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Good morning everyone,

I've come with a particular question...I've been setting up my Toshiba Satellite 2505 CDS laptop for some months now, and I've got it working pretty well! The problem now is I'm trying to get a particular game to play. More specifically - Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

The problem I'm having is with each choice under "Setup" for "Select sound card" the only choices I have are:

-Sound Blaster
-Sound Blaster Pro
-Sound Blaster 16/AWE
-Pro Audio Spectrum
-Gravis Ultrasound
-Wave Jammer
-RAP 10

Each option yields no results and states either a lacking of drivers or a "No sound card could be found which matched the specific configuration" when I select each card and choose "Auto-detect". But I have sound on my computer, why is it fighting me so much?

I've gotten this game to play perfectly on DosBox on my Windows 10 laptop, but that's not the nostalgia purpose I'm going for. Currently trying to win a PCMCIA notebook card that might provide a new option for sound....so let's see where that goes.

Currently my sound card is this:

-Yamaha OPL3-SAx WDM

Not sure what I can do with this integrated sound card, but I'd love to make it work. Any suggestions would really be appreciated. Thanks all for your time.

-Joe

Okay, you've entered the dark age of computers. Back then, "drivers" were still a new concept and not every game used them. Most games would direct talk to the I/O ports on the motherboard to connect to your joystick and/or sound cards. This process was allowed until Windows XP (when Microsoft did the research, and determined that most of the world had finally moved onto the "driver" model. Talk to Windows, then Windows talks to the hardware on your behalf).

Erm... yeah. So somehow, you'll need to stick a sound-blaster (a very common sound card back then) onto your computer's motherboard. It seems like Warcraft is one of the really old-school games with probably assembly-language directly manipulating the motherboard.

I've gotten this game to play perfectly on DosBox on my Windows 10 laptop

DosBox has a Sound Blaster emulator built in. So when those I/O commands come across DosBox, it translates the I/O commands into sound that a modern Windows driver understands.

Yamaha OPL3-SAx WDM

If you're lucky, it may have an option to emulate or otherwise boot up in some kind of Sound Blaster emulation or compatibility mode. Sound Blaster was outrageously common back then, it was kind of the de-facto standard. So a lot of things could emulate sound blaster.

EDIT: I found this on a search?? https://download.driverguide.com/driver ... 73128.html

I don't know if its a virus though. This older hardware has basically no documentation these days. Good luck.

Your soundchip is SB Pro compatible. Add this to your autoexec.bat

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

ChronoReverse wrote:

Your soundchip is SB Pro compatible. Add this to your autoexec.bat

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

Awesome! Where do I find these autoexec.bat? I did a search on my computer earlier and only found 2 files, which I couldn't really figure out. Sorry for having no idea, but I'd love to understand and get that file in the right spot! Is that one I can make from notepad or something?

dragontamer5788 wrote:

Okay, you've entered the dark age of computers. Back then, "drivers" were still a new concept and not every game used them. Most games would direct talk to the I/O ports on the motherboard to connect to your joystick and/or sound cards. This process was allowed until Windows XP (when Microsoft did the research, and determined that most of the world had finally moved onto the "driver" model. Talk to Windows, then Windows talks to the hardware on your behalf).

Erm... yeah. So somehow, you'll need to stick a sound-blaster (a very common sound card back then) onto your computer's motherboard. It seems like Warcraft is one of the really old-school games with probably assembly-language directly manipulating the motherboard.

I've gotten this game to play perfectly on DosBox on my Windows 10 laptop

DosBox has a Sound Blaster emulator built in. So when those I/O commands come across DosBox, it translates the I/O commands into sound that a modern Windows driver understands.

Yamaha OPL3-SAx WDM

If you're lucky, it may have an option to emulate or otherwise boot up in some kind of Sound Blaster emulation or compatibility mode. Sound Blaster was outrageously common back then, it was kind of the de-facto standard. So a lot of things could emulate sound blaster.

EDIT: I found this on a search?? https://download.driverguide.com/driver ... 73128.html

I don't know if its a virus though. This older hardware has basically no documentation these days. Good luck.

Righteous! Thanks for the link. I'll weight my options after I figure out the autoexec.bat issue (see my response to ChronoReverse) as I'm not sure where that file is and if I gotta make it! If you have any info to share to that, I greatly appreciate it

I think you need BOTH pieces of advice here, not just one or the other.

AUTOEXEC.BAT should be in C:\, but environment variables can also be set in Windows (System Properties / Advanced / Environment Variables).

Thing is you might need to install a DOS-mode driver as well (as per dragontamer's post) before the BLASTER environment variable even works.

That means downloading a driver and adding a LOAD=driver.sys line in your CONFIG.SYS (also in C:\), or running something like C:\DRIVERS\SBEINIT.COM in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

jihadjoe wrote:

I think you need BOTH pieces of advice here, not just one or the other.

