Bleh. Something's horribly wrong there. Sounds like maybe your OS is hosed. Of course at this point, I'm guessing. It's just as likely that you greatly angered a Gypsy Mystic (no angry emails from Gypsy Mystics please).

BTW, The built-in emulation won't emulate 16-bit SoundBlaster audio, so SB-Pro is as high as it goes.

This means that you have GIVEIO.SYS or something on your system; the game sees "through" Windows and can touch the FM on the AWE board (which the other board didn't have), but can't detect the SB because DMA and IRQs are not piped through by GIVEIO.SYS. So get rid of GIVEIO.SYS or whatever it is that gives DOS boxes direct access to the hardware on your machine. As soon as you do that you should see everything (SB for sound, SB for music, etc.) in the setup program.

V.

[vEX] wrote:

Good news, sort of. Switched the soundcards so now I'm running on my AWE64. The good news is that now I can select "Sound Blaster 16" for usage with MIDI sound, but I still can't select any soundcard for digital sound (with and without VDMSound).

Hmm, just searched my HDD's for GIVEIO.SYS and didn't find it.
And I haven't installed any programs/drivers for the soundblaster, XP just used it's own drivers directly so I don't know what to look after.

Then it is not called GIVEIO.SYS (i.e. it's disguised under some other name). Do you have any hardware-monitoring program (monitors CPU temeprature, etc.) installed on your system, or did you have any such program installed in the past then uninstalled it? At this point I'm 99.9% sure that this is your problem, and it is fully consistent with the issues that you have been describing so far.

Just to confirm: if you run the SETUP program without ever going in full-screen mode, does the "digital hardware" get detected on port 220, IRQ7 and DMA1? If so, does the same still happen if you go full-screen?

Cheers,
V.

[vEX] wrote:

Hmm, just searched my HDD's for GIVEIO.SYS and didn't find it.
And I haven't installed any programs/drivers for the soundblaster, XP just used it's own drivers directly so I don't know what to look after.

Nope, never ever had any hardware-monitoring programs installed.

I ran the SETSOUND.EXE in both window/fullscreen mode and it still didn't detect the soundcard.

Okay, I haven't found anything at all that would let DOS programs communicate directly with the hardware thus bypassing VDMSound.

Since XP's SB emulation is übercrap and VDMSound works equally good for me I thought about putting a SB16 in my PC along with my Turtle Beach, wouldn't that solve the problem ?
I mean since it seems to have some direct contact with the soundcard it oughta work with a SB16, right ?

Originally posted by [vEX] I mean since it seems to have some direct contact with the soundcard it oughta work with a SB16, right ?

*shrug* Beats me. Like I said, something's whacked in your setup. Try the SB16 and let us know, but if you have any FAT or FAT32 partitions, you could try using a Win9x boot disk to see if your setup will allow proper operation under DOS.

I'll get back to you on this....

The thing is, a DOS box is not supposed ot have direct contact with the hardware (other than with your video-card when in full-screen mode).

Can you (as well as someone else with XP but with a functioning VDMSound) do the following, please, and then we can compare results on this forum:

1) Open a plain DOS box
2) Type:
set BLASTER=A0 I0 D0 H0 T0 P0
3) Go in full-screen mode (Alt+Enter)
4) Type:
debug
5) Type:
i 330
i 331
i 220
i 22e
6) Copy-paste all the output of the above stuff and put it in this thread.

V.

vladr wrote:

6) Copy-paste all the output of the above stuff and put it in this thread.

N:\>set BLASTER=A0 I0 D0 H0 T0 P0

N:\>debug
-i 330
FF
-i 331
80
-i 220
FF
-i 22E
7F

No cheating please! Nicht, since you don't have GIVEIO.SYS and so on you should get straight FF's. You must have used "Run with VDMS" -- not supposed to do that, just plain DOS box! 😉 The point of the exercise is to disable all emulation (WinXP and/or VDMSound), and see if you still get stuff through (supposedly from the hardware).

V.

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

N:\>set BLASTER=A0 I0 D0 H0 T0 P0 […]
Show full quote

N:\>set BLASTER=A0 I0 D0 H0 T0 P0

N:\>debug
-i 330
FF
-i 331
80
-i 220
FF
-i 22E
7F

[vlad's edit: Weird. Could it be that my fake BLASTER variable did not get rid of XP's emulation after all?!]

vladr wrote:

No cheating please! Nicht, since you don't have GIVEIO.SYS and so on you should get straight FF's.

Whacu' talkin about Vlad? This is from a plain command prompt, made full-screen just like you said.

Tried it again, same results.

C:\>set BLASTER=A0 I0 D0 H0 T0 P0

C:\>debug
-i 330
FE
-i 331
BF
-i 220
00
-i 22E
7F

That's what I got so I assume there is something running that shouldn't be running.

Hmm, can't upload files by editing an existing post so here's a new post with what's running on my system:

lfck.exe = program to login to my isp with
3dfxMan.exe = 3Dfx Tools
zapro.exe = ZoneAlarm

Hi, Vex,

It won't show in there. You may find it in Device Manager under "Services" if it's there.

Can you also pls. run the following commands please and post the output (just as before -- write them down on a piece of paper so that you don't have to swap between full-screen mode and this message every time you have to type a command):

1set blaster=A0 I0 D0
2(alt+enter to go full-screen)
3debug
4o 226,1
5o 226,0
6i 22a
7o 22c,e1
8i 22a
9i 22a
10quit

V.

vladr wrote:

It won't show in there. You may find it in Device Manager under "Services" if it's there.

I guessed so and I've already turned off alot of different unneeded services.

1C:\>set blaster=A0 I0 D0
2
3C:\>debug
4-o 226,1
5-o 226,0
6-i 22a
7AA
8-o 22c,e1
9-i 22a
1004
11-i 22a
1210
13-quit
14
15C:\>

On mine:
N:\>SET BLASTER=A0 I0 D0

N:\>debug
-o 226,1
-o 226,0
-i 22a
AA
-o 22c,e1
-i 22a
02
-i 22a
01
-quit

OK, so VeX, you are getting a SB version of "4.16". Nicht is getting "2.01", which is WinXP's emulation (SBPro 2). Neither XP nor VDMSound have version "4.16" so what you're talking to via "debug" is actually a "real" SB (the version corresponds to an AWE, which is what I think you said you put in your system).

If you don't believe me then start playing something in Winamp/Media player in the background, then redo the "debug" exercise (namely the part with "o 206,1" "o 206,0" which effectively resets the SB) -- you will probably notice right away that your music stops, and your computer may even crash (!) depending on how well the sound driver takes it.

So now it's just a question of identifying which .SYS file (or Service in Device Manager) is doing this to your system.

Get the list fo services from Device Manager (you should be able to copy/paste it all), and try to think of any software that you or someone else may have installed on your system that would have needed to talk directly to your hardware.

V.

Yeah I believe ya (had Winamp running the first time).
The only problem is that I'm the only one with access to the computer and as far as I know I haven't installed nor used any program that would need direct access to the hardware.

About copying the service list, device manager ?
Are we talking about the same thing even ?
Start -> Run -> services.msc
^ That's where I'm messing around, don't see any link to it in the device manager.

Aha !!
I found the thief !
A little program called UserPort (found it by selecting View -> Show hidden devices).
It's a program that I need to be able to use my PSX->PC Mem card linker.
I'll even upload it so you can check it out since it is used to map ports, perhaps it can even be used to map the ports of the soundcard ?

Never thought about it since I just set it up, and after that it has been running without me even thinking of it.
Thanks alot for all the help 😀

[vEX] wrote:

I found the thief

So Albion detects the card and runs now?