I might be able to test this shortly. I'm still unpacking and sorting things out in my new place, but my time-machine room / man cave is already up and running, although heaps more work is needed.

But just out of a hunch I would point the finger at FreeDOS.

EDIT: Ah that's interesting...

Something I always do is disable COM1, COM2 and LPT in the BIOS to disable any resources.

Ok I now also tried with DOS 7.1 and I'm getting mixed results. In Monkey Island (not that this game supports GM) and Space Quest 4 it works fine. But Decent just plays nothing and Doom crashes.

What games did you try so far?

Keep in mind that the AWE's GM emulation for the EMU8000 does not work with protected-mode games. So, basically any game using a DOS extender (e.g.: DOS4/GW) won't be able to use the EMU8000 GM emulation.

This restriction does not apply to MIDI devices connected to the joystick MIDI port or a waveblaster connector (if present).

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What games did you try so far?

Doom, Doom2, Lost Vikings, some Lucas Arts games, etc all the same thing... hard crash, doesn't matter if it's FreeDOS or MS-DOS. None of the titles i've tried utilize DOS4/GW.

Perhaps, it's just due to craptacular driver coding from Creative, seems as if they rushed the AWE64 instead of throughly testing everything... maybe i'm wrong but thats sure how it seems.

doom and doom2 are protected mode though as far as I know.

Qbix wrote:

doom and doom2 are protected mode though as far as I know.

Dunno, but even non-protected mode games don't work, just for a couple seconds then BAM! hardlock. The card itself works great with FM Synth and AWE32/64 supported games (wavetable), it's just the General MIDI emulation where it fails.

hi.

I do have an awe64g but haven't tested this so apologies
there but the AWEUTIL.TXT doc does state that to use midi emulation the MFBEN jumper needs to be enabled.
You should check to see if that jumper has fallen off.

bye

Yeah, Doom 1-2 is dos4gw game.
Plus - aweutil don't working with "smart mode" emulation.
By the way, the command must be "aweutil /s /em:gm", IIRC.
Check the MFBEN jumper (must be connected).

And - not sure about the needed MIDI SYNTH: value. Which port emulation will intercept - internal (1) or external (0)?

Chaniyth wrote:

Dunno, but even non-protected mode games don't work, just for a couple seconds then BAM! hardlock. The card itself works great with FM Synth and AWE32/64 supported games (wavetable), it's just the General MIDI emulation where it fails.

Yea that's odd because Space Quest 4 worked just fine for me. I also got sound in Monkey Island (wrong instruments of course).

How much RAM have you got? I have 128MB but will switch to smaller stick like 32 or 64.

You could maybe try another ISA slot?

And do you have other main boards / systems to test with? Sometimes certain parts just don't like each other.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea that's odd because Space Quest 4 worked just fine for me. I also got sound in Monkey Island (wrong instruments of course). […]
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Chaniyth wrote:

Dunno, but even non-protected mode games don't work, just for a couple seconds then BAM! hardlock. The card itself works great with FM Synth and AWE32/64 supported games (wavetable), it's just the General MIDI emulation where it fails.

Yea that's odd because Space Quest 4 worked just fine for me. I also got sound in Monkey Island (wrong instruments of course).

How much RAM have you got? I have 128MB but will switch to smaller stick like 32 or 64.

You could maybe try another ISA slot?

And do you have other main boards / systems to test with? Sometimes certain parts just don't like each other.

48MB of RAM, no other Pentium board, in a couple of weeks i'll have my VIP v3.4 B/F motherboard + AMD AM5x86-133Mhz 486, guess I would try it with that. My system currently is an Aopen AP53 motherboard + Pentium 200Mhz MMX [clocked at 166Mhz because for some odd reason my motherboard is being retarded and not detecting it as 200Mhz even though the setting on the motherboard are set for it].

By the way, I may be wrong, but is the AWE ALREADY GM compatible with "set blaster=... p330 ...", "set midi=synth:1 map:e ..." and without aweutil /em:gm?

Some games use a different MPU-401 mode to what the emulation uses.

Also, according to AWE64FAQ.txt, if your motherboard doesn't have NMI (non-maskable interrupt), you can only use FM synthesis in DOS games.

Gamecollector wrote:

By the way, I may be wrong, but is the AWE ALREADY GM compatible with "set blaster=... p330 ...", "set midi=synth:1 map:e ..." and without aweutil /em:gm?

Don't think so. AFAIK out-of-the-box it routes MIDI to the external port (game port). For example if you hook up a Roland Sound Canvas or another MIDI device.

Gamecollector wrote:

And - not sure about the needed MIDI SYNTH: value.

AFAIK that MIDI environment variable is only used by Creative's PLAY.EXE program, which nobody ever uses.

AdamP wrote:

Some games use a different MPU-401 mode to what the emulation uses.

Also, according to AWE64FAQ.txt, if your motherboard doesn't have NMI (non-maskable interrupt), you can only use FM synthesis in DOS games.

Thanks for that, I don't think it does have NMI [not sure how to find out].

AWEUTIL is almost useless, it has been discussed to death.

Try to launch the game in question from Windows. First try something that is reported to work without major problems. (I usually start with Tie Fighter as setmuse.exe can change and test sound devices)

In Windows, when the AWE64 drivers are correctly installed, launch AWE Control Panel. Go to the "Device" tab. You will only need to tick in "Allow MPU401 emulation on this device".

Try a few other games as well, at reduced CPU speed, just to make sure.
In the game setups, always select 330h for the general MIDI device, never AWE32 / AWE64 native mode (620h). The IRQ is not important, it will not be used.

I love FM synth too. Somehow there's something nice and warm about it.

How about the autoexec.bat and config.sys in that system? Can you list the contents?

Also, use a floppy boot disk (with the AWE statements copied into it), with nothing but himem.sys in config and the AWE statements in the autoexec. Floppies come in handy when testing and for excluding culprits.