Awe32 and Sierra games

[MusicallyInspired]

They don't seem to like it (CT3900). I think it's due to the fact that my card's digital address is on 240 instead of 220. Is there anyway to change that on the card? I couldn't find any jumper settings. Is there a way to change the port the game looks for like the Sierra MIDI port changer on this site? Other games where you can choose the sound card settings manually work fine.

Most games (older ones) just freeze up when the game's loading...well not totally because the mouse can still move. But it just hangs there. newer games (SCI1.1 and up) kick me to DOS and give this message:

We're sorry, you have encountered an internal game error.
Please restart your game and restore a saved game.
If you have continuing problems, please report the following
information to Sierra Customer Service:

Error Number: 29
..\audio.cpp:1160:0:0

Any games set to use just MIDI and no digital sound work fine.

[Tom]

Yes, there's a jumper to change the AWE's address.  Shoot...I forgot to send you the manual, but you should be able to get it online.  There's MIDI port settings, I/O address settings, and I believe a setting for a CD-ROM drive, all accessible with jumpers.

[MusicallyInspired]

Nice, thanks! I'll find that manual, no biggie.

[Alistair]

To solve this problem, I had to do two things:

1. Use the patched MT-32 drivers
2. Disable MPU-401 emulation in the AWE32's Control Panel in Windows

No IRQ changes necessary (for me, anyway).

- Alistair

[MusicallyInspired]

It wasn't the IRQ that was the problem. It was the Address. Anyway, I changed the jumper settings to 220 instead of 240 and Sierra games seem ok with that. But I have another problem. Now the Adlib sounds don't work. I think I might have to disable the MPU-401 emulation because I think it's freaking out with my Music Quest card which is what I use for external MIDI. Never thought about disabling that. Thanks. Might be causing tons of problems.

And I'm not running in Windows on this computer and when I am everything works fine. So changing settings in the Awe control panel wouldn't help anything as I'm running in real DOS mode.

[MusicallyInspired]

Disabling MPU seems to have solved my problems. It was always a pain getting my Music Quest card and my Zoltrix card to work together because they'd fight over MPU rights. Luckily the Awe32 has the option to disable it. Handy!

[Cloudschatze]

They don't seem to like it (CT3900). I think it's due to the fact that my card's digital address is on 240 instead of 220. Is there anyway to change that on the card? I couldn't find any jumper settings. Is there a way to change the port the game looks for like the Sierra MIDI port changer on this site?

Sounds like you've resolved the issue, but for future reference, the address can be specified in the resource.cfg file.

For example:

soundDRV = sndblast.drv 240
or
audioDRV = audblast.drv 240

I'm not sure if this applies to SCI0, but it ought to work with everything SCI1+. Sadly, the MIDI port cannot be specified in the same manner.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah right I forgot about that! The card seems to work much better on 220 though anyway, seeing as when it was on 240 it was trying to use IRQ 9/2 and 10, which was the IRQ my Music Quest was on. So that was resolved as well. Everything runs pretty flawlessly now except for the Awe32 drivers Sierra made with Creative for their older games. They don't seem to work at all. The Aweutil.exe seems to give an error when I run it with the command line "/EM:GM" which the Sierra drivers require. I'm guessing it's because I disabled MPU-401 emulation maybe? It's no biggie, though, as I was only curious as to how they'd sound through the Awe32. Every other game that supports it natively works beautifully well. I love this card!

Sadly, the MIDI port cannot be specified in the same manner.

It can with the MIDI port changer utility on QS's download page, can't it?

[Cloudschatze]

Everything runs pretty flawlessly now except for the Awe32 drivers Sierra made with Creative for their older games. They don't seem to work at all. The Aweutil.exe seems to give an error when I run it with the command line "/EM:GM" which the Sierra drivers require.

Hmm. This wouldn't be the "dreaded NMI error," perchance?

Sadly, the MIDI port cannot be specified in the same manner.

It can with the MIDI port changer utility on QS's download page, can't it?

Sure, the MIDI port changer works well. I only meant that you can't specify something like "soundDRV = genmidi.drv 320" or somesuch in the resource.cfg.

[MusicallyInspired]

Nope, it's "ERRO14: Feedback Path error".

[Alistair]

Yeah, I never resolved that error. I sure tried, but way too much time wasted when I doubt they actually tried to support the AWE32 anyway (and if you've ever heard SQ6's 'special' AWE32 driver, you'd know what I was talking about).

- Alistair

[Tom]

There's still a ton of Sierra MIDI files arranged for the SoundBlaster AWE32 posted on this site.  I converted those for AWE32 support just before getting the SC-55.

[Ari]

Sadly, the MIDI port cannot be specified in the same manner.

It can with the MIDI port changer utility on QS's download page, can't it?

For most games, but not all. I think it doesn't work on Dynamix games (Betrayal at Krondor is one example I know of).