Sound Blaster 16 emulation in new systems

[Francesco]

I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital installed in an AMD PC system with
the motherboard Gigabyte GA-7N400-L (chipset nVidia-nForce2).

I've tried to emulate Sound Blaster 16 in pure DOS with the SBEINIT tool
provided from Creative, but the emulation doesn't work: SBEINIT initalize
correctly with no errors but SBEGO doesn't detect the emulation.
Maybe my motherboard doesn't support NMI, or it's not enabled (I haven't
found any NMI options in the Award BIOS).

So, my questions are:
What are your experiences about sound blaster emulation in new systems?
Do you have the same problems of me?
Newest motherboards don't support SB16 emulation?
Or it's a specific problem of the nVidia-nForce2 chipset?
There's a way to enable NMI if BIOS doesn't support it?

Thank you!

[Rob]

Post by Francesco
I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital installed in an AMD PC system with
the motherboard Gigabyte GA-7N400-L (chipset nVidia-nForce2).

I have a Chaintech znif7

Post by Francesco
What are your experiences about sound blaster emulation in new systems?
Do you have the same problems of me?
Newest motherboards don't support SB16 emulation?
Or it's a specific problem of the nVidia-nForce2 chipset?

I cannot get SB emulation to work at all either on this mobo! Has
nForce2 as well. I have even put in an old soundcard coz the mobo
install Cd has messed up the win98se install anyway for sound, so I
could
not even use the on-board sound! Still, the SB emulation won't work,
and I have been through all the usual cuprits ... the closest I get it
that
there's no IRQ available, yet all reports show IRQ5 is not used (I have
little extra in the system (just a modem!). I can even reassign the
IRQ's around and
there will always be one free ... of course, 5 is the "best" one to use
for
SB (eh?).

Anyway, I just live with it, as it's not important to me, but I thought
I
would add to the brew as there do seem to be similarities ...

Tra,

[Yousuf Khan]

Post by Francesco
I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital installed in an AMD PC system with
the motherboard Gigabyte GA-7N400-L (chipset nVidia-nForce2).
I've tried to emulate Sound Blaster 16 in pure DOS with the SBEINIT tool
provided from Creative, but the emulation doesn't work: SBEINIT initalize
correctly with no errors but SBEGO doesn't detect the emulation.
Maybe my motherboard doesn't support NMI, or it's not enabled (I haven't
found any NMI options in the Award BIOS).

Now, I assume when you say pure DOS, you're talking about booting into
Windows' Real mode, as opposed to running a DOS window under Windows'
Protected mode, right?

Post by Francesco
What are your experiences about sound blaster emulation in new systems?
Do you have the same problems of me?
Newest motherboards don't support SB16 emulation?
Or it's a specific problem of the nVidia-nForce2 chipset?
There's a way to enable NMI if BIOS doesn't support it?

I think you may simply be out of luck here. In the old days of DOS,
Soundblasters were pre-assigned various IRQ numbers, port addresses, memory
ranges, etc. These locations were well known. Then as Windows gradually took
over the landscape, they introduced the Plug'n'Play standards, which meant
that all of these well-known statically-located resources were now free to
move around to any available addresses that were free. It made resource
contention a virtual thing of the past, but old programs no longer can
figure out where things are. DOS may not even be able to initialize the
P'n'P hardware properly, since it predates P'n'P; unless the manufacturer
included a DOS-based driver for it (not likely anymore).

Have you tried running your DOS app under a DOS window rather than directly
in DOS mode? In a case like that the DOS window might be able to emulate a
Soundblaster for you through hardware emulation, under anybody's soundcard.
Also, it may or may not emulate SB16, but it might only emulate SB8, so be
prepared for that too.

Yousuf Khan

[Francesco]

Post by Yousuf Khan
Now, I assume when you say pure DOS, you're talking about booting into
Windows' Real mode, as opposed to running a DOS window under Windows'
Protected mode, right?

Yes, pure DOS means booting in DOS 7.1 under Win98SE...

