Hi all,

Trying (as many have before me Im sure) to get my soundcard working in Dos.

I have an old creative PCI ensoniq card which requires EMM386. My config sys and
autoexec.bat are shown below.

CONFIG.SYS
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\emm368.exe noems /verbose
dos=high,umb

AUTOEXEC.BAT
set blaster=A220 I5 D1 H7 P330 T6
set sbpci=c:\dosdrv
c:\dosdrv\sbload
c:\dosdrv\sbinit

When I try to initialise the sblaster dirvers I get this error

"Could not allocate code/patch RAM below 4 MByte boundary. Try loading SBInit.com before
SMARTDRV.EXE or minimising VDISK RAM. PCI audio driver NOT loading"

Any help greatly appreciated. I have already tried looking for memory holes in the BIOS but no options there.

Covered 4 posts down:

http://www.computing.net/dos/wwwboa...

Yes thank you. I did read that prior to posting, but that is more concerned with the actual drivers and recognising the card. That isnt my problem. Mine seems to be related to the BIOS (memory settings?) and EMM386.

The blaster environment variable is set correctly but when the card comes to initialise it cant seem to 'find' anywhere to put the blaster emulation TSR driver.

This memory error is not unique to the soundblaster card, I have seen it mentioned in other contexts but without any solutions.

Thanks again.

???????????

"device=c:\dos\emm368.exe noems /verbose"

DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS NOVCPI

Thanks again, already tried that, in fact the NOVCPI command only becomes effective with the NOEMS command. Didnt make any difference.

Thanks.

Hi,

I know i'd exclude a memory area but which?

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Salutations,

Michel Samson
a/s Bicéphale

Have you ensured that the Sound Card is on IRQ10 and not sharing the IRQ, if W9x is sharing this IRQ it will cause problems according to CREATIVE!

Remember this is an emulation driver and true non P'n'P ISA Sound Cards are the most reliable.

How would I go about excluding a memory area..? I dont have any isa slots on this motherboard, even if I had an old isa card!

Thanks all for the continued efforts.

How would I go about excluding a memory area..? ???????????????

IRQ sharing was what I stated, you do not appear to be reading the documentation which is included with the driver download from:

http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/ot...

Please note that my experience of Sound Drivers is related to Standalone MS-DOS6/PC-DOS7 - not WinDOS - and answers are in that perspective:

http://www.mwpms.uklinux.net

Sorry I was answering a post above yours that suggested excluding a memory area.

I have followed the instructions and checked for IRQ conflicts etc. The card is not on IRQ 5, des not conflict and I have tried moving it around the various pci slots.

I might give it a go with FreeDos see what happens with that.

Thanks again.

PCI Creative Sound Cards are required to be on IRQ10 alone. SIGH!!!

No other card should be sharing IRQ10.

IRQ5 is emulated by the Creative Driver Package so software which looks for IRQ5 will work, it is a workaround used by Creative.

Hi dosser,

OK Ive grabbed pcisniffer and after alot of pci slot switching and editing the bios Ive got the ensoniq card using IRQ10, on its own with the graphics card on iRQ11.

I still get the same error;
SB PCI @ 1400, IRQ10
Could not allcate code/patch RAM below 4 Mbyte boundary. Try loading SBInit.com before SMARTDRV.EXE or minimising VDISK RAM. PCI audio driver NOT loading.

Any further suggestions..?

Thanks

It is a bios issue, what model is your mainboard??.
I had this problem in 1999, it went away after I diasbled the parallel port in bios. It freed up UMB so the emulaor could load.
Depending on board you might need to disable
USB hubs
com ports
LPT

Thanks for the tips.

Its a Fujitsu-Siemens D1875 P4 board.

I have disabled everything in the bios and also thrown the bios out of the upper memory area. Loaded up EMM386 with the noems switch, it shows there being 40k available in the upper memory area. This is confirmed with mem/c. Driver still refuses to load. Ive also tried it with LH c:\... to force it into the upper memory area.

Wish I had a spare P4 motherboard about to try it on...grrrrrrrrrrrrr so infuriating.

Thanks
Rolf

What exact card do you have, model number??
What dos are you using, ms-dos 7.2?? do you mean, 7.1?
Also what version of the dos drivers do you have
Lots of people report the The 4 meg error message in vmware.

Some help below
http://ru.europe.creative.com/suppo...

OK here goes,

-Its win98 dos (no gui in the boot options).
-soundcard is a creative ES1371 ensoniq pci
-dos drivers are from here;
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/ot...

Not using vmware or dosbox or anything like that. I did try to find out if my motherboard supported NMI, but that should affect how the card runs not actually installing the drivers.

Thanks all.