You might want to try using *shudder* UniVBE... it actually loads under Windows 2000/XP. (Imagine that...something that DOESN'T work under Win9x that DOES work under NT ...err, besides VDMSound. 😉) DosFreak, I assume you've still got SDD on your system... could you compress UNIVBE.EXE and post it? Thankies.

Hehe.. if Dosfreak would post univbe.exe , that would've been better help than none.. 😀

Regarding TLV2.. Even if I tried running it in dos, I don't have any dos drivers for my soundcard.. not on http://www.creative.com support pages.. nowhere! And I certainly dont get vesa to work in true dos!

Creative SB Vibra 128 (pci)

You have PC "know-how"?
*cough*dual-boot*cough*

I previously stated that getting the soundcard to work in DOS is impossible without having soundcard drivers for DOS. And vesa isn't properly supported for my gfx-card in dos either..
All this sums up to the fact that dual-booting win2k/dos on my computer would be a waste of energy.

And LostVikings2 refuses to run if I select "no soundcard"..

C:\games\LOSTV2>lv2
DOS/4GW Professional Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994
Please install sound card using THEVOICE.EXE

Shigawire wrote:

I previously stated that getting the soundcard to work in DOS is impossible without having soundcard drivers for DOS.

? Where is that post? Searching the board, this was the closest I came to what you describe:
showthread.php?threadid=386
(except of course, that doesn't match your data).

Also, your soundcard is fairly common, so it should run under DOS. One thing I do know that presently Creative lists no DOS drivers at all for their PCI line...which is a crock.

It may have been integrated into their Win9x drivers.

And vesa isn't properly supported for my gfx-card in dos either..

Not a good sign.

All this sums up to the fact that dual-booting win2k/dos on my computer would be a waste of energy.

Maybe, maybe not. If not, you might've just lost a solution.

And LostVikings2 refuses to run if I select "no soundcard"..

Not good, as that makes zero sense.

Sorry Nicht Sehr Gut, Here it is 😀
"Even if I tried running it in dos, I don't have any dos drivers for my soundcard.. not on http://www.creative.com support pages.. nowhere! And I certainly dont get vesa to work in true dos!"

My soundcard has no obvious dos support. but the prospect of the dos drivers being integrated with the win9x drivers would at least give me some hope.. is there a way to extract specific files from within such an installer/archive? Because, when I run the win9x drivers install file, it gives me only one option: "Uninstall Drivers" :\ (uninstall the current win2k drivers that is..)

When I run a SVGA/VESA compliant software in proper DOS , I get the message: "Video card not supported"
I have a GF2mx, even though nvidia cards support VBE 3.0.. pretty weird.

Yep, it doesn't make much sense of the game not to run just because I havent selected a soundcard.. I thought "no sound" was supposed to be a viable choice.

If you guys have any suggestions for possible solutions to any of the problems stated, I'd be happy to hear them.

cheers.

DAMN IT! I logged in to reply to this, believe it or not, and now this is the THIRD TIME I had to rewrite this... I'm cursed...

Anyhow, this page should put you on the right track for your sound card: http://www.msu.edu/user/jonesdes/html/SBPCI.htm

As for your SVGA/VESA issue in DOS, you might want to try experimenting with SciTech Display Doctor for DOS:
http://www.scitechsoft.com/ftp/sdd/sdd-dos-7. … .0.340-BETA.exe

Or... waitaminute... WTF? SciTech did SNAP drivers for DOS?
http://www.scitechsoft.com/ftp/snap/dos/snap-dos-2.0.0.exe
Seems to be near identical to SDD 7.0 for DOS, although there's a note on the website that claims this "requires MGL for DOS". Note that only SDD 7.0 includes UNICENTR.EXE, UNIVBE.EXE, and UVCONFIG.EXE as compared to SNAP.

