ZanQuance wrote:

(WINBOOTDIR = location of vortex.ini file, ect C:\ASP4DOS)
WINBOOTDIR = C:\ASP4DOS
Type ASP4DOS /? if you need more settings for the card.

Hmm, i dont know it is problem of Dos 7.1 or what, but.. i have tried

1SET WinbootDir = C:\Drivers\AurealV1

/// where is ASP4DOS
or only

1WinbootDir = C:\Drivers\AurealV1

Give me bad command..
+

1C:\Drivers\AurealV1\ASP4DOS.com

That give me Error #4: Vortex.ini couldnt be opened, driver not loaded.

C:\Drivers\AurealV1 is in path.
ASP4DOS /? working for any path

echo %WinBootDir% still giving me

1C:\Windows

- maybe is protected or something like that.

Im using very similar syntax with Vortex 2 and

1SET INIFILEDIR=C:\DRIVERS\AUREALV2

its working fine.

I could copy vortex.ini to C:\Windows its working, but its not ideal for driver distribution package.

btw. that sweeping noise in Pinball Games is also when choosing "adlib" and using the ess-solo1. It's a problem of the game-engine combined with a faster processor. (celereon300 is ok though).
yes, I do have experimented with "throttle -c" and it's a good option. I always have the problem, that throtteling in connection with qemm386 leads to different performances if I do not make a restart after using it via batch-file for some games. It seems that it can not be deactivated completely via batch after some usage. Something stays in memory and leads to strange performance and lockups via error code. I found out that emm386 in connection with setmule seems to be more stable/reliable but not so flexible. My favorite ist still "cpucache.com". It works perfect on Qemm386, but does not work on emm386. It depends on the cpu and the game. Some games do work pretty good when only deactivating the cpu-cache, for some games this method leads to a much to slow system-speed. Some Demos (CrystalDreams2) work pretty well with cpucache off, I think the Demo-Engine turn CPU-Cache ON when running but you have to come over the first step (perhaps the sound-init, that hangs if your cpu is faster then 233 Mhz), after that everything seems to be OK and it must be with cpu-cache on otherwise it would be MUCH slower. BodyBlows can be tweaked to work on a Celeron300 and Solo1 with FM+SFX when loading the tp7p5fix before statiung the game. This method does not work anymore on my P3-600. There the machine simply freezes. What a pity, it's such a good game. Ultimate-Body-Blows does work in Dos and Win9x on the ESS-Solo1 by the way.

I will do a retest for the wdm-drivers. Have you extracted and tested the me-wdm-drivers in win98se?

No way! There is no FM in Dos under Win98se and WinME either when using the WDM Drivers, there is no FM, no 388h in the WDM Drivers. Only the VXD Drivers support FM in Dos within Win9x.
It cannot be tweak in a dosbox either. Starting essolo leads to a report that everything is OK, but there is simply no FM and no SFX when doing so. But you are right the WinME WDM Drivers do support onboard MPU401 with the solo. The others do not.

I have checked "raptor" again and it's working fine in plain Dos and Win98se (VXD-Drivers) BUT! I have version 1.0 and I am pretty sure that it uses the Doom1 Soundengine before Version 1.666 and that is Solo1 kompatible. If you have a later Version of Raptor which uses the Soundengnine from Doom1 1.66 or later or from Doom2/Heretic/Hexen/Duke etc. then you have no luck in plain Dos and with the Win9x VXD-Drivers.

btw. the WDM Drivers from ME are buggy. In some games there is no Volume-Controle for the MPU401 (I have an S2-Midi-Board on it) and if you exit a game that uses the mpu401 sometimes some strange sounds remind on the sound while the game is quit already. To get rid of that you'll have to reboot.

dr.zeissler, yeah, you're right, man, FM is actually unavailable in the WDM drivers. Sorry for providing you misinformation. I've finally re-checked and confirmed it on my setup - no FM audio in WinME as well. Likely I was under the general impression from temporarily messing with VxD drivers that the ESS Solo-1 can output FM in Windows, but since I was trying to get the GM (also a Dreamblaster S2) working at that time - I never actually went back to test the FM properly. And also because I do not use FM in Windows in any of the games I run with WDM for some reason - all of these games either have the GM/MPU401 option, or they utilize audio-CD for music (I bet there is a pattern here - those games were released right after SB16 and high DMA became a thing).

