vladr

In terms of NT4 machines that work and those that do not work with EMS: do those that do *not* work have the third-party '4NT' shell installed (as opposed to those that work with EMS)? Just a wild guess.

Have you tried to run the game using "Run with VDMS", from Explorer (right-click on the .exe) ? Does the memory problem still persist ? If so then you may have a messed-up NT4 installation; I have such an installation at work, where no matter what values I put for EMS it won't take it. I know (at least) MOO1 works fine under NT4, and the memory settings should also work fine, i.e. they are not "placebos". Have you removed any files, even if they looked totally useless, from the SYSTEM or SYSTEM32 directories since you installed NT ? Vlad.

Search your hard-drive for the file GIVEIO.SYS; rename it and reboot. GIVEIO.SYS (used by Motherboard Monitor, and possibly a few other programs I'm not aware of) gives full I/O access to software running on your machine, thus interfering with VDMSound (for those wondering: full I/O access won't help you even if you have a real SB16 in your machine, since besides full I/O access you'd also need interrupt forwarding and DMA forwarding -- which GIVEIO.SYS does not provide --, plus you'd be conflicting with the Windows sound driver(s), which is asking for trouble, aka. BSOD). Once you made sure GIVEIO.SYS is out of the way, use "Run with VDMS" from Explorer (right-click on the game's executables and select "Run with VDMS"), you should get sound. It is, however, possible that some games will have trouble with VDMSound, although these games are relatively few. Some games (Wolfenstein 3D, Goblins III, etc.) will not recognize the SB if FM emulation is not installed; FM/AdLib emulation is not included in VDMS 2.0.3, and is available separately as installable VDMS modules (see the Bravenet Forum). It will be included in the next VDMS version which is, as far as I can tell, due to come out very soon. Cheers, Vlad.

VDMS works for sure with KQ6, so you must be doing something wrong. Open a DOS window. From now on (i.e. the stuff that I'm telling you to do in this post) only work inside this window. Change directory to where VDMS was unzipped/installed. Run vdms.exe (for v1) or dosdrv.exe (for v2). You can start with v1 as it works with KQ6 but is easier to install than v2 (so this virtually eliminates any installation issues from the problem). VDMS.EXE should now say that it loaded properly. If it gave an error, see the FAQ on the VDMS webpage, with the error code handy, for an explanation and remedy (if you get 'error 1' then you might be missing some DLL's, you can download them from the SourceForge project page, under the 'additional DLLs' package). If VDMS says it loaded properly, run VDMSDIAG.EXE. All MIDI and SoundBlaster tests should pass. You should also hear some piano notes. If the tests passed but you heard nothing, there is probably something wrong with your MIDI device, hence no music in games. Try opening a .mid file in Media Player (you can find .mid files in your Windows directory, in the Media subdirectory; double-click on one). If you can hear the .mid file, then things should be OK. If not, verify inyour Windows Mixer that MIDI is not muted and/or the volume is at a reasonable level. If it doesn't work, post a message on the VDMS bulletin board/forum (see link on main VDMS webpage), and I'll pick it up from there. If you heard the notes in VDMSDIAG, configure the game. Choose "Roland MT-32/LAPC-1" or "General MIDI/Roland SoundCanvas/SCC-1" for music, and "SoundBlaster" for sound effects (do *not* choose Soundblaster for music). Now, running KQ6 should give you music (if you selected Roland MT-32/LAPC-1, your scroll-lock led on the keyboard should blink while the game is loading). You will get a 'soundcard hardware initialization error' mesaage of some kind. This is because of digital sound effects (you can fix by replacing AUDBLASTER.DRV with a copy from Leisure Suit Larry 6 -- don't forget to back up your original file). If you run into problems at any point in this sequence, post a message on the VDMS forum. Vlad.

OK, I got the shareware versions fo Duke3D (1.3d) and Rise of the Triad; I had problems with running install.exe (to decompress them), I finally (somehow) managed to decompress Duke3D and ran setup.exe. I configured General Midi and Soundblaster, it did not like the Soundblaster (duke3d.exe refused to launch). I took SB off and left General MIDI set, the game ran and I had music. I'm on Win2k with a Dell (PIII, CrystalAudio soundcard, DX6 I guess). Vlad.

Hi, SB emulation *is* shaky (variety of reasons) and probably only works on less than 25% of games, I hope that's going to be fixed when I'll use DirectSound. Thanks for telling me about MIDI in Duke and the others, I'll have to check them (at which point maybe 1.0.2 will go out) . Vlad.

Ooops, hit the wrong button ("new" instead of "reply"). That's version 1.0.1 of VDMSound.

Version 1.0.1 is uploaded under: http://members.xoom.com/ntvdm/download/v1.0.1/ You must copy the DLL file on top of an old 1.0.0 installation.

Yes, I've just identified a problem with the MIDI emulation that prevented it from working with games like Doom and others (the documentation I used was crappy and gave the constants wrong). I fixed the constants and Doom works, the other games that worked before (on the compatibility list) also seem to continue working. I'm sticking an updated DLL on the webpage this evening, so stay put! Vlad.

If you had trouble running VDMSound it could be that you were missing a couple of DLLs from Microsoft. Go to http://members.xoom.com/ntvdm/faq/index.html for the list of DLLs plus information about how to download them. I apologize for not realizing that at least one DLL does not come as part of the standard Windows distribution. Vlad.

OK, FAQ page is up, also contains a couple of things to do in order to isolate any problems one might have. If you still have trouble, _send_ _me_ _an_ _e-mail_ (ntvdm@hotmail.com) in which I can see what happened (e.g. if you followed the FAQ and typed "set VDMSoundPath" and something printed out, it would help if I could see all that). After all, it's only a review version, so review it! Vlad.

Hi, No, it's no hoax. I already talked to SHS. To play on the safe side, delete the environment variable VDMSoundPath (just type "set VDMSoundPath=", without the quotes), change directory to where both the .exe and the .dll lie, and run drv.exe. This is what CM seems to have done (he/she? didn't bother with the environment variable at all). If this still doesn't work, then pls. let me know. I'm setting up a FAQ page on the site anyway. I can tell you I've tried this program on at least 5 different systems, with NT4 and 2000, different hardware, and processor speeds, etc., and didn't have any problems, so it has to be some small thing. BTW, at this stage the type of hardware doesn't matter at all. And VDMSound is not loaded until you see "Success" -- if you don't see it then your games won't work. Vlad.