I would try DOSBox and if it's too slow then try Win98 and/or VDMSound. You're not going to find DOS drivers for that audio chipset.

BAH!

And here I was thinking it would all work... any chance of FreeDOS doing it? I'm trying to get as 'pure' as I can. I really do miss my old 486 (it burned up) I guess I'll just make do with what's there and troll eBay or something for older parts.

I'll be putting 98 on it tonight after I backup the drive and use VDMsound then. Hopefully it'll do a good job.

Even with DOSBox though, it should work just fine. I'm running my old Duke3d on a Gateway with pretty much the same specs...the only difference is the processor is dual core, a few MHz slower, more memory with Vista.

One other quick question. Anyone know if 2000 drivers are usable in ME???

No, and stay away from WinME if you can. Win98 has an accessible MS-DOS implementation built-in, but WinME hides/hobbles its underlying MS-DOS.

VDMSound should run under XP I think, so you could try it before going to Win98.

heh. Too late 😉

You see, theis is the same problem I had when I was a kid (I was 6 in 1988 and my first computer I HAD to build. On my own.)
Anyway, when I was a kid, I used to wipe my drive and reinstall DOS aabout twice a month. I had too much time on my hands and I did things differentl each time learning new tricks. It's not so bad with OSes now since I limit myself to a couple months. Don't ask me why...I still don't know.

I have 98 installed now, and installing the drivers. So... yeah...

I had no intentions of going ME. I'd prefer 98. I was just wondering because the download page for the drivers listed graphics drivers for 98, 2000, and XP, but not ME while the other drivers had something for all 4 versions.

drivers for 98 also work on ME. Good luck with VDMS on this. As far as I remember VDMS for Win9x was a hack and not very stable...

A moment's Googling suggests http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/drivers/43/43216.htm might be of use .

Why bother with the alpha of VDMSound for Win9x when you can just use DOSBox? Don't go saying you want the "pure DOS experience" if you're going to use a Pentium 4.

And remember, MS-DOS 6.22 only supports FAT16, so if for some very strange reason you go that way, you'll only be able to boot from a 2 GB partition (though you could use a TSR to access other partitions).

Jorpho wrote:

A moment's Googling suggests http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/drivers/43/43216.htm might be of use .

What do VIA drivers for Win2K have to do with trying to get a Sigmatel audio chipset working in DOS?

That package contains drivers for a number of different OSs, including DOS (i.e. VIAFMTSR.COM and VIAUDIO.COM).

While they are for a VIA chipset, they are nonetheless for a VIA chipset that uses the AC97 codec. Bit of a long shot, certainly.

Alright, well, I guess I didn't explain why I'm trying to use MS-DOS (or some DOS) instead of DOSBox; unfortunately, I do not have the mopney right now to do several things; get a better desktop so I can set ONE setting and play any game I want. (Yes I realize I can resolve this a bit better with a frontend, but for games like DOOM where I would like an evolving, spur of the moment command line to play any mod at that spur moment is not able to be done form what I've seen so far.) I have a few games that some time ago when I was moving around, I backed up to image files that require installation that make calls to the DOS 6.22 commands (like XCOPY). Another point; from my current ifnancial abilities, even if I were making SOME money, older hardware is becoming increasingly hard to find that does't die a few days after you purchased it.

This laptop has had very little use since it was bought. The hard drive and memory pass with flying colors during burn in tests and will last a bit longer. I have programs for windows 98 that will dummy down the speed so a 2GHz p4 will NOT be a problem.

Don't get me wrong, DOSBox was a godsend when I had a good computer. However, I used it often and still wsih for a pure DOS machine.;
The advice I am getting IS helpful though, but it urks me a small bit when someone asks for a solution or help toward a solution and all they get is "Well, why don't you use DOSBox".
I would not like to use DOSBox if I could get away with it. IF after I tweak around and finish pulling out the rest of my hair and I am still not where I want to be, then I will use DOSBox.