AUTOEXEC.BAT should be in C:\, but environment variables can also be set in Windows (System Properties / Advanced / Environment Variables).

Thing is you might need to install a DOS-mode driver as well (as per dragontamer's post) before the BLASTER environment variable even works.

That means downloading a driver and adding a LOAD=driver.sys line in your CONFIG.SYS (also in C:\), or running something like C:\DRIVERS\SBEINIT.COM in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Oh, ****. Alright cool. I just found the autoexec.bat on my C:/ so I'm adding that information to it now. I also added the LOAD=DRIVER.sys to the config.sys file. Now, I'm struggling understanding the installation of those drivers a bit - I opened a file in the zip and it said "uninstall drivers" so I'll go ahead and uninstall and then try to reinstall the drivers from that zip, right? Just making sure I'm doing things right and not **** up this install Thanks again for your help!

Oops I meant LOAD=driver.sys and C:\DRIVERS\SBEINIT.COM as examples, not as the exact lines you have to add.

The stuff you actually have to add in your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS will depend on the driver package you just got for your sound card. If the driver install package is done well enough, you won't need to do any manual editing yourself. I suggest removing those lines first and then following the instructions in the README.TXT file in the driver package.

https://ilovepa.ws/2017/06/09/yamaha-opl-isa-cards/

Huh. Wow. Someone on the internet seems to know a LOT about this Yamaha card.

The OPL3SAX drivers are required. Find them at Phil's Computer Lab. The drivers for the Audician 32 work perfectly. Since the drivers are for the chipset and not the card specifically, this single driver set covers all ISA cards with the Yamaha chip.

In the driver pack, you'll find SETUPSA.EXE. Run this program without any command line parameters and you are greeted with a configuration application. Here, the IRQ and DMA settings for each subsystem can be configured. Use the Tab key to move between the options and use the arrow keys to highlight your selection.

There may be a 3D section at the bottom. If you press Enter, you'll see a second configuration panel with special effects options. I disable all these and turn everything down to zero, but you may set it however you like.

Once you have finished making your selections, press Enter. If there are no conflicts, your settings will be saved.

If you want advanced control over the card's settings, you can edit the OPL3SA.INI file directly with a text editor of your choice. It's in a recognizable and easy format.

Once you have saved your settings, you will need to add SETUPSA.EXE /S to your autoexec.bat file. This will load your settings into the card, and remind you of the IRQ and DMA you have configured.

IRQ is the interrupt request, and DMA is direct-memory-access. Basically, both things that the assembly-code of 90s-era games will utilize to communicate with your hardware directly. "ISA" was the precursor to PCI, which was the precursor to PCIe. I forgot it even existed, lol.

Nothing against TR, but for a specific old-games forum, check out:
https://www.vogons.org/

dragontamer5788 wrote:

https://ilovepa.ws/2017/06/09/yamaha-opl-isa-cards/

Huh. Wow. Someone on the internet seems to know a LOT about this Yamaha card.

The OPL3SAX drivers are required. Find them at Phil's Computer Lab. The drivers for the Audician 32 work perfectly. Since the drivers are for the chipset and not the card specifically, this single driver set covers all ISA cards with the Yamaha chip.

In the driver pack, you'll find SETUPSA.EXE. Run this program without any command line parameters and you are greeted with a configuration application. Here, the IRQ and DMA settings for each subsystem can be configured. Use the Tab key to move between the options and use the arrow keys to highlight your selection.

There may be a 3D section at the bottom. If you press Enter, you'll see a second configuration panel with special effects options. I disable all these and turn everything down to zero, but you may set it however you like.

Once you have finished making your selections, press Enter. If there are no conflicts, your settings will be saved.

If you want advanced control over the card's settings, you can edit the OPL3SA.INI file directly with a text editor of your choice. It's in a recognizable and easy format.

Once you have saved your settings, you will need to add SETUPSA.EXE /S to your autoexec.bat file. This will load your settings into the card, and remind you of the IRQ and DMA you have configured.

IRQ is the interrupt request, and DMA is direct-memory-access. Basically, both things that the assembly-code of 90s-era games will utilize to communicate with your hardware directly. "ISA" was the precursor to PCI, which was the precursor to PCIe. I forgot it even existed, lol.

Awesome source of info! So I went ahead and followed the instructions, but I'm stuck at the setupsa.exe part.

When I go to execute it, I get an error - but it proceeds through it:

"No Configuration Manager. Perform configuration manually using SETUPSA.
SAx Sound system is not found on CM
ctrlBase:OPL3-SAx ctrl register write error!
Please change setting, hit any key_"

Then it brings me to the HUUUGE menu. I leave it as is, just because (nothing to really change) and I go to "Ok" at the bottom to save and this error occurs:

"Setting Error
ctrlBase:Board write Failed
[ Press RETURN ]"

Please advise Not sure what to do with this issue....even tried a clean install of the drivers and everything.

Well, its been decades since I configured a system like that. And btw, I was like, 10 at the time, lol. A lot of it was watching my Dad do it.

