Is this a known issue? Coz it's not known to me 🙁

Moved to Marvin -> Software.

Sorry, my mistake. I figured since it was, specifically, an issue with a DOS game, it belonged there. I apologize.

I'm actually having an issue with two other games as well. Lost In Time's installer seems to hang no matter what I do, and The Time Warp of Dr Brain has an installer that makes the Sierra fanfare but won't show on screen -- and then immediately crashes! The fact that there's a thread specifically about Sierra sound and video issues in the section I just left (although both of these are, as far as I'm aware, Windows games) would suggest that these are likely rooted in known issues. Should I post somewhere else about those, or would it be more appropriate to retitle this thread and edit the original post?

If you can run XP on it, the CPU's probably fast enough to make Sierra's sound drivers upset and give up detection (on DOS games anyway).
Could also be a 48khz sampling rate (common AC'97 standard) + acceleration issue with the old MCI playback because they'd be that for Sierra's Win16 games.

Honestly, your system is a bit new for running DOS games natively without trouble. Looking up the ALC260, it's a 2004-ish chip and Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster compatibility were not mentioned in the datasheet.

That being said, DOSBox may run sufficiently quickly as to emulate the needed hardware and get your music back.

Yay 🙁

...and I've always heard somehow that XP was the "sweet spot OS" for nostalgia gaming... 😒

The Lost Mind of Dr Brain is doing the same thing as The Time Warp of Dr Brain BTW. I can manage DOSBox if a frontend does all the heavy lifting.

I'm also not opposed to moving to another machine if it would be better, but my options are a bit limited. I have a Toshiba Tecra 9100 with known bad onboard sound -- the person who gave it told me that the person who gave it to THEM doesn't know what's wrong, and they themselves didn't deem it worth investigating. They run the local tech shop and basically used it to maintain an old LED sign until it died in a storm. (I got both as a package deal and I suspect the sign is 5150 or XT compatible but that awaits the time and motivation for me to bother with pulling the ROMs for a decompile and I just don't care that much.)

I also have a Gateway 400SD4 someone just 'donated' me -- I have a bit of a reputation 🤣 -- but it's missing its RAM, hard drive, battery, and whatever originally was in the MiniPCI slot... as well as the covers for all of those bays. Literally it's been stripped of everything but the CD drive... and while it has a slim floppy drive, the drive rattles a bit like there's something loose in it, when I tilt the system. I've not even checked yet if it powers on... I probably should, I've got a bunch of stuff to eWaste as it is, and the guy's coming this weekend for that. Most of the screws are off the bottom anyways, so it's obviously given someone some trouble in the past as it is. I have RAM for it, lemme see if it boots. Drivers are gonna be "fun" to find for it tho... /wince

Gateway down!

That screen is VERY destroyed. Somehow it's cracked clear to high heaven without the outside of the panel being visibly broken at all. A good strong flashlight tells all... I'd be willing to frankenstein it but I'm not getting anything on a secondary display which tells me that there's more going on there than a bad panel. It's dead, Jim!

I've also got a Win2k era Dell CPi but I want to run one system and one system only if I at all can and some of my games are way too new for that thing. I really don't have anything in between...