HandOfFate, thx again, now i can control sound volume in dos via buttons!

Now I’ll try more games to test everything and be back.

Wonder if there is a way of emulating better midi under dos?)

You're welcome. I'm glad things are working for you too 😀

It would be nice if there would be some DOS MPU-401 emulation thing. Not only to make it sound better, but it might have working volume controls too.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-07-28, 19:01:

PC/PCI is a hardware link that connects the ISA DMA requests to the PCI side of the machine so it can be processed. Distributed DMA fires those ISA DMA requests to all of the PCI slots/devices, and TDMA (transparent DMA) handles it using some magic secret sauce that doesn't always work. For PCI based audio boards, PC/PCI is always preferred, then DDMA and then followed by TDMA and other wizardry (DDMA/TDMA/etc requires a compliant requires compatible southbridges).

Thanks 😀

I was just going through the ESS Solo-1's data sheet again (which is 100 times more detailed than Allegro's), and it has a chapter about the DMA modes:

To emulate ISA DMA on the PCI bus, the Solo-1 can employ three different protocols. Transparent DMA (TDMA) is a chipset-independ […]
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To emulate ISA DMA on the PCI bus, the Solo-1 can employ three different protocols. Transparent DMA (TDMA) is a chipset-independent mechanism, Distributed DMA (DDMA) and PC to PCI DMA (PC/PCI DMA) need to be supported by the PCI chip set.

In TDMA, the Solo-1 snoops PCI bus transactions to legacy DMA controller device (like the 8237, which is usually embedded in the PCI chip set), then performs a PCI bus master transaction to complete DMA. Legacy DMAC does not receive a DRQ signal from Solo-1.

In DDMA, the central resource (PCI chip set) includes a DMA remap engine. All transactions to legacy DMAC are remapped to each client (such as the Solo-1) by the remap engine. The Solo-1 then performs a PCI bus master transaction.

In PC/PCI DMA, the central resource (PCI chip set) performs PC/PCI cycles, which use sideband signals to the standard PCI bus. The Solo-1 then acts as a slave device during DMA.

Once one of the three DMA protocols is set up, the Solo-1 is detected as an ISA device.

I can't say I understand all those words but at least they tried 😜

I haven't been able to get any sound in PC/PCI mode yet. I'm getting the same errors as when I tried to get TDMA working, namely that the DMA channel is supposed to be invalid.

Is there any issues left unsolved for n600c sound?

I don't think so, except for the MIDI volume but maybe that's just me. And I could use headphones that have a volume slider to make it more bearable.

For some strange reason, this DOS driver doesn't feature windows sound for DOS games. I'm doing smth wrong here, or it is the way it should work? I'm okay to use native DOS for DOS games, but not all games mandatory require that, so I wanted to play ordinary stuff, like Duke Nukem 3D for eg, under Windows 98. But no sound here...

Hi, I got the N600c with Win98SE after reading on a thread here that it might be an "ideal retro gaming laptop", and found it for cheap on ebay. I've been troubleshooting, trying to get audio to work in DOS games for 2 days straight, and have nothing to show for it.

I have tried every fix related to this topic I could find. I finally came upon HandOfFate's instructions here. Followed them carefully. Still nothing. I've tried running Doom and Ultima Underworld. Doom runs only from an MS-DOS prompt in Win98, and without audio. If I run it by directly booting into DOS, I get the error in the attached image.

Ultima Underworld runs fine, but no audio, and I have to give it more EMS memory in CONFIG.SYS to run it. Yet Doom requires NOEMS or else it tells me "not enough memory". I'm not that computer-savvy (compared to the average user here I guess) and don't understand the significance of this.

Also, the mouse doesn't work in pure DOS, but I didn't even begin to look into that issue. Nor do I really care at this point, as I'm burnt out trying to get anything to work with this laptop.

Now I just wish I had gone for the N400c, I saw that some people at least had some easy success with that 🙁

Well first of all i can assure you that both N400c and N600c work the same way, so it's okay. I'll bring my n600c and re-check how it should work.

The first step will be lazy, here is how it looks on my side (it was some time ago, so I'm just copypasting stuff):

I assume you've done what HandOfFate Re: Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works
Install WDM drivers (via SP18965.EXE or any other)
Then you've copied all files from his pack into c:\
Here how it looks on my pc:

And here is the content of two system files:

I guess you need to correct it in Windows, not write directly in the file.

Then I just go into Command Prompt in win 98 launch menu and run ESSINIT.BAT, after that, I've got sound in native dos.

Did not work. I'm really out of ideas. Maybe I messed up something while exhausting all the different fixes I came across, and a reinstall is in order? I don't know.

When you say "need to correct it in Windows", you mean by win+r and running sysedit?

I just tried to test three different shareware DOS games to see if the audio would work, and the games didn't even start, each giving a different error. I don't know what the deal with this laptop is.

I've made a guide with clean windows, just a sec I'll upload it.

Here you go: https://youtu.be/r6JE90COLJo

Adding stuff to system files is an unnecessary step.

Yes! It worked!!!!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to make a video guide. Thanks a ton.

I did add ESSINIT.BAT to autoexec just so I don't have to run it manually every time.

Now my only issue is getting a mouse to work. I tried these drivers: http://www.bretjohnson.us/ and it didn't work, and furthermore it caused ESSINIT.BAT to throw an error (could it be IRQ channel conflict? Idk, this stuff is all new to me)

If you know of a good way to get a mouse working in DOS I'd appreciate it! Thanks again.

Bit of an update:

Music isn't actually working in Doom, only sound effects work.

