regarding the Terratec DMX xFire 1024, it has the following chipset: Crystal CS4624.
I am not sure, but expect it to be quite similar to my Turtle beach santa cruz
(CS4630) and that card's pure DOS support is poor. You have SB emulation, but with few options and I could not get it to utilize a midi daughterboard in pure DOS.

Is not the Terratec Dmx xfire. Is just the Terratec Dmx, that has an ESS ES1970 Canyon-3d chipset: a completely different beast. Not really interested in my specific card at the moment: I'd like to know an experience of using a wavetable daughtboard in a dos enviroment, and how it's accomplished. Thanks

Not possible imho, the DMX xfire's Canyon-3D chipset only ever offered SBPro compatibility in DOS and there were never any DOS games that supported then card directly. I don't even think the MPU401 compatible UART works in DOS as it's based around a CPU driven driver for Windows MME.

Arrrgh...i shouldn't have pointed at all about my "Terratec DMX" and NOT "Terratec DMX xfire". This first supports a wavetable daughtboard, and does mean that it doensn't need a ram loaded samples bank when installed. Again, I weren't interested in my board: I've asked how it's accomplished using a wavetable daughterboard in a sound card that expose it in DOS (for example, an aureal vortex 2 with waveblaster connector).

No need to get upset. Your question referred to the card you purchased, so I answered accordingly. Basically, it depends on the card as many differ, but it's basically a case of using the onboard MPU401 (which is what you select in game) redirected to the internal wavetable board's (waveblaster for example) pin header via a software switch. In most cases this was designed to work solely within a Windows hosted dos box (command prompt). In those cases you used the Windows Midi aspect (either manually directing it to the waveblaster addon card) or the sound card's own management suite.

ie Vortex soundcard in Win9x :-

C. DOS BOXES […]
Show full quote

C. DOS BOXES

Windows DOS boxes are launched from the "MSDOS prompt" in the
Windows 9x Start menu. Simply run the game as usual. The game
still needs to be configured for the Vortex hardware settings.

Vortex provides wavetable support in DOS boxes if the game
supports General MIDI output. To use wavetable in a DOS box:
1. Open the Vortex Control Panel MIDI tab.
2. Ensure that "Vortex Wavetable Receives DOS Box MIDI" is
selected.
3. Open the application in a DOS box. Configure the music to use
MPU-401 output.
The Vortex drivers can also send MIDI to other software wavetable
or external MIDI devices installed or attached on your computer.

Then in Windows you select the waveblaster patchbank via the sound card's software or Windows Midi Control Panel.

http://www.evertek.com/FTPRoot/Drivers_Manual … in9x/readme.txt

Maybe you know, whether a Vortex2 board is able to expose its WaveBlaster header in pure DOS, not in a windows dos box?

@GL1ZDA: The Vortex-2 is one of the few PCI soundcard-chipsets that let's you utilize a daughterboard in pure DOS. So you can bootup in pure dos, load(high) its dos driver 'au30dos.com', and play with SB effects and Midi Music.

@ceztko: it all depends on 1) does the PCI soundcard have a waveblaster header, and 2) did the company bother to write a proper pure dos driver for it, that lets your games access the waveblaster port properly. ...Oh and 3) does your Mainboard support this drivers ISA emulation method.

No need to get upset. Your question referred to the card you purchased

Not upset at all. I was just displeased because probably my question wasn't very clear. "sound card X" in my question referred to any sound card able to use a wavetable daughterboard in pure dos. I'm sorry for the misunterstanding. Thanks

I second the recommendation of a Vortex 2 board if a PCI card with DOS support is required. As a host for a wavetable daughterboard, it was one of the best. Great sound quality, good compatibility in DOS and Windows 9x and no "hanging notes" problem.

As for all the variations, keep your eyes peeled for the Aureal SQ2500 on eBay.

The only issue is that the DOS TSRs for these PCI cards usually cause instability on some level. Some games will be ok, others will lock up. And I've had serious problems with getting ISA cards to work alongside those TSRs (even ones that don't need TSRs themselves.)

swaaye wrote:

The only issue is that the DOS TSRs for these PCI cards usually cause instability on some level. Some games will be ok, others will lock up. And I've had serious problems with getting ISA cards to work alongside those TSRs (even ones that don't need TSRs themselves.)

Hmm. I have not seen this happen at all with the Vortex cards on my PC's. Some games may not work - true, but that could be the case of any sound card including ISA ones.

Attached is the driver readme with the compatibility list at the time it was released.

I have seen that happen too Swaaye. I had the same experience on a K6-2 machine and a couple of pure intel machiines (300A and P200MXX)

Has anyone experience such problems with daughterboards in Windows?:
X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM and 'Can't find X-Wing CD' / problems with MX300 (the second half of the post). Or maybe someone could upload iso images of the MX300 driver CD, because I only own the card and can't find all these demos and stuff anywhere?

dh4rm4 wrote:

I have seen that happen too Swaaye. I had the same experience on a K6-2 machine and a couple of pure intel machiines (300A and P200MMX)

Yes, but locks up only in Windows, even if I remove from autoexec.bat the au30dos.com driver...

OK, so I never had GM setup for Xwing. 😳

Yes, when I choose SB + GM MIDI, it locks up. It does the same under pure DOS too. I run it under DOSBox, so I never play it on my legacy PC.

GL1zdA wrote:

Or maybe someone could upload iso images of the MX300 driver CD, because I only own the card and can't find all these demos and stuff anywhere?

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O2IR25MT

Would that au30dos.com file perchance be located inside the CD image ?

I actually managed to get my hands on a genuine PCI Aureal SQ2500 card(vortex2 AU8830A2), which I suspect is the one that uses that dos driver ??
Or could I use the dos drivers for the MX300 (when I find them) instead ?

If not, I'd really like that au30dos.com file.... 😊

PS: crap! I'm too late for that MX300 ISO.... 😵
(wow, that file died FAST!)

PPS: eh... now it's back ?? what the.... ? hmm, just got a message 180 seconds ago that it violated something and was removed, and now we're back again... makes no sense. Oh well, at least I can get a download!

You can use the AU30DOS.com file without installing Windows if you only want DOS support, but the Windows driver creates the parameters file. Put the file attached in the same folder as AU30DOS.com or you can use the one your Windows 98 installation creates. This INI file is set to use a wavetable board. You also need the VORTMIX.exe file to set the levels. I call a batch file in my autoexec.bat.

Here is my batch file:

1@echo off
2vortmix video 20
3vortmix aux 26
4vortmix pcm 26
5vortmix master 24
6vortmix master 26
7vortmix master 26
8vortmix
9echo.

The multiple vortmix master 24/26 commands are needed because sometimes the first one does not stick. (It might be because they are executed so rapidly). YMMV

The version of AU30DOS.com I have comes up version 2.007. If anyone has one later, let us know.