Off-Topic:
Attn all moderators and admins - we really need to take a hard look at what SciTech has been up to recently.
1. A newly redesigned website:
http://www.scitechsoft.com
2. Several new-ish products:
a. SciTech X86 Emulator Project - "An emulator for executing Intel x86 real mode code on any CPU platform, including the Intel x86 CPU family. " - in other words, their takeover of x86emu: http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/developer … 6_emulator.html
b. OpenWatcom (Paul, look!): http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/developer … om_content.html
c. SciTech Open GLD Linkable Library - "Powerful library that allows Open GL based applications to function using Direct X.": http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/developer … loper_home.html
d. SNAP Graphics - seems to be the next generation of SDD. "SciTech SNAP, The Universal Device Driver Technology for Industrial, Enterprise & Embedded systems. Supports the folowing OS'es: DOS, QNX 4, OS/2 (Windows, Linux, QT coming soon!)"
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/enterpris … s2_content.html
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/embedded/ … d_overview.html
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/embedded/ … os_content.html
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/embedded/ … x4_content.html
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/enterpris … s2_content.html
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/embedded/sdk_home.html

Assumption: Something has gone, or is going, down - with them. A large infusion of cash, maybe. But I get the feeling that something big is happening with them again. 😀
Perhaps we should start trying the trial versions of their products again... set up a thread or forum explicitly for testing with SciTech and their products... I dunno. I'll be continuing my SDD documentation archaeology project some more, it looks like... 😒
Perhaps I should send Kendall Bennett or Steve Wendt of SciTech an email again... hmm... (BTW - I don't think they'd be too happy about warezing UNIVBE.EXE, which is included with a program you must register for...)

- back to the salt mines... 😀

Ooooh...
Thank you SO much for your excellent help, sir! 😁

Shigawire wrote:

Sorry Nicht Sehr Gut, Here it is
"Even if I tried running it in dos, I don't have any dos drivers for my soundcard.. not on http://www.creative.com support pages.. nowhere!

Like I said, that's nonsense. It's more likely that they integrated thd DOS drivers into their Win9x drivers. As time goes by, you're going to find a lot of companies starting to pretend that DOS never existed because they don't want to bother with support for it anymore.

And I certainly dont get vesa to work in true dos!"

A GeForce2MX should have VESA support, so something's not right here...

My soundcard has no obvious dos support. but the prospect of the dos drivers being integrated with the win9x drivers would at least give me some hope.. is there a way to extract specific files from within such an installer/archive?

Unfortunately, there's no easy way. I found this out with the last SoundBlaster Live installer (which actually disable DOS drivers by default). About the only viable way right now would be to install the Vibra soundcard into a Win9x system, install the drivers, then manually copy the DOS drivers from that setup. For all I know, the "SoundBlaster basic" files might work properly. It's a pain-in-da-butt situation in any case.

Because, when I run the win9x drivers install file, it gives me only one option: "Uninstall Drivers" :\ (uninstall the current win2k drivers that is..)

Don't try to install Win9x drivers under Win2K, that's asking for trouble.

When I run a SVGA/VESA compliant software in proper DOS , I get the message: "Video card not supported"

Is this a boot disk you're running? You know that there's no DOS within Win2k, right?

Shigawire wrote:

Thank you SO much for your excellent help, sir! 😁

Word of warning...SciTech's VESA programs can cause as many problems as they might fix.

🤣.. no.. I run proper DOS 6.22 on a bootdisk 😀

Btw, Stiletto, I tried the SBPCI.. it came up with this message when booting:

autoexec.bat runs sbinit.exe :

Self-Configuring PCI Resources ...
error: Could not configure SB PCI IRQ
PCI driver not loading.

then I tried sblegacy.exe :
Sound Blaster PCI Legacy Compatibility Test, ver 4.11D.
error: PCI Device detect failed; Device not found.

I checked the PCI settings in the BIOS.. .. I tried reserving IRQ 7 for a legacy device, disabling ICU.. since I had set the blaster environment variable to: a220 i7 etc just to test.. no go.
Any ideas?

Ok. Warning duly noted Nicht Sehr Gut. I'll try to be careful 😀

Shigawire wrote:

🤣.. no.. I run proper DOS 6.22 on a bootdisk

Ok. Just be aware that booting from a floppy doesn't always represent what would happen if you were booting DOS from a hard-drive. I realize that makes little sense, but I remember seeing stuff fail on floppy that worked on a hard drive *shrug*.

then I tried sblegacy.exe :
Sound Blaster PCI Legacy Compatibility Test, ver 4.11D.
error: PCI Device detect failed; Device not found.

Ooo...not good...at all.

Ok. Warning duly noted Nicht Sehr Gut. I'll try to be careful

If you want an "interesting read", try searching with Google for "problem", "VESA", and "Sci-Tech" or "UniVBE". Be aware that you may find a large number of obscenities in the results.

Yay, good news. I got vesa 2.0 to work in dos using a univbe that came with the techw0rm bootdisk. Scitech DD 5.1
First time ever!

