Getting sound for DOS ga

Question

I have read every post concerning the Audigy sound cards and the futile attempts to configure them for DOS games. Creative has moved the I/O port on their older sound cards from 220 to 3E8 on the newer Audigy 2 and to further thwart backward compatibility, this port is not programmable. Shame, shame, shame on you Creative!!!
I have built an awesome PC Entertainment center with a 46" monitor and the Audigy 2zs Platinum Pro for the "best" PC sound on the market and I cannot hear, or even configure to hear, my DOS games on my PC-DOS 7 partition. There is yet to be a better, more entertaining game written than Duke Nukem 3D - but without its sound, the game play is very average. I really want this system to perform.
My Question - Is the Sound Blaster 6 PCI backwards compatible and if so, are DOS drivers included and can this card co-exist with the Audigy 2zs Platinum Pro under Windows 98se and Win XP pro?
I do have an AWE64 Gold and I'm sure I could get that to work in my new computer but I want to keep it in the computer where it is until that system dies. Creative Labs owes every DOS user a very deep apology. PC-DOS is still the only stable operating system ever written for a PC.Message Edited by UnklePork on 02-0-2005 06:42 PM

Answer 1

Actually I do not recommend the Li've! line. It is outdated. Just like using MS-DOS is for running dosgames!
As I said, the dosgames I play run as well or better with either the Dosbox program (easy with the D-Fend frontend) or vdmsound. So I have no need to partition my hard dri'ves and deal with the old tinkering. As far as the dosgames are concerned, with Dosbox they are running in MS-DOS 5.0. I don't need to set up soundcard, cdrom, mouse, video drivers or deal with setting up memory. Dosbox emulates an S3 videocard, SoundBlaster 6, Pro, 8bit, cdrom drivers, Gravis Sound, Disney Soundsource, mouse drivers, joystick and sets memory all automatically! (You just need to set the proper settings in the game's sound setup program.) In fact it gives dos programs a full 640k no matter what devices it loads! (There is a setting to fake a limit as some games think having the full 640k is impossible and won't run.)
If the game runs fine in vdmsound, so much the better, as then the games can run as fast as they like without processor limitations. (Sometimes you'd need moslow.)
Games can be run full screen with either program.
Now, if you insist on using real dos, keep in mind that retail SbLi've cards no longer contain dos drivers on the driver cd. There was a link on the Ali've website within an article about dos emulation on the Li've cards to the dosdrv drivers that were on the older Li'veWare 3.0 cd's. You might also find them on the driverguide.com resource. If you like to use Windows 3., then you won't be able to use the dosdrv drivers. Windows 3. croaks when they are in the Autoexec, Config files. The best way to use them on 98 is to call them from a shortcut to the dos game. You know, the program properties tab where you can specify an Ms-Dos configuration. You put the drivers in a folder like C:\SBLi've or C:\dosdrv and make the appropriate calls within the private auto-exec, config.sys files for the dos program. You click the shortcut, and the game restarts in MS-DOS Mode and loads the drivers you called for. This, or a boot disk works fine. This way you don't bog Windows down with legacy drivers. You'll need dos cdrom and mouse drivers as well. You should call smartdrv. You'll also need emm396.exe, as the SBLi've dos drivers will not function without it.
As far as using my Audigy 2 ZS in dos. There is a set of files I downloaded (some forum poster provided a link). One zip file contains the dosdrv drivers from the Audigy , the other zip contains a way to make it work with the Audigy 2 ZS. So, if I wanted to have some fun I suppose I could try it out. But I find it completely unneccessary. I can use any soundcard (the Audigy 2 ZS, the M-Audio Revolution 7., the Santa Cruz, the Acoustic Edge, etc.) and run all my dosgames perfectly fine on Windows XP.
But, I do know it's fun! So, by all means go ahead and play with getting it to work. After years of that kind of fun I like that developers have found ways to get it all to work without any fussing on my part.