Regarding Raptor - yeah, this makes a ton of sence. Mine is version 1.2.

dr.zeissler wrote:

btw. the WDM Drivers from ME are buggy

No doubt about it 😀 What really bothers me is the stuttering in Jazz Jackrabbit and Rayman, though.

I can recommend this VXD for WIn98se. Overall the best. For Duke I use xDuke http://vision.gel.ulaval.ca/~klein/duke3d/, perhaps other Ports are fine too. (jonoF has audio-problems)
The WDM driver in WinME produces the DMA-confict after playing for some time, so no reliable solution for the problematic engine.

So does the Solo-1 works with Dreamblaster with VxD drivers? I'm kinda confused.

Absolutely 100% in plain Dos, Win9x and Win9x-Dos-Window with VXD-Drivers. Use my driver above, works best for me.
My only problem with the solo1 are the "problematic soundengines" in Dos and in the Dos-Window of Win98se.

SBpro,ESFM, MPU401 everything works with the VXD-Drivers including volume-control. No stuttering or such things.

dr.zeissler wrote:

. I found out that emm386 in connection with setmule seems to be more stable/reliable but not so flexible. My favorite ist still "cpucache.com". It works perfect on Qemm386, but does not work on emm386.

Do you know Slowdos utility? Im using it on X58, its running setmul l1d for older games, which have starting problem without it - Runtime error 2000, runtime error 6003 etc.. and slowdos for more modern games which are too fast (some of them dont have framepacing at all, some are running hell fast - Battle arena Toshinden, Destruction Debry 2).. Slowdos working fine under EMS, you can adjust speed through very small delay steps, it faik its not generate any incompatibility for my games.

With this combo (setmut + slowdos) i made working everything with appropriate speed what not freeze at the game start, because of other problem for example Microprose games are using mgraphic.exe and there is problem with CPU speed on such old machine as P3 450, it could be simulated in Dosbox with lots of cycles too.. and Setmul or Slowdos is not fixing that.. only replace something in binaries for some nops could help.. More info:
Fix Civilization I and probably lots of others Microprose games for new computers.. I need help with Hex editor magic.

I have tested 160 games on fast X58 machine, i managed to get working 135 of them fine and from 25 problematic, im sure than 1 of is that Microprose problem and in theory i would say max next 5-7 of them is could not working because of some speed problem, which is not fixable with setmul (it slowdown my machine 300x to slow 486 speed good for speed problem testing.. ), for rest of are almost sure that problem is not speed, because there are working without sound, or issues is obvious as need nont ems driver (not is not possible with my soundcard).

Maybe you know it, i just found it - lsit of speed sensivite games:
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

Could you share cpucache.com i dont have it?

Could you pleas share best ESS solo-1 pure Dos driver and autoexec/config lines?

I will add it to my drivers package + config for modern machines with PCI soundcards (i dont want to add ISAs to limit the scope), i it support for now Audigy/!Live, Yamahas 72x/74x and Vortex V1+V2.. i will maybe add CMEDIA 8738.. I dont mind add any other PCI sounddriver too.

BTW are other Creative PCI SC using same dos driver as Audigy and !Live or other? I had SB 128 but, its too long time.. there is also at least SB64 PCI.

One of my actual configs.

Would be VERY cool if Body-Blows could be fixed to run on my setup. Right now it only works on very old machines and up to a celeron300 with loaded tp7p5fix.
It supports the ess-solo for both FM and SFX and is very good!

btw. the speed sensitive list is also not reliable. e.g. DynaBlaster works just fine on my Apple-PC-Card with 166Mhz Pentium build in an 500Mhz PPC 7300.

Thanks, it seems that ESS driver requiring EMS to work too, im i right? Because im getting different error message during driver start (driver not loaded). I dont have this card, so im trying to make config files a bit empty handed.. EMS/JEMS branches seems to be fine, but of course, later we will need test with real card..

dr.zeissler wrote:

I can recommend this VXD for WIn98se. Overall the best.

Thanks, I'll install it as soon as I receive the VIA boards and will use it as the main one. I've noticed that the VxD and the DOS drivers have the same level of compatibility, so if I'll revert to it now - I'm going to lose SFX in about 20 games which are otherwise working fine with WDM. Yes, in Build Engine games it craps out during long sessions, but I'm okay with it if it means I can go without community-made patches 😀

I already have a Windows 2000-only laptop with Win95 versions (did you know Raptor had an official Windows version with prettier explosions?), source-ports and VDMSound for some of my favorite games, so for this build I want to stay as much DOS-native as possible 😀

By the way, I've just tried running Body Blows in DOS 6.22 with L1 Cache off on 600Mhz CPU frequency and it worked like a charm. Which CPUs have you tried running it on (with L1 disabled)?

ruthan wrote:

Thanks, it seems that ESS driver requiring EMS to work too, im i right? Because im getting different error message during driver start (driver not loaded). I dont have this card, so im trying to make config files a bit empty handed.. EMS/JEMS branches seems to be fine, but of course, later we will need test with real card..