I'm starting to think the sound problem has something to do with the motherboard and PCI IRQ/PnP settings of my bios.. because I just learned that the very common dos extension DOS/GW4 doesn't accept soundcards running with a higher irq than 7.
http://www.mameworld.net/emuadvice/pci.html
And my SB PCI Vibra 128 runs at IRQ 9, at least when I'm in Windows.

The ACPI overrides the IRQ i set for the soundcard in the bios..
anyone know a program for DOS to diagnose IRQ and resources for the devices? Something like MS Diagnostic.. I cant find it.

Shigawire wrote:

I just learned that the very common dos extension DOS/GW4 doesn't accept soundcards running with a higher irq than 7.

Bing! You hadn't mentioned that. For all intents and purposes the IRQ must be 5 or 7. Some might work at other IRQ's but those would be the exception and not the rule.

Note that while under XP, that number is irrelevant as the built-in emulation is set to 5, and VDMSound's default is 7.

Also, be aware that your parallel port will want one of these IRQ's as well. Again, irrelevant on XP; critical for DOS.

The ACPI overrides the IRQ i set for the soundcard in the bios..

Ech. You might have to mess with your BIOS on this. Do you actually use your parallel port?

...anyone know a program for DOS to diagnose IRQ and resources for the devices?

Well for DOS, that would be MSD, for XP it's not relevant.

Also, check out NSSI at http://www.navsoft.cz/
It the equivalent of the DOS version "Check-It Professional", except that it's free. A few features aren't working but copy that to a self-booting floppy and select "Automatic Report" and it will generate a rather detailed report about your PC.

Thanks for the great help Nicht Sehr Gut 😀
I'm going to move the files from the bootdisk to d: and choose d:,c: in the bios.. as you said.. maybe it'll work better from an HDD

Also, when I said that the ACPI overrides the IRQ and sets it as 9, I meant the IRQ seen in Windows2000 Device Manager..
I don't know whether or not the IRQ-fascism or ACPI is enabled when running in DOS.
Thats what I hope this NSSI may help me understand.

If ACPI is the culprit, I would be willing to try a lot to turn it off, but the manual doesn't say anything about how to do this.
I have an Asus A7V KT133 Apollo.

Shigawire wrote:

Also, when I said that the ACPI overrides the IRQ and sets it as 9, I meant the IRQ seen in Windows2000 Device Manager..

Ok, 2000 likes to "group" items to an IRQ, so it's a good thing that the IRQ is irrelevant for the NT OS's.

The reason I asked about the parallel port is that it almost always grabs IRQ 7. If you disable it in the BIOS, that should make it available for the card. Also that would allow for easy back-and-forth testing between DOS and Win2k (VDMSound also defaults to IRQ 7).

Yes, you're absolutely right.. Win2k has grouped both my network-cards and my soundcard (3 cards) to IRQ 9 😀
But I've removed the redundant network card now.. to minimize the complexity. Gotta keep it simple.

Disabling the LPT is a good idea, it does indeed use IRQ 7 , and I don't really print that often. And if I need to print, I can always reboot and enable it again..

Here's another reason why it's a good idea.

Important Notes:
1. Your sound blaster PCI card can not use IRQ 5.

Taken from http://www.msu.edu/user/jonesdes/html/SBPCI.htm
where I got the drivers..

I wonder.. what is wrong with using IRQ 5?

I'm going to disable that Parallel port now..

I'm confused... if you're using Windows 2000, what the heck are you doing? You need VDMSound!

Wee.. I finally got Lost Vikings 2 to run! Perfectly! 😁

Snover, I've had VDMS for a long time now, and as with a lot of other games, LV2 doesn't run in it.. I'm using a Dos bootdisk.

Solution:
I had to: Disable LPT1/Parallel port to free IRQ 7.. then I had to set IRQ 5 Legacy to "Yes" (in order for the sb16 emulation to work) and now I got sound.. and was able to run the game..
the only thing which is still a bit problematic is the vesa..
And Riddle of Master Lu requires vesa.. even the installer for it does.

When I run univbe (SDD5.1) , I get the message:

Video Card: Generic VGA SuperVGA ((null)) with 256 Kb, VBE 3.0
RAM DAC: Normal 8 bit DAC
. Installing VBE 2.0 32 bit protected mode extensions

The "null" looks a bit sketchy.. and 256 kb video mem! No wonder stuff wont run..
I don't know how to improve it though.