Post by Yousuf Khan
Have you tried running your DOS app under a DOS window rather than directly
in DOS mode? In a case like that the DOS window might be able to emulate a
Soundblaster for you through hardware emulation, under anybody's soundcard.
Also, it may or may not emulate SB16, but it might only emulate SB8, so be
prepared for that too.

I've already tried running DOS games under the Windows box, I get standard
Sound Blaster(8 bit) emulation, but work only for digital sound, not for FM
music or MIDI out.
The motherboard have an integrated Realtek sound chip that works the same as
the SBLive in the Windows DOS box (digital 8 bit sound ok, but no FM music),
so I think that the emulation of FM music under Windows is not supported.

[Yousuf Khan]

Post by Francesco
I've already tried running DOS games under the Windows box, I get standard
Sound Blaster(8 bit) emulation, but work only for digital sound, not for FM
music or MIDI out.
The motherboard have an integrated Realtek sound chip that works the same as
the SBLive in the Windows DOS box (digital 8 bit sound ok, but no FM music),
so I think that the emulation of FM music under Windows is not supported.

It would make some sense that only 8-bit emulation is available, because
Creative put patents around its 16-bit SB's. The only standard that was in
the public domain (and therefore the only standards other manufacturers
could legally emulate) were the 8-bit SB and SBPro (mono and stereo,
respectively). So even Creative's own later-generation SoundBlasters were
only emulating their 8-bit SoundBlaster; but they wouldn't give their
competitors permission to emulate anything beyond 8-bit stereo SoundBlaster.

The FM synthesizer part of the SoundBlaster was actually a clone of the
previous king of the hill of soundcards, the AdLib (if anyone remembers the
AdLib?). The original SoundBlaster was an AdLib compatible with added
digital sound, as an extra feature. It eventually usurped the AdLib, because
not only did it do all of the things that the AdLib did, but also did
digital sound.

Now, how do you know that your FM music is not working in the DOS window? Is
there some software that attempts to access the AdLib ports and fails?

Yousuf Khan

[Francesco]

Post by Yousuf Khan
Now, how do you know that your FM music is not working in the DOS window? Is
there some software that attempts to access the AdLib ports and fails?

Yes, every game I have configured with SoundBlaster/AdLib FM music, loads
correctly, but I don't hear any music, only digital sound...
Good news: the MIDI port 330 works, so I can use my external Roland MIDI
module for games that allow music through MIDI out!

[Ross Ridge]

Post by Francesco
I've already tried running DOS games under the Windows box, I get standard
Sound Blaster(8 bit) emulation, but work only for digital sound, not for FM
music or MIDI out.
The motherboard have an integrated Realtek sound chip that works the same as
the SBLive in the Windows DOS box (digital 8 bit sound ok, but no FM music),
so I think that the emulation of FM music under Windows is not supported.

If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

Ross Ridge

[Francesco]

Post by Ross Ridge
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

My Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital is the latest of the Live series (I have
bought it right now), and it's shipped with a CD that contains only the new
WDM drivers, old VXD drivers that permits SB16 emulation are not more
supported, and with the new drivers I don't have the old SB16 emulation mode
available in the system manager.
So, I found the old LiveWare 3.0 package (no more available at Creative
site!) in some web sites and download it; LiveWare 3.0 contains the latest
VXD drivers and DOS drivers for Windows9x/DOS that allow SB16 emulation; I
have tried to install it in Windows 98SE but the installation abort because
of system errors (maybe the old VXD drivers are not compatible with new
systems, and Creative replace it with the more stable WDM drivers,
sacrificing SB16 emulation). I have manually extracted the DOS drivers
(SBEINIT,etc.) and configured it correctly, but the emulation under real
mode DOS don't work.

