First post, by Galacnor
Hello everyone!
I'm new to the forum, but not super new to DOS computing or retro gaming. Born in 1997, I'm someone who never really got to use MS-DOS in its golden era, but someone who has always found the operating system and the software written for it to be very interesting.
Anyhow, I've got myself a Socket 7 Pentium system that I found in a recycling pile and have rebuilt into a nice machine and have been trying to get the darn thing running correctly. I've got DOS 6.22 and Windows 98SE dual booted successfully, but have been having problems with sound in the only MS-DOS games I have tried in it so far-My copies of Monkey Island. I have tried to get things running correctly for days now, and running them under the pure DOS, vs the DOS under windows 98 has had no effect.
With The Secret of Monkey island (both the original release on 8 floppies, and the later 256 color release on 4) the game will simply crash and refuse to run if I try and force soundblaster mode with the "monkey a" parameter, giving me the error code "run-time error R6003 - integer divide by 0". I was able to get the VGA version to at least start in the soundblaster mode after patching it with the patch available at T.W.O.M.I (The World of Monkey Island), but it simply plays silently without any sound effects from the soundblaster AWE64 or the internal speaker. If I force the games to run via the internal speaker via "monkey i", they run perfectly fine, albeit with the PC speaker sound that I am trying not to use.
With Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge (the 256 color, German language version on 6 {5 1/4} floppies), forcing the game to run in soundblaster mode yields a game that plays perfectly without patching, but without any sound. I tried patching the game with the patch for more sound devices found at T.W.O.M.I, but have again had no luck with the sound besides the basic PC speaker.
Does anyone have any ideas on what to do?
Out of desperation I switched the soundblaster out with another ISA card I have thats a little bit less well known from ESS Technologies, model ES1869. I was able to actually get some sound out of this device on at least Monkey Island II, but find the sound the card makes unpleasant compared to that generated by the AWE64, and want to use the AWE64 if possible. I have the drivers for my AWE64 installed along with the plug and play manager that MS-DOS needs to detect the card. The card is detected by MS-DOS on startup and the diagnostic program under the SB16 directory produces perfect results that I can hear (all test tracks play perfectly correct) and it seems that DOS configures the card on startup correctly. I am absolutely out of new ideas to try. I am beginning to worry that this sound card is not compatible with these games (And possibly other DOS titles I intend on playing).
Again, any ideas?
Is there a chance I need to change my soundcard settings from default or install some legacy drivers since it's an AWE64 and not one of the older soundblasters?
Here are the Specs of my build.
Motherboard: Intel Advanced EV Motherboard with socket 7 (I'm not sure of the specific model, as there are so many different flavors of this board)
RAM: 64MB
Video Card: ATI mach64GX 2MB
Sound Card: Creative AWE64 CT4500
Floppy Drives: 1.44mb 3 1/2 and 1.2mb 5 1/4
CD Drive: Creative 12x IDE
Hard Drives: Maxtor 2GB for DOS and Maxtor 6GB for windows IDE
Thanks in advance!
Alex