This DOS problem that quite a few are having is actually cause by the
motherboard. The problem is that the Motherboard manufacturers are ignoring
a feature that the Live requires when designing their boards. This feature
is called NMI or 'non-maskable interrupts'. You will find that this problem
is common on most cheaper motherboards such as: -

Nearly all PCChips motherboards (BXCEL; TXpro; VXpro; etc)
Cheaper ASUS boards

These are to name a few. Replacing your motherboard will resolve the
problem.

This is what he found in the Asus newsgroup: -
"Due to some feedback from Creative Technologies (Creative Labs) I have
concluded the Asus P5A-B Mainboard is not capable of running the Sound
Blaster Live!, the Sound Blaster Live! Value, the Sound Blaster PCI 128 or
ANY PCI Soundcard under MS-DOS. This is the result of a NMI (non-maskable
interupt) that doesn't give direct IRQ access to the Sound Blaster Emulator,
hence no sound in DOS, or any non-32-bit O/S. It is also all over the
newsgroups that this mainboard and the P5A do not work well with ANY
Creative PCI or AGP Video Card for the same and/or other related reasons. Do
you have something against Creative Labs, or is their something I can do to
get this soundcard to produce sound in DOS. It is VERY important I get this
to work."

Here is an old SB Live newsgroup post: -
Symptoms are the emulator installing to W95, but showing "not present/not
working properly" in device manager. SBEINIT.com loads and initialises ok at
boot, but if SBGO is used (Dos boot) the really helpful message "Is SB
Emulation enabled ???" is all you get. This is because the motherboard does
not support NMI.

Creative says-----
Legacy emulation under DOS SB Live! cards will not work on systems that: -
a) do not route the PCI SERR# signal to the processor NMI.
b) have  a capacitor between SERR# and ground or between NMI and ground that
is too large.
Some background is required here. The Creative/Ensoniq PCI cards use the PCI
SERR# signal to indicate that someone has accessed a Legacy device register
(i.e., Sound Blaster, MPU-401, ). This SERR# signal must generate a
processor NMI before the I/O instruction completes so that the Legacy
emulation software can perform proper emulation of the trapped I/O event
before the processor executes the subsequent instructions.
In the event that the SERR# signal is not connected to the NMI input, the
software is never notified and cannot perform any Legacy device emulation.
In the event that there is a capacitor on the line that is too large, the
NMI does not propagate to the processor in time to emulate the I/O before
the next processor instruction(s) execute(s). If the I/O event is emulated
too late, it may have an adverse effect on the system as it may change the
state of processor register al at a time when the processor is not expecting
it.

Well there you go. The motherboard is the cause of no DOS Emulation on some
motherboards.

I am sorry if this has been posted before. I must of missed it.

Bye,
Lee York
nuy...@mweb.co.za
ICQ#2008641

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