No, the ESS driver requires nothing, no ems, no xms, it works just out of the box.

I use this one: https://www.pc-erfahrung.de/fileadmin/php-skr … info.php?ID=345 (I stated the TDP wrong earlier, it's about 15 Watts.)
Yes I tried different tools, but the game alway shows me a Error that look like a TP-Bug. The T7p5fix works only on slower machines for that game. 🙁
Perhaps it's the 133FSB?

Another game that cannot be played with the solo1 is "Turrican" for Dos; only Turrican32k works. But my CPU is fast enough to play the T2002 Windows remake. http://www.pekaro.de/t2002.html

hm, I think "Powerslave" worked for me with sound, perhaps there is a way for the other too:

"The BUILD Engine powers the following commercial games: Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Witchhaven, TekWar, Extreme Paintbrawl, Powerslave, NAM/Napalm, WWII GI
...some sequels, some unreleased games, and a bunch of TCs." http://www.icculus.org/BUILD/downloads/

"The AUDIOLIB.ZIP file contains all of the data you need from Jim Dose's sound engine that was used in Rise of the Triad, Duke 3D, and Shadow Warrior to compile the actual Audio Library itself. Instructions for doing this are contained in that file. I have not tested this personally to see if it compiles under the free version of Watcom."

If I just had much more experience in understanding how to change code-stuff, I would do it by myself. https://github.com/dos-games/vanilla-shadow_w … master/audiolib
That must be the soundengine used in lot's of the problematic titles. If this could be patched every soundengine could be recompiled and will work with the ess-solo1.

dr.zeissler wrote:

That must be the soundengine used in lot's of the problematic titles. If this could be patched every soundengine could be recompiled and will work with the ess-solo1.

But no one is going to do this for all the games. You may have more luck finding a way to patch the ESS-Solo1 driver to work properly with these sound engines. Or just use a more compatible solution like Aureal (but you get worse FM)...

I will stay with the ESS because of the really good FM and the lack of alternatives in that way. Never thought about patching the solo1 drivers. Don't know where to start. All I know is that "old sbpro" implementations that do not offer a high-dma work in most cases on the solo1. adding "-1" for the high-dma in the problematic engines (Duke, SW, etc) does not solve the problem 🙁

dr.zeissler wrote:

I use this one: https://www.pc-erfahrung.de/fileadmin/php-skr … info.php?ID=345 (I stated the TDP wrong earlier, it's about 15 Watts.)
Yes I tried different tools, but the game alway shows me a Error that look like a TP-Bug. The T7p5fix works only on slower machines for that game. 🙁
Perhaps it's the 133FSB?

I literally use the same CPU model 😀 Have you tried disabling the Level 1 cache before you start the game (from SetMul or BIOS)? Also, 133 FSB is a good thing for slowdown projects if your motherboard also supports switching FSB to other values (100 and 66).

No switching possible. I can only change the CPU to a FSB 100 or FSB 66 model, but I will not do that, because I need the CPU-Power. (watching videos on i815e xvid/divx performance is great!)
I need that power for emulation "css64 in plain dos works with ess-solo1 and uses 800x600 @50!! hz so no stuttering!!!...fantastic! if I only could patch the problematic games or the "esssolo.com".

btw. rott can be plaid as "winrott" or "rott32_registered". so this is also "fixed" for my setup. Duke3d is also fixed with "xduke", Hexen, Heretic, Doom1-2 are also "fixed" with doomgl, glheretic, glhexen (they work great on V1 in 512x384 on 15"TFT), that keeps swarrior(3dfx), blood1 (3dfx) and ww2gi as open targets.

dr.zeissler wrote:

No, the ESS driver requires nothing, no ems, no xms, it works just out of the box.

Ok there other error, here i added ESS to all branches with sound, i also added Cmedia 8738 drivers. First version of multiple sound card config and driver package is ready to test: Re: X58 PC+ Yamaha744 sound card-pure Dos7.1- compatibility list and research, work in progress- gurus needed You could report problems in that linked thread.