Computer Hardware

[Robman]

Here's a page documenting most of the PC hardware I still own. Rob's Computer Hardware.

And here's a few things I bought today for $40 Canadian.

BFG GTX 260 896mb MaxCore OC - Sapphire HD 3850 512 AGP - ASUS AGP V3800 Ultra TNT2 32mb - Radeon X1600 Pro 256Mb AGP - SoundBlaster Audigy 2

[Robman]

The 5820k 3.3-3.6Ghz, 16gb DDR4 2667Mhz ram, r9 270x 2gb gddr5 + More goodies...


My IBM Model M Keyboards 1989 and 1994.


Sony Vaio Core2Duo T6600 2.2Ghz, 4gb 1066 DDR3, Geforce G210M 256mb.


Apparently this SDM-X82 Sony LCD Monitor was more than $1000 US back in 2002-03.

[Robman]

Got an original xbox 360 "Xenon" at Value Village for 20 dollars and that copy of DNF for 5 dollars the other day.
This being my first 360, I took it apart and cleaned it, reapplied the thermal paste and performed this fan cooling mod.

[Ninjakitty]

A few weeks ago, I acquired two computers. One is a touchscreen where the entire computer is stuffed into the monitor, runs windows XP, $20.
It can run Shadow Warrior, but it's weird about it. The main menu demo runs fine, until u press escape to hide the menu. Then it's almost as if it's in slow motion. This affects actual singleplayer the same way, everything runs slow while the menu isn't visible. I don't know what causes this.

I also got an Inspiron 8000 laptop ($10 for laptop, around $15 for charger) and after a whole lot of hard drive issues and formatting drives, I managed to install Windows 95 on it. It can run Shadow Warrior fine, except for the fact that the computer doesn't seem to have any audio drivers and therefore cannot play sound from the game. 

The sound menu in SW setup will tell me I own all of the selectable sound cards, but gives me a different error with each one, so I'm pretty darn sure I need an audio driver, but I don't know how to get one that's compatible with this laptop. It says it has an ESS Maestro 3.

[Robman]

Cool! |They both look like they're in great condition. A google search yields nothing for a soundcard driver?

[Ninjakitty]

Oct 6, 2018 19:49:48 GMT -5 Robman said:

Cool! |They both look like they're in great condition. A google search yields nothing for a soundcard driver?

Well, ya see, the thing is when I search for one, I try to find one that is

1. For the soundcard I have
2. Compatible with Windows 95
3. Said to work on my exact computer

However, while I can find one where A and C is true, B is false. I don't believe this computer was meant to be running Windows 95, and that's probably why there are no drivers for it using this soundcard and Windows 95. When I first got it, it seemed to have a corrupted Windows 2000 on it. I had to use a dos boot disk to install dos then I had to format drives and stuff. Then I was finally able to install Windows 95 which in theory should run Dos games just as well as native Dos.

I have tried installing drivers that were for Windows 95 and for this soundcard (but not specifically for an Inspiron 8000), but they just crashed the computer on startup and I had to boot into safe mode to remove them.

[Corvin]

I looked, I didn't see a driver, but I seen a Win98SE OS loaded on the same laptop someone else has.
I only found a WinXP driver on Dell website for your laptop.

[Ninjakitty]

So now, what are my options?
What I want is to be able to run DOS games without an emulator on this laptop and to still get sound.

Do I need to buy another soundcard or something...? (not entirely sure how that would work)
Should I install Windows XP on it to install the sound driver and just hope it can still run Dos games well?

[Corvin]

Seems like only Winxp with DOSBox is possible, or you can use one of the ports of SW. No idea if they all run on XP or not. I know JFSW did.

The sound card is integrated with your motherboard, rather than a separate card. You can get a USB sound card I think, but then how would you get old drivers for something like that.


Go here:
www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-8000/drivers

Try WinME in the selection to get a WinME sound driver. Then run dos SW on the WinME OS WinDosBox or whatever it was called back then.

[Robman]

Did you try a 98 driver in place of the 95 one? Could be worth a shot.
Win98 could handle native dos stuff also couldn't it? If it does, why not just use win98se?

[Ninjakitty]

Oct 7, 2018 21:39:02 GMT -5 Robman said:

Did you try a 98 driver in place of the 95 one? Could be worth a shot.
Win98 could handle native dos stuff also couldn't it? If it does, why not just use win98se?

