Old-fashioned hardware

[beaujob]

I have an old 486DX 33MHz PC with 16MB of RAM and a SB16 which for some reason cannot support high DMA without windows running.  If anyone has knowledge of old hardware, I would appreciate any thoughts as how to rectify this problem.  I would like to be able to support 16 bit digitized sound so I can run M.E.S.S.

[mendel]

You have me confused here: 16-bit sound usually means 16-bit samples, and you can transfer those to the soundcard using 8-bit DMA if your application supports it.
I suggest setting your 16-bit DMA channel to the same value as for the 8-bit DMA; I assume you have checked that your 16-bit DMA setting is correctly reflected in the BLASTER environment variable?
I never had any problems with my SB16, but then I don't know what M.E.S.S. is, either.
Hope this helps.
Michael

[baggio]

I think you are correct mendel. Although it has been a long time since I used an SB16, I seem to remember that the DMA channels were set to 1 an 5 by default. It was however possible to set the high DMA to the same channel as the low DMA, in this case 1 if your computer wouldn't support the SB16 on 5.

It might just be a problem with what you are loading. I seem to remember that you could only use the DMA channels if EMM386 or some other memory manager was running.

[mendel]

From Soundblaster - The Official Book (2nd Edition):
p106: Since the SB16 has excellent installation manuals, you'll want to read them thoroughly before attempting to install your SB16.
dito: Problems with 16-bit Audio Playback
[....] Some computers may have problems with these 16-bit DMA transfers, but thankfully the SB16 allows the use of an 8-bit DMA channel as a substitute (albeit at the cost of speed and processor cycles).
This book has all the installation info, if you need further details, email me.

[beaujob]

Hmmm, instresting...  Thanks all.