Do you actually see the CD drive's light flashing when it should be playing music? If so, it could be some obscure mixer issue, in which case you'll need to find the DOS mixer utility for your laptop's sound hardware and adjust the volume for CD audio. There might also be an in-game setting for adjusting the music volume that will accomplish the same thing.

It is also distinctly possible that in Windows, digital CD playback is being used. On a typical PC of the era, analog CD playback would be used, feeding the audio directly from the CD-ROM drive to the sound card. If no such connection for analog CD playback exists in your laptop, then there will be no way to get CD audio in DOS.

Try running cdplayer.exe in Windows. Does that give you any CD audio? (I think cdplayer.exe always uses analog playback.)

mills26 wrote:

I also wanted to ask, how can i run "second reality" demo? it will always complain about memory.

You will probably need to adjust your autoexec.bat and config.sys to ensure you have enough memory. That might fix the problem with Lemmings 3 as well. Perhaps you should be more specific about "complains about memory".

CD light does not flash when it should be playing music on dos, it just starts to make sounds, like reading, and stops.

CD player works perfect on windows 98.

Now lemmings 3 says " error 55:53 unable to calibrate timmer" and second reality says "not enough conventional memory".

I set config.sys to load emm386, if i don't, lemmins 3 has no memory, and second reality shows the same error.

Thanks.

mills26 wrote:

CD light does not flash when it should be playing music on dos, it just starts to make sounds, like reading, and stops.

That's not a good sign at all. It's possible your laptop simply wasn't designed with this capability in mind. Perhaps there is some option in the BIOS?

Are you sure the light isn't even flashing a little bit? Even if it is working, it probably won't make the same amount of noise as it does during normal operation, since CD audio playback runs the drive at a much, much lower speed. The light won't flash nearly as much as it normally does either.

CD player works perfect on windows 98.

Just to be sure: you mean cdplayer.exe, specifically?

I set config.sys to load emm386, if i don't, lemmins 3 has no memory, and second reality shows the same error.

You will probably have to strip your config.sys and autoexec.bat down to the bare minimum to run Second Reality. Perhaps you could post the contents of your config.sys and autoexec.bat ?

As for Lemmings... http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=lemmings+%22calibrate+timer%22

Cdplayer.exe works perfect. I tested Mxplay.exe, it played rayman music cd on dos! But a bit slow...

Second reality worked the first time before i edited anything, so you are right but i won't be able to have any sound...

Lemmings 3 is still not working... i'll keep searching.

Thanks.

mills26 wrote:

I tested Mxplay.exe, it played rayman music cd on dos! But a bit slow...

mxplay probably uses the same kind of digital CD playback that Windows uses.

Second reality worked the first time before i edited anything, so you are right but i won't be able to have any sound...

So your sound card requires drivers to be loaded in DOS? Like I said, it would be much more helpful if you just posted the contents of your autoexec.bat and config.sys.

Lemmings 3 is still not working... i'll keep searching.

So have you tried running it from a full-screen MS-DOS window within Windows 98?

Why do you want to run Rayman in DOS if it works in Windows 98, anyway? If you're having speed problems in Windows, DOS probably won't help you. (You need to edit your RAYMAN.CFG to fix that problem, I think)

I got second reality working with sound, i just had to choose the right option and restore the original autoexec and config files, (nearly empty).

I can't copy the files here, they look like this

Autoexec: just 3 lines, loading keyboard.sys and ega.cpi

Config: another 3 lines loading setver.exe display.sys country.sys

Rayman runs jerky on windows, not smooth at all, on dos, it run much faster.

My sound card has lots of issues if i run dos games inside windows 98, in many games,midi music is not working, and they run a bit jerky.

By the way, my sound card is windows sound system, and it works on dos just like a sbpro (220 irq5 dma0).

I tried lemmings 3 in full screen, it didn't work.

Thanks for your help.

Given that mxplay also cannot play CD audio at full speed, it seems feasible that your laptop just isn't fast enough to play digitized CD audio and keep up with the game. And since it apparently can't play analog CD audio, you may be out of luck.

Does Rayman run at full speed in Windows if you disable the music?

mills26 wrote:

I tried lemmings 3 in full screen, it didn't work.

That is not helpful. Did you get the timer message again, or a different message, or did something else happen, or what?

Sorry, i got the same message from lemmings 3, on windows, on dos, fullscreen.. every combination showed the same message.

