First post, by TheGoose81
Hello all!
I am having a strange issues with my AW64 Gold soundcard. Let me start by saying that several months have passed since I last fired up my 486DX2 66mhz machine and the last time I used this machine I had no issues what so ever, which makes this issue even more frustrating!
I am running PhilsComputerLabs MS DOS 7.1 Stand alone Dos environment and the issue I am facing is with Sound Effects and Midi. The midi is outputting to my Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 mkII and the AWE64 sound effects are straight out of the soundcard and mixed through the SC-55. Now, when I fire up a game such as Doom 1, Doom 2, Rise of the Triad, and pretty much any other Dos game which I want Midi music with I get no sound output at all and the games run very slowly. If, for example I run Doom 1 Setup I can disable the sound effects and enable just the MIDI (Sound Canvas) and the midi and the game itself all work just fine. And vice versa, disable midi all together and just enable SoundBlaster and the sound effects work just fine and so does the game.. I have also tried the AWE32 midi option to use the AWE64 to decode the midi, and I get the same issue when enabling Sound effects, however disabling sound affects the AWE32 Midi works just fine!! I was however able to enable PC Speaker output for the sound effects and have midi playing through the Roland just fine!! I am guessing, somehow I have a conflict? So what I have done so far is:
Formatting my C drive and re installing Phils Dos environment, I have also Followed Phils guide on setting up the AWE64 in a Windows Dos Environment CTCM and SB16 folders, and adding the autoexec.bat lines and re installing my games, however the problem still persists. The soundcard seem to initialize just fine, with the defaults as stated on Phils setup. I have also changed the Midi port to 300, but this has made no difference with my issue.
I was planning on removing the AWE64 soundcard and trying it in another machine (Dos) and seeing if it still happens, so I am curious to find out if anyone else has this same issue? Just to be clear, when I last used this 486 some months ago the system worked flawlessly, both Soundblaster and Roland midi worked together perfectly, in all games! and this was using the default settings.
I hope I can eventually get to the bottom of this.
Many Thanks
Mike 😀