Well...the windows WDM driver has nothing to do with sound in Pure DOS. There's a good chance your sound hardware simply hasn't got a dos driver for emulating older cards like Sound Blaster/Adlib/Gravis Ultrasound, etc. I had a quick look, and I couldn't find one anyway, but someone might know otherwise.

Having Windows ME is unfortunate. Out of all the Windows versions, it's the worst one for dos-gaming. Your machine doesn't sound that slow, though. Have you tried using dosbox on it instead? It should run fast enough to play most 2D games.

Man...
yes it runs DOSBOX, but it can't play games like dark forces and dukenukem. I tried setting it up with General MIDI, but they both froze too many times. Sound FX work. Ah well I'm happy with the other ones anyway so I guess its alrite.

MadBeastMike wrote:

Man...
yes it runs DOSBOX, but it can't play games like dark forces and dukenukem. I tried setting it up with General MIDI, but they both froze too many times. Sound FX work. Ah well I'm happy with the other ones anyway so I guess its alrite.

Have you tried using "VDMSound"? That may do the trick for you.

That don't work in ME. I tried the 9x version but i dont really understand what to do (since I couldnt get vcredist to work, haha)

Well, at least when it comes to 3D dos games, a lot of them have been ported to windows now. Doom/Hexen/Heretic, Duke3D, Quake, ROTT, Descent, etc... (not dark forces though unfortunately)

Here's what I've been able to figure out tonight
- I got the VDMSound for Win 9x working. It's very choppy and although I'm really happy to get it working, im still a little upset because its kind of broken and hard to get working, and the sound is incredibly choppy.
- The reason my sound card doesnt work in MS-DOS mode i don't know, but whenever I try to detect my card through Duke Nukems setup, it says "Cannot find FM Chip". I don't know what this means but I'm hoping maybe one of you can help me figure it out/fix it.

What I'd like to do is:

- Either fix VDMSound Win 9x, or get it to run under Pure DOS,

or

- I remember someone saying something about getting DOSBOX to run under Pure DOS, and although it would be very hard it is possible. Would there maybe be a guide or something that would help me be able to obtain that?

I have one more problem with DOSBox:
- It is very choppy, I've tried pretty much all the methods to try to speed it up, but they either don't work or make things not compatible with my system.

Thanks!

Buy a SB16 or AWE32.....

where can I get them? aren't they outdated?
and do I absolutely have to, meaning no alternatives?

Your using a P3....trying to play DOS games.....and your complaining because they are outdated? Oh the irony.

The SB16 or AWE32 are the two best cards for your configuration.

Hi.

This is how I got an ISA sound card (Vibra16 ct4180) working in DOS 6.22. Hope this is of some help. Creative has a nice executable at their site, which installs the needed files and modifies the autoexec.bat and config.sys files appropriately.

(from Creative's site)
Filename: ctcmbbs.exe

This is the Creative Configuration Manager for use with DOS 6.x and Windows 3.1x systems. This file is only applicable to those users who own PnP ISA (Plug and Play) versions of Creative hardware.

Included is a README.TXT file with installation instructions and some FAQ on Plug-and-Play.

You can download the file at http://files2.europe.creative.com/manualdn/Dr … 230/ctcmbbs.exe

If this is not what you are looking for, try searching for other drivers at http://europe.creative.com/support/downloads/

Hey man thanks for the advice, but i just found I had a sound blaster 2 card in my cellar.
Anyways, remembering DosFreaks advice to just get a soundblaster card, I was lucky enough to find Soundblaster 2.0 in my cellar. THe only problem is, the chip that came with it is meant for desktop computers (judging from the size...) and the thing I'm using is a laptop. So i took the floppys and I tried to install it anyways, but it says I can't run INSTALL.EXE under Windows 95 or a Windows 3.1 DOS box, which is funny... cuz I was already in pure DOS.

Oh yeah, and my laptop is pretty messed up, and I can't get into windows... so if any part of registering sound blaster has to do with getting into windows im pretty screwed. (Yuck and i have to take my laptop to work on mondays too 🙁 )

MadBeastMike wrote:

... and the thing I'm using is a laptop.

