I tried audblast.drv from KQ6CD and LSL6, AND also tried renaming audthund.drv from KQ6CD, and all three attempts would load the game, but speech no longer worked.

I have KQ5 talkie CD installed on my K6/2+ which has a lot of speed profiles. The previous card I had in there (ES1869F) seemed fine but now using the PicoGUS in SB2.0 mode, it also has sound crashes. Going to the town near the start of the game where you can hear the river has a high chance of triggering a freeze with the HDD light stuck on.

I tried all the speed profiles that were fast enough to play the game down to a 386/20-ish speed and it didn't help. So I'm not sure if this particular issue would be fixed by changing the CPU. I also don't have the thunderboard option so it must be only in the very latest versions.

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-18, 02:44:

I have KQ5 talkie CD installed on my K6/2+ which has a lot of speed profiles. The previous card I had in there (ES1869F) seemed fine but now using the PicoGUS in SB2.0 mode, it also has sound crashes. Going to the town near the start of the game where you can hear the river has a high chance of triggering a freeze with the HDD light stuck on.

I tried all the speed profiles that were fast enough to play the game down to a 386/20-ish speed and it didn't help. So I'm not sure if this particular issue would be fixed by changing the CPU. I also don't have the thunderboard option so it must be only in the very latest versions.

Uncanny! I have a K6-III+ CPU/mobo/RAM combo currently not in a case, and thought about testing with it since setmul works great with it. It seems that I shouldn't bother testing with it, since you are able to recreate the same issue that I am having with a 486. I also have a PicoGUS and was trying to use that in SB mode, but I kept getting the unable to initialize error. However, since you are getting the same crash on your PicoGUS, I won't bother with further testing. I have two PicoGUS cards and use them mainly for intelligent MPU with plans to explore Ultrasound stuff (since I never got to experience the Ultrasound back in the day,) but figured that there may be times when the SB mode could prove useful, though apparently not with this game...

This situation doesn't make any sense. Many people have played and beaten KQ5 CD, and I have to assume that many of those people were using 486s and SB clones. I simply cannot understand why this issue is happening to both of us, and that I cannot find any other examples of these lockups on any forum. I thought that I had an ESS card, but I cannot locate it, so I suppose all I can do now is wait for the CT1600 to arrive and test with that. I am somewhat disappointed with this since I know that many SB Pro clones actually sound better than the real thing, and I have major nostalgia for these Opti cards I have been trying to use. Other testing I have done since the last post is to boot without EMM386, but of course the issue persists. I also tried using my GOG version with the 486 in case GOG did some tweaking or patching, and yet again the issue persists. I am running out of ideas! I will note that it is weird that the lockup can happen right outside of town where speech doesn't occur, but the same lock up happens during speech (if I can get into town without the lock up.)

Also, thank you for trying to help and for testing with your hardware!

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-18, 02:44:

I have KQ5 talkie CD installed on my K6/2+

Does it freeze if you play it from the CD? If not, you do not have the resource.cfg configured properly, or you did not copy all the files over from the CD, or both. Yes, the game will 'run' if you copy just the resource files, but will crash if not all the files are copied over.

This is easily verifiable just by running it off an install with a vanilla resource.cfg and having the CD in the drive.

I tried all the speed profiles that were fast enough to play the game down to a 386/20-ish speed and it didn't help. So I'm not sure if this particular issue would be fixed by changing the CPU. I also don't have the thunderboard option so it must be only in the very latest versions.

Perhaps I am not as certain with my empiricisms with what I'm about to suggest as I am certain with I just previously stated, but I am fairly confident that the game's engine is sensitive to actual raw CPU megahertz, and no amount of slowing down any modern CPU will help with regard to this.

This situation doesn't make any sense. Many people have played and beaten KQ5 CD, and I have to assume that many of those people were using 486s and SB clones. I simply cannot understand why this issue is happening to both of us, and that I cannot find any other examples of these lockups on any forum

True, but here's something you haven't considered and is something that also dawned on me recently. Hopefully this will save someone a lot of time, as I have personally been troubleshooting audio with this game for more than 5 years.

