DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 17:16:

I'm sure someone said I can't have two cards configured in DOS, which makes sense, but is there a way of unloading my ISA drivers once in DOS? There is an uninstaller, but I think the last time I tried that, it removed a lot of needed files, and I had to revert back to an image of my HDD. At the moment I'm backing things up to an image before trying it again. Apart from that, I haven't seen an unloader.

I'm not sure who claimed you could not have two sound cards configured in DOS. That isn't right at all. I've installed up to 6 sound cards concurrently in DOS. It's just a matter of assigning hardware resources so the devices don't conflict.

Insofar as "uninstalling" drivers in DOS, first you need to know how DOS drivers work. Typically driver installation will make changes to CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Removing drivers from being loaded on boot up can be accomplished by either putting a REM statement in front the respective lines or just deleting those lines altogether.

Personally I'd recommend the REM approach since you can always undo those changes by removing the REM statement, if you wanted to activate the drivers again.

If you are finding the two cards won't play nice concurrently, you can look into setting up a DOS boot menu with individual configurations for each card.

I have system with multiple sounds cards, including a Audigy 2 PCI, and the best way I found to manage it in DOS was not initializing any card at boot, and then using .BAT files with Unisound to initialize just what I want to use at that moment.

Ex.: you would creat a .bat named yamaha.bat that would look something like this:
set blaster=a220 i5 d1 p330 t4
c:\drivers\unisound /c1

and another one called live.bat, that would look something like this:
ECHO Initializing SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS under DOS...
SET CTSYN=C:\LIVE
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
C:\LIVE\SBEINIT.COM
ECHO Initialization complete.

More details about my system and how I do it here:
I call it "poor man's Orpheus" :-)

You can have multiple sound cards in pure DOS without too many issues, as long as each one is assigned different resources.

Under Win9x, this is a bit harder, because Adlib and Joystick ports from different cards tend to conflict with each other. That can be worked around by manually disabling or reconfiguring resources on each sound card, but it requires a lot of careful work. That's why I don't recommend it with my guides, as it tends to create resource conflicts and disrupt the normal driver installation procedure under Win9x.

Shponglefan wrote on Yesterday, 17:59:

I'm not sure who claimed you have two sound cards configured in DOS. That isn't right at all. I've installed up to 6 sound cards […]
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DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 17:16:

I'm sure someone said I can't have two cards configured in DOS, which makes sense, but is there a way of unloading my ISA drivers once in DOS? There is an uninstaller, but I think the last time I tried that, it removed a lot of needed files, and I had to revert back to an image of my HDD. At the moment I'm backing things up to an image before trying it again. Apart from that, I haven't seen an unloader.

I'm not sure who claimed you have two sound cards configured in DOS. That isn't right at all. I've installed up to 6 sound cards concurrently in DOS. It's just a matter of assigning hardware resources so the devices don't conflict.

Insofar as "uninstalling" drivers in DOS, first you need to know how DOS drivers work. Typically driver installation will make changes to CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Removing drivers from being loaded on boot up can be accomplished by either putting a REM statement in front the respective lines or just deleting those lines altogether.

Personally I'd recommend the REM approach since you can always undo those changes by removing the REM statement, if you wanted to activate the drivers again.

If you are finding the two cards won't play nice concurrently, you can look into setting up a DOS boot menu with individual configurations for each card.

I see. I may be mis-remembering, or misunderstood, about it not being possible. Or it wasn't recommended. I know resource assignment is a bit of an issue if multiple cards are installed. I did try and free some by disabling the two COM ports and LPT.

But what you've described confirms that my understanding is correct. 😀 That's how I've been doing it. I've still yet to figure out how to set up a custom DOS boot menu with different configurations. With my ISA card, apart from the SET BLASTER line, nothing else appears to be configured for it. Though I need to check in the config.sys file for anything. So the problem lies with those ports already being configured to the card, which I presume it does automatically when DOS is initialised...? I tried removing the card and seeing if the SET BLASTER line would assign it to the only card present, but I still get that error and the wrong ports.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 18:07:

You can have multiple sound cards in pure DOS without too many issues, as long as each one is assigned different resources.

