Sound under DOS
Posted by Joseph on Apr 14, 2008
This is useful if you are in to playing DOS games on your Libretto 100/110CT. Unfortunatly, due to the limitations of the WDM Yamaha drivers under Windows 98, the soundblaster emulation does not work when running Windows, which means you can’t get any sound output when using a DOS program with sound. Basically this means you can’t play your favourite DOS game such a Quake under Windows, but instead you will have to play it under real-mode DOS. The set up for this is rather more tricky than Windows, but it is still achievable.
- Enter the Libretto’s BIOS by turning on the laptop and repeatedly pressing ESC, then when prompted, press F1
- Go to the next page in the BIOS by pressing PgDn (Fn + Down Arrow)
- Under I/O ports, go to sound
- Check the ‘SBPro I/O Address’ is 220H
- Check the ‘WSS(Play) DMA’ is Channel 0
- Check the ‘WSS(Rec.) & SBPro DMA’ is ‘Same as Play’
- Press End (Fn + Right Arrow) to save changes and exit
- The system will reboot, and will boot into Windows
- Open notepad, and open C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
- Make a new entry underneath reading SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D0 T4
- Save it and close
- Reboot the laptop and keep pressing F8 till you get the ‘Windows 98 Startup Menu’
- Choose option 5 - ‘Command Prompt only’
- Now you are in real-mode DOS, you can play your game. For example, if Quake is stored in C:\QUAKE, you type (on the prompt) C:\QUAKE\QUAKE.EXE to run the game. If you need mouse support, you will need to get a Mouse driver such as CuteMouse, and run that before starting Quake.
Notes: in the SET BLASTER line - the D0 is a D and a zero, not a D and an O.
On Windows 95, you can play the game under Windows, as the old-fashioned VXD drivers are used, which support the soundblaster emulation required by most sound enabled DOS applications. Windows 98 uses the newer WDM (Windows Driver Model) Yamaha drivers, which for some reason do not provide soundblaster emulation under Windows. I am sure this goes for Windows Me aswell.
