Integrated Soundcards

Richard Bruns · April 17, 2001, 19:49

If you enjoy classic games like X-COM and Master of Magic, then make sure that you do not, under any circumstances, get a computer with an integrated soundcard. I brought my X-COM game to college last weekend, and when I installed it I discovered that the sound would not play at all. If you have played X-COM you know that the sound is truly excellent and is a big part of the fun of playing the game.

The problem is that the game asks you to input the IRQ, the DMA address, and the port number. Since the soundcard is part of the motherboard, it has no DMA address and the port is xE800 - xE8FF, which is not listed as an option in the game setup. All of my attempts to change these values have failed. The computer company's technical support has of course not helped at all.

This soundcard works fine with more modern games designed for Windows, but I cannot get sound for anything designed for DOS. Is there any way to fool my computer into thinking I have a soundcard that DOS games can use?

John-SJ · April 17, 2001, 20:20

Some computers with sound integrated onto the MB have a piece of software that you can run that will cause the driver to emulate a soundblaster card, with DMA and a port in the normal range. You'll have to hunt for it on the computer though, or look through the help system. Another option is if you know whose MB it is you might try their website and/or their customer support. Hope this helps.

John-SJ

Richard Bruns · April 17, 2001, 22:22

From a previous e-mail:

quote:

There is sound card hardware available today that still includes drivers that will pretend to be Real Mode drivers so that older MS-DOS style software can still make use of them; unfortunately, the integrated audio solution on your system, the SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio, does not include such a backwards compatible feature.

But here's the real annoying one, from a website:

quote:

Your Integrated Digital Audio system will not play DOS games that were published before Windows 95 and only work in real mode DOS.

Ok, that was bad enough. But to add insult to injury:

quote:

Installing such games is inadvisable anyway. Many of these older games slow down the whole operating system and need manual set-up of many system resources.

Sigh... This has moved out of the realm of tech support and into the realm of hacking. Is there anyone who knows any 'unofficial' ways of fixing souncards like this?

If all else fails, I might install another soundcard. I can scavenge the one from our family's five year old computer whenever it finally bites the dust. It should be possible for me to use that soundcard for DOS games only and hide its existence from the other programs.

Father Beast · April 20, 2001, 11:54

I have a soundcard that absolutely refused to play sound in dos games under windows. I would have to reboot to dos in order to hear sound, otherwise it would give me the message "unable to play sound, the PCI sound card is in use by another application. I never could find out what...

the AOL deleted my hard drives, and I had to reinstall everything, and I had sound again!!!

Duke nukem, MoO, all the rest.

then it quit on me one day and started giving me that "the PCI sound card is.." crap again. but I was close enough to uninstall the few things I had since it worked.

the Culprit? TweakUI. once I uninstalled that, I get sound again.

weird, huh?

Father Beast · April 21, 2001, 08:56

Richard, I have a windows version of XCOM, and will send to you today. sorry, no windows version of MoM.

Richard Bruns · April 21, 2001, 10:19

Thanks a lot, Father Beast. I decided to go ahead and play my DOS version without sound, but I found that there are a lot of problems with the interface that I never had with my old computer. The mouse clicks rarely registered properly, and the time on the geoscape went by incredibly fast; the "5 Minutes" button advanced the time as fast as the "1 Hour" button used to go. It was such a pain that I had to stop playing, but hopefully the Windows version will fix that.

*Checks profile to make sure the correct e-mail address is listed*

Ok, you can send me my "backup copy" now. My e-mail program sometimes has a few bugs with file attachments, though, so it would probably be best if it was a zip file.

Father Beast · April 21, 2001, 13:55

Richard, I once again got it back with a note saying it's too big.
any suggestions?
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited April 21, 2001).]

Richard Bruns · April 21, 2001, 16:28

The DOS X-Com is split into lots of smaller files and folders. If this version is the same, it might be possible to zip the folders seperately and send those individually.

Or you could use the "Send Directory" function of AOL IM, if you have that program. My friend once sent me a 600 megabyte game demo using that. My screen name is NCSSM Richard.

Again, thanks.

Father Beast · April 21, 2001, 22:50

OK, Richard, I am sending them again, each directory from my own installation in its own zipfile. hope it works this time

Father Beast · April 22, 2001, 00:19

OK, your email seemed to accept it all this time, except the manual, which is a huge (4.5 meg)PDF File. I figure If you have the game already, you must have documentation. at least I hope. anyway, I don't think I can break that one down.

good luck...

Father Beast · April 22, 2001, 00:32

OK, sending it again. it'll probably take an hour to upload. got it down to 7.75M from 7.83M by zipping it up. so now it's xcom.zip, which unzips to the self extracting xcom.exe.

