Heres how to get your aureal vortex 8830 (vortex 2) pci sound card to work in dos 6.22. this may work for other versions of dos, but i’ve only tested this solution with 6.22:
Step 1. you need a driver, so go here …
http://www.inetbridge.net/forum/driver-aureal-sound-driver-vortex-2-8830-vt1160.html
(the download link is at the bottom of the page)
Step 2. Unzip what you’ve downloaded and check out the contents. The only file you will need is called “au30dos.com”. write that file to floppy disk.
Step 3. Startup dos and copy the au30dos.com from your floppy drive to the c:\ drive that dos is on. like such …
copy a:\au30dos.com c:\
Step 4: For some strange reason this file will make dos crash if you try to auto-run it with autoexec.bat and config.sys, so you’ll have to do it manually. go to your c:\ drive and type “au30dos.com” like such …
C:\au30dos.com
Step 5. You’ll see it launch and it will give you some error messages, but it will run after that. the error messages are because its not running in a windows environment, but that’s okay. the last line will tell you its running information, such as address, interrupt, dma, and joystick port address. mine tells me this …
blah blah:220-22Fh interrupt:5 DMA:1 joystick:201h
Step 6. At this point, the card is running in soundblaster compatibility mode. so now you want to set dos up to communicate with this “soundblaster” by using the SET BLASTER: command. just plug in the values that your driver just told you like such …
SET BLASTER:220-22FH I5 D1
Step 7. Now install your game. it seems that things work the best when you set up your soundcard as a “soundblaster pro” in the game installation, but it should work with any soundblaster configuration (especially if youu dont have the option of a soundblaster pro).
Yes, you will have to do this every time you start dos, but it works … very well.
godspeed on the command line …
this has been tested with the pc games “phantasmagoria” and “harvester”.
