98 when the controller runs in RAID mode, unfortunately it's capped at 150MB/s (using a OCZ Vertex 30GB detected as SATAII in the RAID BIOS screen).

Kamerat wrote:

Xenphor wrote:

I suppose having sata working is good compared to the socket 939 board which didn't work. But since there are only 2 sata ports and I have no native IDE drives that kind of limits my options. That's assuming that there's nothing actually wrong with IDE on this board.

Did you try running the SATA controller of your socket 939 board in RAID mode? At least the VT8237S southbridge got working drivers under Windows 98 when the controller runs in RAID mode, unfortunately it's capped at 150MB/s (using a OCZ Vertex 30GB detected as SATAII in the RAID BIOS screen).

No, I read that RAID mode is what makes it incompatible with Windows 98 and you have to use IDE mode, at least for installing the operating system to it. I didn't really try messing with it after having already installed Windows because IDE seemed to perform decent enough and didn't really need another drive connected since I was already using a 128gb SSD on IDE.

Xenphor wrote:

No, I read that RAID mode is what makes it incompatible with Windows 98 and you have to use IDE mode, at least for installing the operating system to it

correct. "RAID" mode on these old boards is confusingly named. What it primarily does is activating AHCI mode. AHCI is not supported on windows 9x systems.

zyga64 wrote:

...hmm, that gave me an idea to try himemx (limit memory to 16MB) with emm386.exe combination.

Now I can confirm that this combination works:

1device=c:\windows\himemx.exe /max=16384
2DOS=HIGH,UMB
3DEVICE=c:\windows\emm386.exe RAM

Even better - I'm able to get music in Lemmings.

zyga64 wrote:

I'm using himemx only for limiting memory to 512MB for Windows 98SE. Don't know about other advantages. For DOS I'm not using it […]
Show full quote

dr.zeissler wrote:

Are these (himemx/jemmes) better then himem.sys and emm386.exe ?
What advantages do they have?

I'm using himemx only for limiting memory to 512MB for Windows 98SE. Don't know about other advantages. For DOS I'm not using it.
Jemmex is himem.sys+emm386.exe in one executable, it also can limit EMS memory to 16MB, so i.e. Aladdin is working (Aladdin needs EMS memory, but if there is more than 16MB it falsely reports about "not enough EMS memory"). Plus - in this configuration (i865G+1GB) when I tried to run emm386.exe and next DSDMA - computer was restarting - didn't go to the DOS prompt. With jemmex everything is working fine.

...hmm, that gave me an idea to try himemx (limit memory to 16MB) with emm386.exe combination.

Of course I have many configurations in my config.sys (with himem.sys/himemx.sys/umbpci.sys/emm386/jemmex/etc.). And I'm checking which combination is working best for particular software.

Both HIMEMX and JEMM386 have a smaller resident size than HIMEM and EMM386.