VOGONS


SB16 + sound in DOS

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First post, by Amigaz

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This must be my first post....been lurking here for some time though 😉

Have been struggling for some time to get two old pc's working for old DOS games.
This weekend I finally got a functional DOS setup with lots of free mem, could even launch Privateer which I never have been able to do before.
Problem is that the sound level was very low and crackled and sometimes vanished..I'm using a Soundblaster 16 PNP ISA model CT2940.
I'm just using the SET BLASTER command in my DOS configs

Why I'm posting this is because I feel like I'm fumbling in the dark when it comes to DOS and configuring drivers/devices, I didn't own any computer from 1993 and up to 2000 so I missed the whole DOS game era 🙁

Can anyone give me if there's any drivers etc I need to install?

I have also have Soundblaster 16 ISA CT1740, and in my other PC I have a Soundblaster 16 PNP ISA (unknown model) with a Yamaha DB60XG wavetable, I tried Privateer on that setup and changed the game settings to use General midi for the music and Soundblaster 16 för speech but ended up with no sound 😕

I'm using Win98 btw

I guess you guys see I'm frustrated.... 😜

Reply 1 of 26, by gidierre

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Welcome 😀

Well 1st thing I would do is taking a look at Creative website for dos & Win9x drivers for sb 16 card.

EDIT
iirc you should go about one sbbasic.exe plus one ctcmbbs.exe to use preferably under dos (boot in what was dos 7 iirc),
but I haven't been messing with a real sb card lately so check it out more precisely yourself.

Anyway the archives' installing ought to be quite straightforward, and their output quite flawless 😎 (hopefully)

Reply 2 of 26, by Amigaz

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Just tried installing the sbbasic.exe stuff in pure dos but the installation just exits out to DOS before it starts, it does this on both my CT2940, CT2290

Is there some trick or magic spell I forgot to do before I started the install?

Reply 3 of 26, by gidierre

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Amigaz wrote:

Is there some trick or magic spell I forgot to do before I started the install?

my first 2 cent tip would be
is emm386.exe loaded in config.sys at (re)boot ?

Iirc that was needed in dos...

EDIT
also, tried with ctcmbbs install first ?

Reply 4 of 26, by Amigaz

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Same thing happens, also tried ctcmbbs....it also just exits out to the dos prompt

It just says "installing, one moment please..." for about 0,5 seconds and then exits to the dos prompt.

It's odd that this happens on three different pc's + soundcards

I'm just so anxious in getting this working since a Roland Lapc-I + SCC-1 is soon arriving here 😎

I just have this in my config sys:

DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE

Reply 5 of 26, by gidierre

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now wait a minute
is maybe there a little misunderstanding here ?

ssbasic contains/extracts the files to installation, but it's install.exe who actually.. installs, right ?

You extract, go to install.exe location and run it.

Reply 6 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:
now wait a minute is maybe there a little misunderstanding here ? […]
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now wait a minute
is maybe there a little misunderstanding here ?

ssbasic contains/extracts the files to installation, but it's install.exe who actually.. installs, right ?

You extract, go to install.exe location and run it.

That's just what I've tried with both ctcmbbs + sbbasic

The extracted drivers + installs are in two seperate folders

And I've run both installers (install.exe) for ctcmbbs + sbbasic but both just end abruptly and quits into DOS

Reply 7 of 26, by gidierre

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thats' odd

when you boot in dos 7 (7.10 iirc)
you use a floppy bootdisk or is that via dosstart.bat ?

Reply 8 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:

thats' odd

when you boot in dos 7 (7.10 iirc)
you use a floppy bootdisk or is that via dosstart.bat ?

I just boot into DOS with holding F8 during boot and boot into comand prompt only

Reply 9 of 26, by gidierre

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Amigaz wrote:

I just boot into DOS with holding F8 during boot and boot into comand prompt only

hmm.. take my advice for what it can be worth which is surely not that much
but I wouldn't be doing it that way

What I would do (take my advice etc. etc.) is

expand sbbasic & Co. in Win9x at dos box prompt
using of course a name like c:\amigaz (<= 8 letters)

then if autoexec & config files are OK and dosstart.bat doesn't do any monkey business in there on its own (check it)
now I'd reboot (I mean restart to dos mode) and launch install,

if it goes awry I'd just use a floppy boot disk (of course you'll also need mouse/cdrom drivers for dos there)...

Reply 10 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:
hmm.. take my advice for what it can be worth which is surely not that much but I wouldn't be doing it that way […]
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Amigaz wrote:

I just boot into DOS with holding F8 during boot and boot into comand prompt only

hmm.. take my advice for what it can be worth which is surely not that much
but I wouldn't be doing it that way

What I would do (take my advice etc. etc.) is

expand sbbasic & Co. in Win9x at dos box prompt
using of course a name like c:\amigaz (<= 8 letters)

then if autoexec & config files are OK and dosstart.bat doesn't do any monkey business in there on its own (check it)
now I'd reboot (I mean restart to dos mode) and launch install,

if it goes awry I'd just use a floppy boot disk (of course you'll also need mouse/cdrom drivers for dos there)...

I'm gonna try some more

What you mention is almost what I did, but I cannot extract both sbbasic + ctcmbbs into the same folder since they both contain for example "install.exe" so what I did is that I created a folder called C:\SB16 and then the folders sbbasic and ctcmbbs in it with the files from each archive

Can't find any dosstart.bat file so I guess I don't have to bother with that one

Why you think I need cdrom/mouse drivers when I boot from a floppy instead?

