• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

autoexec.bat and config.sys not running

T

TNH

New Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2020
Messages
4
I'm trying to get Impulse Tracker running on my 486 PC running IBM DOS 5.0, which requires EMS to run. I haven't done a whole lot with this computer yet, so this is my first time modifying its config.sys. That's when I noticed that there wasn't one in the DOS directory, only "config.411". So I made a seperate config.sys file containing the following:

DEVICE=<path>\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=<path>\EMM386.EXE RAM H=255

EMS is still not working, when I run EMM386 I get "EMM386 driver not installed". At this point, out of curiosity, I looked at the autoexec.bat file, which contains the following:

@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH A:\;A\DOS50;
A:\DOSKEY
REM ------- Turn off the NUMLOCK
rem A:\switch NLOFF

I changed the prompt out of curiosity but when I rebooted nothing changed, it was still displaying PROMPT $p$g. So it looks like it's just ignoring whatever is in autoexec and config but I don't know why.

Any ideas?
 
Where is the AUTOEXEC placed? The one you show looks to the A: drive which does not fit with most hard drive installs. If you have an oddball system with a Zip drive or similar as the A drive, please inform.

For the sake of testing, insert an ECHO command in the AUTOEXEC.BAT. Something like ECHO AUTOEXEC would confirm if the AUTOEXEC edited is the one being run. I could see this problem happening if the system has a complicated set of startup options changing which OS and support files are being called.
 
My only thought on these is autoexec.bat and config.sys are not where they need to be. As the above post also seems to think.
 
TNH said:
I'm trying to get Impulse Tracker running on my 486 PC running IBM DOS 5.0, which requires EMS to run. I haven't done a whole lot with this computer yet, so this is my first time modifying its config.sys. That's when I noticed that there wasn't one in the DOS directory, only "config.411". So I made a seperate config.sys file containing the following:

DEVICE=<path>\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=<path>\EMM386.EXE RAM H=255
Click to expand...
Which drive are you booting from, A: or C: (C:=hard drive if you have one installed)?
If you boot from C:, it does not know where to get the config.sys and autoexec.bat, so DOS just drops to a default prompt.

 
eswan said:
Autoexec.bat and config.sys go in the root directory of the boot drive.
Click to expand...
Yup, this was the problem. For some reason there was a second autoexec in c:\dos as well as root. So now I have EMM386 working with 4MB ram allocated to it, but Impulse Tracker still isn't detecting my sound card (Sound Blaster AWE32). I can load the driver manually and I have enough RAM to do it, but I'm still not getting any sound and it won't start the module either. My sound card is working, I've gotten it to work on other programs, so I'm not sure what's going on here.
 
I think by default Impulse Tracker will use the SB16 driver if you have an AWE32 due to limitations with hardware mixing on the 32. You can force it to use the AWE32 driver with /S6.

Make sure your BLASTER environment variable is set correctly, or you are specifying the correct address/IRQ/DMA on the command line when launching IT. For the AWE32, the address should be the EMU8000 (usually 620) not the DSP (usually 220).
 
I figured it out, I guess I just needed to re-install the sound blaster driver, but it's working now. Thanks for the help everyone!
 
I have seen strangeness with the BLASTER environment variable before, on freedos.

It needs to be one of the first ENVs in the ENV block... if you have too many ENVs, some programs including games do ignore everything past a certain point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top