dos sound quirks

[guest]

Recently, I've been trying to catch up on all the good dos games that I didn't play for some reason, and I've run into a weird problem. On some of the games I play, the sound effects will come out of my speakers, but the music will play through the CD-ROM drive itself. In order for me to hear both the music and the effects, I have to plug headphones into the drive and turn up my speakers, which isn't really all that effective. Is there some way to pipe all the sound into the speakers? The system I'm playing these games on runs on original Windows 98.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

Have you tried VDM sound?

[Malias]

I thought that VDM sound was only for non-DOS running OSs. And since he's using 98, that wouldn't work.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

It never hurts to try.

[franpa]

vdmsound isnt availible for dos based os systems tsm.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

And Win98 isn't DOS based so what's your point?

[dosraider]

If W98 is a dos-based or not OS is discutable, let say it has extended dos-support.
also: W98 do NOT need dos to run.

About VDMSound:
It is developed to run underNT based OS's.
Means: WNT-X, W2K, WXP.

It will NOT install under W95-W98-WME whitout tempering with the system settings, even if you can install it (not easy to accomplish) it will never work flawless and give full sound support on the games. Several instructions are not suited for the non-NT OS.

BUT:
for games who can't work under the dos support W98 gives, DOSBOX runs flawless under W98 if your PC is powerfull enough.

[franpa]

if you delete command.com from windows 98 then windows 98 cant boot anymore thus it is dos based.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

Question: franpa without looking it up, what does DOS stand for?

[franpa]

well seeing as you really only nead command.com for dos to work i know that removing it will prevent windows from starting up.

(DOS = Disk Operating System)
(DOS = Command.com)
(Windows 98, se and me require command.com)
(older versions of windows also require DOS)

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

But it's still not a DOS system is it? No, it's not. It may hold similarities with it, but that's MS for you we all know they don't like to change things. But getting back to the point I think you’ll find no new DOS system has been released for some 12 years, and Win98 was released 8 years ago.

[johpower]

Calm down a bit. Win 98 is better integrated but still starts with a command.com before it hands off to the Windoze structure. So you are both right. Now to the problem...

It was common for 2 different sound channels (or more) to be necessary to get sound and effects to work. Some games worked better than others at this. At the original setup of Doom and Wolfenstien, for instance, you set the address and options for both. I really HOPE guest has these ops for the games he's playing. If so, go to the game folder/dir and look for the "setup.exe's" of the game. This is USUALLY different than the options you see at the game screen. Starting these will usually start the option process over. Be ready with the settings of your sound card (in Win 9x, see Control Panel\System\Sound.... and check the various device properties under resources).

Another thing: is the sound card properly installed with DOS level integration? Many Win sound devices are annoyingly short here.

[dr_st]

Command.com isn't DOS. It's just the command interpreter. It's possible to use an alternate command interpreter (like 4DOS or NDOS).

Windows 98 _IS_ a DOS based system. It runs over a pure DOS core (unlike NT-based systems) and maintains a lot of backwards compatibility even in it's graphical 32-bit mode. Granted, it's more independent than Win3.x, and replaces more of DOS functions with its own routines, but it still has DOS underneath it. So do 95 and ME. NT, 2K and XP don't. Hence the difference.