I guess some pics are in order:

Your incompatibilities are common with later PIII machines such as this one. Probably most of them are due to memory management though, or the CPU being too fast for certain games, or the sound card not being ISA.

Thanks for your quick response. The funny part is that with throttle.exe I have less problems with games than with applications. You may be right about the memory management being the cause for that, in which case there is nothing much I can do. What really kills it for me is the noise/distortion when playing MODs with every MOD player I have tried. It's surprising considering I have no such issue with game sound effects and mpxplayer.exe, which also play PCM audio. I expected to have more problems with FM emulation, but that's working flawlessly.

If I can get the MOD players to work, then I would keep it around as a multimedia and gaming DOS PC. But if it is just for games, then DOSBox is good enough for me.

If your motherboard has an ISA slot, then definitely use an ISA sound card. You won't lose anything in Windows 98, and DOS will work much better. Look for Sound Blaster 16, Yamaha YMF, ESS, etc.

For the CPU being too fast, some games can be patched to fix this (e.g. Jazz Jackrabbit).

For memory management, you can control that. It's not really a PC-specific thing. The best thing is to run pure DOS and fine-tune your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, for example you could use something like JEMMEX from FreeDOS instead of HIMEM+EMM386.

What you have is a great machine for Windows 98 things, which you can also use for DOS stuff if you set it up right and your sound and video cards are compatible enough.

Unfortunately, my motherboard does not have an ISA slot. For the CPU being too fast, I have had great success using throttle.exe by setting different levels for each game.

It is a great machine otherwise, too bad I don't care much for Win98 - I personally consider it to be a downgrade from DOS. I have long moved to Linux and only keep a Win10 desktop around for gaming on Steam.

Is JEMMEX really more compatible than HIMEM+EMM386? I will get my autoexec.bat and config.sys files and paste them here. I don't mind giving it one more shot to try and get it to work.

I should add that I'm not using Win98SE - just Win98SE DOS for the 32GB FAT32 filesystem.

It's extremely unlikely that anything crashes because of Win98 SE DOS , but I have heard that some DOS applications may have issues running of FAT32 partitions. Haven't tested it personally, since my Win98 SE system has FAT16 partitions for the DOS stuff, and only Windows stuff is on FAT32 partitions.

Even though you don't have ISA slots, I think there may be more DOS-friendly PCI cards out there than the Audigy. I remember some Yamahas were suggested.

Memory management does not usually lead to crashes (unless you explicitly used EMM386 to claim ROM regions for RAM in an incompatible way, but then the games are still more likely to crash than some programs). Personally I've never had any problem with HIMEM+EMM386, but I don't do weird things on my system (and apparently, neither do you).

Yes, I definitely don't do weird things on my system . Here are my autoexec.bat and config.sys files:

autoexec.bat:

1@ECHO OFF
2LH C:\DOS\DOSKEY
3LH C:\DRV\CTMOUSE
4LH C:\DRV\SHSUCDX /S /D:IDE-CD /L:F
5SET DIRCMD=/OGN /4
6SET PROMPT=$P$G
7PATH C:\DOS
8LH C:\DOS\DOSLFN /C- /Z:C:\DOS\CP437UNI.TBL
9LFNFOR ON
10call C:\DRV\SBLIVE\LIVEINIT.BAT
11C:\DOS\SMARTDRV

config.sys:

1DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
2DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
3DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRV\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:IDE-CD
4SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM /P /E:640
5SET TMP=C:\TEMP
6SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
7DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO
8NUMLOCK=OFF
9FCBSHIGH=4,0
10FILESHIGH=30
11BUFFERSHIGH=20,0
12LASTDRIVEHIGH=32
13STACKSHIGH=9,256

And this is my mem output:

Memory Type Total = Used + Free
---------------- -------- -------- --------
Conventional 640K 38K 602K
Upper 69K 66K 4K
Reserved 315K 315K 0K
Extended (XMS) 523,264K 5,729K 517,535K
---------------- -------- -------- --------
Total memory 524,288K 6,147K 518,141K

Total under 1Mb 709K 104K 606K

Total Extended (XMS) 523,264K (535,822,336 bytes)
Free Extended (XMS) 517,535K (529,955,840 bytes)

Largest executable program size 602K (616,272 bytes)
Largest free upper memory block 3K (3,360 bytes)
Available space in High Memory Area 5K (5,408 bytes)
MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

There is not much in there because I tried to keep it as simple as possible. If anyone can tell me what in these files is causing my applications to crash, I would be most grateful.

I would suggest getting rid of DOSLFN unless you really need it.

Plus, put the CD drivers under a menu option so you only use them if you need them.