The thing is, is that people often now enable General MIDI (or Roland MT32) for these Sierra games, and the sound faults seem to be more prolific when you do that. For example, if I choose General MIDI and WSS (or SB), sound samples cut off or start 'repeating'. A good test is right after you start the game, walk to the "beauty and the beast" hedges (where the orphan girl is yelled at by her stepmother). After you witness their colloquy, the orphan girl walks back into the house and closes the door. The door slamming sound will start repeating itself. I don't remember if this happens on my 386/DX-33, but it does on my 486/DX-33 with the aforementioned sound combination set up.

Please post the contents of your resource.cfg file, or resource.win file if playing the Windows version.

Other drivers will NOT work for this game as it was a unique version of SCI as Sierra's first talkie/CD endeavour, or something like that - drivers are not compatible with later drivers.

As far as MT-32/Sound Canvas and Sound Blaster conflicts, they are usually IRQ conflicts and most games have patches to solve those. Some later games like QFG4, I do not know how to stop.

The Sound Blaster Pro2 arrived and in excellent, working condition. Installing the drivers was a pain since if installing the files from a HDD folder, I kept getting errors, and copying the files to 1.4mb diskettes was problematic as the test file would not fit and needed to be skipped and copied manually. However, it is installed and working, and sounding a tad muffled as compared to my clones. As this card was almost 80 dollars as is the price of retro hardware in the modern age, I am torn between keeping it installed as it is an actual Sound Blaster, or putting my Opti 924 w/ wave blaster header back in, because...

KQ5 CD is still having the conversation lock ups. I did run install.exe and switch from MT-32 to Adlib, and this prevented the random lockup outside of town - or, I was just getting lucky whilst walking back and forth between screens, trying to tgrigger the lock up. Talking to the tailor, however, triggered the HDD thrashing-hard lock up. I GIVE UP. Windows 3.x is the ONLY way to play KQ5 CD on a retro system. I have to beleive this, since not very many people have chimed in with their retro hardware/KQ5 CD experiences, and two of us can recreate the lock ups on vastly different systems.

Spikey wrote on 2025-12-19, 12:01:

Please post the contents of your resource.cfg file, or resource.win file if playing the Windows version.

Other drivers will NOT work for this game as it was a unique version of SCI as Sierra's first talkie/CD endeavour, or something like that - drivers are not compatible with later drivers.

As far as MT-32/Sound Canvas and Sound Blaster conflicts, they are usually IRQ conflicts and most games have patches to solve those. Some later games like QFG4, I do not know how to stop.

I was going to post the contents, but I reinstalled and kept everything virgin, including accessing the audio file from CD. The game is simply broken, and I am convinced that not very many people actually bought and played the CD version, back in the day, unless they were all on 386 machines, perhaps...

Now, if I could get the Windows version not to display the "King's Quest V" title bar at the top, and give me my dos mouse icons back, I would be fine with playing the Windows version. At any rate, given the number of hours and energy put into trying to fix this, I HAVE to play and beat it in whatever form works with my PC VGA CRT... I may still attempt a ScummVM or DOSBox attempt on my Pentium III 700, but I have yet to get any version of ScummVM working on Windows 98SE, and the fact that it is not a native way to play despite my investment in retro hardware, is a hard sell, unfortunately.

I have a feeling that a tech savvy programmer could identify and patch whatever is going on, given how easy it is to recreate the lockups. However, I feel that the retro PC population simply doesn't care about KQ5 that much.

Scythifuge wrote on 2025-12-20, 06:59:

KQ5 CD is still having the conversation lock ups. I did run install.exe and switch from MT-32 to Adlib, and this prevented the random lockup outside of town - or, I was just getting lucky whilst walking back and forth between screens, trying to tgrigger the lock up. Talking to the tailor, however, triggered the HDD thrashing-hard lock up. I GIVE UP.

