Hi Sammy, got a bit of good news for you.
I managed to get the sound working in plain-jane DOS! Here is some background:
- These laptops have no MIDI / FM synth / OPL3, only digital sound support (16bit Stereo 44khz).
- The Crystal "cs4231a.zip" driver "cyclone3d" provided from this link below, works fine in 311, but I can't get the DOS emulation driver to work:
http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/drivers/66/66506.htm
- I actually found an ENGLISH copy of the MS Windows Sound System driver disks with real-DOS support! Download the file from the 2nd post, credit goes to "alexanrs":
Microsoft Windows Sound system ISA Drivers help.
To install WSS: 1st floppy has to be on a physical FLOPPY disk (weird setup program). So:
- Extract all 5 disks
- copy disk 1 to a 3.5"floppy
- copy and combine disks 2,3,4,5 into one directory
- Run SETUP in windows from the floppy
- When SETUP asks for disk2, specify the directory where the rest of the WSS files are.
This will give you Windows and Windows Dos Box sound. To get real-DOS sound, either:
- Run WSSXLAT.EXE, this is the DOS SoundBlaster emulation driver. Works fine in real DOS with SimCity Classic and SimFarm.
- Run WSSCNFG.EXE, this will setup WSSXLAT.EXE in your Config.sys with some switches (also sets up a complicated DOS boot menu, so backup your Config.sys first)
NOTES on WSSXLAT.EXE:
- When running DOS games in real DOS, or DOS under Windows, use SoundBlaster - IO=220, IRQ-10, DMA=1 in game settings.
- I cannot see any difference loading WSSXLAT.EXE from config.sys with the switches, or loading it without any switches from the DOS prompt or autoexec.bat
- On my laptop at least, WSSXLAT.EXE acts a tad 'flaky'. Sometimes it says "sound hardware not found". Rebooting / resetting the laptop helps.
- After loading WSSXLAT.EXE, if you load Win311 the sound sometimes doesn't work in Windows (driver errors). Restarting Windows helps.
Well Sammy, that's about it for my sleuthing so far. I'll keep you posted on further discoveries, let me know if you find anything else out as well.
By the way, I also have the ZENITH NoteFlex system reference in a help file, and the Western Digital Paradise 256 color video drivers for win31, let me know if you need either, or anything else comes to mind.
Cheers! 😎 Bellarmine
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