First post, by keenmaster486
- Rank
- l33t
I feel like I've had this issue before and posted about it but here we go anyway.
I'm building a Pentium III all-in-one DOS/Windows PC. One partition has Windows 98, the other has MS-DOS 7.1 with Windows 3.1 set up - pretty typical dual boot.
The system has a Sound Blaster AWE64 Value card in it. It was the only non-PCI Sound Blaster I had handy, and I thought it'd be good for compatibility across the different OS's. So far: I cannot get FM sound working in pure DOS. I know you're supposed to run AWEUTIL to initialize the EMU8000 chip to let FM sound through without muting it.
Running AWEUTIL results in the error message: "cannot initialize AWE32" or something. Running AWEUTIL /S results in the same thing. Loading CTCM in CONFIG.SYS beforehand yields the same result. CTCM loads up fine at bootup but AWEUTIL still cannot initialize the card. I've tried various things like unloading SHARE.EXE, with no luck.
Everything works fine in Windows 98, just as it should. DOS games run fine with either OPL3 sound or, having selected General MIDI, the AWE64 wavetable. (by the way, getting MIDI sound in DOS would be nice too but I'm well aware of the fact that AWEUTIL MIDI emulation in DOS sucks, so I'm just focusing on getting FM for now)
Should I install the official drivers in Windows 3.1 and let the installer do its job?
Here's what I want to end up with: the least amount of memory usage possible to just initialize the card and make it work as a standard SB16 in pure DOS mode. Windows 3.1 can do whatever it wants but that pure DOS memory usage is crucial.
World's foremost 486 enjoyer.