😮
Geez, you should have mentioned that in your first post. If people had known that you're using a laptop, they wouldn't have posted the tips about getting a different soundcard, because this makes absolutely no sense in this case!

MadBeastMike wrote:

Oh yeah, and my laptop is pretty messed up, and I can't get into windows... so if any part of registering sound blaster has to do with getting into windows im pretty screwed. (Yuck and i have to take my laptop to work on mondays too 🙁 )

If you need your laptop for work, why did you try installing all kinds of stuff without knowing what they do (all the bootdisks, drivers for soundcards that are not present)?
Sorry if that sounded rude, but maybe you should try the DOS experiments on a computer that isn't used for anything else, so it won't matter much if it doesn't boot anymore. Hopefully you'll find someone experienced who fixes the laptop (most likely it's nothing serious, but we cannot tell without a very detailed error description).

5u3 wrote:

MadBeastMike wrote:

... and the thing I'm using is a laptop.

😮
Geez, you should have mentioned that in your first post. If people had known that you're using a laptop, they wouldn't have posted the tips about getting a different soundcard, because this makes absolutely no sense in this case!

Uh, he did.

....People are like 'find drivers' and whatnot, but I have no idea what to do, where to download them, or how to put them in AUTOEXEC.BAT or whatever it is. You see, I have this Laptop, and I use it for games when I'm at work, but I can't get old games to work unless its in pure dos because its sooooo slow... and I just hope its possible that I can get my games to run in DOS.

MusicallyInspired wrote:

Uh, he did.

....People are like 'find drivers' and whatnot, but I have no idea what to do, where to download them, or how to put them in AUTOEXEC.BAT or whatever it is. You see, I have this Laptop, and I use it for games when I'm at work, but I can't get old games to work unless its in pure dos because its sooooo slow... and I just hope its possible that I can get my games to run in DOS.

Oops, my fault. Sorry! 😢

Don' worry 'bout it.
Anyways, what I'm worried about right now is getting my sound blaster 2.0 floppies to get working with my DOS. Don't forget, I'm not using the big chip that came with the sound blaster 2.0 (cause its for desktop computers) but the problem with these floppies is they think im working in windows 95, which is not true at all. I tried a DOS 5.0 boot disk to which couldnt detect the C:. when I boot with my own settings I don't know what DOS it is, but thats not a big deal because I usually use BHive anyway. Now what I'm wondering is
1) COULD it work anyway even though I'm not using the chip that came with it (Since its installing all the sound files, I guess?)
2) Is there a way to be sure that its not going to detect windows 95, and just detect Plain old DOS?

(EDIT another thing I'm wondering.... is THIS
what I'm looking for?

Okay...I think you're confused about what is and what isn't possible here. Your Sound Blaster disks are most likely Windows drivers for your Sound Blaster card (What you're referring to as a chip). The only point of the driver software on that floppy is to allow Windows to use the Sound Blaster card. There is *no* point installing those drivers if the card isn't in the computer (and as it's a desktop PC card, obviously that's not possible in your case).

Some sound cards could pretend to be (emulate) a Sound Blaster card in Pure DOS, often with the help of special DOS drivers, but your integrated laptop sound hardware probably cannot do this, and installing drivers for a *real* sound blaster will not help. You would have to find a DOS driver for your laptop sound hardware that could make the card act like a sound blaster, so games could use it, and I don't think such a driver exists in your case.

So what you're saying is, I'm 100% SOL, no matter what even with the help of God?

I think very few people can get sound in Pure DOS with modern sound hardware. Card designers just don't bother putting the emulation support in the hardware or writing DOS drivers anymore, cos there isn't much demand.

The best options for running DOS games with sound (aside from getting an old PC) are:

Using DOS under Windows 95/98 - Some cards/drivers do Sound Blaster emulation in this case.
Failing that:
VDMSound - Think this works best with 2K/XP.
And failing that:
DosBox/QEMU - Fast enough to run 1993/1994 and earlier games on a Pentium 3

Failing that, see if someone's ported the game to Windows.

If you could find out the exact description of your ALI onboard sound chip, there is a chance to get sound working in pure DOS mode. Some ALI onboard sound chips have hardware SoundBlaster Pro emulation (e.g. ALi Audio Accelerator M5451).