Drivers that are for 98 are usually also for 95 and vice versa. I've tried a few that were said to support 98/95, but I guess since they weren't meant for this exact system they just wouldn't work.

I've also tried installing Windows 98SE. It wouldn't start up SW, just gave me a black screen. After that, I tried opening a disk and the screen just went crazy with graphical glitches so I just shut it down, booted off the Windows 95 Dos disk again and reinstalled 95. 
There aren't any drivers that were said to be for both 98 and this system, though, so I don't know why I tried upgrading to it.

I then tried formatting the hard drive and installing Windows ME (which had automatically installed the correct sound driver). I could then only start up the computer in safe mode, which defeats the purpose of upgrading to get sound because sound is one of the drivers that gets disabled in safe mode.

Unfortunately, I think the best option I have is to keep it on 95 and just play Dos games in silence. I don't know if there are any compatible sound drivers for Windows 2000, but I don't think I'd have any better luck anyway.

[Robman]

Just sounds odd, I've played around with plenty of systems new and old including laptops and never had drivers beat me... try and try again NinjaKitty, don't give up.

[Ninjakitty]

Oct 8, 2018 9:48:17 GMT -5 Robman said:

Just sounds odd, I've played around with plenty of systems new and old including laptops and never had drivers beat me... try and try again NinjaKitty, don't give up.

Alright, guess I'll try to install 2000 (which is what was originally installed, albeit corrupted, on this laptop).
Unfortunately, none of these newer versions of Windows come with the guarantee to run old Dos games at all, so I don't know if this'll run them at all.

[Ninjakitty]

Installed 2000, all dos games are just blank screens.

[Ninjakitty]

Nevermind, I just found out that the reason it was just showing a blank screen was because I was running the SW that I installed on 95, which in theory should not make a difference. But when I uninstalled that one and reinstalled it with Windows 2000, it ran just fine on 2000. Now I have managed to download the correct sound driver, sound is working fine. However, in SW's setup, none of the selectable sound cards work. Do I have to emulate the sound cards in some way or something...?

[Ninjakitty]

I found this:  www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=19212&highlight=
Could someone walk me through how exactly I would install it for Windows 2000...?
(Soundcard I have is ESS Maestro 3i)

*EDIT:
I found out how I gotta install it. Just gotta empty everything inside the folder to the C drive and paste some lines into CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT

The problem is that they're both hidden. I can't find any way to make them visible (they're hidden whether or not I uncheck hide hidden files), and therefore I cannot edit them. Is there a way to unhide these files?
I would try to create my own AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, but when I try it says there is already one there, and I don't want to overwrite them because what's in them might be necessary for the computer to boot.

*EDIT2: I figured out how to edit both of those files, but I seem to have been following the wrong directions or something...? I installed it the way I thought I was supposed to but it made no difference. If anyone could explain all of this to me, it'd probably help a lot: groups.google.de/group/de.comp.os.msdos/msg/ca0e07ae1d32c531

[Corvin]

There's no dos in win2000? I don't understand how you are trying to install 'it'?

You should have stuck with WinME and ironed out your safe mode issue as Dell supports it and SW would run on it.


There are old methods to get BUILD Games to run on Win2000 but they are crap. Its best just to get the DOSBox emulator if it even runs on Win2000.
BTW right on the laptops lower right corner, it indicates which windows works with it, except winME is not indicated, but is supported.

[Robman]

I would assume he's after more of a "native" dos experience short of actually using dos.

[Ninjakitty]

Oct 9, 2018 21:31:08 GMT -5 Corvin said:

There's no dos in win2000? I don't understand how you are trying to install 'it'?

You should have stuck with WinME and ironed out your safe mode issue as Dell supports it and SW would run on it.


There are old methods to get BUILD Games to run on Win2000 but they are crap. Its best just to get the DOSBox emulator if it even runs on Win2000.
BTW right on the laptops lower right corner, it indicates which windows works with it, except winME is not indicated, but is supported.

Nonono, Windows 2000 runs Dos programs really well. The problem is that Dos games do not support my sound card. Windows ME was limited to safe mode on a fresh install, so I really don't think my computer is compatible with it. On the label, it says it's meant for Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT Workstation 4.0, and Windows 98.


