Sometimes DOS4GW issues can be cured by using DOS32a instead.

That's one of the things I tried actually. Didn't help either - in fact whenever the setup program would crash and throw an unsupported opcode with DOS4GW it would just freeze with DOS32A

Now I remember why I buried that cd.... not only the tables are meh but GUS does indeed reboot or freeze my system. SBPRO2 works fine though ...
The game is so weird, like a monkey put together some tables with weird config and batch files and redirections and cr*p like that... back to the storage for it 🤣 🤣 🤣

I've got to admit I really like the first table and the physics are quite good for a DOS pinball. But the setup ... true nightmare fuel. Makes me wonder how I managed to get the demo running back in the day.

Are you using an original release CD-ROM, or is this part of a compilation (Pinball Madness 4, for instance). Encore (publisher of the Pinball Madness series which many call shovelware) used to pull stunts like omitting music for some pinball titles on the Pinball Madness CD-ROMs, so it pays to be skeptical about whether or not you got the whole game.

Tried the original CD-ROM release + the ripped crack by Hybrid (without the redbook audio).
As said ... they work perfectly in DOSBox, but fail really bad on real hardware.

Sound in Absolute Pinball seems to work well on my current setup. Have tried with a Sound Blaster AWE64 and an Audio Excel AV310 (no sound in SB16 mode for the AV310) on an Abit LX6 with a C3 "Samuel 2" CPU. Running it in MS-DOS 7.1 and using UMBPCI to get enough conventional memory. Only thing I noticed are that that samples in the music cuts off too early somtimes.

Thread necromancy!
Just gave this game another spin with a non-PnP GUS ... same issue.

If anyone can briefly describe what DOSBox does different ... or even better report that the game works on real hardware with a GUS - that would be largely appreciated.

You might want to see Martin Mathis' comments on this game: http://www.lastbandit.com/pinrevue.html?pbr_absolute

I had a particular installation problem with the MS-DOS version and the install instructions are contradictive in a few places. To avoid too much detail, the standard installation refused to find certain data files on the CD-ROM. I could start the menu but not get to any tables. Unless there is a unique problem with my CD-ROM reader or the drivers, it almost looks like they screwed up with relative path references inside an executable. I worked around it by installing the entire CD-ROM PINBALL subdir in the root of the install partition. It still requires the CD-ROM but at least it works though it uses 19MB instead of 8MB disk space. I'd like to hear from others about this oddity. Then, I dislike that regardless of the installation dir, an INI file is written to C: root and each time I start the game, some file is copied from the CD to the HD, duh.

Since you essentially use a mounting process in DOSBox, maybe that's why it works because you are more or less doing the same thing if you use Martin's approach. Might be worth a try.

I'm roughly familiar with that issue but the game works fine without sound and with soundblaster cards. Problem seems to be related to the GUS implementation.

Ironically ... the crashes only seem to happen when I input the correct settings for the GUS ... if I enter invalid ones the game remains silent but works. Same for the soundtest ... usually it would crash with an illegal opcode in dos4gw.exe, if I enter bogus it claims to have found a 256k GUS but won't work because it requires 512k ram.

Friend of mine figured it out ... only happens to GUS cards with >512k RAM. If you set 512k in DOSBox-X or use a real card with 512k it works.

You said it works in normal DOSBox though? Which emulates a GUS with 1MB...

Indeed it does ... no idea why it doesn't crash/complain there.