You already tried increasing the CPU cycles in DOSBox, right..?

Anyway, the last AC97 DOS driver I read about was intended for VIA chipsets. I think these things might all be chipset-dependent.
http://list.driverguide.com/list/DOS/company1112/

Thanks, I'll give the drivers a try.

Well, I can't really increase the cycles anymore, since these games are Protected Mode, so DOSBOX goes from cycle count to 100%. I tried the 105% setting; not quite enough. I also changed the output from surface to OpenGL, and that helped just a little.

Did you do anything with "core="?

Core is left at auto, but for protected mode games with a Windows host, that should be 'dynamic', right?

I'm starting to realize Win 7 starter is a 'crap' OS, and am putting Linux on this weekend. I'll try out dosemu.

but for protected mode games with a Windows host, that should be 'dynamic', right?

This is done automatically for x86 compatible systems, but your processor
may simply be not capable to play a certain set of games using an emulation
layer like dosbox.

Running XP drivers with VDMSound lets these games run full speed.

One observation with VDMSound: Adlib emulation slows down my whole system, but General Midi works fine!

Doesn't work on 64bit installations though.

That is true. However, on this particular machine (atom-based netbook) 32-bit is a better fit. My desktop is a much better fit for 64-bit OS, and is fast enough to run these games fine in DOSBOX.

There are two other solutions that worked as well:

-DOSEMU: I shrunk the windows partition down to put on linux. While I was at it, I installed DOSEMU. It's pretty good. And there is an x86_64 port for it. The best solution if you run Linux most of the time.

-VMWARE: I installed dos 6.22 in vmware player, and got good performance. VMWare sound 'sucks', but through tweaking it is ok. There's also a little bit of screen 'tearing'' in between frames; maybe I can tweek that as well.

You're not saying you got better performance on this Atom-powered netbook with VMware than with DOSBox?

The Dos MP3 player MPXPlay works on my eee-PC netbook. That program has the code to access the hardware of many soundcards directly. But it is not a SBPro emulator....
Other than that I could not get any sound out of the netbook in pure dos.

"You're not saying you got better performance on this Atom-powered netbook with VMware than with DOSBox?"

Thats exactly what I'm saying. In DOSBOX, Tomb Raider was barely playable at 320x240. VMWare plays it as 640x80 just fine. Same with Descent.

Descent plays nicely in DOSBOX at 320x240, but when you get a lot of enemies in one room it slows down a bunch.

With NTVDM/ VDMSound/XP Graphics Drivers all these games run at 60 fps at 640x480.

Wait, are you running WinXP in VMWare, or are you booting WinXP directly?

I am running Windows 7 and Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

In Win7 in VMWare I was running DOS 6.22. Tomb raider and Descent run fast in it.

What video hardware does your netbook have?

I have an Acer Revo R3610 box (using it as an HTPC) with a dual-core Atom CPU and nVidia ION GPU and it ran Duke Nukem 3D in DOSBox 0.74 at 320x200 with no noticeable choppiness when I tried it a couple weeks ago.

My Celeron 900 netbook, which I have since replaced with an Atom 1.66Ghz netbook, ran DOSBox fine for all needs, as did it's successor. I imagine you've got some OS bloat or configuration problems.

As for sound drivers, there is one guy who has written AC'97 and Intel HDA drivers for DOS, but they don't allow general SB16 emulation or anything. I contacted him about releasing them as OSS, and he would if I could provide the code to do the other half of the work prior to his releasing his work - I unfortunately am not very capable at low-level coding. Unless somebody can code an SB emulation module ready to plug an API into the input of, we're SOL there. VDMSound perhaps could be modified for that, by someone with more experience than I.

Atom has plenty of Grunt for DOSBox. My Acer Aspire One works great 🤣

Descent is quite demanding though. Needs a DX2 or DX4 to run well.

In cycles we are looking at 24000 for a DX2 66 and 36000 for a DX4

I was going to start my own thread, but this one is close.

If we bought an Atom based motherboard with a PCI slot, are there any PCI sound cards that would work for DOS? I like the Aureal SQ2500 based cards, but I run it in a BX chipset board now. I don't know if the comparative Atom's chipset would support DDMA or any other mechanism needed by PCI sound cards.

Atom would still be way to fast.

I had Duke Nukem 3D running in SVGA 😁

I wouldn't bet on the PCI soundcard working to be honnest. Until you try we won't know for sure...

Atom is fast enough to run DOSBox, so I'd personally go that route to avoid hardware headaches.