Nice writeup elianda!

For MPU-401 emulation under DOS see this post, it's actually disabled on purpose.

Kamerat wrote:

Nice writeup elianda!

For MPU-401 emulation under DOS see this post, it's actually disabled on purpose.

Thanks, I will try the patched SNDINIT as soon as I have the Webboy setup again. You have the memory location to patch in the PCI ID by chance? Just in case the Webboys chipset has some other.
You wrote the MPU-401 emulation works itself but the instrument playback is completely broken?

elianda wrote:

Thanks, I will try the patched SNDINIT as soon as I have the Webboy setup again. You have the memory location to patch in the PCI ID by chance? Just in case the Webboys chipset has some other.
You wrote the MPU-401 emulation works itself but the instrument playback is completely broken?

The PCI ID values are located at offset E583 in my SNDINIT.EXE file and reads 39 10 30 06 by default and 39 10 31 06 in the modified one. The MPU-401 emulation of the SiS 7018 actually works pretty well compared to the Trident 4DWave it's based on.

If you want to run the SiS 7018 without any TSR you can use the T4DW.EXE utility made for the Trident 4DWave (only Sound Blaster sample playback will work, no OPL or MPU-401 emulation].

Hello. sorry for digging up this thread again after such a long time but i'm getting desperate.
It doesn't say Gericom Webboy on my notebook it has an "IPC TopNoteH 340S2 on it, but it probably uses the same hardware.
It came with an Preinstalled Windows98 SE and the drivers were pre-installed. Now it's been 25 years for me It's since the last time I had anything to do with DOS and the links to the drivers don't work anymore either. I've tried several versions from other sources and these files I'm supposed to edit just don't appear. To be honest, I don't understand anything SNDTSR.EXE is, I still have no idea what "MPU-401" does. Isn't there a solution for which you don't have to have studied computer science in the 90s? I was 10 years old at the time and at that time I just had to set sound blaster 16/pro "220 - 5 - 1" and then it worked.
I usually fix my problems myself, and I'm also in the process of running linux systems, but I just don't check anything here.
How should I solve the problem if I already fail to download the driver. I feel like an idiot.
Does the procedure described in the thread solve the problem that all my games in the Dos cannot find my sound card?
I'm not even sure about that because I understand 20% of it.
i think i need help. please

Bergwacht wrote on 2023-04-14, 10:03:

Isn't there a solution for which you don't have to have studied computer science in the 90s?

Sure have that feeling myself sometimes 😁

Bergwacht wrote on 2023-04-14, 10:03:

I still have no idea what "MPU-401" does

MPU-401 is the interface for MIDI music playback. I would bench that thought for now and just focus on getting basic Sound Blaster functionality working.

The audio core within the SiS 630 chipset is the SiS 7018. The drivers are still available here: http://w3.sis.com/download/agreement.php?url=/download/

Accept the agreement, choose OS, Audio, 7018. It will download "7018_119.zip". See how you go with the instructions now that you actually have the files to work with, and report back if you need to.

Pierre32 wrote on 2023-04-14, 11:09:

The audio core within the SiS 630 chipset is the SiS 7018. The drivers are still available here: http://w3.sis.com/download/agreement.php?url=/download/

Accept the agreement, choose OS, Audio, 7018. It will download "7018_119.zip". See how you go with the instructions now that you actually have the files to work with, and report back if you need to.

I've been busy with this all day now.
Exactly the driver from the sis website is missing the "Dos" directory. The files were entered into the autoexec by the setup but the setup had not copied these files.(just a uninstall exe)
Someone seems to have had the problem, because somewhere I found a version of the driver with a DOS directory.
Somehow it didn't install these files at first, then I found them in some other directory and copied them into it by myself

It now reports when Windows boots that these 2 files are loaded, then something is triggered (too fast to read) is written there(looks right).

Settlers 2 now finds my Soundblaster as a Midi card, but I don't have any sound yet and it still dont detect any "digital audio". When I ran Jack ordlando's auto detection my win98 freezed first time and second try it detected my midi card but no audio was there.

And since I did this Dos driver installation procedure,sounds everything like a mixture of squeaking and hissing comes out of my audio jack depending on... I don't know - hard disk speed or CPU load or something.(I'm not quite sure if this is also there without headphones, maybe it's just harder to hear then)

In Win98 the sound still works normally(plus these noises).
When I had the notebook new 2 days ago, "Midi" was displayed in the windows volume mixer, which was greyed out, this has now disappeared complete.

The readme from the driver that actually brings the dos directory has a slightly different readme that says:

"2. Please make sure HIMEM is already installed. Add this line in your config.sys
DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
For Windows, you don't have to do so because Windows loads HIMEM automatically."

I couldn't find this HIMEM on my hard drive.
In addition, the readme says that the addresses of my sound card entered in the TSSND cfg must not be already occupied. I have no idea whether these addresses are occupied by anything and I don't know how to check it either.

The only driver I found that also brings the Dos directory with it is this one:
Exactly This "AUDIO" directory is missing from the official driver.
https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … e589c045707c051

I am very thankful for the help!
Sorry that I write so much text but I'm still trying to understand what I'm doing here^^

So, although I have some familiarity with this chipset from a recent Aptiva, personally I've only set it up in Win98.

