First post, by MrMateczko
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Hi. After two previous tries, I finally have a PC that has a proper non-AC97 sound card, and is kinda suitable for proper up to ~2003-4 DOS/Win9x gaming!
CPU: Intel Celeron 2.4GHz, Northwood, s478
MoBo: ASRock P4i45GV R5.0 with latest BIOS, ICH4 southbridge, and a i845GV chipset.
RAM: 2x256MB Elixir RAM running at DDR266 (limitation of MoBo and CPU)
HDD: WD Caviar 40GB IDE
ODD: Some TEAC DVD drive
PSU: Chieftec 350W
GPU: (on ASRock's cheated AGI slot): GeForce2 MX 200 with S-Video/composite outputs (I can post direct screenshots from DOS via my USB grabber, crikey!)
Sound Card: SB Live! 5.1 (SB0100) - frustration machine!
So basically, I did managed to get the SB16 Emulation DOS drivers running in the pure DOS 7.1 enviromnent (Win98SE's IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.SYS).
SBEGO.EXE works fine.
The IRQ's are not conflicting, the sound card physically gets IRQ7 which does not conflict with anything, and it's emulating the SB16 under IRQ5.
However, not a lot of games work:
1. Inertia Player works fine.
2. Wolfenstein 3D works fine.
3. Deluxe Ski Jump 2 work fine.
4. Dyna Blaster hangs after loading it, might be the game's fault, need to download from different sources and delete configuration files. I did managed to get it working with OPL2 music playing before!
5. Second Reality (with 2NDFIX.EXE) demoscene demo hangs at black screen after the initial menu selection, even when selecting no music, probably MoBo's fault.
6. DOPE demoscene demo hangs after loading it.
7. Ganja Farmer crashes/reboots the system after moving the mouse at the title screen. Game uses STKRUN (may it not be compatible with the SB16 emulation?)
8. Prince of Persia hangs after loading it. I did managed to get it working once, after I switched the PCI slot of the Audio card and switched to the integrated VGA on the MoBo. (it doesn't like the GeForce?)
If there are any other well respected DOS games with sound that can be used to test the drivers, please let me know.
Anyways, back to main question:
What are the main differences between running DOS application inside the Windows's DOS prompt while running the VXD drivers with the SB16 emulation enabled, and running them in pure DOS 7.1 environment with SBEINIT.COM? Is the compatibility the same? Do I only lose OPL2/3 sound?
While I've named the topic as such, this will probably evolve into yet another SB Live/SBEINIT SB16 emulation topic where people usually get angry and tell you to get a real ISA SB16 and a proper retro motherboard. 😁
Well, maybe if I win the lottery I'll have it 😀
At least the driver works for me in the first place, believe me, I've read enough about the SB0100/SBEINIT stuff, and after Phil's video about this particular model, I was hooked, but reality showed its ugly face 😜
Thanks in advance.