I have found out that if I unload CuteMouse and reload it, the errors are getting more severe. Perhaps it should be noted that my system normally invokes

1CTMOUSE

whereas I did it with

1CTMOUSE /P /M /O

Sounds like some serious resource conflicts going on if it’s able to destroy the file system, have you tried a different mouse driver ?

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-29, 16:39:

Sounds like some serious resource conflicts going on if it’s able to destroy the file system, have you tried a different mouse driver ?

No. And turning it off doesn't help.

In general, any and every hang in DOS, nevermind what causes it, is a potential filesystem killer. All you gotta do is forcibly shutdown a hanged system while it had file pointers open with write mode. Rinse and repeat and you will accumulate enough filesystem damage that your DOS won't even boot or mount.

when you use CTCU to set PNP configuration, copy the config (ctpnp.cfg) to C:\ so CTCM can see it (otherwise you will get defaults).

sounds like maybe you have mouse using same IRQ as sound or something.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2022-06-29, 19:38:

when you use CTCU to set PNP configuration, copy the config (ctpnp.cfg) to C:\ so CTCM can see it (otherwise you will get defaults).

sounds like maybe you have mouse using same IRQ as sound or something.

No way, the mouse has IRQ 12. However, what does in fact have the same IRQ as sound (5) is the main graphic card, Voodoo 5500 for AGP.

The Transport Tycoon as far as I am informed uses TNT DOS Extender 😉

I've cleaned up my IRQs and I'm still getting nowhere. AWE64 has exclusive use of IRQ7. There are no LPTs activated.

Update: Duke Nukem 3D's setmain.exe gives us a helpful clue:

1Invalid Opcode at 1B43 1EC5 0002 0F34 130D 0246 031A BF35 F2B1 0000 21F8 0000 0020

Now, I've never had any idea how to decipher stack dumps in DOS. I don't understand. How do I deal with this?

AWEUTIL's MPU-401 emulation for the EMU8K only works with real mode games without relying on any third-party utility.

Duke Nukem 3D has a "Sound Blaster AWE32" setting for music but that will only use the samples stored on the EMU8011 ROM and doesn't require AWEUTIL to be started without the /S parameter which is for EMU8K initialization only.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-06-30, 16:34:

AWEUTIL's MPU-401 emulation for the EMU8K only works with real mode games without relying on any third-party utility.

AWEUTIL's documentation confirms this. I find this really saddening and in fact, quite unjust. Windows can pull that kind of trick. Why can't DOS?

My motivation to do this is pretty simple. CQM sounds like garbage in this game. Duke Nukem 3D sounds like someone tried to play its music on a SNES with a built-in echo, like it's playing in a church or something. This is gonna be a spicy opinion, but it's true for me - at least that one game, because I haven't tested each and every one, sounds way better on Vibra 128 with 2MB ECW than on CQM.

I'll try to disassemble the Windows drivers in my spare time. Maybe they hold the secret to doing this right.

moog wrote on 2022-07-01, 08:46:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-06-30, 16:34:

AWEUTIL's MPU-401 emulation for the EMU8K only works with real mode games without relying on any third-party utility.

AWEUTIL's documentation confirms this. Why can't DOS?

Edit by Dominus *removed confrontational writing*: see this thread on how to do it nowadays
DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB

Offtopic: And by the way the DOS file system is not that fragile after all, no need to be afraid and use chkdsk more regularly if that's critical to you.

As mentioned, you could use the game's AWE32 setting. There's also this utility DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB

georgel wrote on 2022-07-01, 09:54:

Because you fail to read and search for things that have already been done: DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sou […]
Show full quote

moog wrote on 2022-07-01, 08:46:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-06-30, 16:34:

AWEUTIL's MPU-401 emulation for the EMU8K only works with real mode games without relying on any third-party utility.

AWEUTIL's documentation confirms this. Why can't DOS?

Because you fail to read and search for things that have already been done:
DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB

Offtopic: And by the way the DOS file system is not that fragile after all, no need to be afraid and use chkdsk more regularly if that's critical to you.

It didn't pop up on DuckDuckGo. The thread I referred to however, did. Your thread is very helpful and I appreciate.
Also, yes FAT is fragile AF. It only takes 3 hangups with Rayman to destroy a FAT filesystem. Call it trauma, paranoia or whatever, but I'll stick to my opinion on FAT. This is what you get when you don't design your OS around a journaled filesystem like normal people. But we got what we got from devs of old days and we gotta deal with it. My way of dealing with this is adding dosfsck to autoexec at the end.

moog wrote on 2022-06-29, 16:01:

Hi, I'm having exactly the same issue as this op Soundblaster Awe64 Dos Probs..., genereal midi emulation... […]
Show full quote

Hi, I'm having exactly the same issue as this op Soundblaster Awe64 Dos Probs..., genereal midi emulation...

