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MSDOS drivers for Neoware Eon Thin Client's CS5530 sound card

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First post, by compiler

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I have some problems with the sound in my "retroPC".

I have a Neoware EON Geode GX300, which it's supposed to have a CS5530 sound card (SB16 compatible).

The BIOS allows me to set SB16 emulation and set Address, IRQ, DMA, etc.

I'm using the following 3 games as a test :

- Gods with its initial theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DexgMrYfko.
- Duke Nukem 3D's sound test in setup.exe.
- Prince of Persia 1.3 with "prince sblast".

1.- If I start MSDOS 6.22 without any driver loaded, and I set the BLASTER variable properly:
- Gods opening theme works and the first "Into... the wonderful" voice can be heard, but then the voice does not sound anymore in the theme, I only have the background music and the drums.
- Duke3d sound test works fine (both music and sfx).
- Prince Of Persia 1.3 has music and sound effects.

2.- If I load UNISOUND 0.82a in autoexec.bat, the card gets detected (as a non PNP sound card), and it shows the proper configuration parameters that I have set in the BIOS and I specified in the BLASTER variable.
- Gods doesn't have any sound.
- Duke3d sound test does not give any error but I cannot hear any sound.
- Prince of persia has no sound.

The thing is... are there specific/dedicated MSDOS sound drivers for the CS5530 that work with all games?

I could only find Windows drivers here: here.

Thanks.

Reply 1 of 2, by NeoG_

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The audio on the Geode platform is PCI based AC97, so you probably need to throw away the idea of it working with all games. But it's worth noting that quite a few games from the DOS era expect the sound card to be at a specific location regardless of what is set in the blaster variable. The most compatible set of values for older games is Address 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1, High DMA 5 (if available).

If the chipset is providing hardware level non-PnP emulation that works without any initialisation software, it likely never had drivers to begin with except maybe a mixer app but you could use the original SB16 mixerset as a replacement for that. That's not really anything to do with game compatibility though.

98/DOS Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, SB16-SCSI, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA CD, ZIP100
XP Rig: Lian Li PC-10 ATX, Gigabyte X38-DQ6, Core2Duo E6850, ATi HD5870, 2GB DDR2, 2TB HDD, X-Fi XtremeGamer

Reply 2 of 2, by compiler

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NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 11:33:

The audio on the Geode platform is PCI based AC97, so you probably need to throw away the idea of it working with all games. But it's worth noting that quite a few games from the DOS era expect the sound card to be at a specific location regardless of what is set in the blaster variable. The most compatible set of values for older games is Address 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1, High DMA 5 (if available).

If the chipset is providing hardware level non-PnP emulation that works without any initialisation software, it likely never had drivers to begin with except maybe a mixer app but you could use the original SB16 mixerset as a replacement for that. That's not really anything to do with game compatibility though.

Thanks a lot.

Yes, the SB16 is emulated in the chipset and you can set the "sound card settings" in the BIOS.

I just changed the IRQ in the BIOS from IRQ 5 to IRQ 7 and now i have voices in GODS and sound effects in "all" games (tested).

There's no need for drivers.

Many thanks.

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