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PCI Soundcards in DOS

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First post, by jjfabbsy

Posted on 
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Hi,

Was reading thru a website regarding PCI cards working in DOS, it mentions a solution but doesnt really elaborate.

http://www.pcmech.com/show/multimedia/161/

"One pitfall of the PCI bus arises out of older DOS applications. Legacy DOS applications are designed so that they require a DMA and IRQ to move audio data from the main system memory. This means they use Sound Blaster compatible protocols. These are only features of the ISA bus, not PCI. For this reason, there is a risk that older DOS games will not run with PCI sound cards.

There are workarounds for this ISA-PCI problem in DOS. Using special hardware, it is possible to redirect the PCI interrupts into the legacy space, in effect making them ISA IRQ's. The DMA requirement for DOS is being handled by enhancements to the PCI bus protocol. The total effect is to provide DOS support for PCI sound cards."

What method could possibly achieve this? I currently have an Audigy and the emulation is not exactly all that great, so any solution bar squeezing an ISA card into a PCI slot with a sledgehammer, would be good to know 😀

Thanks,

Jason

Reply 1 of 1, by HunterZ

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I've never heard of a hardware solution to that - maybe they're talking about plug-n-play IRQ configuration in the BIOS setup or something? AFAIK, the DOS drivers for PCI sound cards act primarily as software bridges between a legacy IRQ and the real PCI IRQ that the sound card is using.

If I were serious about DOS games, I'd consider getting an ISA sound card - they're really cheap (under $20 for a brand-new SB16). Some day I want to build an old DOS box with one of the ISA sound cards I have laying around.

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