I'll be tracking here what I have:
- FreeDOS 1.3 RC5
- SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold with 28MB upgrade
- AWEUTIL 1.35
- CTCM 1.06
- Epox EP-D3VA

It appears that for me, setting the PNP OS to "No" yields no effect. To be continued, trying more things. By the way, this is pretty nasty with:
- JEMMEX
- Transport Tycoon Deluxe regardless of JEMMEX or HIMEMX
because with those, the system will hang. Every hang on DOS is a risk of destroying the filesystem as I've learned with Rayman.

I had a similar problems with an AWE32 and it was caused by Freedos (latest release). What I learned is never trouble shoot DOS software/hardware problems using Freedos. I like Freedos and use a lot of the utilities that come with it but it's still nowhere near 100% compatible with DOS6.22/7.1.

Also have had a lot of crashes and freezes from certain DOS games(my fault with soundcard resources and running a p3-750, too fast for dos games without remembering to use setmul) that cause me to hard power off the PC (256GB ssd with fat32) but never once has this caused file corruption in DOS 7.1. Again don't know if this is another Freedos problem or if you are running smartdrv or some other disk caching software. Any disk cache software in DOS tends to cause more problems than they are worth when dos crashes. With ultra fast cf/sd/ssd hard drives I skip smartdrv because it can cause data loss/corruption and just wastes conventional or upper memory.

For peace of mind I check my dos fat32 SSD twice a year by plugging it into a small usb3 caddy and running chkdsk from a modern Win10 computer rather than DOS' own scandisk. No corruption found for five years despite lots of crashes in Dos7.1.

Try the exact same setup you currently use on the same hardware but use DOS 6.22/7.1 , I think you will find some answers.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2022-07-02, 13:20:

Any disk cache software in DOS tends to cause more problems than they are worth when dos crashes. With ultra fast cf/sd/ssd hard drives I skip smartdrv because it can cause data loss/corruption and just wastes conventional or upper memory.

I never had issues with disk cache software in DOS, BUFFERS should be reduced to 10 when using them. It did improve I/O performance on my 7200 RPM HDD in several situations and write caching (which only gets flushed when returning to the DOS prompt by default) should be disabled to prevent possible data corruption.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-07-02, 15:00:

Riikcakirds wrote on 2022-07-02, 13:20:

Any disk cache software in DOS tends to cause more problems than they are worth when dos crashes. With ultra fast cf/sd/ssd hard drives I skip smartdrv because it can cause data loss/corruption and just wastes conventional or upper memory.

I never had issues with disk cache software in DOS, BUFFERS should be reduced to 10 when using them. It did improve I/O performance on my 7200 RPM HDD in several situations and write caching (which only gets flushed when returning to the DOS prompt by default) should be disabled to prevent possible data corruption.

Before I use to set buffers (loaded in UMB) as high as 40 and then some game freezes etc and forced me to pull the plug but never had disk corruption.
A few years ago when I started using a large 256GB SSD in Dos(all cd images etc in one place) I tested different buffers and smartdrv settings. Came to the conclusion they offered such minuscule performance benefit with a SSD that it was better to disable them. So I run with no smartdrv, buffershigh=0.

Would be interested to hear though what disk corruption if any you have come across with the buffers command set to more than 10.

Any fat32 drive I use for Dos 7.1 that is more than 128GB I just periodically pull from my dos machine and check in Win10 with chkdsk using an external usb caddy.
Never had corruption in 5 years. If a drive is less than 128GB I would just use the latest scandisk (from Winme dos 😎 run from dos itself.
In Win9x I have found the opposite, even one freeze or crash can causes fat32 corruption.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2022-07-02, 19:27:

Would be interested to hear though what disk corruption if any you have come across with the buffers command set to more than 10.

I only set BUFFERS more than 10 when Windows 9x isn't running (it has its own disk caching driver) or using a DOS configuration where no disk caching software is used, which at this point I set it to 30. More than that isn't beneficial and wastes memory like you said. Apart from occasional FAT32 (the entire FAT file system isn't reliable) errors on the HDD about the incorrect file system size and lost clusters (rare, but I can recover them without problems), I have yet to witness any serious data corruption in DOS and Windows 9x.