Reply 11 of 26, by gidierre

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>What you mention is almost what I did, but I cannot extract both sbbasic + ctcmbbs into the same folder since they both contain for example "install.exe"

why of course, one will go in c:\sbb and one in c:\ctc (just an example) then install from each of them (no nesting in \sb16 subfolder, don't)

>Can't find any dosstart.bat file so I guess I don't have to bother with that one

iirc that only means you never rebooted in dos mode from Win9x so far 😀

>Why you think I need cdrom/mouse drivers when I boot from a floppy

but you always need them, how can you have mouse & cdrom access otherwise 😉

Reply 12 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:
>What you mention is almost what I did, but I cannot extract both sbbasic + ctcmbbs into the same folder since they both contain […]
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>What you mention is almost what I did, but I cannot extract both sbbasic + ctcmbbs into the same folder since they both contain for example "install.exe"

why of course, one will go in c:\sbb and one in c:\ctc (just an example) then install from each of those (no nesting in \sb16 subfolder, don't)

>Can't find any dosstart.bat file so I guess I don't have to bother with that one

iirc that only means you never rebooted in dos mode from Win9x so far 😀

>Why you think I need cdrom/mouse drivers when I boot from a floppy

but you always need them, how can you have mouse & cdrom access otherwise 😉

Ahh..that explains why a dosstart.bat was never created 😉

mmm.....a mouse etc is handy sometimes 😁

Bad news...same thing happened after I tried the install from just one folder under C:\ .....no subfolder

😲

edit:

think I know what's messing things up, it quits because the installer says I'm using Win95 and not win3.11 or DOS...how do I get around this?

Reply 13 of 26, by gidierre

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>mmm.....a mouse etc is handy sometimes

definitely 😀 there's lots of generic mouse/cd dos drivers around that will do

>same thing happened after I tried the install from just one folder under C:\ .....no subfolder

what do you mean from one folder
extract sbbasic in c:\sbbasic and the other in the similar way (2 folders in c:\) that's feasible imo from Win98 as well,
then you have to boot and install from dos, OK ?

edit
>think I know what's messing things up, it quits because the installer says I'm using Win95 and not win3.11 or DOS...how do I get around this?

ah I see then sorry I was wrong that means imo you just need to install the drivers from dos, I guess there's no other way (but in Win9x notice that you were supposed to try at the dos box prompt and not in explorer at any rate)

Last edited by gidierre on 2007-11-28, 21:55. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 14 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:
>mmm.....a mouse etc is handy sometimes […]
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>mmm.....a mouse etc is handy sometimes

definitely 😀 there's lots of generic mouse/cd dos drivers around that will do

>same thing happened after I tried the install from just one folder under C:\ .....no subfolder

what do you mean from one folder
extract sbbasic in c:\sbbasic and the other in the similar way (2 folders in c:\) that's feasible imo from Win98 as well,
then you have to boot and install from dos, OK ?

Just did this, have extracted all from sbbasic.exe into C:\SB1 and ctcmbbs.exe into C:\SB2

Please read my edit on my last reply, I've found the problem but don't know how to get around it, I rem'ed the winversion line in msdos.sys but that didn't help..it still seem to know I'm running Win95 or higher somehow 😜

Reply 15 of 26, by gidierre

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>Please read my edit on my last reply, I've found the problem but don't know how to get around it, I rem'ed the winversion line in msdos.sys but that didn't help..it still seem to know I'm running Win95 or higher somehow

yes, I see
there's nothing to do I'm afraid
but leave Win9x since it won't take it and get things done from "true" dos.

Reply 16 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:
>Please read my edit on my last reply, I've found the problem but don't know how to get around it, I rem'ed the winversion line […]
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>Please read my edit on my last reply, I've found the problem but don't know how to get around it, I rem'ed the winversion line in msdos.sys but that didn't help..it still seem to know I'm running Win95 or higher somehow

yes, I see
there's nothing to do I'm afraid
but leave Win9x since it won't take it and get things done from "true" dos.

Yeah, but what was do you recommend to boot into "pure dos"?

Reply 17 of 26, by gidierre

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>Yeah, but what was do you recommend to boot into "pure dos"?

take note I wrote "true" with the " " thingies because dos 7.xx isn't real dos anymore like 6.22
anyway
that's what I said before :

expand sbbasic & Co....
then if autoexec & config files are OK and dosstart.bat doesn't do any monkey business ...
now I'd reboot (I mean restart to dos mode)

if it goes awry I'd just use a floppy boot disk (of course you'll also need mouse/cdrom drivers for dos there)...-> this can well be done after the sb driver mess is settled

Reply 18 of 26, by Amigaz

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gidierre wrote:
>Yeah, but what was do you recommend to boot into "pure dos"? […]
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>Yeah, but what was do you recommend to boot into "pure dos"?

take note I wrote "true" with the " " thingies because dos 7.xx isn't real dos anymore like 6.22
anyway
that's what I said before :

expand sbbasic & Co....
then if autoexec & config files are OK and dosstart.bat doesn't do any monkey business ...
now I'd reboot (I mean restart to dos mode)

if it goes awry I'd just use a floppy boot disk (of course you'll also need mouse/cdrom drivers for dos there)...-> this can well be done after the sb driver mess is settled

Gonna grab a dos 6.22 bootdosk from www.bootdisk.com and try my luck with it but I bet it doesn't like FAT32 or something 😜

Reply 19 of 26, by gidierre

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>Gonna grab a dos 6.22 bootdosk from www.bootdisk.com and try my luck with it but I bet it doesn't like FAT32 or something

that's for sure
why not create a floppy from Win98 itself
or else search for a bootdisk to dos 7

don't use 6.22 if on a Windows machine, I do that but only in a VirtualPC session

EDIT
look anyway it ought to be simpler if rebooting from Win98 to dos (before resorting to using boot floppies) and making your way from there