I literally did the same thing, switched back to Adlib and was like wow it's solved when the river outside the town didn't lock up. Walked around town and talked to a couple of characters, all good. Went into the tailor and after about 5 or 6 lines of dialog, it froze again.

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-20, 07:26:

Scythifuge wrote on 2025-12-20, 06:59:

KQ5 CD is still having the conversation lock ups. I did run install.exe and switch from MT-32 to Adlib, and this prevented the random lockup outside of town - or, I was just getting lucky whilst walking back and forth between screens, trying to tgrigger the lock up. Talking to the tailor, however, triggered the HDD thrashing-hard lock up. I GIVE UP.

I literally did the same thing, switched back to Adlib and was like wow it's solved when the river outside the town didn't lock up. Walked around town and talked to a couple of characters, all good. Went into the tailor and after about 5 or 6 lines of dialog, it froze again.

Hehehe, wow. This entire King's Quest V CD lock up situation is bizarre. We have thrown everything at it. Why it isn't a famous well known issue, is beyond me.

Scythifuge wrote on 2025-12-20, 07:50:

Hehehe, wow. This entire King's Quest V CD lock up situation is bizarre. We have thrown everything at it. Why it isn't a famous well known issue, is beyond me.

You're not playing it off the CD, are you? You copied the contents locally? That's why it's locking up. You did not copy everything properly, and you did not set up resource.cfg up properly, or your CPU is too fast, or all of the above. It's no mystery.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-12-21, 01:03:

Scythifuge wrote on 2025-12-20, 07:50:

Hehehe, wow. This entire King's Quest V CD lock up situation is bizarre. We have thrown everything at it. Why it isn't a famous well known issue, is beyond me.

You're not playing it off the CD, are you? You copied the contents locally? That's why it's locking up. You did not copy everything properly, and you did not set up resource.cfg up properly, or your CPU is too fast, or all of the above. It's no mystery.

I have tried it both with the CD and also by copying the speech file to my HDD and editing resource.cfg to point to the file. I also put a quad speed drive in place of the 16x DVD drive and played it from, the CD with a fresh install. The lock ups are happening with both methods. Speech works for a little bit, but will invariably lock up when a new line is spoken. The game seems to work in Windows 3.1 without lockups, at least in the limited testing I have done.

My next effort is going to be using a different CF card in FAT16 format and install MS-DOS 6.22, and try it again, just in case this is an issues with Fat32/MS-DOS 7.1. I am also wondering if too much XMS could be an issue. I have 16mb RAM installed. I did try with and without EMM386 and reducing expanded memory to 4mb.

As I requested above, please post your resource.cfg file contents here.

Spikey wrote on 2025-12-21, 13:42:

As I requested above, please post your resource.cfg file contents here.

My GOG transplant with speech file on the HDD:

videoDrv = VGA320.DRV
soundDrv = MT32.DRV
audioDrv = AUDBLAST.DRV
joyDrv = NO
kbdDrv = IBMKBD.DRV
mouseDrv = STDMOUSE.DRV
memoryDrv = ARM.DRV
mode = real
minHunk = 206K
directory = c:\kq5

My CD install with speech file on the CD, and where I changed music to Adlib to rule out any MT-32 issues that would unlikely interfere with Sound Blaster speech:

videoDrv = VGA320.DRV
soundDrv = ADL.DRV 220
audioDrv = AUDBLAST.DRV 220
joyDrv = NO
kbdDrv = IBMKBD.DRV
mouseDrv = STDMOUSE.DRV
memoryDrv = ARM.DRV
floppy = YES
minHunk = 180K
audio = D:

Both suffer the random speech lockups.

For the GOG one, do you have your speech in: directory = c:\kq5 ?
Also, curious why the files differ (audio vs directory). What files run the game in each version, does the GOG one use a batch file before the exe? If so, please post the contents of any BAT file.

