don't mean to ask a stupid question, but you did download the latest drivers from realtek right? did you tested for sound without SB emulation also?

Excuse me for not expressing myself very clearly. AC97 sound works fine in Windows, legacy SB sound doesn't work in neither Windows or DOS. The non-PnP SB-emulation device takes up the right system resources and some games detect it correctly, it just doesn't produce any sound.

The latest generic driver from Realtek doesn't work (Code 2). There is a physical ALC201A chip on the motherboard but I noticed that Realtek's own Sound Manager also refers to it as VIA3058. There's a VIA AC97 driver for this board so I tried it and it works fine, but still no legacy SB sound.

Wolfenstein 3D 'sees' a Sound Blaster compatible device, Commander Keen 4 doesn't. Creative's DIAGNOSE.EXE doesn't find any sound hardware.

I wonder if there are any USB sound card solutions that will solve the problem....

epicbrad wrote:

I wonder if there are any USB sound card solutions that will solve the problem....

As such a question is a pretty good question, and why not go for the source then. And find/hunt/buy/salvage/dumpster dive a Creative USB soundblaster ? Cause they work quite well(I sent such a device to a friend of mine and it works). Unless you happen to get into a driver issue..

If SB DOS emulation isn't working it may be due to missing non-maskable interrupt support on the motherboard.

Also, I am not sure any USB sound devices can do DOS. Seems unlikely. Certainly not outside of Windows.

swaaye wrote:

If SB DOS emulation isn't working it may be due to missing non-maskable interrupt support on the motherboard.

Also, I am not sure any USB sound devices can do DOS. Seems unlikely. Certainly not outside of Windows.

Okay, but as I said. It was just a thought, but am I wrong by saying perhaps he could dual/triple boot with Freedos on a partition, cause they support USB. Or is that more like USB CD/DVD etc. ? Instead of USB soundcards !?

It looks like FreeDOS has some support for USB storage and input devices by various drivers.

Besides, without NMI support, he needs a real ISA sound card to get DOS sound AFAIK. Or a PCI card with a SBLink connection.

swaaye wrote:

It looks like FreeDOS has some support for USB storage and input devices by various drivers.

Besides, without NMI support, he needs a real ISA sound card to get DOS sound AFAIK. Or a PCI card with a SBLink connection.

Then I bloody hope, he does not have a hardware failure. Cause then he is pretty much SOL.

To rule out the possibility of hardware failure, since I have three identical systems I have tested the other two, same exact thing.

I'm starting to think that the SB-compatible sound was never implemented correctly in the first place, but why have such explicit BIOS options then? Is there any way to check if this board lacks NMI support?

Yeah since the BIOS has SB settings, I think the board probably does support it. I think you need the VIA audio drivers for that southbridge instead of the Realtek driver. They mention DOS SB emulation.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/support/drivers.jsp
Work your way to the Windows 98SE AC97 sound drivers. There is also a link in the description there for a SB driver for pure DOS.

Delete that SBPRO driver you have installed as I'm sure that won't work.

Perhaps some variables / files need to be parsed from command line pre / during OS load? along with win vxd / dll's?

What a frustrating problem. Are there any board updates?

Have you tested the audio in 8-bit only for dos stuff? ie doom, Rott stuff that needs it fed in rather than W3D etc

I haven't had much time lately to mess around with this thing, and I have also been without Internet access, but I've finally solved the problem. You've hit the nail right in the head, swaaye. You provided the crucial piece of the puzzle I needed to figure the rest out. 😉

swaaye wrote:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/support/drivers.jsp
Work your way to the Windows 98SE AC97 sound drivers. There is also a link in the description there for a SB driver for pure DOS.

That leads here:

The audio drivers provided on this website are general sound effect drivers with common functions. System manufacturers and motherboard vendors customize audio hardware and software and therefore, to ensure optimal sound quality and compatibility, we strongly recommend you to obtain the system-validated and certified audio drivers directly from your system manufacturer or motherboard manufacturer. If you use audio drivers provided on this website and you experience a difficulty, we recommend that you uninstall them and instead use the latest drivers supplied by your motherboard or system manufacturer. This driver supports DOS sound for VT82C686A/VT82C686B/VT8231 only. The VIAAUDIO.COM file mentioned in the Readme concerning DOS sound can be obtained from this old audio driver package.

SB-emulation sound in Windows

The old audio driver package (68MU220b.zip) is exactly what we need. It comes with DOS drivers and both WDM and VxD Windows drivers. The VxD drivers must be used for the SB emulation feature to work!
A proper driver will be installed for the SBPro emulation device when you use the VxD driver. Unfortunately the VxD driver performs worse than the WDM driver - the sound output is a bit weird and distorted (kind of like if both speakers were out of phase but not quite), but if you want SB-compatible sound, you've got no other choice.

SB-emulation sound in MS-DOS

In order to enable the SB-emulation feature of the VT82C686 in pure DOS mode install the DOS driver by running INSTALL.EXE found on the \DOS directory. This will create a VIAUDIO directory on the root of your hard drive and it'll modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT file for you, but it won't work straight away! You need an additional file which is not included with the aformentioned DOS driver: VIAFMTSR.COM

Just add the VIAFMTSR.COM to the VIAUDIO directory and call them in this exact order through your AUTOEXEC.BAT or DOSSTART.BAT

1C:\VIAUDIO\VIAUDIO.COM
2C:\VIAUDIO\VIAFMTSR.COM
3SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330

You should have SB-compatible sound working in DOS now! A downside of these drivers is that they take a crapload of conventional memory, making it difficult to run your games. You might try loading them high, I had limited success with that.

---------------------------

Finally I managed to get SB-compatible sound to work so I can use this mini PC as a cool solid state DOS gaming rig I can just throw in my backpack and carry with me. 😁 Sound quality is so-so but for a specialized board with no expansion possibilities I'm grateful to even have an option. It took some time and effort to get it working but now it's all documented in case someone else ends up with the same problem. I have mirrored the files here in case they ever disappear from the VIA website. I know how frustrating is not being able to find some old and obscure driver file anywhere.

Thanks a lot to everyone who helped! 😀

Great outcome, well done and thank you for updating the thread!

I have to thank you for this thread! I bought myself a EP-8KTA3PRO motherboard that is VIA-KT133A based and does include the same VT82C686B sound chip. With the information here I got sound working under DOS (Jazz Jackrabbit keeps crashing though). I also found it easy to load the sound driver to high memory and still have more than 600 kB available, if anyone is interested I can post my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT - I'm running on a Windows 98 shipped DOS.

At the moment I'm researching an ideal general DOS gaming system for myself and this is the high end side of things. Of same generation of motherboards I also have nForce2 based ASUS A7N8X-VM/400 but it is just awful for DOS gaming and legacy Windows stuff doesn't work quite right on it either.

Sorry for the necro
I have the same thin client and I can confirm it works, the FM sound quality is OK and the SFX is good enough. Also VIAFMTSR.COM eats a lot of memory and some of the motherboard ROMs (i guess the bootmanager for LAN) eats a good chunk of upper memory leaving like only 45kb available. With some QEMM magic the best I can get is 584K of free conventional memory with Keyb , Display.sys, Ansi.sys , Doskey , CTMouse, VIAFMTSR and VIAUDIO, with files=30, buffers=10, Lastdrive=L (EMS enabled) and 607K with NOEMS. No smartdrive.

This little PC boots into DOS at warp speed, I'm pleased. I have only tried DOOM 1 and WOLF3d so far.