[Jenny100]

Post by Francesco

Post by Ross Ridge
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

My Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital is the latest of the Live series (I have
bought it right now), and it's shipped with a CD that contains only the new
WDM drivers, old VXD drivers that permits SB16 emulation are not more
supported, and with the new drivers I don't have the old SB16 emulation mode
available in the system manager.
So, I found the old LiveWare 3.0 package (no more available at Creative
site!) in some web sites and download it; LiveWare 3.0 contains the latest
VXD drivers and DOS drivers for Windows9x/DOS that allow SB16 emulation; I
have tried to install it in Windows 98SE but the installation abort because
of system errors (maybe the old VXD drivers are not compatible with new
systems, and Creative replace it with the more stable WDM drivers,
sacrificing SB16 emulation). I have manually extracted the DOS drivers
(SBEINIT,etc.) and configured it correctly, but the emulation under real
mode DOS don't work.

Someone uploaded the contents of the DOSDRV directory on an
old SBLive install CD here:
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/SBLiveDosDrv.html

These are for the SBLive 4.1. I don't know if there's a difference
in the DOS drivers.

You said you've already extracted the drivers, but you might check
to see if anything is missing. I've read that Liveware does not
include DOS drivers that work in DOS mode, though it may include
DOS emulation within Windows. The difference is whether you're
rebooted to DOS mode or using a DOS Window.

The default location of the DOSDRV directory is
C:\Program Files\SBLive

The DOS install added these lines to my autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM

and these lines to my config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE


The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.
And your motherboard has to support NMI, as you've already mentioned.

[Dave]

Post by Jenny100

Post by Francesco

Post by Ross Ridge
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

Christ, even most of the old MVP3 mobos work fine with SB emulation...

Post by Jenny100

Post by Francesco
My Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital is the latest of the Live series (I have
bought it right now), and it's shipped with a CD that contains only the new
WDM drivers, old VXD drivers that permits SB16 emulation are not more
supported, and with the new drivers I don't have the old SB16 emulation mode
available in the system manager.
So, I found the old LiveWare 3.0 package (no more available at Creative
site!) in some web sites and download it; LiveWare 3.0 contains the latest
VXD drivers and DOS drivers for Windows9x/DOS that allow SB16 emulation; I
have tried to install it in Windows 98SE but the installation abort because
of system errors (maybe the old VXD drivers are not compatible with new
systems, and Creative replace it with the more stable WDM drivers,
sacrificing SB16 emulation).

Nope, likely an .inf from the WDM package left in c:\windows\inf\other,
proper uninstallation necessary, or registry settings needing scouring in
extreme cases. The VXD drivers work fine, even in ME. The WDM drivers cause
stuttering issues sometimes with 98SE (ME is a mess I don't wish upon
anybody), the VXD drivers do not. And indeed, the legacy compatibility layer
works a lot better, no surprise, really. You have to manually install the
driver if you are in a mess because you didn't uninstall the WDM driver
completely, and it would help greatly to remove the traces of the WDM
package from your system (this at the least should be uninstalling
everything from "add/remove..." first, then deleting the information files,
maybe drvidx.bin and drvdata.bin as well, but the uninstall STILL leaves all
sorts of orphaned crap in the registry to be hunted down and eliminated
without mercy---thank you, Creative!---but you can likely not worry too much
about it if you uninstall things properly first instead of installing things
on top of another, especially older versions on top of newer, which may
result in version conflict and incompatibility issues.




I have manually extracted the DOS drivers

Post by Jenny100

Post by Francesco
(SBEINIT,etc.) and configured it correctly, but the emulation under real
mode DOS don't work.

Someone uploaded the contents of the DOSDRV directory on an
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/SBLiveDosDrv.html
These are for the SBLive 4.1. I don't know if there's a difference
in the DOS drivers.
You said you've already extracted the drivers, but you might check
to see if anything is missing. I've read that Liveware does not
include DOS drivers that work in DOS mode, though it may include
DOS emulation within Windows. The difference is whether you're
rebooted to DOS mode or using a DOS Window.
The default location of the DOSDRV directory is
C:\Program Files\SBLive
The DOS install added these lines to my autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
and these lines to my config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE
The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.