To compare apples with apples, did you try soundDrv = ADL.DRV with the GOG version?

Finally, have you tried the GoSierra patch with either version?

Spikey wrote on 2025-12-22, 06:12:

For the GOG one, do you have your speech in: directory = c:\kq5 ? Also, curious why the files differ (audio vs directory). What […]
Show full quote

For the GOG one, do you have your speech in: directory = c:\kq5 ?
Also, curious why the files differ (audio vs directory). What files run the game in each version, does the GOG one use a batch file before the exe? If so, please post the contents of any BAT file.

To compare apples with apples, did you try soundDrv = ADL.DRV with the GOG version?

Finally, have you tried the GoSierra patch with either version?

I do have the speech file in c:\kq5. I will have to double check on the GOG/batch file, but I don't think so. I think that the GOG version uses ScummVM "natively." Whenever I transplant a GOG MS-DOS game, I delete all of the dosbox/scummvm/PDF stuff.

I may have tested ADL.DRV with the GOG version, but I do not recall, since I have been trying so many different things. However, for me, the game must work with MT-32 in order to be considered working.

I did not try the gosierra patch, but I definitely will. It seems odd for a 486, but maybe that is the key.

I am currently setting up a FAT16 DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11 install, and I will be testing KQ5 in DOS with 6.22 soon, to rule out whether or not FAT32/DOS 7.x is the issue. It has been a nightmare setting up this particular install with failed FDISK/FORMATS on a 4gb sandisk CF, and trying to make disks for dos and the SB PRo. Luckily, I have a usb floppy drive which works decently with Windows 10, though I have to unplug and plug back in the drive, from time to time. I need to invest in a white/beige Gotek, though I have a working floppy drive and working floppies, so I try to use those.

I've never done DOS on a pure DOS machine, only my childhood Pentium 1 with 166MHz and Win 95. But if that can play a game, I promise you can get it running on almost anything.

GoSierra fixes issues that are speed and audio related, which are unlikely to apply here, but just to try something.

ScummVM should obviously NOT be used on an old PC, you should be running the game without any extra files.

I have forgotten with this long thread and the other one, but did other speech games work?

Spikey wrote on 2025-12-23, 10:53:

I have forgotten with this long thread and the other one, but did other speech games work?

For both of us, KQ6 does freeze using the sound blaster driver but works fine with the thunderboard driver. So whatever they fixed by the time KQ6 came around with various SB compatible cards seemingly never got patched into KQ5. Our systems are also miles apart spec wise, the only real connection is DOS7 and probably memory managers.

I can also run pretty much all SCI titles without needing speed patches

I wanted to reiterate my perspective on this matter. I think the OP's KQ5 is freezing because of a hardware problem. I would also suggest using the April 1992 CD version of KQ5, and not the original CD release.

Admittedly, my testing is confined to KQ6.

With KQ6, I can confirm that there is in fact an issue with freezing when audio is enabled. But it can be caused by a few things. The first thing you need to rule out is an incorrect resource.cfg configuration for when you think you have copied the game to the HDD so that you don't need the CD. The issue is that most of the guides from back in the day had it wrong. It is not just a matter of copying a couple of files. There are also patch files, and resource.cfg needs to be configured properly to point to them locally.

Here is the correct list of files you should have:

