I've always maintained that if you want to play DOS games under DOS, then build a proper DOS system, which in this case means a system with at least one ISA slot with an ISA sound card installed.

Regardless, I believe in order for Creative Audio PCI to work properly under DOS, your motherboard must support DDMA and you must have EMM386.EXE loaded.

If you have the parts, my suggestion would be to build up a Socket 370 (Pentium III) or early Socket A (AMD Athlon) system with at least one ISA slot and install an ISA sound card.

I went into it knowing that pure DOS sound is unlikely, but was hoping to at least get sound for DOS games that can run in Win98 window, or is that assumption incorrect? Reading Vogons thread I found that NForce2 chipset doesn't suport DDMA, yet I get sound when launching DOS games from Win98, just not from DOS Prompt. And then my other board that runs VIA VT8235 SouthBridge and I thought supports DDMA doesn't produce any sound at all when launching DOS games from Win98. I'm perfectly content concluding that it's a rabit hole pursuing PCI Sound in DOS, but I was puzzled by my observations. Is there any refernce guide that would list which chipsets/boards support DDMA. Also, I read that some more modern boards with ISA don't actually provide "full" support for ISA sound (not sure the right technical reason), is there a list somewhere that would list which modern chipsets/boards do not support ISA sound?

Regarding "early Socket A Athlon" motherboard, if it has ISA slot, can I assume it will work with ISA sound under DOS or are there some other potential incompatibilities with these more modern ISA motherboards? I would love to stick with Socket A as I have two Athlon XP CPUs (1600 and 2500+) and nice quiet cooler to go with them, but my guess is "early boards" won't support my Athlon XP CPUs.

If I pursue any other socket type. Any recommendations for a board that has ISA and 1.5V AGP so that I can reuse my ATI9800 Pro?

Thank you.

I have one of these cards and have used it for real DOS without any problems. One of the issues I had trying to get it to work was that there seemed to be quite a few different versions of drivers claiming to support the card, but not all of them worked for me with my card (a pre-Creative card from the Ensoniq days).

I can't remember right now exactly which driver I used, and couldn't guarantee that the same one would be the right one for your card, but with any luck I should have kept a copy of the good driver somewhere safe. I'll try to have a dig for it when I'm home and report back.

WildW wrote:

I'll try to have a dig for it when I'm home and report back.

Thanks a lot WildW.

Try using actual Ensoniq drivers instead of Creative's garbage. They are very different. The former is SB Pro compatible and the latter is SB16 compatible (and shit).

appiah4 wrote:

Try using actual Ensoniq drivers instead of Creative's garbage. They are very different. The former is SB Pro compatible and the latter is SB16 compatible (and shit).

Which one from this list should I try:

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … menustate=45,36

p6889k wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Try using actual Ensoniq drivers instead of Creative's garbage. They are very different. The former is SB Pro compatible and the latter is SB16 compatible (and shit).

Which one from this list should I try:

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … menustate=45,36

I'd try this first: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … menustate=45,36

p6889k wrote:

Regarding "early Socket A Athlon" motherboard, if it has ISA slot, can I assume it will work with ISA sound under DOS or are there some other potential incompatibilities with these more modern ISA motherboards?

Yes, I see no reason why. At that point, ISA slots were actually still being included for backwards compatibility and should work fine with most ISA sound cards. Just take note that some of the early Sound Blasters (and their clones) do not behave well on fast PC's (like a Pentium III or AMD Athlon).

p6889k wrote:

I would love to stick with Socket A as I have two Athlon XP CPUs (1600 and 2500+) and nice quiet cooler to go with them, but my guess is "early boards" won't support my Athlon XP CPUs.

No, early Athlon boards unfortunately do not support the later Athlon XP CPU's. I'm not an expert in what would be regarded as the best AMD Athlon motherboards but, I haven't come across Athlon XP motherboards that also has an ISA slot (I stand to be corrected). The only one that I had in my collection was the Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 but, this is an early Athlon motherboard. It does, however, have two ISA slots.

p6889k wrote:

If I pursue any other socket type. Any recommendations for a board that has ISA and 1.5V AGP so that I can reuse my ATI9800 Pro?

There are quite a number of Socket 370 boards (if you want to stick with a Pentium III). However, only later boards had full 4x AGP support and was AGP 2.0 compliant (and still had ISA slots). I can't recall now if the very latest Pentium III boards also supported AGP 8x. One such board in my collection (that supports AGP 4x) is the Gigabyate GA-6VXC7-4X but, there should be many more. However, since the ATI9800 Pro is an AGP 8x card, it is probably better suited for an AMD Athlon XP (or even AMD Athlon64) and Pentium IV based system.

My apologies, but I was unable to find the drivers I've used in the past as I'm not using that card any more and apparently I didn't keep the drivers somewhere safe.

I would echo the comments of others that the older Ensoniq drivers were the ones to go for - I'm sure that's what I used, and that none of the Creative ones worked for me.

So I tried to install these drivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.ph%20...%20tate=45,36
and didn't get very far. Upon boot to DOS when APINIT.COM runs it gives me an error that no PCI card was found. Do I need to make any changes to the c:\audiopci\sndscape.ini file?

Additionally:
I switched back from Asus A7V8X to using the Asus A7N8X Deluxe board with NForce2 chipset and the Ensoniq AudioPCI card. Upon testing some more games, it seem that many of the DOS games that launch from Windows UI have sound, e.g. GP2, Doom, Wolfenstein, Prince of Persia. When I launched sound setup from GP2, it autodetected the audio as SoundBlaster Pro: Port 220 IRQ 5 DMA 1.

The tricks the PCI sound cards use to do ISA sound card emulation are problematic and it sounds like nforce2 is not a good choice. Interesting that it works in Windows.

Try searching the forum. There have been loads of threads about PCI sound card DOS emulation and compatibility with motherboards.

Sorry for digging up an old thread but I also have one of these cards, well it is onboard audio in a Gateway 2000. I struggled with installing drivers until I found a post made by PhilsComputerLab which includes the drivers and all. I wasn't expecting much from onboard audio but I was gobsmacked. The drivers he links too are set to use the biggest soundfont file with the best sounds and they are stunning...in some games and some not. Depends on what games you like playing. The Dooms, Hexen, Heretic, Blood, DUke3D etc all sound fantastic. Here is the link to that page if anybody wants it.

Ensoniq / Creative AudioPCI