Actually, it doesn't. This is just for the pure-DOS emulation layer, which
does. And it's not such a great idea to have loaded a real-mode expanded
memory driver while in Windows 9x, same as a CD driver TSR back in "them
days". I just install the card manually, pointing to the .inf file or skip
the DOS driver install while installing the package. Then, your expanded
memory manager and the DOS driver (the SBEINIT line) can be loaded from a
custom PIF to run something in pure DOS as required. Though, most things run
in a Windows fullscreen DOS environment ok, and there's no trouble with
sound. I would think that only with the really dusty legacy titles that this
would be any problem, and these will run the way I've described.

Post by Jenny100
And your motherboard has to support NMI, as you've already mentioned.

[Francesco]

Post by Dave
Nope, likely an .inf from the WDM package left in c:\windows\inf\other,
proper uninstallation necessary, or registry settings needing scouring in
extreme cases. The VXD drivers work fine, even in ME. The WDM drivers cause
stuttering issues sometimes with 98SE (ME is a mess I don't wish upon
anybody), the VXD drivers do not. And indeed, the legacy compatibility layer
works a lot better, no surprise, really. You have to manually install the
driver if you are in a mess because you didn't uninstall the WDM driver
completely, and it would help greatly to remove the traces of the WDM
package from your system (this at the least should be uninstalling
everything from "add/remove..." first, then deleting the information files,
maybe drvidx.bin and drvdata.bin as well, but the uninstall STILL leaves all
sorts of orphaned crap in the registry to be hunted down and eliminated
without mercy---thank you, Creative!---but you can likely not worry too much
about it if you uninstall things properly first instead of installing things
on top of another, especially older versions on top of newer, which may
result in version conflict and incompatibility issues.

No, I don't have traces of WDM drivers, because I have installed the VXD
drivers in a clean installation of Win98SE; I have installed Win98SE with no
drivers for the SBLive, then I soon installed the latest VXD drivers from
Creative; during installation of the sound drivers, the install process
abort because it say that I don't have enough space on the disk drive, but I
have a FAT32 partition of 20GB with many GB free...I've tryied to install
the drivers in a FAT16 partition too, but with the same errors.
The WDM drivers works fine, until now, except for SB16 emulation...

[Dave]

"Francesco" <***@interoffice.it> wrote in message news:4516b.28268$***@news2.tin.it...

snip

Post by Francesco
No, I don't have traces of WDM drivers, because I have installed the VXD
drivers in a clean installation of Win98SE; I have installed Win98SE with no
drivers for the SBLive, then I soon installed the latest VXD drivers from
Creative; during installation of the sound drivers, the install process
abort because it say that I don't have enough space on the disk drive,

The install pack is likely corrupted, you should try installing the drivers
manually thru Device Manager.


but I

Post by Francesco
have a FAT32 partition of 20GB with many GB free...I've tryied to install
the drivers in a FAT16 partition too, but with the same errors.
The WDM drivers works fine, until now, except for SB16 emulation...

[Jenny100]

Post by Dave

Post by Jenny100
The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.

Actually, it doesn't. This is just for the pure-DOS emulation layer, which
does.

I thought that was what Francesco was looking for - sound in
DOS mode - rebooted to DOS - as opposed to sound in a DOS box
with Windows running in the background.

Post by Dave
And it's not such a great idea to have loaded a real-mode expanded
memory driver while in Windows 9x, same as a CD driver TSR back in "them
days". I just install the card manually, pointing to the .inf file or skip
the DOS driver install while installing the package. Then, your expanded
memory manager and the DOS driver (the SBEINIT line) can be loaded from a
custom PIF to run something in pure DOS as required.

I use the custom PIF too. I can get more conventional memory that way
and can tweak DOS settings without disturbing Windows. But I also have
the stuff loaded in C:\config.sys and C:\autoexec.bat that the DOS
driver install on the SBLive installation CD put there.

Post by Dave
Though, most things run
in a Windows fullscreen DOS environment ok, and there's no trouble with
sound. I would think that only with the really dusty legacy titles that this
would be any problem, and these will run the way I've described.

I wonder which games Francesco is having the trouble with. I've had
no trouble with some games, but with others, like "Lost in Time,"
I only get some types of sound files playing. So Francesco's problems
may be because of the eccentricities of the game he's playing.