1C:\SIERRA\KQ6CD\SEQ
2BIRDS.SEQ
3BOAT.SEQ
4CD1.SEQ
5CD6.SEQ
6CLOSE.SEQ
7CLOUD.SEQ
8FPAN.SEQ
9FS1.SEQ
10FS2Y.SEQ
11FS2Z.SEQ
12LAND.SEQ
13NSHP.SEQ
14OPEN.SEQ
15OPEN2.SEQ
16SCAN.SEQ
17SCOP.SEQ
18
19C:\SIERRA\KQ6CD\
20420.HEP
21420.SCR
22425.HEP
23425.SCR
24460.HEP
25460.SCR
26470.HEP
27470.SCR
2865535.MAP
29ADL.DRV
30AUDBLAST.DRV
31AUDBLAST.OLD
32AUDCDROM.DRV
33AUDDISNY.DRV
34AUDMSSYS.DRV
35AUDNONE.DRV
36AUDPRO.DRV
37AUDPRO16.DRV
38AUDPS1.DRV
39AUDTHUND.DRV
40FILES.TXT
41GENMIDI.DRV
42IBMKBD.DRV
43IBMPS1.DRV
44INSTALL.EXE
45INSTALL.HLP
46INSTALL.INI
47INSTALL.INS
48INSTALL.SCR
49INSTALL.TXT
50INTERP.ERR
51INTERP.TXT
52JOYSTICK.DRV
53KQ6CD
54KQ6CD.BAT
55KQ6SG.000
56KQ6SG.DIR
57MESSAGE.MAP
58MICROSOF.DRV
59MMAWARE.DLL
60MT32.DRV

61PROAUDIO.DRV
62PROGLIB.DLL
63README
64RESOURCE.000
65RESOURCE.AUD
66RESOURCE.CFG
67RESOURCE.MAP
68RESOURCE.MSG
69RESOURCE.SFX
70SBPRO.DRV
71SCIDLL.DLL
72SIERRA.EXE
73STD.DRV
74VGA320.DRV
75VGA320BW.DRV

And here is the correct way to format resource.cfg:

1 videoDrv  = VGA320.DRV
2 soundDrv  = GENMIDI.DRV
3 audioDrv  = AUDMSSYS.DRV
4 joyDrv    = NO
5 kbdDrv    = IBMKBD.DRV
6 mouseDrv  = STDMOUSE.DRV
7 memoryDrv = ARM.DRV
8 mode      = real
9 minHunk   = 207k
10 language  = 1
11 cmd       = kq6cd
12 sync      = .\
13 audio     = .\
14 audioSize = 45K
15 cd        = YES
16audio=.\
17sync=.\
18movieDir=.\seq
19patchDir=.

Next thing to consider is whether your hardware is period correct. I tested with a 486-DX/33. The next level up I tested with was a VIA C3 underclocked to 150Mhz (3 x 50Mhz FSB) which is slower than said 486. No other CPU features were disabled, other than slowing the CPU clock down. It crashes in this situation. The Sierra engine doesn't care how cleverly you think you slowed down your system, it cares about mhz. I am an ignoramus when it comes to understanding the intricacies of low level programming, but I offer this bit of empiricism nevertheless.

Then there's General MIDI or MT32. When that is enabled, it complicates things because even on a period correct system, you get some wonkiness with the audio. Audio starts to repeat itself and such -- even on a 386DX.

So the game engine is very fiddly, and it can "crash with audio" for many different reasons. But you need to exclude the improbable before you directly blame the game engine. Remember that the unwashed masses played these Sierra games in the 90s and no one complained of crashing then. Again, I am not saying the engine is not deeply flawed, but just keep that in mind before jumping to conclusions.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-12-23, 15:53:

INext thing to consider is whether your hardware is period correct. I tested with a 486-DX/33. The next level up I tested with was a VIA C3 underclocked to 150Mhz (3 x 50Mhz FSB) which is slower than said 486. No other CPU features were disabled, other than slowing the CPU clock down. It crashes in this situation. The Sierra engine doesn't care how cleverly you think you slowed down your system, it cares about mhz. I am an ignoramus when it comes to understanding the intricacies of low level programming, but I offer this bit of empiricism nevertheless.

In what way does the crash manifest itself on the C3?

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-23, 23:42:

In what way does the crash manifest itself on the C3?

The audio gets frozen in a loop and the mouse cursor freezes.

Is that a speed issue, and therefore, solvable with GoSierra?