Stick with NForce2 mobo or go back to old Pentium3 mobo to run WC games?

[Unregistered]

I posted before earlier this motnh with problems using most Wing Commander games on my NForce2 Epox board and got no resolution. I got the original Wing Commander to work on it,but now i am abck to my old problem. The problems are now:1.I'm not sure how to mount a cd game like WC3-Prophecy that need the discs in the cd drive as well as the fiels on the ahrd drive.2, This is my biggest issue. The games will not see any audio on my system at all whther it's the onboard sound or a seperate SoundBlaster card. WC1 has sound under DosBox no problem, When ti comes to say trying to use WinMe or even 98 on this thing like i sue to the games will nto detect sound and if i force them to sue what setting the Legacy drivers sue in the SBPCI128 settings they all will freeze on install. On this i want to knwo should i jsut go back and build an old Pentium 3 system that isn't Nvidia chipset oriented? I had Soyo Dragosn in the past and they worked fine using WinMe/98 and WC3-WCP with no issues. Those were VIA chipsets though. I'm really leary of the old NForce2 board now sine i think it's the whoel chipset that messing the games up and not working as they use to on a different chipset mobo. I say Pentium 3 sicne it's a VIA and intel based board and i never had a problem on my old P3 either. Any ideas useful suggestiosn would really help me a lot. Thanks.

 

[ChrisReid]

Your paragraph there is pretty sloppy. You'll get a lot more help from people if they don't have to spend most of their time deciphering your situation instead of thinking up solutions. I don't understand what you're having trouble doing with Wing Commander 3-Prophecy. What are you trying to mount? What operating systems, environments or emulations are you using to do this? It sounds like you just need to spend more time adjusting the configuration of your current setup before building a whole separate computer that could have its own configuration problems.

 

[Unregistered]

Hi again. You tried helping me on my Epox NForce2 board earlier in the month. Sorry my typing and thinkign isn't so great. I am uing Windows 2000. i also have windows Me on another drive in the system. if you remember neither OS or no matter what i tried worked for audio first off. My econf problem is mounting the cd's. You know how you copy the files over to the hard drive liek the object file,music files and so on? Well when i try to run WC-WCP they won't load correctly sicne I'm not not doing somethign right. I have RealTex 6 channel onboard audio and also a SoundBlaster PCI128 card. Neither of which are seen by any of the Wing Commander games and causes a lockup of the isntall process if i use the SBPCI128 Legacy settings. I've doen everything i can think of. i uninstalled my RealTek drivers and disabled the sound chip. No go. i tried gettign the last drivers for the SVPCI card, still no good. i palyed withe IRQ and so forth still nothign happened. I disabled my hardware monitoring. I am uding DosBox 6 as my emulator and that works ad far as Wing Comamnder 1 goes and with sound. So I can't figure out the audio problems using a card that ahs DOS drivers and also mounting the games IF I can get them to work and isntall on either OS.

 

[ChrisReid]

Hi again. You tried helping me on my Epox NForce2 board earlier in the month. Sorry my typing and thinkign isn't so great. I am uing Windows 2000. i also have windows Me on another drive in the system. if you remember neither OS or no matter what i tried worked for audio first off.

Everything older than this week is a distant memory. Every new tech support threads needs a summary of your hardware, software, situation and what you've done up until now to alleviate your problem. Also, if you're not using a registered account, it makes it very difficult to go back and research your previous posts if that becomes necessary.

My econf problem is mounting the cd's. You know how you copy the files over to the hard drive liek the object file,music files and so on?

No, I don't understand what you're doing. Are you just talking about installing the game? Are you trying to copy disc contents to the hard drive to run without the need for CDs? Are you doing this in Windows with Daemon Tools or in DOSBox?

Well when i try to run WC-WCP they won't load correctly sicne I'm not not doing somethign right. I have RealTex 6 channel onboard audio and also a SoundBlaster PCI128 card. Neither of which are seen by any of the Wing Commander games and causes a lockup of the isntall process if i use the SBPCI128 Legacy settings.

Are these two separate situations? How does this sound card stuff relate to the copying/loading games problem you are describing?

I've doen everything i can think of. i uninstalled my RealTek drivers and disabled the sound chip. No go. i tried gettign the last drivers for the SVPCI card, still no good. i palyed withe IRQ and so forth still nothign happened. I disabled my hardware monitoring. I am uding DosBox 6 as my emulator and that works ad far as Wing Comamnder 1 goes and with sound. So I can't figure out the audio problems using a card that ahs DOS drivers and also mounting the games IF I can get them to work and isntall on either OS.

If you're using DOSBox, then there is absolutely no sound card configuration or driver installation you should be doing. It sounds like you're bouncing around between different problems with different games, so I'm still not clear what's going on.

 

[Unregistered]

Ok. I'm running Windows 200 and WindowsMe. Seperate drives on the same computer.
Epox NForce2 board
512 OCZ DDR 400 ram dual channel
100GB maztor SATA hard drive
SeaGate17GB IDE hard drive
Lite-on 16x DVD drive
Lite-On DL DVD writer
RealTek onboard 6channel audio(which does not support DOS absed games)
SoundNlaster PCI128(which does support DOS based games,but the card is an end of line model.)
My main problem is there is a DOS driver for the SBPCI card. However isntalling Wing Commander games they don't detect the card at all. Windows sees the card no problem in my device manager. The settings are 220,1,5,7 and I ahve fooled withe IRQ's and still can't get anythign on sound when installing under WindowsMe directly. If i force the games to use the dos settings they freeze up oninstallation. Period. No errors no nothing.I know the onboard audio has no DOS support. I ahve done everything from the IRQ's to the drivers,to DosBox. DosBox works for WC1. WC3 is choppy,but gets sound under DosBox. I am tryign to run the games just in ME no emulators. This problem is new with this partiular system sicne the games use to work on my old Soyo board based computers which I no longer have.Does that clarify it better now? My other problems on dosBox and anything else i will deal with elsewhere.