I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to do right now, but I think I'm attempting to get my soundcard to be able to emulate a soundblaster soundcard, which would be compatible with Dos games. The instructions and explanation are in German, though, and I'm having trouble understanding it even after running it through Google translate.

[Corvin]

you have to install the Win2000 version (if they exist, they should) drivers for your sound card.
You'll have to emulate the sound there after with the the help of other "programs":




Try these docs, I haven't updated them in a long time, but I remember making them for others and myself. They where very popular back then after I posted them.

www.r-t-c-m.com/knowledge-base/documents-online/setup-windowxp-buildgames.html
www.r-t-c-m.com/knowledge-base/documents-online/setup-windowsxp-sound.html

www.r-t-c-m.com/knowledge-base/documents-online/setup-windows-buildgames.html
www.r-t-c-m.com/knowledge-base/documents-online/setup-windows-sound.html



PS: Dell has support for WinME directly, your install must have been incorrectly done. You may have needed BIOS update as well, not sure.

[Ninjakitty]

Ah, so you've helped people with this before? Perhaps it would be better if you could tell me what I'm doing wrong.

I'm currently going off of this: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=19212&highlight=
I dragged everything in the ES198x folder into the root of my C drive, then I edited my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT in the C drive

AUTOEXEC.BAT
@ECHO OFF
LH C:\ESSAUDIO.COM
:: SET BLASTER=A220 D1 I5 T4
C:\MSDOS7\attrib.exe -h -s C:\MSDOS7
ECHO You are using automatically generated configuration files.
ECHO Your original configuration files have been renamed
ECHO Config.upg and Autoexec.upg and are located in the C:\MSDOS7 Directory.
ECHO.The ":: SET BLASTER=A220 D1 I5 T4" and "LH C:\ESSAUDIO.COM" lines are the only things I added to the file, the rest was originally like that

CONFIG.SYS
REM Setup Generated File.

DEVICEHIGH=C:\ESSAUDIO.SYSOnly added the "DEVICEHIGH=C:\ESSAUDIO.SYS" line

So, this is how I currently have it set up, and it doesn't seem to be working.

[Corvin]

Some help, its been long time ago that I did this kind of tech support.

So are you running MSDOS or Win2000. If your in Win2000 you don't want those DOS drivers for sound, you want to the Win2000 audio drivers.
Then follow the steps for perhaps use soundfx2000 program. This program will use the win2000 audio drivers and translate them into SB audio sets.

[Ninjakitty]

So I've installed SoundFX2000, and now every dos program that uses sound just freezes. 

[Corvin]

Shadow Warrior Freezes? Did you read the instructions included with the program and my documents?

You might need the included Clip program.

I remember there being a resident program that needed to run or too patch the exe. I can't remember.

[Ninjakitty]

Yeah, I'm trying to use cli2nop right now, but I can't figure out how. Your guide says to use cli2nop.exe, but there is no cli2nop.exe, there's only patch.exe which doesn't seem to work with the parameters your guide tells me to put in the Dos shortcut.

[Ninjakitty]

Was able to patch the file through cli2nop

Sound works now, but it's very very quiet and low quality. It gets drowned out by the CD audio easily.

Also, it crashes every few minutes.

[Corvin]

it might be instructions for the separate download. I think the Cli2nop is a batch file with soundfx2000.

Yeah you might want to try VDMsound instead of soundfx2000. Like I said these methods where crap back then. That's why I suggested DOSBox Emu if your laptop will run fast enough to use it.

[Ninjakitty]

Hm... So how would I go about uninstalling SoundFX?

NVM, figured out how. I have installed VDMSound. I know I'm supposed to be using some sort of specialized shortcut to run the game with VDMSound, but your guide doesn't specify what it has to be like.

[Corvin]

no idea. Did you install SoundFX or just place it?


okay. I don't remember why there's no instructions for the shortcut. It may have been a separate download to avoid confusion I guess.




EDIT- It a downloadable file of preconfigured shortcuts, says so in the doc. I kinda remember these. I think I was going to provide the steps to configure the shortcut, I just never got to it for some reason.

I can walk you through it or you can compare what I have selected (since the vlp shortcut is just a text file) you can read it with notepad.

[Robman]

Many cards worked using the sound blaster or compatible heading, still needing the correct address and irq or however that used to work. It's been eons since I played with that stuff.