Sound Blaster Live! In DOS

U

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Hey All;

Is there any way to get a Sound Blaster Live! to work in DOS? I'm talking real DOS via a boot disk, not the Windows shell. I want to play Privateer again, but I can't find a DOS driver for this card. Has such a thing ever actually existed? I remember somebody claiming that they got Armada to work with their SB Live a while back, but I don't remember how.

Thanks;

Adam
 
In your drivers,there is an emulatior for older SB cards.Just install it from windows.You can emulate SB ,SB pro,SB16 for DOS,and they work perfect :)
 
Heh. Just as a side note, I don't have that set of drivers - it refuses to install with the rest of them, and although the DOSDRV directory is on the CD, it somehow never unpacked itself into anything useful on my hard drive. Creative's response was something along the lines of "Well, it should have." I'm still waiting for a response from them on this one. I remember having some problems getting the DOS drivers to unpack from my AWE64, too, but that was because I got a bad CD. The only reason I posted my last question here was because my previous PCI soundcard wouldn't work in DOS for love nor money, so I wanted to make sure that the Live! would before I spent many fruitless hours playing with my boot disk.

Thanks for the response, though. I appreicate it.

-Adam
 
All the supports by companies are stupid ! Anyway I think that these drivers cant be found there Starkey.....:(

Its worth to try though :)
 
Yeah, about the first place I looked was DriverGuide. I couldn't find them there, but I dug up a copy somewhere else. Of course, now the soundcard initializes in DOS (after I changed the IRQ to 7 in order to fix a conflict on port 5), it tests successfully using their little test program... and freezes my computer when I try to run Privateer.
Back to the drawing board, I suppose.

-Adam
 
Try changing soundboard settings to "SB", "SB PRO", "SB 16", etc. Is there a way to disable sound in Priv2? If there is, disable it just to see if sound is really the problem. Also, post your autoexec.bat and config.sys here so I can take a look at them and see if there is anything wrong.
 
It's the original Privateer I'm trying to run, not Priv2.
I thought that SB16 emulation was all the Live! would do - I'll check into getting it to work. I've found that it has to be something with the sound driver itself - the game will load if the sound lines are REMed out in Autoexec.bat. This doesn't change, regardless of the sound options in the setup program. Even with no sound card selected, it still won't load.

Autoexec.bat

REM LH A:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:BTCCD001
SET CTSYN=C:\SBLIVE\DOSDRV
SET BLASTER=A220 I10 D1 H5 P330 T6
LH C:\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
C:\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBECFG
PATH=A:

Config.sys

DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE 16384 HIGHSCAN RAM
DOS=HIGH,UMB
REM DEVICEHIGH=A:\BTCCDROM.SYS /D:BTCCD001

The switches on the end of the EMM386 line are new, it didn't run without switches, either. The CD-ROM lines are REMed out because I don't have enough conventional memory to have both those and the sound drivers loaded. I had to switch to IRQ10 for the sound card because 5 was a conflict and kept the card from initializing. IRQ7 didn't work either.

-Adam
 
For the record, I've done some digging around the forums and some obscure websites, and revamped my Autoexec.bat & Config.sys files. This has given me a lot more conventional memory, but the sound still refuses to run.

Autoexec.bat

LH A:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:BTCCD001
SET CTSYN=C:\SBLIVE\DOSDRV
SET BLASTER=A240 I7 D3 H6 P330 T6 J200
C:\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
C:\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBECFG
PATH=A:

Config.sys

DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE 16384 RAM D=64 /I=B000-B7FF
DOS=HIGH,UMB
STACKS=9,256
FILES=25
BUFFERS=25
DEVICEHIGH=A:\BTCCDROM.SYS /D:BTCCD001

I had a FRAME=E000 line in with EMM386, but this just gave me a neat error message (Option ROM or RAM Detected Within Page Frame), although it did give me a load o' free conventional memory. Ignore the SET BLASTER values, I'm just playing with the settings. They're default on A220 I7 D1 H5 P330. I can't use IRQ 5 because this is the IRQ already given to the card, and it causes a conflict. IRQ 10 is my video card. I've turned off the PNP PCI option in my BIOS, so that it actually assigns an IRQ to each device instead of just using the ESCD. The system still hangs when I try to load Privateer. If I REM out the sound lines, the game loads just fine. Driver fault?

