I recently upgraded to an Intel DG41TY motherboard with 4 GB RAM and obviously, there are no real-mode MS-DOS drivers to be found for my on-board Realtek ALC888VC audio. Since I still like to play good ol' DOS games (yes, I do know about DOSBox, thank you), I guess I have to install an old SB Live! PCI card I have lying about. I will be using this card after booting to real-mode MS-DOS 7 (the version that came with Win98SE). Questions: 1) Will the card even work with this motherboard? 2) Will its DOS drivers conflict with my on-board audio and cause any issues with IRQs etc.? 3) The Live!'s DOS drivers require EMM386 to be loaded as a prerequisite. Now I'm facing a wierd problem with EMM386 that I've never seen before. Here are the outputs from MEM /C /P without and with EMM386 loaded: ============================================================ Without EMM386 Memory Summary: Type of Memory Total Used Free ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Conventional 655,360 31,648 623,712 Upper 0 0 0 Reserved 0 0 0 ************************************************************* Extended (XMS) 3,183,476,7 65,536 3,183,411,2 ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Total memory 3,184,132,0 97,184 3,184,034,9 ************************************************************* Total under 1 MB 655,360 31,648 623,712 Largest executable program size 623,616 (609K) Largest free upper memory block 0 (0K) MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area. ============================================================ With EMM386 Memory Summary: Type of Memory Total Used Free ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Conventional 655,360 16,288 639,072 Upper 129,504 19,664 109,840 Reserved 0 0 0 ************************************************************* Extended (XMS) 3,183,347,2 ? 0 ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Total memory 3,184,132,0 ? 748,912 ************************************************************* Total under 1 MB 784,864 35,952 748,912 Largest executable program size 639,056 (624K) Largest free upper memory block 65,280 (64K) MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area. ============================================================ As you can see, with EMM386 loaded (required for the Live!'s DOS drivers to work), used and free XMS is not being detected properly, whereas it is when EMM386 is not loaded. Can anyone explain this to me? Is EMM386 barfing on encountering 4 GB of RAM? What do I do to solve this issue, 'cos many games won't work without free XMS being available.

you need HIMEM.SYS from win9x installed prior to loading EMM386.exe. earlier version can only detect and make use of 64mb ram. follow these tips to install your soundcard in DOS: http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/h... http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/h... http://dosmame.mameworld.info/

Thanks for the reply! 64 MB should be more than enough. :) Re. Himem.sys, it is being loaded. Here's my Config.sys: DEVICE=C:\DOS\COMMAND\HIMEM.SYS DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\DOS\COMMAND\EMM386.exe I'm still getting that XMS issue with EMM386. :( Any further suggestions? P.S. All my DOS files/utils including Himem.sys are from the version included with Win98SE, as I had noted above.

are the PATHs correct? there are recommended startup files in the links above to use with SBLIVE drivers. the get UMB/HMA, youe nned the "RAM" parameter with emm386, like so: DEVICEHIGH=\DOS\EMM386.exe AUTO RAM NOEMS NOVCPI NOTR A=32 D=64 H=128

I thought RAM and NOEMS were exclusive (one enabled EMS support and the other disabled it)? Anyway, I have tried all the combinations of the available EMM386 switches I could think of, and no luck so far. :( Since without EMM386 my XMS is shown properly even though DOS was never meant to recognise that much, I guess it's obvious that EMM386 is the one that's causing all the trouble here. P.S. Yes, the paths are correct. The problem is getting EMM386 and XMS to coexist happily, for the Live! drivers need the former, and games depending on popular (Watcom) DOS extenders like DOS/4GW and DOS/4G need the latter or else they quit with an "Insufficient XMS" error.

search for JEMMEX or JEMM386 by japheth, it's an EMM386 replacement from FreeDOS.

Thanks a lot, that helped! JEMM386 was able to detect all available XMS properly with Himem.sys loaded. Now I only hope the SB Live! DOS drivers work with JEMM386 instead of EMM386...