 

[ChrisReid]

Ok. I'm running Windows 200 and WindowsMe. Seperate drives on the same computer.
Epox NForce2 board
512 OCZ DDR 400 ram dual channel
100GB maztor SATA hard drive
SeaGate17GB IDE hard drive
Lite-on 16x DVD drive
Lite-On DL DVD writer
RealTek onboard 6channel audio(which does not support DOS absed games)
SoundNlaster PCI128(which does support DOS based games,but the card is an end of line model.)
My main problem is there is a DOS driver for the SBPCI card. However isntalling Wing Commander games they don't detect the card at all. Windows sees the card no problem in my device manager. The settings are 220,1,5,7

Does that mean DMA High 5 and IRQ 7? Things like the brand of RAM don't impact it either way, but how fast is your processor?

and I ahve fooled withe IRQ's and still can't get anythign on sound when installing under WindowsMe directly. If i force the games to use the dos settings they freeze up oninstallation. Period. No errors no nothing.

Unfortunately, those are the two hardest operating systems for trying to do what you want to do. WindowsME is just 98 with the DOS compatibility mode ripped out.

I know the onboard audio has no DOS support. I ahve done everything from the IRQ's to the drivers,to DosBox. DosBox works for WC1. WC3 is choppy,but gets sound under DosBox. I am tryign to run the games just in ME no emulators. This problem is new with this partiular system sicne the games use to work on my old Soyo board based computers which I no longer have.Does that clarify it better now?

So, everything about WC1, DOSBox and Windows 2000 is a separate issue? All you're trying to do is run WC3 DOS in WindowsME?

Read this http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/software/windows/winme/startup/page1.html
WC3 probably falls into the category of games that require real-mode sound card drivers. Even if your Soundblaster qualifies, it's possible your onboard sound is interrupting that. You should go into the device manager and make sure the Realtek device is disabled and the SB128 is active. I'm not sure that WindowsME will actually properly allow you to utilize the DOS drivers however. It may be loading the card with Windows drivers, which sounds like it might be the problem.

 

[Unregistered]

My cpu speed is 2.16Ghz. i have disabled the RealTek sound in my bios so it won't load anything in Windows,but that's what I'm talking about. I'd say it's been about 2 years now since I've played the WC3-WCP games. My old Athlon XP's were VIA chipset based systems and i still sued WinMe and ahd no issues installing the games. So what i'm trying to figure out is why now i am ahving problems? The things that ahve changed are the chipsets on the motherboards and the onboard sound;which is or can be disabled. See where I'm coming from now? Things sue to work fine and dandy. I go to MAcs for a year or 2 and end up coming back to Windows with my same operating systems only different motherboards and suddenly games that worked under WinMe don't work anymore. Thanks for the link i read it. i think as you said i do need a boot floppy. I should try one more tiem to reinstall 98 and see if i can get it to work fully on this system. i probably need 98SE,which unfortunately i ahve a cd,but it's damaged so I use the old 98 that can't seem to ahndle soem of he drivers for this board.

 

[Unregistered]

Ok the problem is the board itself. I tried reisntalling Windows 98 and the Epox drivers and the old 98 do not seeem to work together at all. The company doesn't seem to really support any operating systems other than ME.2000and XP. although all the documentation says it supports 98 it truly doesn't. So i need to jsut get rid of the board and go with my idea of tryign out some Pentium 3's and that doesn't work jsut give up on this whole Wing Commander idea.

 

[ChrisReid]

I don't remember saying anything about a boot disk. If the adjustments you've made so far don't help, booting to them on a disk probably won't change things too much.

I'm surprised the company supports Windows Me at all. I would again blame the 98 problems with configuration errors more than real incompatibility. With a 2 GHz computer, you should try the dynamic core option in DOSBox 0.65 though.

 

[Unregistered]

I don't remember saying anything about a boot disk. If the adjustments you've made so far don't help, booting to them on a disk probably won't change things too much.

I'm surprised the company supports Windows Me at all. I would again blame the 98 problems with configuration errors more than real incompatibility. With a 2 GHz computer, you should try the dynamic core option in DOSBox 0.65 though.

Accordign to Epox the board should support ALL Windows versions. I's got to be a board issue. Theier website has no info on that board at all,yet they amke it still! The manual is no help. i ahven't changed anythign in my BIOS that should affect installing Windows 98. WinMe isntalls fine,200 installs fine too. It's only an AthlonXP board. If i can find a VIA based AthlonXP board and get everythign isntalled with no issues then i know for sure it's a hardware problem. I'll have to work on that and let you know how it all goes. Oh you sent my the link and the link says that i should make a boot disk for Me to run the games and stuff under.

 

[ChrisReid]

Oh yeah. Boot disks are helpful when you drastically different configurations you need to apply, but you have to be able to achieve the desired result first. If you're not getting WC3 to run, configuring everything off a boot disk probably won't directly help that.

I haven't heard too many good things about the nforce boards, and I've personally had a bunch of trouble with VIA ones, so my next system won't have either.

 

[Unregistered]

Ah ok. see this is my first NForce board. I've heard the NForce 4's are good and I was originally going to spend soem cash on one,but I thought no the Windows Oses I need to run any Wing Commander games on doesn't support the 4 versions and I wasn't too sure about SIs boards at all. I've alawys had good luck on VIA based boards in the past though. Sadly everywhere I've looked so far today online has rated Epox as the best boards. Go figure. Soyo no longer makes motherboards and those were what i had the best use of the last time.