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[AlumiuN]

If Japo's doesn't work (which it should), I have one that AFAIK works on everything.

[The_Lemming]

I now have the CD drive working (Thanks for the suggestions!). However, now I have three new problems.

1. I can't seem to locate a generic sound card driver.

2. Even after changing the drivers' lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to try to load them into the upper memory area, they STILL load in conventional memory, leaving me with too little to run some games (like Lemmings 2 and 3D.

3. When I attempted to run The Incredible Machine, the screen went black and nothing more happened. Is this perhaps a video driver issue?

[Japo]

1.- Are you sure you need drivers? Isn't it enough to set the "BLASTER" (or equivalent) environment variable?

Which card is it?

2.- Honestly I never finished figuring that out, perhaps someone else will be able to help you. You can always try running memmaker. Or researching in Google, but it's true that saving conventional memory--when possible--isn't so easy as using devicehigh and loadhigh. You need to understand what memory areas are available and what fits there, but don't ask me.

Since the CD-ROM drivers take a lot of memory, back then I used multiple startup configurations, and loaded the CD-ROM drivers only when I needed them. You can create a startup menu with special syntax in config.sys and autoexec.bat.

3.- I remember things like that happening with several games for no particular reason, because PCs were never 100 per cent compatible, and DOS left apps to their own devices when interfacing with hardware--there are no video drivers in DOS usually, not in the OS, each game speaks to your particular video hardware directly; and if they don't happen to understand each other in the least you're screwed.

2 + 3 = why I love DOSBox

[The_Lemming]

The card is a Creative Labs CT4810. Yes, I need drivers, because none of my programs are able to find a sound card.

And as for DOSBox, I'm tired of it. I want PURE DOS!!!!!!!!

[Japo]

I do have drivers to emulate a Sound Blaster 16 from my old Sound Blaster PCI 128. Dunno if they would serve you. (I remember that they needed the emm386.exe from DOS 7.x, they wouldn't load with the one from 6.x.) Anyway have you tried looking for drivers for that card in creative.com or Google?

[The_Lemming]

Never mind, my dad and I went through our garage one more time, and found:

-One old boy scout hat

-One boy scout merit badge sash

-One SOUND BLASTER 16 AND DRIVER FLOPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES!

Now I'm down to two problems:

1. The Incredible Machine. When I type TIM to start the game, the screen goes black, and nothing more happens, forcing me to hit RESET.

2. Lemmings 3D. When I click Play to show the level selection screen, the crosshair cursor appears on a black screen, and I am unable to do anything, and Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn't work either.

P.S. Thanks for all the help with my other problems, everybody!

[tikbalang]

sbpci dos drivers here:

http://tinyurl.com/bk4nua

(mediafire link)

[Maxor127]

Floppy disks were incredibly frustrating which is kind of how I became obsessed with abandonware and trying to preserve old games before they were lost forever. I still scour the internet searching for disk images of some old games that apparently no one but be really cares about. I wish I'd kept better care of my old disks, and my dad used to work in a school computer lab, so I wish I'd tried to get some of the old software and computers he had since the schools probably just throw that stuff away when they replace it.

But even if you take excellent care of floppy disks, they could still go bad. It's one of the reasons I strongly favor abandonware.