I need DOSLFN for DJGPP, but I could put it and the CD driver in a menu option. But that's all I have in there besides the Audigy stuff, isn't it? Speaking of Audigy, here are my config files:

liveinit.bat:

1@echo off
2SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
3SET CTSYN=c:\drv\sblive
4c:\drv\sblive\sbeinit.com

ctsyn.ini

1[ctsyn.drv]
2SBEnable=true
3JoyEnable=true
4Waveset=C:\drv\sblive\default.ecw
5PCIPort=e800
6PCIIRQ=9
7OPLPort=388
8MPUPort=330
9SBPort=220
10SBIRQ=5
11SBDMALO=1
12SBDMAHI=5
13JoyPort=200
14
15[SBEINIT]
16CONFIG=SBESET.CFG
17
18[SBESET.CFG]
19SBPORT=220
20MPUPORT=330
21SBIRQ=5
22SBDMALO=1
23SBDMAHI=5
24OPLPORT=388
25SBENABLE=TRUE
26JOYPORT=200
27JOYENABLE=true
28WAVESET=C:\drv\sblive\DEFAULT.ECW
29PCIPORT=e800
30PCIIRQ=9
31
32[SBEMIXER]
33MasterVolL=125
34MasterVolR=125
35WaveVolL=125
36WaveVolR=125
37CDVolL=125
38CDVolR=125
39SynthVolL=125
40SynthVolR=125
41MT32=-

If anyone can tell me why FM, mpxplay.exe and games sound fine, but every single MOD player like glx.exe and opencp.exe have terrible noise/distortion, I would be most grateful.

Your mod players sound bad because not many PCI sound cards work well with DOS. You have to have drivers to provide emulation of an ISA sound card, which causes problems.

What you need is a real ISA sound card, but your motherboard doesn't have an ISA slot.

I tried commenting out the CD driver, DOSLFN, and SMARTDRV, but the applications like display.exe and gsplay.exe that crashed before continued to crash. Seems like only option left is to format disk as FAT16, create a bunch of 2GB partitions, and boot DOS 6.22.

Regarding Audigy, if that's true, then it's a real shame. What would be a more compatible PCI card? I wasn't planning on buying anything more, but I will keep a watch on eBay to see if anything pops up at a decent price.

I have heard that maybe some Yamaha PCI cards have good compatibility, but I have no personal experience with them.

Yamaha YMF744 is a great PCI sound card that has very good DOS compatibility, and it has genuine OPL3 to boost. I've tested it to run on all sorts of CPU/chipset/motherboard combinations including P3, P4, Core 2, AthlonXP, Athlon64, VIA/Intel/Nforce chipsets. Out of the about 30 motherboards I tested, only about 3 is incompatible, so the success rate is around 90%. The only draw backs are: the driver (setupds) needs to be patched for more modern chipsets, and it's SFX driver (dsdma) requires EMS and hence EMM386/JEMMEX to be loaded, and dsdma takes up a big chunk of upper memory too. Other than that, it works and sounds great.

I found a new AOPEN AW744L II - Yamaha XG YMF744 on eBay for $26.50 USD. Is the AOPEN a good YM744 card? And is that a good price?

I think this AOpen AW744L card was the one Philscomputerlab reviewed previously. It was selling for USD25 then. You can check out his video here.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-06-04, 19:17:

Plus, put the CD drivers under a menu option so you only use them if you need them.

No, why? What's the purpose other than to waste your time? Is there a single documented case of a CD driver interfering with anything?

enaiel wrote on 2020-06-04, 20:55:

Seems like only option left is to format disk as FAT16, create a bunch of 2GB partitions, and boot DOS 6.22.

You can make a FAT16 partition, but you surely don't need DOS 6.22.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-06-04, 19:17:

I need DOSLFN for DJGPP, but I could put it and the CD driver in a menu option.

If it's just for DJGPP, you can remove DOSLFN from AUTOEXEC, and load it on-demand.

enaiel wrote on 2020-06-05, 02:59:

I found a new AOPEN AW744L II - Yamaha XG YMF744 on eBay for $26.50 USD. Is the AOPEN a good YM744 card? And is that a good price?

It is one of the best PCI cards you can have if you also want to do DOS gaming. However you will not get proper DOS sound with it unless your i815 motherboard has an SB-Link header. I've had much better luck with ForteMedia FM801 cards with i810/815 motherboards without SB-Link.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-05, 07:58:

It is one of the best PCI cards you can have if you also want to do DOS gaming. However you will not get proper DOS sound with it unless your i815 motherboard has an SB-Link header. I've had much better luck with ForteMedia FM801 cards with i810/815 motherboards without SB-Link.

I've tested the YMF744 on many motherboards/chipsets without SB-Link. FM will play regardless, but for SFX to work it needs 2 things: (1) setupds patched for the particular south bridge so that when it runs, DMA is set other than "none", and (2) dsdma needs to be loaded.