For discussions of finding and installing DOS drivers for things like sound
cards, video cards, CD-ROM drives.

11 responses total.

I am attempting to get Arachne browser working on a 386 and a 486.  The 486
has an ET4000 (Tseng) video card running at 800x600 under Win31.  Can I use
the WIn31 driver as a DOS driver, if so where do I find it, and what do I do
with it.  If not, how do I install an ET4000 DOS driver once I find one?  Do
I put it in a directory and do something to autoexec.bat and config.sys?

Second problem.  My PC-speaker is now set up to play wav files but they sound
bad, so I brought home a couple of vibra16 sound cards (1991 and 1994). I
downloaded 4 disks of Creative VIbra16 driver files and unzipped.  I also
downloaded from the ftp site an install.exe file, which does nothing when I
type install.exe.  It is on my hard drive, the other files on floppy.  The
other files are pvl.  The ftp site had several other files, most of them I
already have on disk, but there were also install.pvl and filelist.pvl.
What do I do to install a CT2501 using these disks?  The information will be
useful for Kiwani's other vibra16 sound cards.  The Creative site explained
how to install into Win31.  Disk 4 is Win95 updates.

Arachne (see Kiwanis item 32 in agora) does not come with drivers.

Bill Levak is working on these problems.
1.  The vibra16 drivers are only for Windows.  DOS was not supported.
Does anyone know which sound cards support DOS?
2.  The 486 is an IBM Valuepoint.  His book says the chip is not an ET4000
but an S3 made for IBM.  Windows and the diagnostic program treat it as an
ET4000.  The vmode programs that come with the VESA drivers for the Tseng
chips work in it (columns to 132, rows to 60).  Running those drivers makes
Arachne think it is a VESA card, but it does not work in Arachne with those
drivers (1992 and 1996 - they said a universal driver would not work).  I
found UNIVBE51.zip (garb.uwasa.fi/pc/graphics.html) which says it also
supports Tsent ET4000 (1996 date) but when I tried to install it it crashed
the computer (divide error).

Bill is working on this.  He says IBM has online drivers for all its
computers at www.pc.ibm.com/support/search.
All I have to do is put the pertinent driver in a directory and then either
type the comman manually before using it, or add to autoexec.bat.  The
universal driver had a configuration command to modify autoexec.bat.  Claimed
to work for both DOS and Windows.

This is built-in video and Bill sees no way to disable it, so the only
solution (if IBM does not support SVGA for DOS on it) is to change computers
or at least move the components to another board and add a video card.

The tech person at Newdeal said pvl files were used by an installation program
for DOS drivers called Instalit.  THe company is out of business.  Error 2126
means not enough memory to run it in (needs 540K conventional memory).  All
the files have to be in the same place, too.  

Arachne helpfully sent me the URL of the site with a VESA driver for the S3
video chip in the IBM computer (that Windows treats as an ET4000 but it is
not).  The URL could not be accessed, nor could several related S3 sites. 
I think it is time to give up and use some other browser if I need 256 colors.
Netscape and IE work, and Newdeal has its own VESA drivers which might work.
If they don't, I switch computers instead.

I found an install.exe program at Creative which called for Disk1.  It did
not like my disk 1, labelled vibra2.zip. (Disks 2 and 3 were vibra3 and
vibra4).  A search for vibra1.zip found two - a .wav file in Japan and the
larger vibra1.zip in Holland, which appears to be the correct one.  Did
Creative forget something at their site?

I downloaded jumper settings for my card, which was set to I/O address 240.
I set other jumpers to defaults.  CT1600 SB 2 Pro.  Installed leaving out all
the optional and windows stuff.  'Wrong base I/O address or audio hardware
is not detected at 220H.'  It was also not detected at 240H.  Or after I moved
the jumper to 220H.  Does this mean the card is not usable?

