First post, by Ralf
Hello everyone!
I have some configuration problems with my SBEmulation....
System:
CPU: AMD Duron 800
Mainboard: Asus A7VL-VM
=> Chips: VIA VT82C686B, VIA VT8364, Creative ES1373 (Audio PCI)
RAM: 256 MB
Optical: DVD-ROM Drive - Secondary Master
PCI-Card: Cheap Chinese SIL 3114 clone
HDD1: 1x 320 GB (3 drives on 2 partitions) - Primary Master
HDD2: 1x 1 TB (1 partition) - Sil3114
HDD1 is a SATA drive attached with a SATA to IDE converter recognized and manually configurate with the acutal size of 320 GB in the BIOS. The primary partition and the first logical drive are below 120 GB, so they are accessible without problems by Windows 98 setup or Windows 98 start disk without 48 bit LBA support.
HDD2 is attached on the SIL3114 card (flashed with the SATALink NON RAID BIOS) and works fine after installation of drivers in Windows 98
Software Configuration and Drivers:
Windows 98SE
VIA 4 in 1 Chipset Drivers
S3 ProSavage Display Drivers
VIA 68mu220a Driver Pack for sound
SIL3114 drivers
ESDI_506 (updated to support 48 bit LBA)
NUSB v2.4
I'm using this system to play old Windows games and the configuration works quite well. I have a problem with the HDD attached to my SIL3114 in Windows 98 - DOS-Mode. At the beginning I had a few folders and files on my SIL HDD and after I pressed "Restart in DOS-Mode" everything worked well - switching to that directory, execute files, list directory etc... but after installing dozens of windows games on that drive, the system crashes after I switch to that drive and list directory or try to execute something....I suspect it has to do something with the length of file names or maybe there is some special character somewhere...maybe someone has an idea??
Problem:
I want to play some old DOS games also and according to various threads in this forum it should work with the SBPro Emulation and I have problems with the configuration, due to my poor skills about hardware from that time . I already read different threads in this forum but nothing works for me.
NOTE: I want to boot from a modified Windows 98 Start Disk and play DOS games from there - so I can decide, depending on the game, what to load and keep memory usage as low as possible.
I'm using drivers from 68mu220a.zip but I also tried 68mu220b.zip and the VIAFMTSR from this site
AUTOEXEC.BAT
....
C:\VIAUDIO\VIAUDIO.COM
C:\VIAUDIO\VIAFMTSR.COM
SET Blaster=A220 I5 D1 P330
BIOS Configuration:
If I use this configuration the PC sticks at the VIAUDIO.COM line. If I disable the MPU 401 or use a different not matching address in the SET Blaster instead of P330 it gives me the "Congratulations" message, but without working sound. Auto detection of one game gives me a DMA: failed to identify, maybe this helps?
I'm a bit lost know....Thank you for your help!
Best regards!