retrofan011

I use a regular Western Digital hdd 250Gb, connected to the SATA interface. Of course, during the Win98 installation, I applied the R.Loew SATA patch. CPU is Core2Duo 2.13Ghz, more than enough for all retro needs. Currently I use a multi boot system with Win7, WinXP and Win98SE/DOS, on the same hard drive. So far everything is working very well, the last uninstalled driver was the one for the integrated HD audio, but now that is also resolved.

I agree. Since there really aren't any issues with 2Gb for now, I'll start with those settings. Thank you for your effort, your contribution to this thread is enormous. I will continue to use this win98 setup and if theres any unusual behavior, I will report here.

Ok, I tested this fixed 1GB version and now it works just fine, Device Manager reports 1006Mb of Ram. So, both versions are very stable, the only question is which one to use. btw, I did another test with the demanding game Half Life and the sound works flawlessly. I'm still impressed that the 16-bit win 3.1 driver solved the problem, which I couldn't do until now...

I tried the example for 2Gb of Ram and first let me say, that your calculations are absolutely correct, windows reports 2030Mb of Ram in Device Manager. The system still works stable, I haven't noticed any issue so far. However, an interesting side effect occurred. As soon as I entered the MaxPhysPage=7F000 entry in the 386Enh section, msconfig automatically set the Ram memory limit to its max 999Mb. Still, the system reports that I have 2030Mb, as expected. If I uncheck the limit memory option in the msconfig/advanced section, the MaxPhysPage=7F000 entry from the 386Enh section automatically disappears and then Device Manager report 2046Mb of Ram. It seems to me, that this happens because of the limit that Windows 98 has for Ram memory by default, which was bypassed by the R. Loew patch. Can I ignore this, as the system is working just fine ? Btw, I also tried the example for 1Gb, but then I have no sound at all.

@deomsh No, I'm actually using Win98SE, which sees all 2GB of Ram. Only in DOS, I limited the RAM to 64Mb, for better compatibility with older games, with the R.Loew patch. Maybe there was a misunderstanding, so just to be sure, do I need the BUSMASTER section in HDAcfg for Win98 or is it only necessary for ME ? As I said, everything works allready without BUSMASTER entries, but if its a good prevention for some potential problem, can I use these examples you gave on Win 98 too ?

OK, I tested stability with Opera and after more than 60 tabs open it still had free memory and didn't crash. However, to prevent some future problems, it might be a good idea to insert BUSMASTER entries into the HDAcfg file. My computer has 2GB of RAM, can you tell me what are the optimal values in that case? Well, I had a strange problem with windows shutdown, because it didnt complete the process, it remained stuck on the "windows shutdown..." screen and didnt actually turn off the computer, although after the reset, scandisk did not appear. After I increased MaxFileCache value, problem is gone. I havent experimented with MinTimeSlice settings, what is its purpose and what should I need to change? Thanks for the explanation. I was just wondering, if there was any reason to use that deafult HDAICOUT.HDA, because your universal version serves me just fine and I wouldn't change it unnecessarily. I also tried without HDAICOUT.HDA, but then I have no sound at all, so its a must in my case.

Hello everyone, A few days ago I came across this thread and first of all I want to thank @deomsh and the author of this driver for finally solving the sound issue on my retro Core2Duo machine from 2007, with Intel 945G + ICH7 chipset and Realtek ALC882 HDA integrated card. I followed instructions and the installation was very quick and easy, the sound worked immediately after I copied the HDAICOUT.HDA to the Windows folder and perform reset. The sound works great, without interference, tried system sound, winamp, gom player (mp3, avi) and finally game Warcraft II Battle.net edition, where the sound worked perfectly both in the game and with cd audio. Here are some of my experiences and a couple of doubts. First I have to say, that my setup works without HDATSR.exe, so I removed it from the windows folder, as well as the autoexec.bat entry. Of course in HDAcfg.ini it says "TSR not loaded", but the sound works perfectly, even though I don't have BUSMASTER entries in the cfg file. Somewhere in the thread it says that without TSR loaded we lose some functionality, but I haven't noticed any problems. During testing, I discovered that MinFileCache=1024 and MaxFileCache=8192 in thesystem.ini [vcache] section suit me best in terms of stability. I also changed wait1 and wait2 value in HDAcfg.ini, from $100 to $10 and now the windows desktop appears almost without any boot delay. As for the VolumeWidget entry, I left the default $14, although I also tried $02, $0C and $10, but I didn't notice any difference. Finally, one more question. I was using the latest HDADRV9L version of the driver which has its HDAICOUT.HDA file which is quite different and shorter than the @deomsh version I'm currently using. Both work, but it's not clear to me how they really differ. Generally, driver works surprisingly good and I want to thank again @deomsh and everyone who helped with the whole endeavor. My default HDAcfg.ini is attached (without my personal changes), it might be useful to someone. HDAcfg.ini