Version 6.5, Still No Sound Support for Legacy Apps

Yeah, actually the problem is with DOS games (wink).

We know DOSBOX is capable of doing the job for a long time, but still it just can't make every those good oldies run like they did in a real 80486 or 586 PC. Thus, I, along with some WS users (though little,) have been looking for one day that VMWare can make these games alive again. But every time just as the newer version came out, it broke my heart after every failed attempt to get the sound functioning under DOS. Now it's 2009, and the version number comes to 6.5...a respectful one considering the long period after WS 4.52, isn't it? So here we are my last test on VMWare Workstation's ability to support sounds under MS-DOS (BTW, I have not posted on VMTN forums for 4 years.)

If my memory serves well, WS uses AudioPCI as the primary sound emulation base. I snapped the following two files back to prepare for the test: es1371driver.zip SBPCI128Setupus_w9x.exe

OK, let's begin with the story about the first one. Just as I finished installing WIN98, I ran the setup program extracted from the file. Upon seeing the successful installation, I was happy. But after clicking into Device Manager the same old nightmare came: AudioPCI Legacy Drive wasn't working because no free IRQs available to use. This time I investigated carefully and executed the Hardware Troubleshooting Wizard. After following the suggestion to close a device which it listed to release a specific IRQ number (chose the BusLogic SCSI Adaptor,) still didn't work for the wizard telling me that device wouldn't discard its IRQ. The next choice was the LPT1 printer port. This time it worked. After two restarts of Windows the Legacy Drive looked normal in Device Manager. But when I headed to MS-DOS mode in WIN98 the VM halted after APINIT.COM's self-configuration failed. No, not again.

There was one hope remaining: testing in the Command Prompt mode. Different results were found under two sets of settings:

● Starting with no SMARTDRV ● Starting with SMARTDRV

The error messages generated from each above are listed in the second post. Note that the change of EMS or SNDSCAPE.INI (located in C:\WINDOWS for this example) didn't affect the results. The story about es1371driver.zip ends.

Got a BSOD and failed to install the device...that's the poor end of the second story! Thank you for listening to a bored guy's chatter.

▲SoundBlasterPCI128drivercannotbeusedwithinaWindows98VM. Error Messages

[MS-DOS CONFIGURATIONS]

[CONFIG.SYS]

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE 4096

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T2 SET SNDSCAPE=C:\WINDOWS LH C:\EAPCI\APINIT.COM

PCI Audio @ Port 2000, IRQ 5 DOS/4GW error (2001): exception 0Eh (page fault) at 148:0043C38A TSF32: prev_tsf32 5120 SS 150 DS 150 ES 150 FS 0 GS 20 EAX 18101C EBX 194 ECX 180000 EDX 11A000 ESI 181000 EDI 1AE067 EBP 27000 ESP 45F62C CS:IP 148:0043C38A ID 0E COD 0 FLG 10202 CS= 148, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF9B SS= 150, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF93 DS= 150, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF93 ES= 150, USE32, page granular, limit FFFFFFFF, base 0, acc CF93 FS= 0, USE16, byte granular, limit 0, base 13, acc 0 GS= 20, USE16, byte granular, limit FFFF, base 23C30, acc 93 CR0: PG:1 ET:1 TS:0 EM:0 MP:0 PE:1 CR2: 18101C CR3: 26000 Crash address (unrelocated) = 1:0000038A PCI audio driver NOT loading.

[ERROR WITH NO SMARTDRV]

Ensoniq AudioPCI Initialization Driver, Ver 4.26.

PCI Audio @ Port 2000, IRQ 5 error: Could not allocate code/patch RAM below 4 Mbyte boundary. Try

loading APINIT.COM before SMARTDRV.EXE or minimizing VDISK RAM. PCI audio driver NOT loading.