[Francesco]

Post by Jenny100
Someone uploaded the contents of the DOSDRV directory on an
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/SBLiveDosDrv.html

Thanks, I check later...

Post by Jenny100
You said you've already extracted the drivers, but you might check
to see if anything is missing. I've read that Liveware does not
include DOS drivers that work in DOS mode, though it may include
DOS emulation within Windows. The difference is whether you're
rebooted to DOS mode or using a DOS Window.

LiveWare 3.0 contains DOS drivers in a separate package that is installed
together with the Windows VXD drivers, but they works fine in real mode DOS
too;
look at http://atlas.hemmet.chalmers.se/livecenter/showpage.php?id=39, it's
explained how to extract the files and configure it.

Post by Jenny100
The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.

I know, I've loaded EMM386.EXE correctly.

[Yousuf Khan]

Post by Ross Ridge
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

NMI's, as in Non-Maskable Interrupts? What motherboard doesn't support
NMI's. In fact, they don't have a choice, it's wired directly to the CPU, to
detect severe hardware problems.

Yousuf Khan

[Francesco]

Post by Yousuf Khan
NMI's, as in Non-Maskable Interrupts? What motherboard doesn't support
NMI's. In fact, they don't have a choice, it's wired directly to the CPU, to
detect severe hardware problems.

I report a post of a Creative technician in the Creative forum about NMI:

Legacy emulation under DOS Creative/Ensoniq cards will not work on systems
that . .

a) do not route the PCI SERR# signal to the processor NMI
b) have a capacitor between SERR# and ground or between NMI and ground that
is too large.

Some background is required here. The Creative/Ensoniq PCI cards use the PCI
SERR# signal to indicate that someone has accessed a Legacy device register
(i.e., Sound Blaster, MPU-401, ). This SERR# signal must generate a
processor NMI before the I/O instruction completes so that the Legacy
emulation software can perform proper emulation of the trapped I/O event
before the processor executes the subsequent instructions.

In the event that the SERR# signal is not connected to the NMI input, the
software is never notified and cannot perform any Legacy device emulation.

In the event that there is a capacitor on the line that is too large, the
NMI does not propagate to the processor in time to emulate the I/O before
the next processor instruction(s) execute(s). If the I/O event is emulated
too late, it may have an adverse effect on the system as it may change the
state of processor register al at a time when the processor is not expecting
it.

[Ross Ridge]

Post by Yousuf Khan
NMI's, as in Non-Maskable Interrupts? What motherboard doesn't support
NMI's.

Some don't. Like my craptastic MSI 845PE Max2. *sigh*

Post by Yousuf Khan
In fact, they don't have a choice, it's wired directly to the CPU, to
detect severe hardware problems.

They have a choice to not wire it to the CPU. They have a choice not to
wire SERR# to the southbridge. They have a choice not to enable SERR#
NMIs in the southbridge's configuration registers. They have a choice
not to provide an NMI handler in the BIOS.

They are all sorts of stupid things they can do break NMIs, and something
a simple as not wiring a pin can make the difference as to whether another
expensive layer on the motherboard is needed. Most motherboards don't
support two floppy drives anymore because it means having one less pin
to wire that way.

Ross Ridge

[Rotes Sapiens]

Post by Francesco
I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital installed in an AMD PC system with
the motherboard Gigabyte GA-7N400-L (chipset nVidia-nForce2).
I've tried to emulate Sound Blaster 16 in pure DOS with the SBEINIT tool
provided from Creative, but the emulation doesn't work: SBEINIT initalize
correctly with no errors but SBEGO doesn't detect the emulation.
Maybe my motherboard doesn't support NMI, or it's not enabled (I haven't
found any NMI options in the Award BIOS).
What are your experiences about sound blaster emulation in new systems?
Do you have the same problems of me?
Newest motherboards don't support SB16 emulation?
Or it's a specific problem of the nVidia-nForce2 chipset?
There's a way to enable NMI if BIOS doesn't support it?

I'm not sure whether your problem is trying to emulate a SB16 with a
SB Live, or trying to emulate a SB16 with a new non SB16 mboard.

