Dos ....it's hell I tells ya

  • Thread starter Thread starter mjnurney
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If you like DOS games the best and most easy way to do that is to find a Sb16 (CT2800) model which has original Yamaha OPL3 chip

or to buy one Awe32. ISA is compatible 100%. Forget PCI in DOS. Really sucks.
 
The vogon site is where I downloaded a huge cd full of drivers from and it was on there :-)

I gave up with the soundblaster site.

The vogon forum was very good :-)
 
Vogons is one of the places to go to get support for DOS still. They are very friendly and if there are parts you are looking for a lot of times they either have them or can point you to where to get them. My recommendation for best setup is a Sound Blaster Pro I or II, a Roland SCC-1 (if you can find one) or an MPU401-IPC-T card with an MT-32 and SC-55. This will give you complete compatibility across the board, Sound Blaster Pro is 8-bit and can still be recognized by older games (some older games have problems with the second channel High DMA on SB16 and up) and with MT-32 and Sound Canvas you can listen to how those games that utilize those systems were designed to sound. It can be an ear opening experience. I miss my old LAPC card.... Everything I have is external now.
 
@ mjnurney

I have a very old DOS-era card here; it came from an old HP Vectra machine and it's an ISA card with the Aztech 2320 chipset.

Being an ISA card, I'd be very surprised if this didn't support 8-bit sound.

The HP part number marked on it is 5064-2620, if that helps.



Any interest....?? It could be yours for the postage.....;)
 
DOS is a PITA, but when set up right (takes some time) it is bulletproof. I spent several months making a suite of software to run arcade games off CF card. Lots of hair pulling I must say. But eventually it paid off, its much more reliable than Windows.

Its been running now for 3 years with no problems on my arcade machine. I managed to get it to boot up into Gamelauncher (frontend) in around 10 seconds. And because it is so flexible all those old emulators can be run straight through command line underneath the launcher with scripts. This way you see nothing other than the menu with a game list, then a simple press of "start" runs selected game with no other screens popping up inbetween.

I think if you want to make a Games only machine and set them all up in a nice menu then you could do really well in DOS, it will just take ALOT of time and patience. One thing I would recommend though, get a motherboard with a REAL ISA port and get an ISA soundcard with hardware jumpers for IRQ etc, preferably a real Soundblaster 16 (CT1740 for example), but the one Merlin has above may be ok too. It will make life MUCH easier. And if you want a MB that takes a fairly recent CPU as well as having a fully functioning ISA slot try ABIT KT7A mainboard. If you find one with V1.3 BIOS you can run up to an Athlon XP 2400+ too :)

Be wary of the P4 boards that have ISA slots, they are a pig in DOS for whatever reason. I wasted a few bob with a couple of them to try and push a 3GHz P4, not worth the hassle. I stick with my trusty ABIT now.
 
Wut? Nobody remember teh awesome QEMM386 patch? It frees the DOS memory to ~610kb, which is enough for the wast majority of games of that era.

Few games don't like it (VROOM was one, IIRC), but this one is better on an Amiga. Same for Cool Spot, Lion King and others.

When a version is available for Amiga, I take this one instead.

Now, someone to point me where I can acquire a DOSx.x (even win95 DOS version is good to go on win3.11), and the win3.1 (3.11 will not work on my bridgeboards).?
 
keropi said:
the updates are all you need :D

edit: also look here for a MASSIVE archive of complete drivers : http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=20786
Click to expand...


Just to warn people, the link from the above site infected my Laptop with the fake 'Total Security' Antivirus Software. I'm always up to date with all my AV definitions and this one just sailed though:thumbsdown:

Aledgedly Malwarebytes is the only product that will remove it although the virus prevents execute of the malwarebytes executable (mbam.exe). The way around this is to rename mbam.exe to something that doesn't contain 'mbam' (ie mbam2.exe won't work but mb.exe will)

Hope this helps someone else if this has just happened to them as well...

Chris
 
Wish I saw this post earlier MJ - I still have the mother of all DOS6.2 boot disks stored on my server that I coud have sent you. Multi Drivers for video, audio and NIC :)

But others are right - DosBox is a better option.

John
 
ptp170 said:
keropi said:
the updates are all you need :D

edit: also look here for a MASSIVE archive of complete drivers : http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=20786
Click to expand...


Just to warn people, the link from the above site infected my Laptop with the fake 'Total Security' Antivirus Software. I'm always up to date with all my AV definitions and this one just sailed though:thumbsdown:

Aledgedly Malwarebytes is the only product that will remove it although the virus prevents execute of the malwarebytes executable (mbam.exe). The way around this is to rename mbam.exe to something that doesn't contain 'mbam' (ie mbam2.exe won't work but mb.exe will)

Hope this helps someone else if this has just happened to them as well...

Chris
Click to expand...

I had something similar to that I use Nod32 and it sailed right though
I just shut down then rebooted into safe mode and did a system restore
to the day before..

:coffee:
 
mjnurney said:
A few months ago I decided to make a dos machine for gaming...ahh the good old days.

I had a voodoo and an Nvidia card, sound blasters all over the place , plus a few spare cf to IDE parts...

So I quickly threw the parts in an old amd tower, popped some ram in and fired the old girl up. Nice. Sounds like a helicopter..

Next Dos .

Erm ok floppy ... Nope got none with dos on, ok format in windows 7 , can't doesn't do fat16, ok fat 32 will do.

Ok now copy dos 6.2 fro
Ms over and setup ...error incorrect version.

Ok , sod dos , format the cf and bugger dos.

Pc now boots and asks the time in dos..

Right , download drivers for the sound card, sound blaster pci 128 live.
Nope you can't , drivers removed from creatives website.

After spending 3.6 years searching forums I managed to download the correct driver. Reboot .

Game time , download some stuff.

Error not enough free memory
Error ems not configured
Error sound environment not set
Error cd not detected
Error mscdx not detected
Error mouse not detected


It took a whole weekend to play warcraft ... And you know what?

Windows xp and dosbox is better.. Never again will I use dos. It must be ten or 15 years since I last installed dos and my hatred of it has actually increased!!!!


Windows xp and dos box is better!P
Click to expand...
Hello,
I also have a computer devoted to running old dos games. I don't know if this will help you at all, but you might want to look up something called "FreeDOS". It could solve your driver problems..
 
Skilgannon said:
Wish I saw this post earlier MJ - I still have the mother of all DOS6.2 boot disks stored on my server that I coud have sent you. Multi Drivers for video, audio and NIC :)

But others are right - DosBox is a better option.

John
Click to expand...

Hi John

i may take you up on that offer in the future, i fancy a Spectrum +3 first , then maybe pinch my brothers C64 ...the back to a making a dos machine :-)
 
Stress=HIGH, UMB

blah i actually miss the days of Dos were i felt like i was actually in control of my system ;)

My friend made a classic batch file called dirw ...because we kept typing that instead of dir/w (in haste) and it came up with a series of amusing putdowns if you kept doing it
 
lol

i used to be pretty good with DOS and at the time it was the only way to play games, i remember playing a game that was Windows95 and DOS compatible but the Windows version needed more ram and was much slower than dos :-)
 
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