Oh, quite a lot of replies in that short time! Did not expect to get
that much attention...
First of all I have become a bit more careful in trying out things because
DOS7 crashed when changeing the sound settings with the Install.exe once
more.
Nonetheless I have started playing the game (more on that later).
I need more information about a few things before trying out further
sound settings.
I read somewhere else, that the install.exe can sometimes screw up the configuration files of MoM - by failing to properly overwrite them when changeing settings. I think this is what may have happened when DOS7 crashed after trying to change those setting again.
So I decided to delete the MoM folder, clean up that partition (by running Norton Speeddisk to overwrite the empty space) and reinstall. But before reinstalling the game I realized I do have enough space in my DOS7-Partition to install the game there. Now I have to say I mostly do not like installing games directly in my OS-Partitions. I usually prefer installing them in separate data partitions - but sometimes games do not like that.
So figuring that installing in Drive F might cause some problems with the game being so finicky about hardware settings, I decided to install it directly in the DOS7 partition. That partition is 300 MB large and I had only used 80 MB prior to installing MoM - so it would not hurt much to put it there - spacewise.
I think that putting the game in an extended partition may actually have used up a tiny bit of conventional memory too - usually not a problem but with MoM, where every byte seems to count, it might make a difference.
What I did this time was to install without sound right from the start - just to see whether the game would run without issues that way. It does. The feeling when running the game without sound directly from the DOS7 partition is clean. No error messages. And it runs fluently. I will make an Image of that partition with the game running like it is now (just for safety - in case I screw up anything later).
Now what I need to know is where the game puts the info about the sound setup after running the Install.exe and doing adustments. I might want to
make backups of those files and then be able to make changes by shuffling the files instead of going to the install.exe every time.
What I have seen are the two following files: config.mom and install.dat.
Does anyone know whether these two files contain the whole settings? So for instance if I back them up with my settings without sound if anything goes wrong with new settings I could replace them with the backed up versions. Would that get me back to a clean situation? Or are there any more files to be considered?
The next thing that I suspected is that having the Creative DOS-Drivers installed might actually conflict with the game sound-settings. I think the game uses it's own sound drivers (not sure though). So having sound settings in the Autoexec.bat might actually cause problems. I now put "REM" in front of those two lines with the Soundsettings in the autoexec.bat. Also I suspect that these soundsetting might be another reason for why DOS7 crashed when trying to change settings with the install.exe again. I did not get that "insufficient-memory" error any more when setting up the game without sound this time - even though I still only have 579 KB of free conventional memory.
Regarding your hints about moving stuff to higher memory by activating EMS plus RAM plus Highscan and using Loadhigh and Divicehigh - I've already done all of that.
The one thing I did not do is trying to use another Himem.sys file. Presently I do not have DOS 6.22 installed anywhere. I had it installed some time ago but did not like it (I prefer DOS 6.0 and DOS 7.1). I still have a few old hard disks lying around - so if everything else fails I might do an install of DOS 6.22 on one of them but the BIOS of my Pentium II always takes a bit of time of adjusting to a differetn hard disk (giving me wide range errors for a while even if the disk is recognized properly). Lately I did not have them so often as I used to when putting the system together initially. So that is not one of the urgent things I'd try out. But I DO have DOS 6.0 installed in another partition. And I have the Device=Setver.exe (loaded high actually with memmaker) in my config.sys anyways - so trying the Himem.sys from DOS 6.0 might be an option. But I would first like to know what others have to say about that.
Getting a Soundblaster Live is an option in the longrun. I was considering that already but I'm a bit low on the money side presently so I'm postponing buying hardware for now - even if it is used. Yet the info that a Soundblaster Live should have a higher Soundblaster-compatibility is new for me - I did not know that.
As for the 512 MB Memory I have - I also use this PC for the internet, rather
than my faster system - because I like to clean up in DOS-mode after having been on the web. Even though I have XP installed on the other machine, I still prefer Win98 for surfing the web since the DOS-cleanup that I use is much more effective than anything you can do with Firewalls and Antivirus programs on XP. Also Win98 has a much lower footprint when it comes to making images of the OS-partition. My Win98-partition-Images are usually just about 1GB each - that's not so hard to tug away on an external harddisk - and is also fast for recovery. So those 512 MB RAM are actually being well employed - when running Win98-stuff.
There is another question though. In the MoM Install.exe there are three Sounblaster cards to choose from: Soundblaster 16 (original), Soundblaster Pro (early version) and Soundblaster Pro (later version). I don't know which one of those would be closest to the Soundblaster 128 PCI that I have. Also the Installer.exe has the option to set MIDI for Music (then supposedly using base 330 instead of base 220). I'm not sure whether that would be a good idea or not. It would still require choosing one of the Soundblaster cards for the FX-Effects. So MIDI wouldn't help with those.
Also Scatty, could you give me more info on why choosing Interrupt 5 would help when the Creative DOS-Driver installer usually tends to set the Interrupt to 7 for my card. Also you were refferring to the line in the Autoexec.bat. I'm not sure whether the game is using it's own sounddrivers or is making a call on the Creative DOS-Driver. Of course if I need to have to use the Creative DOS driver I would have to enter the same values in the MoM Install.exe as I have in the Autoxec.bat (this is what I did first - using Interrupt 7 and DRQ 1 - but getting the error "Reconfigure hardware Options"). I had the two lines in the autoexec.bat untouched when trying to install with sound enabled. I have remmed them out now. Another thing to consider is whether I would have to change the interrupt settings in the BIOS as well when changeing them in the autoexec.bat. Remember that I'm also running Win98 in a separate partition on that machine. So changeing interrupts would also affect Win98 - and I might end up continuously having to change the interrupt settings when changeing between the OSes....
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