I know how you feel going in circles with this stuff though. Like you said it was so simple in the DOS days of plugging in a Sound Blaster and setting a single SET BLASTER line. Sadly with integrated chipsets like this we were well into the Windows area, DOS support was fading, and ****arounds like this to get things working in DOS were on the up. But at least the capabilities were there if your time was wasn't valuable 😁

Unless I'm missing something, in elianda's original post there is no mention of a DOS directory in the driver pack. So my assumption is that using the latest driver download from the SIS site, and running that installer with the appropriate switches, is all you should need to do. (Plus the manual file management bits and adding the lines to autoexec).

The package you've found appears to land you in much the same place, having to move files to the right location etc. It seems like you're close.

This HIMEM.SYS issue might be the last hurdle? This would historically be in your C:\DOS directory but under Win98 should be under C:\WINDOWS.

Some discussion for reference - scroll a few posts down for a typical CONFIG.SYS example: How do I set up EMS on Windows 98SE?

If it's missing or corrupt somehow, you can get another copy off a boot disk: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000425.htm

[edit] If you're trying to locate HIMEM.SYS in Windows Explorer, you may need to ensure that hidden files & system files are visible in Explorer options.

Very annoying, I could even read that the drivers were loaded and there was a connection to the card. Unfortunately, I have to wait 2-4 days because I dropped the hard drive.
It wasn't that easy to find one with an IDE that wasn't too big. I was a bit frustrated at first but I'm amazed at how much fun it is^^

Pierre32 wrote on 2023-04-15, 08:19:

So, although I have some familiarity with this chipset from a recent Aptiva, personally I've only set it up in Win98. […]
Show full quote

So, although I have some familiarity with this chipset from a recent Aptiva, personally I've only set it up in Win98.

I know how you feel going in circles with this stuff though. Like you said it was so simple in the DOS days of plugging in a Sound Blaster and setting a single SET BLASTER line. Sadly with integrated chipsets like this we were well into the Windows area, DOS support was fading, and ****arounds like this to get things working in DOS were on the up. But at least the capabilities were there if your time was wasn't valuable 😁

Unless I'm missing something, in elianda's original post there is no mention of a DOS directory in the driver pack. So my assumption is that using the latest driver download from the SIS site, and running that installer with the appropriate switches, is all you should need to do. (Plus the manual file management bits and adding the lines to autoexec).

The package you've found appears to land you in much the same place, having to move files to the right location etc. It seems like you're close.

This HIMEM.SYS issue might be the last hurdle? This would historically be in your C:\DOS directory but under Win98 should be under C:\WINDOWS.

Some discussion for reference - scroll a few posts down for a typical CONFIG.SYS example: How do I set up EMS on Windows 98SE?

If it's missing or corrupt somehow, you can get another copy off a boot disk: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000425.htm

[edit] If you're trying to locate HIMEM.SYS in Windows Explorer, you may need to ensure that hidden files & system files are visible in Explorer options.

I couldn't wait for the hard drive I bought to arrive so I bought an old hard drive from ebay.
Now I've installed windows98 again, it's exactly the same only with himam installed.
As described in the instructions, I copied the files from the driver directory (sndinit.exe, sndtsr.exe and tssnd.ini) to C:/DOSAUD.
Then I copied the Himem.sys from my boot disc (there were none on my hard drive and on the windows cd) to C:/DOS.
Then I added the entry "DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS" to my config.sys as requested in the instructions.
This now has the following entries:

device=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\display.sys con=(ega,,1)
Country=049,850,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\country.sys
device=C:\DOS\Himem.sys

Then I linked the two exe in the autoexec as stated in the readme of the driver, which looks like this:

mode con codepage prepare=((850) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ega.cpi)
mode with code page select=850
keyb gr,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\keyboard.sys
C:\DOSAUD\SNDINIT.EXE/INIT
C:\DOSAUD\SNDTSR.EXE

If I start the computer in msdos mode and then run sndinit.exe to test it, I get the message
"The value of index(04H) in PCI header is 0, it should be 07H.
Can not find SiS 7018 PCI Audio Aclerator."

meantime I think I understand at least a little bit what I'm doing, isn't that SETBLAST thing missing in the exec?
Thanks for all the patience. Maybe I should learn Direct DOS and leave windows alone ? ^^

I'm beyond the point where I can provide more help unfortunately. Hopefully someone else can step in. I want to point out one difference in your autoexec entries and the ones in the OP though - OP's includes a call to TSSND.INI:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SNDINIT.EXE /INIT /FC:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\TSSND.INI

(It sounds like you set up your SET BLASTER info in TSSND.INI)

OP also mentions "two separate configs for windows bootup and DOS bootup" (I assume autoexec & config.sys) which may be necessary here? Here's some info on that topic:

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-mode-super-easy.html

meanwhile I've also lost the overview, it's just too complex. I don't know what I have to set in the bios or what it is that I see there.
this easy dos thing only brings mouse and cdrom drivers with it? how should my sound work with it?
I give up. I'm just too stupid for that. Thanks for all the patience. maybe i should play with lego instead. life sucks