I got this on the july 2000 PC gamer disk, for what it's worth.

it still runs pretty fast on my computer, but you can use a slowdown utility like moslo or something. there's a windows slowdown somewhere, I'm sure.

Urban Ranger · April 22, 2001, 11:03

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 04-17-2001 07:49 PM
The problem is that the game asks you to input the IRQ, the DMA address, and the port number. Since the soundcard is part of the motherboard, it has no DMA address and the port is xE800 - xE8FF, which is not listed as an option in the game setup.

AFAIK, integrated sound cards still needs IRQ and DMA to fuction properly. As for the port, the x simply denotes a hexadecimal number. If that's not listed, you could try the BIOS setup to see if you can switch the ports around.

Richard Bruns · April 22, 2001, 13:41

quote:

AFAIK, integrated sound cards still needs IRQ and DMA to fuction properly. As for the port, the x simply denotes a hexadecimal number. If that's not listed, you could try the BIOS setup to see if you can switch the ports around.

I don't think there is any DMA, since it is part of the motherboard. The system information did not list any DMA at all for that soundcard. I have tried to change the port number many times, but I can never get it so accept a value that the DOS games think a soundcard should have. I tried to enter the value "0220-022F" for example, but it said that that it was an invaid setting.

Father Beast, I can't play the game completely beause the units folder is missing. I never recieved it; maybe it got lost in cyberspace. Whenever I try to access an entry in the UFOpedia or enter the battlescape, the game crashes and shuts off. Other than that the game seems to be running well. I can research, make bases, shoot down UFO, etc.

Father Beast · April 22, 2001, 22:45

Richard, I didn't know that your email rejected the units.zip until I signed on today. I'll get on that and divide that folder in 2, and see if that works.
give me a few minutes....

Father Beast · April 22, 2001, 22:56

wait a minute! it should have taken the units.zip without problem, since it swallowed the terrain.zip without diff., and thats over 1M, and units is only 136k!

So I'm sending it as is again.

Father Beast · April 22, 2001, 23:59

It Choked AGAIN!
maybe you can clean out your mailbox. If it's full, maybe that's why it can't recieve it.
I'll send units.zip again tomorrow sometime.
alternatively, you could check to see if the units folder in your old XCom install will do the trick. maybe, maybe not...

Urban Ranger · April 23, 2001, 00:00

If you go into BIOS, you might be able to change the settings of your sound card.

Richard Bruns · April 23, 2001, 07:28

Father Beast, I had cleaned out my mailbox yesterday, removing a lot of old files. Unfortunately, there was some kind of bug that prevented me from moving or deleting anything from the inbox, so that could have been the problem. They must have fixed that bug, because this morning I was able to move your files to another folder. Now my e-mail had a lot less stuff on there, so it should send properly. I'm sorry about all the trouble this is causing.

The old version of X-Com has an entirely different arrangement of folders and data, so I couldn't use any old data with the newer version.

Urban Ranger, I don't know about the BIOS editor. How do I get into it and how is it different from the device manager in the control panel?

Thanks for all your help.

Richard Bruns · April 23, 2001, 11:22

I got the units folder and installed it. The game is now complete but all of the old bugs have returned. It constantly misses keystrokes and mouse clicks, and runs rather haltingly. That didn't happen before I put in the the units folder. Did this ever happen to you, and if so what can fix it?

Richard Bruns · April 23, 2001, 22:09

Oddly enough, the game works perfectly now. I don't know what has changed, but I won't complain. I couldn't save any games in any slot other than #1 until I copied and renamed the other folders, but saving seems to work okay now. A lot of the animations still go really fast, but I can get used to that.

Thanks again.

Urban Ranger · April 23, 2001, 22:52

Since it seems that you got the game working, I am not going to show you how to muck around in BIOS, although that is a nice bit of skill PC users should have

Father Beast · April 23, 2001, 23:50

I find that with a windows progarm called turbo, I can set it to 25% and the game goes by at about a minute per second on my 300MHZ sys, and it's not too jumpy. I can even navigate the geoscape without it running away from me. XCom, that is...

asking advice over in a new thread

Glad to hear you got it working, richard

Richard Bruns · April 25, 2001, 00:41

quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 04-23-2001 10:52 PM
Since it seems that you got the game working, I am not going to show you how to muck around in BIOS, although that is a nice bit of skill PC users should have

Master of Magic, Seven Cities of Gold, and Eye of the Beholder are still without sound. Is a good FAQ available somewhere on the net?