Hi,
I hope someone out there can help - I have been working on this problem for almost 2 weeks now - and no success! Of course - I dont know much about the autexec.bat or config.sys files and their structure (enough to be dangerious), and that might be the problem...Please except my apology if I am not posting this in the right place!

I have an older laptop (see specs at he end) and I am attempting to get some of my favorite old games to work on this system. They actaully RUN fine - but (after they boot automaticaly into MSDOS after start-up) I get NO CDROM background music!! It ruins the atmosphere to say the least! All in-game sounds work, I can actually see/feel the CDROM spin up like its playing a CD - I can see it change tracks via the in-game cd player - but no audio!

This I have tried:
-Finding specific DOS drivers (no luck - closest I could find was a Crystal Audio Init. program called CWDInit.exe)
-Adding Blaster statements
-Finding any information at all!! (NO LUCK!!)

Anyway - here are my systems specs - please if anyone has any ideas at all let me know - I am so **EXTREMLY** frustrated with this now - its taken all the fun out of playing my old games again...

Games that run, but have no CDROM Audio:

Blood
Blood Plasma Pack
Blood Cryptic Passage
Blood 2
Redneck Rampage
Redneck Rampage Rout 66
Redneck Rampage Rides Again

System Specs:

Model: Dell Latitude CPi D300XT Laptop
Model Number: PPL
ASSY PN:9321C
Dell LBL P/N: 4617P
SERVICE TAG #:ZYF2X

OS:Win95
300Mhz PII processor
64M Ram
Crystal 4237B Audio (Sound Blaster Pro-compatible voice and music functions)
Samsung CD-Rom 24X and Standard Floppy (swappable Bay)

Autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\
LH C:\CDROM\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCDOOD /M:20

Config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EM386.EXE NOEMS
FILES=30
STACKS=0,0
BUFFERS=20
DEVICEHIGH=C:WINDOWS\COMMAND\ANSI.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\SSCDROM.SYS /D:MSCDOOD /V
device=C:\WINDOWS\cwdinit.exe /w

What I get at the DOS promp:

c:\>c:\WINDOWS\CWDINIT.EXE /A

CrystalWare(tm) Audio Initialization Utility, Version 2.720
Copyright(c) 1997 Crystal Semiconductor Corp. All Rights Reserved

*Plug N Play BIOS Detected
*SBpro: I/O = 220, IRQ = 5, DMA = 1

c:\>

So this is not an MS-DOS problem par-se but about running DOS games in W95 ??

If you are starting the games in W95, then W95 should be able to set the environment variables:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show...

Actually I have tried it in these ways - -starting the game from a Win95 shortcut (which reboots the pc into DOS)
-Starting the game and playing it in a MSDOS promt in Win95
-Booting into DOS and THEN starting the game.

For what its worth - the CD Player works fine in Win95 - but NOT the win95 MSDOS prompt. But then, the game documents for at least one game (Redneck Rampage) states that it will not play CD audio in Win95 (or presumably the Win95 MSDOS prompt)

I will try renaming the config.sys file then (essentially deleting it) and see what happens...

Maybe go back to a pure MS-DOS6.22 setup if all you want is to play games on an old laptop..............

Took me a while, but I am back...Thanks, but it didnt work. I noted that I actually had two config files - a config.sys and a config.win

-I tried the games with no config in both win95 and MSDOS - no success
-with config.win in both win95 and MSDOS, same result
-Same thing with only config.sys

I rebooted each time I renamed the files.

I will keep that in mind (going back to just DOS) - but only as a last resort. I like the GUI - + there may be a few games that wont run in just DOS that I may install - (Seven Kindoms, Total Annihilation etc).

I just noticed that the PCMCIA socket appears to not be installed correctly. Could this somehow relate?

Ok - got ALL the PCMCIA drivers installed correctly but it did NOT correct my problem - not surprising considering I am not running audio with my PCMCIA socket, but you never know. Double checked all other devices and they are ok. I am out of ideas - anyone else? Please?!?

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/windows/wi...

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/132994

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/132995

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/134...

Well - wow - its going to take me DAYS to sort through all this. I have been through some of it prior to asking my question on this site thankfully and to be honest I was hoping for something a bit more concise - still...thanks. I am sure the answer is in there - I just need to find it. I may end up posting this question again in a week or two after I have gone though all this information.

Well from my experience on similar hardware years ago did have a few problems, so had a dual boot PC-DOS7 / Win9x setup.

Yeah - I haven't given up on just using DOS - no Win95 - I actually ran accross this really cool DOS environment called DOSSTART that I may give a try. Trouble is that I am worried I will end up with the same problem. I am thinking I may have a hard time finding specific DOS drivers for the Crystal 4237B sound. I actually have been looking for quite some time with no luck - just Win95 drivers.

I'll bet if I could get a look at a config/autoexec file(s) on a system with that audio card that actaully works in DOS my problems would be over...oh well.

The Win9x Driver for the Audio is VxD PCI so quite likely will be on IRQ10, IRQ5 is what DOS games look for.......

Therefore a PC may be a better option in the UK a P2 Base Unit is around £10 ($6)

try the cd rom and dvd drivers on this site (bottom of page)

http://www.fracassi.net/iw2evk/

Blood doesn't force a DOS boot, at least the latest version before it was banned (when the heck was it banned?) with the Plasma Pak and Cryptic Passages in one package.

Redneck Rampage, I know, does.

You need to be running MSCDEX v2.0 or higher (which 95 and 98 have because they have DOS 6.22 or higher), I think, because it has the Redbook audio instructions, which Blood and Redneck Rampage use.

I have a generic CDrom driver on-hand that actually makes use of MSCDEX, but i haven't tried the redbook audio in DOS because CyberMage for some reason runs more stably in Windows 98 command state than DOS - and doesn't use Redbook anyway.

I'll double check when I reconnect my DOS gaming computer and let you know tomorrow (that being Tuesday/Aug. 14th) how it works out.

But if your CD audio program does not support redbook, then it doesn't matter. It has to support redbook, no matter which one you use, or you won't get the audio.

As an aside, Blood should automatically use midi audio if the CD isn't present.

This computer is f---ed...

Alrighty, here's the follow up. The CD-ROM won't run in DOS unless the game forces it. *edit*

I had a driver issue due to the enhanced CD Version of System Shock 2 that shut down everything but my soundcard - restazrting the mouse was easy, but the CDROM wasn't happening; anyway after a restart, everything was right as rain.

The MSCDEX version that comes with Windows 98 is 2.25, see if you can get that and then pop it in a directory called Command (which is somewhere in the Windows directory tree).

Honestly, though, I doubt you'll need it, Windows 95 comes with at least MSCDEX 2.20, which is Redbook-compatible. Just make sure that MSCDEX is telling the computer where your CDROM is, not another program.

It might use up more of your precious 640k, but at least it works.

This computer is f---ed...