Games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, etc. are protected mode games (these type of games are normally loaded with a DOS extender like DOS/4GW).
In order for these games to work with the AWE32's MIDI, they must support it natively (they must have AWE32 in their setup menu).
Real mode games are supported via the Aweutil utility (for these you would select General MIDI).

Since your card is not plug and play, make sure the jumper settings on your sound card matches your environment variables in your Autoexec.bat file (the set sound parameters).
Furthermore, you can reserve your sound card's DMA and IRQ channels in your BIOS to prevent other devices from utilizing those resources. This might be the reason why you have system crashes and reboots.

Thanks for responding!

Makes sense on the Doom,ROTT and Heretic and other games which you are correct, I need to select the AWE32 drivers. So thank you for confirming that! And when I do that, they work fine!

My jumpers on the sound card are set correctly and match what it shown above, and I have reserved the IRQ5,7 and DMA 1,5 channels in the BIOS so nothing else is using them.

Its just some games that have SB16 support(epic pinball) work fine with no issues. But some games like Jazz the Jackrabbits and One Must Fall(when set to SB16) reboot the computer when the game is launched.

And games like my Hocus Pocus that supports General Midi for music will also reboot even if I set the aweutil with the /em:gm or just /em config. And some games like SANGO FIGHTER just wont recognize the General Midi when activated, its like it tries and pauses and makes the menu slow but no music.

If it was just picking on General Midi only then It would make more sense. But since it reboots on Jazz and OMF as well, kind of puzzles me. Hmmmm

AWE32 GM support is way too buggy outside Windows, don't load it at all on DOS or you'll have issues.

ok, I will quit trying with the GM stuff under DOS I guess. I know i had it working back in the day. But I also had a different motherboard back then too. So maybe there is something going on there.

But GM issues aside, still doesn't answer why certain games when SB16 is selected will reboot the computer. Is there something else(other than DOSBOX) that people use for their old rigs to get GM stuff to work properly in DOS? Is 6.22 the way to go, or Dos 7? Maybe I'm going about this wrong?

Thanks for the continued feedback though!

;

On an AWE64 Gold, I've also seen reboots when trying the GM emulation. On some games it reboots instantly, on other games (Privateer for example), the game works for a while, then the audio sounds a bit off and then the machine reboots 😀

So best is to use native AWE support, and for GM games, acquire an external GM device, from Roland or Yamaha for example.

Blades wrote:

ok, I will quit trying with the GM stuff under DOS I guess. I know i had it working back in the day. But I also had a different […]
Show full quote

ok, I will quit trying with the GM stuff under DOS I guess. I know i had it working back in the day. But I also had a different motherboard back then too. So maybe there is something going on there.

But GM issues aside, still doesn't answer why certain games when SB16 is selected will reboot the computer. Is there something else(other than DOSBOX) that people use for their old rigs to get GM stuff to work properly in DOS? Is 6.22 the way to go, or Dos 7? Maybe I'm going about this wrong?

Thanks for the continued feedback though!

;

The GM TSR might be causing the reboot, even the game does not use GM at all.

Some games allow you to choose which DMA channel to use.
Based on your current configuration, these are DMA 1 (the "low" DMA channel) & DMA 5 (the "high" DMA channel).

When you are in the setup menu, and if an available option, choose SB16/AWE32 for digital sound but, choose DMA 1 (not DMA 5) and see whether that doesn't solve your problem.
If you still don't have any luck, try configuring your sound card to use IRQ7 (not IRQ5) - just make sure your printer port (not that you would have anything connected to your parallel port) is also not using the same IRQ (I usually just disable it in the BIOS).

For Real Mode games, where you need to load the Aweutil tsr, make sure your motherboard supports non maskable interrupts (NMI's) and that it is enabled in the BIOS (if an available option).
However, with the hardware that you're using, it should support it.