-Adam
 
Originally posted by TCSTigersClaw
All the supports by companies are stupid !
Click to expand...

Creative's top of the line however when it comes to soundcards.
For example they deny that any of their PCI soundcards work in DOS at all.
(as did all other soundcard manufacturers I asked, and that had been a lot).
 
Originally posted by cff
For example they deny that any of their PCI soundcards work in DOS at all.
Click to expand...

That´s right! When I told them that my SB PCI 128 works in DOS they said "You must be mistaken. That´s not possible. It will not work in DOS, only in the DOS shell in Windows.".

to our Unregistered friend: Does the game work when you disable sound?
 
The game still works if I don't load the sound drivers completely - selecting no sound from the install menu makes no difference. The system still hangs.

-Adam
 
If I got it right, it doesn´t matter if you disable sound in Privateer. The game still won´t work if the sound card drivers are loaded, right?


Try removing the SBECFG line from your autoexec.bat, fix that set blaster line (there´s no point in having a wrong line, even if it doesn´t seem to be the problem), increase your "files" setting to 30, use the emm386.exe line just as "device=a:\emm386.exe 16384 ram" and post here how much base memory do you have. If it still doesn´t work, try looking for help at the SB drivers bulletin board of www.driverguide.com. People post instructions there on how to make SB cards work in DOS.
 
simmilar problem

Hi ... i have similar problem .. .but i have sound blaster 128 pci ... when i deinstall drivers to it .... privater works ... when i install it hangs at startup no matter if in privateer setup sound is on or of ... i have pure DOS 6.22 and my SB works fine with other dos games

my configuration is:

AUTOEXEC.BAT:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H7 P330 T6
SET SBPCI=C:\DOS\SB128
LH C:\DOS\SB128\SBLOAD
LH C:\DOS\SB128\SBINIT.COM
C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS;C:\NC
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((852) C:\DOS\EGA.CPI)
MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=852
KEYB PL,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS

CONFIG.SYS:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /NUMHANDLES=128 /TESTMEM:OFF /Q
DOS=HIGH
COUNTRY=048,,C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,,1)
FILES=30
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE 16384 ram

i've reed all the threads on that forum and tried to find simmilar problems and sollutions .. .this is the most simmilar ... plese help me if U can ...
 
Well, for starters, sbeinit doesn't particulary like being loaded into upper memory. Other than that, sorry, I can't get my SB Live to work quite right myself. The Creative diagnostic program sees the card just fine, but not a single game will. Go figure, hey? Other than that, there's just no guarantee getting PCI cards to work in DOS. Good luck.
 
>SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H7 P330 T6

Try H5, this is a more 'standard' value

>LH C:\DOS\SB128\SBLOAD

What does this line do?

>LH C:\DOS\SB128\SBINIT.COM

What does this line do?

Regarding the two SB lines: Try if one of them is enough to have other DOS based programs have sound. Also have a look if the appear in a "mem /c" command (so check if they are TSR). If they aren't like "aweutil" for my SBAwe, then there is no use of LHing them.
 
i am still trying to run priv with sb128 ... and i tried 10 different drivers ... all of them are working with other dos games but not with privateer ... (i have 3 different wersions of that game non of them is working with sound) ... i post a thread ... in Tech Support named "WC:privateer poblems ... HELP" and placed all the informations there ...
 
If you have Win95/98 you can always use MyJemm and play Priv straight from Windows.

If you don´t, try setting your autoexec and config like this:

@ECHO OFF
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H7 P330 T6
SET SBPCI=C:\DOS\SB128
LH C:\DOS\SB128\SBINIT.COM
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS;C:\NC
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((852) C:\DOS\EGA.CPI)
MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=852
KEYB PL,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS

CONFIG.SYS:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE 16384 ram
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=30
COUNTRY=048,,C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,,1)

Please observe the order of the lines above. That is important.
 
in that configuration my DOS restarts itself at the beginning :p

ok ... now is ok ... but still priv hangs at the beginning and other games work fine ... eh
 
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