Asus P3B-F needs IRQ/DMA Resources refreshed at every power-on for DOS-in-Win98 applications/games

[T-Squared]

I've run into a weird problem with Asus boards... It seems that to make Doom, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Epic Pinball, and a host of other games to run with Sound Blaster 16 sound and music properly, the IRQ and DMA resources need to be refreshed in Windows 98 (i.e. changing "Basic Configuration ####"), as the resource allocator doesn't hold onto the resources after a restart, causing a crash or kick back to Windows, despite what the resources in Device Manager say.

(Doom/II crashes back to Windows or freezes the whole system at T_SystemTimer during its startup, Cosmo doesn't play its music properly, and Epic Pinball usually gives me a crash back to Windows when starting a Pinball Table, i.e. switching to one of the table executables)

I've had problems with Intel 440BX systems before, where it seems that Windows 98 games only work in certain cases, where a too-long, but still correct SET BLASTER string, is used in the resource allocation (Some just need Address, IRQ, and DMA, rather than those three values plus MPU Address and Card Type), but that's a different problem that I figured out.

My basic specs are:

1Ghz Pentium III Slot 1
768MB RAM
Windows 98SE (with some Windows updates from the auto-patcher)
Sound Blaster 16 CT1740

 

[njroadfan]

Set the "Plug-and-Play OS" option in the BIOS to "No". Let the BIOS allocate the resources, not notoriously buggy Windows 98. You can reserve the jumpered SB16's IRQs in the BIOS so they aren't auto allocated to other devices.