Someone in Sweden working for Arachne said Vibra16 cards were cheaper and did
less than Soundblaster cards.  Should I be getting Soundblaster drivers
instead of Vibra16 drivers?

Got the install program to recognize the cards but it tells  me to insert the
accessories disk.  This means vibra1.zip from the four-disk set in Holland
does not work with my vibra2-4.zips.  Before downloading all four from Holland
I did a bit of creating Altavista searching through forums and things etc.,
and found sbbasic.exe via the www.europe.creative.com site, which has things
better organized.  This is one 1.2M file which is for people with DOS and Win31
who want only the basics, not all the games and  samples and organ programs.
I then also found it at creative americas site by searhing for that file name.
The Creative site is so confusing that I could not find a way to email tech
support so emailed feedback about its omissions.

Does anyone know the use of the extra two SIMMS that you can install in the
SB32 card?  I only wanted to listen to WAV and MIDI files and possibly
RealAudio if I can get it working somewhere.

The first card was not recognized - is it dead?  I installed sbbasic and it
loaded everything for both DOS and WIN but I can delete 2M of the latter.
I played odetojoy.wav and will try midi files later.  Jim listened to the
Windows midi and wonders why they bothered. (canyon).

Bill found a reference to uvesa.exe which autounzips to 3 files, one of which
you run to change the BIOS of the S3 chip so that it will act like a VESA
card.  He says it slows it slightly so do not run it in WIndows.  Or we can
set up all our Win31 computers with it and use a universal SVGA driver to save
time hunting for odd drivers, but we found most by now.  I found uvesa.zip
at three sites.  The first suggested XDirect for downloading their files, and
it needs a sound card.  A sound card for file transfer?  sbbasic install
required a VGA monitor because they used various colors instead of mono, but
I assume you can listen to sounds with a TTL monitor.

Jim thinks more RAM in the sound card will buffer RealAudio to avoid the
breaks during network congestion.  

Does anyone know if you can put a 387 coprocessor in a slot when the chip has
two rows of pins and the slot has three?

I think it goes in the center of the socket.  Make sure you get the
orientation right.  I think the notched corner is pin 1.

Thanks, Jim will try that.
We ran Bill's favorite vga program, whatvga (the older version - the newer
one does not work right) and it tells us we have a Tseng4000 SVGA card.
It displayed during this program in modes up to 1024x768 256 color and 1280
15 color.  We ran univesa.exe (unpacked from UVESA.ZIP) and it told us we had
a TsengET4000.  It added a VESA driver to this, which whatvga recognized as
such (two drivers).  We had to reboot to run whatvga properly and do all the
test modes.  One mode turned half the screen upside down.  
WIndows is running with TsengET4000 drivers.  Windows has a diagnostic program
that agrees to Tseng.  IBM lists S3 as their video chip, but perhaps they
changed boats in the middle of the stream.

Arachne does not recognize SVGA on this computer even after running univesa.
Cannot initialize video mode.  We can try Arachne with a different computer
(built-in video on the IBM) or Skipper on that IBM to see if their ET4000
driver works with it.  If it does, either Arachne has a bug or I am doing
something very wrong in setup.  It recognizes only VGA mono or color.

I don't have a midi player - anyone want to recommend one for DOS?
Do you need special software to run the wavetable part of a sound card?

We downloaded ScitTech's Display Doctor and ran it and it told us we now had
VESA driver 3.0.  TLVESA gave us 1.1.  Before running either there were no
VESA drivers.  TLVESA gave six graphics modes, DD gave 2 , as opposed to 0
before. Arachne still does not do SVGA mode.  

Do you need anything other than a computer, sound card, and DOS MIDI player
to play MIDI files?  (And DOS, of course).  And headphones.

play.exe (play13.zip) plays MIDI files but sounds bad with my sound card..

I added 2M RAM (30pin) to the card and it still sounds the same.
There is a file in there ending in .sbk - do I do something special with it?
SOmeone suggested Cubic PLayer but it is 10M.

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