SB Live! under real-mode MS-DOS 7.0

[ajones81]

I recently upgraded to an Intel DG41TY motherboard with 4 GB RAM and obviously, there are no real-mode MS-DOS drivers to be found for my on-board Realtek ALC888VC audio. Since I still like to play good ol' DOS games (yes, I do know about DOSBox, thank you), I guess I have to install an old SB Live! PCI card I have lying about. I will be using this card after booting to real-mode MS-DOS 7 (the version that came with Win98SE).

Questions:

1) Will the card even work with this motherboard?

2) Will its DOS drivers conflict with my on-board audio and cause any issues with IRQs etc.?

3) The Live!'s DOS drivers require EMM386 to be loaded as a prerequisite. Now I'm facing a wierd problem with EMM386 that I've never seen before. Here are the outputs from MEM /C /P without and with EMM386 loaded:

Without EMM386

Code: Select all

Memory Summary:

  Type of Memory       Total         Used          Free
  ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------
  Conventional          655,360        31,648       623,712
  Upper                       0             0             0
  Reserved                    0             0             0
*************************************************************
  Extended (XMS)    3,183,476,7        65,536   3,183,411,2
  ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------
  Total memory      3,184,132,0        97,184   3,184,034,9
*************************************************************

  Total under 1 MB      655,360        31,648       623,712

  Largest executable program size         623,616   (609K)
  Largest free upper memory block               0     (0K)
  MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

With EMM386

Code: Select all

Memory Summary:

  Type of Memory       Total         Used          Free
  ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------
  Conventional          655,360        16,288       639,072
  Upper                 129,504        19,664       109,840
  Reserved                    0             0             0
*************************************************************
  Extended (XMS)    3,183,347,2             ?             0
  ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------
  Total memory      3,184,132,0             ?       748,912
*************************************************************

  Total under 1 MB      784,864        35,952       748,912

  Largest executable program size         639,056   (624K)
  Largest free upper memory block          65,280    (64K)
  MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

As you can see, with EMM386 loaded (required for the Live!'s DOS drivers to work), used and free XMS is not being detected properly, whereas it is when EMM386 is not loaded. Can anyone explain this to me? Is EMM386 barfing on encountering 4 GB of RAM? What do I do to solve this issue, 'cos many games won't work without free XMS being available.

[DOSGuy]

1) I don't know. Give it a try.

2) Probably not, but you can disable the on-board audio in the BIOS if it does.

3) You have 3 GB of XMS, which is about 2.9 GB more than DOS was designed to recognize. MEM can't tell how much you're using, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't available. Try playing Wolfenstein 3D and see if it reports finding any XMS.

[ajones81]

Thanks for replying!

3) I don't have Wolf with me right now. Will Doom do? Also, problem is, when I run programs/games that use DOS/4GW or the newer DOS/4G Watcom extenders, they quit with a "No XMS" error. So I guess XMS is really not available...

Any switches for Himem/EMM386 that will limit the amount of XMS visible to DOS and thus solve this issue? Also, isn't the problem really EMM386's inability to deal with that much XMS? After all, without EMM386 loaded, MEM displays the free and used XMS just fine, and I can run all programs/games whose extenders require XMS.

[DOSGuy]

The reason I recommended Wolfenstein 3D is because Wolf3d tells you how much conventional, EMS and XMS memory is available when you start the game.

There may be switches that you can add to EMM386 to solve this problem, but it might require a lot of messing around. I recommend starting with one of these basic solutions.

DEVICE={path}\EMM386.EXE RAM
This will turn all available XMS into EMS.

DEVICE={path}\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
Just in case it's actually EMS that's your problem.

You haven't given us your config.sys file yet, which might help us.

[ajones81]

Here's my Config.sys:

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DEVICE=C:\DOS\COMMAND\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\DOS\COMMAND\EMM386.EXE I=B000-B7FF NOEMS NOTR NOVCPI

I have tried with none of those switches, with all, with different combinations, with more switches like HIGHSCAN, RAM, MIN, L, NOHI, NOMOVEXBDA etc. etc. Basically have tried all EMM386 switches known to Man, in most possible combinations!

The conclusion I have come to is that either with my specific MB + RAM combo, or on all machines with so much RAM, EMM386 messes up and makes XMS unavailable.

BTW, I tried Wolf3D and it too failed to detect any free XMS. So it really is unavailable, as reported by those DOS extenders as well.

Anything else you can suggest?

[DOSGuy]

But have you tried the RAM switch? You should only turn off EMS if you know that you aren't going to use any program that uses EMS. Converting XMS to EMS might be a good thing in this situation.

As far as "finding" a copy of Wolfenstein 3D, I assume you know that you can get a copy from this website, but you simply don't have a method of getting it from your internet-connected computer to your DOS computer because you don't have a floppy disk in your internet-connected computer. But, if your DOS computer can take 4 GB of RAM, it must have a USB port on it, so I'm still confused.

[ajones81]

I did try the RAM switch alone, but it didn't help.

My "DOS Computer" is the same as the one I'm writing this from. What I meant earlier was that I had an original copy of Wolf3D lying somewhere and thought I'd track that down and use it.

Eventually I did get hold of it and I posted the results in my previous message.