Under Win9x, this is a bit harder, because Adlib and Joystick ports from different cards tend to conflict with each other. That can be worked around by manually disabling or reconfiguring resources on each sound card, but it requires a lot of careful work. That's why I don't recommend it with my guides, as it tends to create resource conflicts and disrupt the normal driver installation procedure under Win9x.

Ahh, okay. Gotcha. So I need to find out how to assign different resources. Because even with my ISA card removed, it's still assigning the wrong ones to the SB Live! card.

Pino wrote on Yesterday, 18:00:

I have system with multiple sounds cards, including a Audigy 2 PCI, and the best way I found to manage it in DOS was not initial […]
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I have system with multiple sounds cards, including a Audigy 2 PCI, and the best way I found to manage it in DOS was not initializing any card at boot, and then using .BAT files with Unisound to initialize just what I want to use at that moment.

Ex.: you would creat a .bat named yamaha.bat that would look something like this:
set blaster=a220 i5 d1 p330 t4
c:\drivers\unisound /c1

and another one called live.bat, that would look something like this:
ECHO Initializing SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS under DOS...
SET CTSYN=C:\LIVE
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
C:\LIVE\SBEINIT.COM
ECHO Initialization complete.

More details about my system and how I do it here:
I call it "poor man's Orpheus" :-)

Great. Thanks for the link; I'll check that out. Does Unisound need to be initialised in autoexec.bat first? And then get it to call those custom BAT files from there?

Unisound just needs to be called once from anywhere to initialize the Yamaha card. Unlike CD-ROM devices for example, there's no two step device driver and then load extension process. Just one and done.

By default both Unisound and SBEINIT should follow the BLASTER variable for resource assignment. My recommendation would be to use Address 220, IRQ 7 and DMA 1 as some older games are hard coded to use one or more of these values.

That would mean that your Yamaha BLASTER line would be "A220 I7 D1 P330 T4" and your SB Live BLASTER line would be "A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6"

I expect that the DOS driver installation has put a default value for BLASTER in your "C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT" file, which is where SBEINIT is currently getting it's resource values from.

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 22:33:

Unisound just needs to be called once from anywhere to initialize the Yamaha card. Unlike CD-ROM devices for example, there's no […]
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Unisound just needs to be called once from anywhere to initialize the Yamaha card. Unlike CD-ROM devices for example, there's no two step device driver and then load extension process. Just one and done.

By default both Unisound and SBEINIT should follow the BLASTER variable for resource assignment. My recommendation would be to use Address 220, IRQ 7 and DMA 1 as some older games are hard coded to use one or more of these values.

That would mean that your Yamaha BLASTER line would be "A220 I7 D1 P330 T4" and your SB Live BLASTER line would be "A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6"

I expect that the DOS driver installation has put a default value for BLASTER in either your windows "C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT" file, which is where SBEINIT is currently getting it's resource values from.

Great. Thanks. I'll have a play around with it soon. But yeah, the line has been added to autoexec.bat by the driver, along with the directory of the DOS files. I'll see about setting up different BAT files with the commands and see if they're called correctly. 😀

Okay, I seem to be running into another issue. I think it might have something to do with resources...? But I'm not sure. Basically, when I had the SB Live's drivers installed first I went and installed the Windows drivers for that HPT IDE controller. After restarting, I keep getting a BSOD. A 'fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C2A230E2'. I tried going back and installing the controller's drivers first and then the sound card's, but the same issue has happened. It goes if I disable the controller in the BIOS though.

I am tempted to just disable the controller and be done with it, but if it is a resource issue, and there is a way of getting things to work together in harmony, I'm all for it.

Do you have access to any other driver versions for the controller? Typically you won't have resource issues with built in PCI devices on the motherboard. But at the end of the day, if it's not necessary I would can it. No need to complicate matters just to show something as enabled in the BIOS.

I've run the Orpheus II in a machine with a SoundBlaster Live! It worked fine. The reality is the SB Live! only consumes one IRQ in DOS if you aren't using it for legacy emulation, and why would you if you have a real ISA card?