roarkes wrote on 2020-08-26, 22:24:

On my Dell Latitude CPx H i have only ms-dos 6.22 installed.
If i remove it, can i put dosbox on a cd-rom and have only dosbox installed on my HDD ?

No. DosBOX is an application that runs under another operating system (Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.) not an standalone operating system.

That system is a PIII yeah? Sounds like it's already the perfect "DOS box". What's your goal?

I need than a front end for ms-dos 6.22 than, if my empty HDD cannot run dosbox over ms-dos 6.22, like aha2940 said.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-08-26, 22:35:

roarkes wrote on 2020-08-26, 22:24:

On my Dell Latitude CPx H i have only ms-dos 6.22 installed.
If i remove it, can i put dosbox on a cd-rom and have only dosbox installed on my HDD ?

No. DosBOX is an application that runs under another operating system (Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.) not an standalone operating system.

Thank you.

roarkes wrote on 2020-08-26, 22:43:

I need than a front end for ms-dos 6.22 than, if my empty HDD cannot run dosbox over ms-dos 6.22, like aha2940 said.

If this is all you need, then probably norton commander would help you manager DOS functions easily? or perhaps installing Windows 3.1 over DOS 6.22 will do the job.

I've recently set this up on one of my machines, and it's brilliant to work with:

New MS-DOS Games Launcher / Menu System App

aha2940 wrote on 2020-08-26, 22:46:

roarkes wrote on 2020-08-26, 22:43:

I need than a front end for ms-dos 6.22 than, if my empty HDD cannot run dosbox over ms-dos 6.22, like aha2940 said.

If this is all you need, then probably norton commander would help you manager DOS functions easily? or perhaps installing Windows 3.1 over DOS 6.22 will do the job.

I cannot install any sound drivers for ms-dos 6.22 and i don't know if windows 3.11 will recognise ESS-Maestro2E driver for ms-dos. I tried only without windows 3.11.
I don't know which is ESS-Maestro2E driver for ms-dos for my Dell Latitude CPx

Doesn't look like you're going to have any luck with that: ESS (not Ensoniq) Maestro-2 Compatibility

Seems like installing W98SE could solve all of your problems.

If you don't want to install Win9x for some reason, then there is almost certainly some version of Linux that you can download for free that will have suitable drivers for your sound card and that will also run DOSBox. Offhand, I'm not sure what that would be, though.

Pierre32 wrote on 2020-08-26, 23:53:

Doesn't look like you're going to have any luck with that: ESS (not Ensoniq) Maestro-2 Compatibility

Seems like installing W98SE could solve all of your problems.

My guess is that it would be quite simple to figure out what exactly the DOS driver looks for in the Win9x installation. Probably something in System.ini or the like.

Probably don't even need the Windows directory at all.. I would think that the DOS driver just looks for whatever file has the settings in it and the PATH statement would take care of that for the Windows folder as it would never be able to be hard-coded into the driver because you can install Windows into whatever folder you want.

The impression I got from that thread was that the card flat out wouldn't work under pure DOS. Assuming that's true, my suggestion is just to run Win98 and launch DOS games from there.

Pierre32 wrote on 2020-08-27, 05:10:

The impression I got from that thread was that the card flat out wouldn't work under pure DOS. Assuming that's true, my suggestion is just to run Win98 and launch DOS games from there.

Well... looking at Maestro.com with a hex editor, the text strings give some clues:

Cannot find ESS PCI Audio Adapter $Please use Windows Software Applet to enable Sound Blaster, MPU401 and Game port for Real/Win […]
Show full quote

Cannot find ESS PCI Audio Adapter
$Please use Windows Software Applet to enable
Sound Blaster, MPU401 and Game port for Real/Windows DOS
$Error Configuration File Error

Plug and Play OS is selected in the BIOS setup, which means * * your sound card is to be configured by Windows. If you want * […]
Show full quote

Plug and Play OS is selected in the BIOS setup, which means *
* your sound card is to be configured by Windows. If you want *
* to run games in real mode DOS, please run Windows first, *
* then exit to DOS to run games.

MAESTRO�Init GPIO--Start$�--End […]
Show full quote

MAESTRO�Init GPIO--Start$�--End

$Maestro-1$
Maestro-2$
Maestro-2E$
SOLO$
Unknown Device$
DMA Mode is VIA DDMA$
DMA Mode is ALI TDMA$
DMA Mode is ALI DDMA$
DMA Mode is SIS SWDMA$
DMA Mode is SIS DDMA$
DMA Mode is TDMA$
DMA Mode is PCPCI$
DMA Mode is TDMA with WB$
DMA Mode is DDMA$
Maestro reInitialized !$
Current Maestro PCI IRQ: $
Current Solo PCI IRQ: $
PCI IO Base: $

SBPro Game Settings:$
SBPro Disabled$
SB IO=220h $
SB IO=240h $
SB IO=? $
IRQ=3 $
IRQ=4 $
IRQ=5 $
IRQ=7 $
IRQ=9 $
IRQ=10 $
IRQ=11 $
IRQ=12 $
IRQ=? $
DMA=0$�
DMA=1$
DMA=3$
DMA=?$
MPU401 Disabled$
MPU401 IO=300h$
MPU401 IO=320h$
MPU401 IO=330h$
MPU401 IO=340h$
MPU401 IO=?$
Game Port IO=201h$
Game Port IO=200h$
Game Port Disabled$
Error: ESS Audio IO Port resource not assigned!!$
C:\ESSOLO.INI
C:\ES1938.INI
C:\MSTRINF.INI
BLASTER=A220 D1 I10 T4

So...
1: Real mode DOS is definitely supported.. or at least it looks like it is.
2: If PNP OS is enabled in BIOS, then you must boot into Windows first to initialize the card and then reboot into DOS mode
3: Maestro.com cannot be run from within a Windows DOS BOX
4: Need C:\MSTRINF.INI
5: Look at all those different DMA modes... holy cow!

Good digging. Sounds like there's some hope here for OP.

Ok, thank you all.