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Please help a novice with ESS Solo-1

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First post, by AlessandroB

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Hello to everyone. I have bought a Notebook Acer extensa with PII 366, Video Card compatible (i think), CD-ROM, Floppy Drive as my primary Machine to use with the older DOS Games ( from 1992 to 1999 approx, NOT EGA ecc.. from Monkey Island II forward).

As a child I had a 486 DX2 with a Sound Blaster Pro and a Trident VLBUS on which everything really worked. I have not played with autoexec.bat and config.sys settings for many many many years. I tried to insert a Rebel Assault CD (I remember my amazement with this wonderful game). The game starts but I do not hear audio. Windows98 is installed on the Notebook and I tried the game from there. I probably have to teach the ESS SOLO-1 card to be compatible as a Sound Blaster PRO, but I do not even know where to start, does someone give me a hand?

Very very thanks from a older DOS PLAYER!!!!!

Reply 1 of 7, by Kamerat

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You need to initialize the Solo-1 to enable Sound Blaster emulation under MS-DOS. You can find the required tool here. Remember to place the ESSOLO.INI directly in C:\.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 2 of 7, by AlessandroB

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Yes thanks but... i remember in pure DOS 6 in my 486 that all the instruction must be write on autoexec and config.sys a computer with Win98 that start automatically in Windows.. how work?? Autoexec.bat and config.sys are also used or all the configuration must be put inside the windows register??

Reply 3 of 7, by Kamerat

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If you want to boot directly into MS-DOS 7.1 just like you did with version 6 then you need edit your MSDOS.SYS file. You have to change the attributes of the file to allow saving the changes and change the attributes back after editing and saving. Now you can add your stuff to AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS as needed. You can still boot Windows by just typing WIN and hit enter on the command line.

In MSDOS.SYS change BootGUI=1 to BootGUI=0 (prevents Windows to load automatically) and add Logo=0 (removes Windows logo, not needed but I tend to add it anyway) to the line of options.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 5 of 7, by dr_st

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derSammler wrote:

Instead of editing ms-dos.sys, you can also just press F8 at the beginning of the boot process and select "command line only".

It all depends on whether you want to spend most of your time in DOS or in Windows.

Kamerat wrote:

You need to initialize the Solo-1 to enable Sound Blaster emulation under MS-DOS.

What about inside Windows? Does the Windows driver include SB emulation for DOS games running under Windows?

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Reply 7 of 7, by Kamerat

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Yes, that's the screen of the Solo-1 initializing via the DOSSTART.BAT file located in your Windows folder. Is it possible to change the DMA on the Sound Blaster emulation under Windows, it really should be 1 instead of 0? Also try hitting F8 before Windows boots as someone already suggested to bring up the boot menu and select "Command prompt only" and see what's happening. Did you try any other games, some with FM (Sound Blaster or AdLib) music?

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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