Well I'm somewhat making some progress. I found that EMM386 is causing Jazz Jackrabbit and other games to restart the computer when launched. Which is good I found what it was.... Bad though since I need the extra memory to run most games and with EMM386 disabled it really lowers my conventional memory. Hmmm. And SimFarm plays GM (when activated via aweutil) just fine while other GM games(sango fighter, hocus-pocus) do not. Weird. Well guess I will keep tinkering. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks guys for your help so far!

;

IIRC there are alternatives for EMM386 - or was that only for HIMEM.SYS?
Anyway, you might try UMBPCI to get some extra memory without switching to v86 mode at all, that should work with your board (Aladdin V).

Blades wrote:

I found that EMM386 is causing Jazz Jackrabbit and other games to restart the computer when launched.

It may be a combination of exact HW and EMM386 switches. I know for a fact that on my old system, Jazz Jackrabbit works fine with EMM386.

Try without the D=64 switch. Do you need it for something specific?

However, as you are not using EMS (evident from your NOEMS switch), perhaps the suggestion of the EMM386 alternatives (like UMBPCI) is the best for you.

Never had any problems with EMM386 and these games on my older machines, and I had a SB32 PnP. However, the parameters I used were RAM and occasionally HIGHSCAN (this last one can cause issues but raises conventional memory).

I use this:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOSW\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B400-B7FF I=CA00-CBFF AUTO

The more standard I=B000-B7FF causes problems with CDMAN 2.0 and I think a few other games.

Howdy,

Thanks for all the help guys/gals!

I ended up using UMBPCI and that took care of most of my problems with resetting and such.

Still won't play GM on Hocus Pocus and Sango Fighter. But has no problems with Castles 2, Sim Farm, Lost Vikings and others.

So it seems GM is a hit and miss in DOS. But overall im happy with the results!

Thanks again!

Sorry about resurrecting the old thread, but I just encountered the same problem: Jazz Jackrabbit rebooted my machine when EMM386 is loaded. While using UMBPCI instead of EMM386 might indeed be a very good idea, because it avoids (needless) paging in Real Mode, I found a way to run Jazz Jackrabbit even with EMM386 in NOEMS configuration.

At http://plit.de/asem-51/asemx.htm, the author of ASEMX has some hints on preventing crashes that occur when EMM386 is loaded. The author recommends using the environment variable DPMIMEM to limit the amount of memory used by the Borland 16-Bit DOS extender to below 16MB. As Jazz Jackrabbit uses the same DOS extender (but with renamed files, DPMI.000 is actually DPMI16BI.OVL and RTM.000 is actually RTM.EXE), I tried to give it a shot. It worked, indeed: If I use

1set DPMIMEM=MAXMEM 48000

or lower, Jazz Jackrabbit works flawlessly, even with EMM386 loaded.

The reason we do not remember these kind of crashes from the times when the games were new is most likely that nearly no one had 48MB RAM or more on the machine used to play Jazz Jackrabbit.

Note: This crash of Jazz Jackrabbit is not related to the MIDI emulation of the SB AWE. My system contains a SB16, it does not even support NMI feedback for MPU emulation. The incompatibility between (other) protected mode games and AWEUTIL is a very real thing, though. It doesn't affect Jazz Jackrabbit, because this game does not access the MPU401 ports.

My Win98SE machine has 256MB RAM and I don't think Jazz Jackrabbit crashes with EMM386 (I definitely don't have that DPMIMEM switch), but it may be affecting some systems and not others. Great find.

Interesting. I'm using the version of Jazz Jackrabbit that is available on GOG. For me, it crashes in DOS 6.22 and in "Command line only" configuration of Windows 98SE.
It does not crash in the DOS VM (DOS window) of Windows 98SE, though. In the DOS window, Jazz Jackrabbit uses the DPMI host services provided by Windows 98, while in DOS mode, Jazz Jackrabbit uses the 16-Bit Borland DPMI host bundled with Jazz Jackrabbit.