You could try VDMSound which allows DOS sound emulation under Win
NT/2000/XP (I've never used it):

http://ntvdm.cjb.net/

but you say you're running under pure dos. Most likely your interrupt
isn't set to IRQ 5, port 220, DMA 1 and 5, MIDIport 330. You might
also have to turn on or off BIOS plug and play or manually set the
interrupts in the bios.

Or just buy a second hand Vibra128 card, even new ones aren't
expensive.


Sig:
Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can save a
couple of hours in the library. -Frank H. Westheimer, chemistry professor
(1912- )

[Francesco]

Post by Rotes Sapiens
I'm not sure whether your problem is trying to emulate a SB16 with a
SB Live, or trying to emulate a SB16 with a new non SB16 mboard.

I'm trying to emulate SB16 with SBLive under DOS in real mode (not in
Windows)...

Post by Rotes Sapiens
You could try VDMSound which allows DOS sound emulation under Win
NT/2000/XP (I've never used it).

I don't want to use DOS emulation under WinNT/2000/XP, because these
operating systems are not friendly with old DOS apps(specially with games),
anyway thanks for the advice...

Post by Rotes Sapiens
Most likely your interrupt
isn't set to IRQ 5, port 220, DMA 1 and 5, MIDIport 330. You might
also have to turn on or off BIOS plug and play or manually set the
interrupts in the bios.

The emulation under DOS use port 220, irq 5, dma 0/5, midi port 330, these
resources are free, I have checked under Windows system manager, so I don't
think it's a resource conflict.

[TS]

Post by Francesco
I'm trying to emulate SB16 with SBLive under DOS in real mode (not in
Windows)...

Note that the SBLive soundblaster driver under DOS requires EMM386
since it is mostly a software emulation. The SB16 emulation is partly
broken, it treats unsigned and signed samples the same way.

Post by Francesco
The emulation under DOS use port 220, irq 5, dma 0/5, midi port 330, these
resources are free, I have checked under Windows system manager, so I don't
think it's a resource conflict.

AdLib should occupy Port 388+389 - checked this? The SBLive also
supports adlib emulation (at least in the DOS box, never tried it
under real DOS).

[Francesco]

Post by TS
Note that the SBLive soundblaster driver under DOS requires EMM386
since it is mostly a software emulation. The SB16 emulation is partly
broken, it treats unsigned and signed samples the same way.

Yes I know, SBEINIT requires EMM386 that put the CPU in "Virtual 8086 Mode",
so it's not correct to talk about "Real Mode" DOS, I just want to mean that
I boot in DOS.

Post by TS
AdLib should occupy Port 388+389 - checked this? The SBLive also
supports adlib emulation (at least in the DOS box, never tried it
under real DOS).

Yes, FM synthesis use port 388 of the AdLib card that is emulated by the
Sound Blaster through OPL3 chip, I've checked the port in the system
manager, it's free and not used by other hardware.

[Roger Squires]

Post by Francesco
I don't want to use DOS emulation under WinNT/2000/XP, because these
operating systems are not friendly with old DOS apps(specially with games),

Why don't you tell us what games you are going to run. I am also using
a Nforce2 mobo (with no addon soundcard) and I can't think of a dos game
offhand that it hasn't worked fine for.

rms

[Francesco]

Post by Francesco
I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital installed in an AMD PC system with
the motherboard Gigabyte GA-7N400-L (chipset nVidia-nForce2).
I've tried to emulate Sound Blaster 16 in pure DOS with the SBEINIT tool
provided from Creative, but the emulation doesn't work: SBEINIT initalize
correctly with no errors but SBEGO doesn't detect the emulation.
Maybe my motherboard doesn't support NMI, or it's not enabled (I haven't
found any NMI options in the Award BIOS).

I've contacted the GIGABYTE technical service and they reply to me saying that:
"...after checked the board specification with our R/D engineers, we are sorry
this MB does not support SB16 emulation."
So, it's a problem of my motherboard(NMI?) and I can't do anything for it to
work... :-(