You have sound in other games and are the games complete (e.g. not ripped? although I can't imagine anyone ripping pcspeaker music)
Does midi work at your place ? I have a vague rememberence that it uses midi for sound

I am using the original freeware version which is available on Cinemaware website (www.cinemaware.com).
Every game I tested on my machine & DosBox works perfectly.
I can hear the MIDI music, though (both AdLib and Roland MT-32, via my real MT-32), but still no sound effects... and they were there, I am sure of that, because I played the game on my old 386.

unzipping the archive
and running desert.bat gives me sound (on the answer the door screen)

Qbix wrote:

unzipping the archive
and running desert.bat gives me sound (on the answer the door screen)

What do you mean by "sound"?
If you mean "music" I get that too, no problem.
I was talking about sound effects. If you look into the directory of the game, you'll find files such as "thatshim.spl" (one of the yells you get when escaping the hospital, "That's him!") and "donkey.spl" (the donkey verse in the "answer the door" screen).
In addition, you should hear the sound of the falling comet in the title screen.
Instead of these effects, I just hear some strange and fast sound stuttering.
These effects were the same of the Amiga version, only at a lower sound rate, played through the PC Speaker (through a Realsound-like system, but the genuine Realsound in Mean Streets works fine for me).

Read what Qbix wrote in brackets.

Then please post full system specs including dosbox version, mounting etc.

wd wrote:

Read what Qbix wrote in brackets.

Then please post full system specs including dosbox version, mounting etc.

Does Qbix mean that he's hearing the donkey verse?
I don't think the problem is related to a specific system, since I get the same issue on my two different systems, but you're right. My fault. 😉

Here you go:

My desktop

Athlon 64 3500+
1Gb RAM
ATI RADEON 1600Pro 256Mb VRAM
AC97 sound chip
Windows XP sp2

and my laptop

Intel Centrino 1.73Ghz
1Gb RAM
Intel Graphics with shared video Ram
AC97 sound chip
Windows XP sp2

DosBox version: 0.72, mounting c:\desert as c:, fullscreen.
My dosbox.conf is attached.

try starting the main executable with /I to reconfigure the game
(as noted in the batch file that comes with the game)

Diduz wrote:

If you mean "music" I get that too, no problem.

Same here.

Diduz wrote:

In addition, you should hear the sound of the falling comet in the title screen.

I hear the desert music, I see the comet falling, but I don't get any sound effect like a crashing comet.

Diduz wrote:

Instead of these effects, I just hear some strange and fast sound stuttering.

That is *after* the comet, and at the end of the title showing? I hear that too. I think it is supposed to be the sound of ants crawling.

Edit: Tried the DESERT /I trick, and selected sound effects, but I don't hear any falling comet. So the question is, should there be a falling sound??

Edit more: This is all with SoundBlaster. Going to try PC-speaker, AdLib etc.

Nope 🙁

Unless the sound effects are only present further into the game, I can't make them work (if there are any).

My last attempt was to configure with no music, sound effects through the speaker, and no click-sounds. And all I got was silence.

Anyone know how to enable mouse-control over the pointer? I noticed this on the Cinemaware download page: " A DOS Mouse Driver is also recommended." Could that be it? I need to load say CTMOUSE or AMOUSE in DOSBox?

Set irq=3 for the soundblaster config in the DOSBox conf file, and the digitized sfx can be heard with the SB option in the game. The README mentions the hard-coded IRQ for the SB. 😉

Thanks ripsaw. Will try that. Further research seems to indicate that there is no mouse support in that game.

Yeah!! With IRQ set to 3 the sound effects works with SoundBlaster 😀

I am attaching my setup in case anyone wants to try.

Edit: Updated the entry in the database:
http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=1274&letter=I

ripsaw8080 wrote:

Set irq=3 for the soundblaster config in the DOSBox conf file, and the digitized sfx can be heard with the SB option in the game. The README mentions the hard-coded IRQ for the SB. 😉

Ouch!!!! THAT DID THE TRICK!
Thanks, ripsaw (and everyone else, of course 😁 )

This hard-coding thing is strange, considering that the SB IRQ is usually 7 or 5..... 😦

IRQ3. That's odd. Isn't that the IRQ used for COM2?