Use Vortex2 without Windows? \ VOGONS

Use Vortex2 without Windows?

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First post, by boxpressed

Posted on 2016-12-18, 16:50

boxpressed Offline

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Has anyone been able to use the Aureal Vortex2 cards in a DOS-only environment?

I'm trying to clean up some of my wavetable recordings, and it would be very convenient if I could use a Vortex2 on my test bench, which is a Socket 3 board with SiS 85C496/7 chipset.

I'm running DOS 6.2.

I created a "dummy" directory called C:\WINDOWS and copied AU30DOS.COM and AU30DOS.INI (from a 98SE build) to that directory.

In my AUTOEXEC, I have these lines:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330
SET WINBOOTDIR=C:\WINDOWS
C:\WINDOWS\AU30DOS.COM

On my 98SE system, when I put these lines on a bootdisk, I can boot to DOS 7.1 and use the Vortex2's SB Pro emulation and the daughterboard wavetable.

However, I seem to be missing something on this DOS-only build. The startup just hangs after AU30DOS.COM is loaded, and I do not see the line that reports the address, INT, DMA, etc.

I'd love to know if anyone has been able to do this because the Vortex2 is the quietest card I own with a wavetable header.

Reply 1 of 4, by RJDog

Posted on 2016-12-18, 18:16

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If a driver hangs while loading rather than giving an error message or simply not loading correctly, that could indicate that it is a DOS version incompatability (although there are other reasons too, for sure). Are you able to try it with a clean install of DOS 7 or 7.1? My initial suspicion is that even though there are "DOS" drivers with the Windows install, it is expecting to be used exactly how your successful demo is set up -- in DOS-mode of Windows 95/98, so it might require those versions of DOS.

Reply 2 of 4, by Jorpho

Posted on 2016-12-18, 19:13

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It's mentioned at http://www.flaterco.com/kb/audio/PCI/#M2A3D as not working very well at all.

Reply 3 of 4, by boxpressed

Posted on 2016-12-18, 19:17

boxpressed Offline

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Thanks to both of you for your help. I'm willing to take the word of the folks at flaterco.com. Great info on that website, though.

Reply 4 of 4, by boxpressed

Posted on 2016-12-18, 20:29

boxpressed Offline

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RJDog wrote:
If a driver hangs while loading rather than giving an error message or simply not loading correctly, that could indicate that it is a DOS version incompatability (although there are other reasons too, for sure). Are you able to try it with a clean install of DOS 7 or 7.1? My initial suspicion is that even though there are "DOS" drivers with the Windows install, it is expecting to be used exactly how your successful demo is set up -- in DOS-mode of Windows 95/98, so it might require those versions of DOS.

This turned out to be the problem! I didn't want to create a new HDD with DOS 7.1, so I decided to see what would happen if I booted off a DOS 7.1-formatted floppy.

I got an error message saying

"The compression driver cannot be set up correctly.
Get a version from your vendor that is compatible with this version of Windows."

However, the system booted up fine after that, and AU30DOS loaded. The wavetable header works just as it should. Thanks again!

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