Does any of this make sense??? 😵

but it urks me a small bit when someone asks for a solution or help toward a solution and all they get is "Well, why don't you use DOSBox"

Well, when you asked here you probably asked because you thought people here could give you advice. The first answer sums it up nicely "You're not going to find DOS drivers for that audio chipset."
So that eliminates DOS, you've got Windows 9x left and there you can again not count on the underlying DOS since you got no sound drivers. So what you've got is VDMS and that has a Windows 9x version that AFAIR is considered an alpha version at best and VDMS development has stopped years ago. Have you tried it yet?
If that is not working what alternative do you have to Dosbox? That is just the solution that people found looking at your setup.
A pure DOS machine is not possible through the machine you have, at least not if you want to hear sound in your games. You need good old hardware for that.

From all your other problems you seem to have with DOSBox on your laptop are solveable in a way:
- use your Win98 setup to free the images of your games from the xcopy dependence
- live with the problem that you can't have ONE setting to play any game (be real about this issue - not even with the best availlable machine nowadays will you achieve this and you could NEVER achieve this with a pure DOS machine)

Yeah I'm not sure that notebook sound hardware that is good for DOS games exists. You really need a SB16 or SBPro2 in there and there never was a notebook to my knowledge that had either. ESS ISA chipsets were ok, but still not ideal. Those stopped showing up after ~Pentium MMX notebooks. Almost anything else offers a really unreliable level of compatibility in DOS. PCI notebook audio chips with DOS support are a real pain in the ass, just like even the best PCI sound cards w/ DOS support.

And then there's the issue of video compability. Unless you have a S3 video chipset, you will almost certainly have problems there too. You have a Radeon and I've had plenty of problems with Radeons with DOS games.

DOSBOX on the other hand offers superb compatibility and flexibility that no real hardware can match, but requires a lot of CPU power for late DOS games as you know.

James_Richards wrote:

(Yes I realize I can resolve this a bit better with a frontend, but for games like DOOM where I would like an evolving, spur of the moment command line to play any mod at that spur moment is not able to be done form what I've seen so far.)

If you want Doom that badly, I suggest a source port. Chocolate Doom, perhaps. Or you can look for one of the old DOS Doom frontends, like "D!".

As for DOS XCOPY, you can boot and run MS-DOS 6.22 from DOSBox quite easily.

Did you try those VIA drivers already?

Te IVA drivers I have not tried yet. I've been tinkering witht he iwndows 98 setup for s short while. For some reason, windows wanted to keep reinstalling the same driver on every single reboot. FInally got that nailed down.

I did find one solution that is stretching the idea of keeping DOSBox... Virtual PC.

I mount and install fomr there, then use winimage to copy out of the .vhd the directory and then just copy it to the folder that has a few games already, so that solves almost everything. The more I look at it, Dominus is correct...the best solution does look to be DOSBox.

I downloaded a bunch of fornt ends so I will give those a whirl and see what happens. And my idiot self completely forgot about all the sourceports for Doom...and that solves that problem.

I guess I will be using DOSBox mroe than anything else now. I copied the DOS foler formt he same .vhd and can now actually run a couple of the installers 😉 except for the one I made for a disc form Apogee... The installer crashes when I move forward with the instll.It asks me for the CD drive letter, I select Rise of the Triad to install, then it asks me where. I tell it C:\ROTT and when I hit enter it crashes. I solved that issue by booting into Virtual PC,, install mount copy...

I hope my post about the best solution crap didn't come off as angry or arrogant 😉 It really didn't mean to come out that way. I only realized that once I went back and ended up reading it.
Now...I do wonder about one thing...some fo my Windows 95 games....that DO NOT run in DOS... has anyone figured out a stable method to getting 95 to run ok in DOSBox??? Or should I switch to Virtual PC for that kind of stuff?

Good to read, that it goes your way now.
Windows 95 does run in Dosbox but not as cleanly as Dos games or Windows 3.1x and certainly not as stable. All the Virtualizers like Virtual PC, VMWare, Virtualbox do run Windows 95 but I'm not sure how good they run it and how good you can run games that need a 3D card. There are threads about this here on the forum, though.