Anyway, http://www.oldskool.org/guides/oldonnew/sound

This sets an environment variable that describes the settings of the Sound Blaster to DOS programs, including games. Some games read this environment variable to get the settings of the sound card, so if it's missing on your system, you'll have to add it. Here's a breakdown:

A determines the value of the I/O port address. In the above example, it's 220.

I determines the value of the IRQ. In the above example, it's 5.

D determines the value of the DMA channel. In the above example, it's 1.

H determines the value of the 16-bit DMA channel. In the above example, it's 5. Only Sound Blaster 16s and higher use this.

T determines the type of Sound Blaster it is. In the above example, it's 6. The available types are:

1: Sound Blaster 1.0 (the original Sound Blaster)
2: Sound Blaster 1.5
3: Sound Blaster 2.0
4: Sound Blaster Pro
5: Sound Blaster Pro with OPL 3 FM chips
6: Sound Blaster 16

Try setting up the settings in the menu to be those?? Maybe?

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dragontamer5788 wrote:

Well, its been decades since I configured a system like that. And btw, I was like, 10 at the time, lol. A lot of it was watching my Dad do it.

Anyway, http://www.oldskool.org/guides/oldonnew/sound

This sets an environment variable that describes the settings of the Sound Blaster to DOS programs, including games. Some games read this environment variable to get the settings of the sound card, so if it's missing on your system, you'll have to add it. Here's a breakdown:

A determines the value of the I/O port address. In the above example, it's 220.

I determines the value of the IRQ. In the above example, it's 5.

D determines the value of the DMA channel. In the above example, it's 1.

H determines the value of the 16-bit DMA channel. In the above example, it's 5. Only Sound Blaster 16s and higher use this.

T determines the type of Sound Blaster it is. In the above example, it's 6. The available types are:

1: Sound Blaster 1.0 (the original Sound Blaster)
2: Sound Blaster 1.5
3: Sound Blaster 2.0
4: Sound Blaster Pro
5: Sound Blaster Pro with OPL 3 FM chips
6: Sound Blaster 16

Try setting up the settings in the menu to be those?? Maybe?

https://ibb.co/ktdunJ

https://ibb.co/m0SLSJ

https://ibb.co/jkV77J

These are the errors I get when using those settings, and even other ones (trying different channels, etc). It still says it can't find my card.

It sounds like you've found some good answers, so I'm going to ask a question out of pure curiosity:

"I've gotten this game to play perfectly on DosBox on my Windows 10 laptop, but that's not the nostalgia purpose I'm going for."

So . . . what's the problem? I'm just a little bit confused. Are you trying to get the game to work in Windows just so you can say that you did?

Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy finding unnecessary solutions just for the experience. So is that it? You solved the problem using DosBox, but you want the game to run in Windows just so you can say you succeeded?

mikewinddale wrote:

So . . . what's the problem? I'm just a little bit confused. Are you trying to get the game to work in Windows just so you can say that you did?

Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy finding unnecessary solutions just for the experience. So is that it? You solved the problem using DosBox, but you want the game to run in Windows just so you can say you succeeded?

There is no problem. I'm stating that I can emulate it properly via DosBox on a current gen PC. The problem is I want it to run flawlessly on my Toshiba Satellite 2505 CDS. I can play anything on my laptop but I'd rather play original games on original hardware. I'm a purist with these things, plain and simple.

Hmm, have you tried running it in DOS mode?

I remember that fixing a lot of issues back then.

+1 on trying the game using DOS (not DOSBox, but actual DOS), just to rule out any possible Windows issues.

Myself I think maybe the Yamaha sound card could be the problem. It seems like you've found the right set of drivers, but it's trying to save configuration onto a ROM area that might no longer be working on your card. Since you mentioned playing on period-correct hardware was a goal, now might be good time as any to pick up a Sound Blaster 16 off ebay. It is after all the reference by which game audio of the era was experienced.

dragontamer5788 wrote:

Hmm, have you tried running it in DOS mode?

I remember that fixing a lot of issues back then.

The game functions (kind of) but there's no mouse support while in dos mode, and still no sound

jihadjoe wrote:

+1 on trying the game using DOS (not DOSBox, but actual DOS), just to rule out any possible Windows issues.

Myself I think maybe the Yamaha sound card could be the problem. It seems like you've found the right set of drivers, but it's trying to save configuration onto a ROM area that might no longer be working on your card. Since you mentioned playing on period-correct hardware was a goal, now might be good time as any to pick up a Sound Blaster 16 off ebay. It is after all the reference by which game audio of the era was experienced.

See previous statement to Dragon.

I'll see what I can find, would be nice to use the proper native sound hardware that functions properly. I thought that these systems (laptops) had integrated sound cards?

I won a PCMCIA card yesterday - https://www.ebay.com/p/Creative-Sound-B ... 0013.m1986

It's something, and I believe it should work. Thoughts?