Also, Ultima Underworld isn't installing at all. After choosing the IRQ/DMA/etc settings for the Sound Blaster and pressing 'Y' to install, the installer hangs.

drunkenlizard wrote on 2021-01-30, 15:15:

Yes! It worked!!!!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to make a video guide. Thanks a ton. […]
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Yes! It worked!!!!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to make a video guide. Thanks a ton.

I did add ESSINIT.BAT to autoexec just so I don't have to run it manually every time.

Now my only issue is getting a mouse to work. I tried these drivers: http://www.bretjohnson.us/ and it didn't work, and furthermore it caused ESSINIT.BAT to throw an error (could it be IRQ channel conflict? Idk, this stuff is all new to me)

If you know of a good way to get a mouse working in DOS I'd appreciate it! Thanks again.

Download Cutemouse and run the ctmouse.exe executable.

Nice to see that my efforts are useful to others 😀

drunkenlizard wrote on 2021-01-30, 15:28:

Bit of an update:

Music isn't actually working in Doom, only sound effects work.

Also, Ultima Underworld isn't installing at all. After choosing the IRQ/DMA/etc settings for the Sound Blaster and pressing 'Y' to install, the installer hangs.

It has been a while since I touched this laptop but my main focus was to get all the sound working in true DOS, and that is definitely possible too. I had several issues getting DOS games working from Windows.

You could try the VXD (non-WDM) drivers because they add a "DOS sound" device to Windows. When installing the drivers Windows will complain it can't find the correct sound card but you can manually select the Allegro-1 PCI device from the list.

HandOfFate wrote on 2021-01-31, 12:38:

Nice to see that my efforts are useful to others :) […]
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Nice to see that my efforts are useful to others 😀

drunkenlizard wrote on 2021-01-30, 15:28:

Bit of an update:

Music isn't actually working in Doom, only sound effects work.

Also, Ultima Underworld isn't installing at all. After choosing the IRQ/DMA/etc settings for the Sound Blaster and pressing 'Y' to install, the installer hangs.

It has been a while since I touched this laptop but my main focus was to get all the sound working in true DOS, and that is definitely possible too. I had several issues getting DOS games working from Windows.

You could try the VXD (non-WDM) drivers because they add a "DOS sound" device to Windows. When installing the drivers Windows will complain it can't find the correct sound card but you can manually select the Allegro-1 PCI device from the list.

The major headache with the Compaq n600c is that the DOS setup works in TDMA mode - while on a similar Dell C600, it's DDMA. What's the material difference between the Dell C600 and the HP n600c? ATi M6, Tualatin CPU and 830/ICH2 versus ATi Rage M3, Coppermine and 440/PIIX4E. The chipset differences are quite important.

If my experience with the ESS Solo on the Igel J+ thin client tells me anything, it’s that compatibility with TDMA on the ESS for various games is hit-or-miss. It works in some cases (Simcity 2000, Doom, Psygnosis's Pyromania, Kyrandia 2: HOF) but fails in others (i.e. locking up in TIE Fighter, Return to Zork, etc). The Dell Inspiron 8000/8100 are supposed to have same/similar issues with DOS audio, and they ran on the i815EP/ICH.

On the C600 the DOS compatibility is far superior versus the n600c simply because of the DDMA angle (the PIIX4E explicitly support it). It doesn't sound pretty but it works. Oh, the n400c is also supposed to be 440 based, which would explain its DOS compatibility.

We'll need to use setpci to poke the PCI config registers on the ICH2M itself to see if we can get PC/PCI working. Hopefully the 3 pins needed are routed.

Edit: maybe not - looks like the PC/PCI functionality has to be initialized from the ISA/LPC side of things.

Did you solve the cut sound issue? I have Compaq Deskpro EN. Added ESS 1938S and it is working only using pciset and wdma modes. But the sounds are always cut. Tried all irq and address and dma configurations. It does not really matter. Compaq bios has pci bus mastering and pci serr generation enabled. Board does not offer sblink and chipset is Intel 815E. Carmageddon crash with emm386, so sound blaster live is out of the equation. I just need to solve sound cutting issue you had as well.

Got it after 2 days! Ddma and Tdma use pci bus master operation according to datasheet. Wdma does not. I use wdma 110 same as you, but sound was cut. Disabling pci bus mastering solved the issue!!! IRQ can be 5 or 10. Does not matter. But address for me must be 240h and dma 1, otherwise it will restart. These settings can be easily observed on Windows device manager panel, you just use that and set it up in DOS as well.

There was one more quirk, in the main menu game, after few minutes when I was out of PC,the sound start to make noise only. I guess it is some power management saving feature or ACPI I/O which might be further disabled in BIOS. If you dont let it stuck without playing any sound in the game, it wont happen.

Also to get cd audio working, I had to run essolo.com first and then run pciset to overwrite few values. Overwriting only wdma did not help. There is something more going on, but I got it solved after reading all threads here and experimenting whole day!

This way Carmagedon 3dfx works in DOS without emm386.exe and with Terratec ESS1938S PCI sound. Ess Audiodrive for essvol.exe is not detected, but sound blaster pro mode works. Sound autodetection might hang PC, so manual configuration is recommended.

In game, when sound is playing, it can remain idle and ACPI will not come into effect, so that’s good. I’m on Deskpro EN SFF PIII 1.0Ghz, FSB 133mhz, 128MB Ram and only here I get butter smooth Carma 80fps. Other P3 with slocket 440bx does get only around 50fps, it has voodoo 2. While this Compaq got upgrade to Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. Really small Compaq, but very powerful. My fav machine now!

Guys, any chance you have original recovery disk for n600c? Wanna restore it in history purpose 😀