I also found a post saying lemmings 3 didn't like AGP graphics cards. Damm Small linux (dsl) found an "AGP bridge" in my laptop. Maybe it is not true, as the card is not good at all, it just might be a strange card, i don't know.

Another reason could be the HD is FAT32, and lemmings game likes FAT16?.

CD drive seems to work perfect, i looked (on windows) how it flashes while playing music (it looked like doing nothing... just a rithmic noise), then it did the same thing on ms-dos, so it might be sending the audio to sound card, but for some reason, volume is low, or soundcard does not recieve the music.

I don't think this pc is slow to play music while gaming, it is a pentium mmx 233 and it has 64 MB of RAM. I tested rayman cd with ignition on windows, (a game that uses cd tracks), it worked just like without cd, but playing the music.

mills26 wrote:

Sorry, i got the same message from lemmings 3, on windows, on dos, fullscreen.. every combination showed the same message.

But in your first post you said it was sometimes complaining about memory.

Another reason could be the HD is FAT32, and lemmings game likes FAT16?.

Lemmings 2 famously had a bug in its copy protection scheme that was incompatible with FAT32, but I have never heard of anything of the sort happening with Lemmings 3. That is unlikely to be the problem.

CD drive seems to work perfect, i looked (on windows) how it flashes while playing music (it looked like doing nothing... just a rithmic noise), then it did the same thing on ms-dos

Earlier you said "CD light does not flash when it should be playing music on dos, it just starts to make sounds, like reading, and stops." So which is it?

I tested rayman cd with ignition on windows, (a game that uses cd tracks), it worked just like without cd, but playing the music.

This sentence is unclear.

Does the drive have a headphone port?

And what sound card does this computer have?

What CD driver do you have in CONFIG.SYS.

Sorry Jorpho, my english is not very good.

Lemmings 3 complains about memory if you don't load emm386 in dos. But If you load emm386, the game shows the timer error.

While playing music, Cd light flashes very few times, so the first time i did not see it.

I tested Ignition on windows, It plays any cd you insert, without slowing down the framerate.

Mau1wurf1977, this laptop has a headphone port, i don't know if it is just the sound card port, or the CD drive has a port connected to it.

Soundcard is detected like "WSS windws sound system" on dos. Windows has an OPL3-Sax driver installed.

CD driver in config.sys is OAKCDROM.SYS

How are you running Lemmings 3, by the way? Are you using L3.BAT, or are you running something else?

mills26 wrote:

While playing music, Cd light flashes very few times, so the first time i did not see it.

All right, then: we're back to my previous idea. Is there an option in the game for changing the music volume? Do you have any DOS utilities for controlling the volume level of your sound card?

Mau1wurf1977, this laptop has a headphone port, i don't know if it is just the sound card port, or the CD drive has a port connected to it.

Some old CD-ROM drives had their own headphone port independent of the sound card, but it would be unusual to see something like that on a laptop. The headphone jack on your laptop is probably just for the sound card.

I'm using L3.bat to load lemmings 3.

Rayman has a music volume option, it is at 100%.

I don't have any ms-dos software to chage volume, that might work 😀.

This is a wild guess, but try using UniVBE.
VESA Fix Utility Listing (for old video cards)

You can also try NOLFB.
NOLFB - Disables LFB enabling DOS games to fallback to VESA 1.2 modes

OPL3-Sax.

Just got to find a DOS driver for this chip that comes with the audio mixer?

Also, just to be sure: if you clear this checkbox in Windows 98, do you still get CD audio? (I should have asked this earlier.)

You can get to this box by right-clicking on your CD drive in Device Manager. (Does that make sense?)

Jorpho wrote:

This is a wild guess, but try using UniVBE. VESA Fix Utility Listing (for old video cards) […]
Show full quote

This is a wild guess, but try using UniVBE.
VESA Fix Utility Listing (for old video cards)

You can also try NOLFB.
NOLFB - Disables LFB enabling DOS games to fallback to VESA 1.2 modes

It didn't work I'll look for another version of lemmings 3, maybe there is a cd version or something. thanks anyway.

Jorpho wrote:

Also, just to be sure: if you clear this checkbox in Windows 98, do you still get CD audio? (I should have asked this earlier.)

You can get to this box by right-clicking on your CD drive in Device Manager. (Does that make sense?)

audiofull.gif

It does not look like that window, I have no volume control, and I have a "disconnect" option unchecked, if I check it, cd still plays perfect.

I'm not sure you're looking in the right spot.