Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing the Sound Card Driver

Sound cards and intstalling their drivers on early computers was generally not an easy task. There were many different hardware configurations and software incompatibilities. Sound cards didn't become common until the late 80's and became more user friendly as time passed. Once the sound cards supported Windows Plug and Play, they became easier to install.

My Gateway 2000 came with an installed Sound Blaster ViBRA 16.

The Sound Blaster ViBRA 16 was released as a cost-reduced, more integrated Sound Blaster 16 that supported Plug and Play for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It lacked separate bass and treble control, an ASP/CSP socket and Wave Blaster connector. Several different revisions of the VIBRA chipset exist.

This one is the earliest model, which featured an external Yamaha YMF262 OPL-3 synthesis chip.

This Yamaha chip was replaced on later ViBRA-equipped sound cards with a cost-reduced replacement termed CQM synthesis, which largely emulated the features of the Yamaha OPL-3 chip. However, its emulation of OPL-3 was far from perfect, causing considerable distortion in FM-generated music and sound effects.

Installing the driver

I was able to find a two disk install for this driver at Vogons Vintage Drivers Library. A compressed folder contains two disk images that require 720K formatted disks.

To make the install disks, I first had to format two disks using the following DOS command:

FORMAT A: /N:9 /T:80

This command will format a 720k disk in a 1.44mb floppy drive. /N:xx specifies the number of sectors per track.  /T:xx specifies the number of tracks.

Once I had the 720k floppy disks at hand, I used WinImage to make the install disks.

Installing the software was simple. I accepted all of the software's recommended settings. In the following two screenshots, the settings can be reviewed:

Included with the install is a diagnostic utility which searches for any conflicts in the install.

The utility also allows for audible testing of both wave and midi sound. Everything sounds great with this install and I have to admit, I'm amazed at how easy this install progressed. I was actually expecting complications due to my memory of headaches when installing sound cards in the early 90's.
 

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing MS-DOS and Drivers

Initially, I'll be installing MS-DOS 6.22 on the largest partition that's allowable. In this case, the MS-DOS file allocation table (FAT) file system can support only 2 GB partitions.

The 2-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. The FAT file system is limited to 65,525 clusters. The size of a cluster must be a power of 2 and less than 65,536 bytes--this results in a maximum cluster size of 32,768 bytes (32K). Multiplying the maximum number of clusters (65,525) by the maximum cluster size (32,768) equals 2 GB. This is commonly known as the FAT16 file system.

My hard drive has a total capacity of 10 GB, but because of the limitations of my computer's BIOS, I'll only be able to utilize 8 GB. This 8GB limit only applies because of a longtime standard BIOS function. In order to access bigger drives, some extensions were added to them (the so-called INT13h-extensions, INT 13h are the functions to access the disk drive via BIOS). Operating systems not aware of these extensions like MS-DOS 6 are still limited to the lower 8 GB even with a new BIOS.

My plan is to use special software to make four primary partitions. Each 2 GB partition will have a different OS.

Installing MS-DOS 6.22

My new hard drive was shipped fresh with 10 GB of unallocated space. Using MS-DOS 6.22 installation disks and by following the prompts, MS-DOS automatically created the maximum 2 GB partition and formatted it. The hard drive is then ready for the system installation.

After a successful installation, DOS SHELL was added along with the other extras supplied on the Supplemental Disk. 

Installing the mouse driver

MS-DOS 6.22 did not come with a mouse driver. Adding one is quite simple, by downloading the Microsoft mouse driver and adding the mouse.com file to the DOS directory. In order to run the driver automatically, we need to add a line to the autoexec.bat file.

I find using the Dos Shell an easier method of moving about DOS. This, of course, is with the aid of a mouse, but at the moment, the driver has not been loaded. To be able to use the mouse, we first have to load the driver. Do this, by going into the DOS directory and entering mouse. Now, the mouse is ready for use in the Dos Shell.

At the Dos Shell GUI, there is a text editor available under MAIN.

Make sure that drive C: is highlighted and not the DOS directory. Double-click on Editor and type autoexec.bat in the required popup window. This will open the file's contents in the editor. Add the line:

LH C:\DOS|MOUSE.COM 

(by mistake, I typed > instead of a period initially, but it still worked).

The LH at the beginning is used to load programs in to high memory to free up your conventional memory. There will be more about this later. 

At this time, it's also good to write one last line, simply dosshell. This will automatically load the shell at boot.

Installing the CD-ROM driver

The last essential driver is the CD-ROM driver. This is one of the more difficult drivers to install, due to different systems and CD-ROM manufacturers. I found what works most of the time is a driver that I found that installs on different systems using doscdrom.exe. 

I did a manual install by adding the file cd1.sys to my DOS directory. I then added these lines to my config.sys file:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\cd1.SYS /D:banana
LASTDRIVE=Z

I added this line to my autoexec.bat file:

MSCDEX.EXE /D:banana /L:R

The last letter in the line denotes the drive letter. After a re-boot, the dosshell appears with an operating mouse and all drives accessible.

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Setting up Dosshell

There's one more item I'd like to save from the hard drive before I replace it. This is the SOUND directory that contains (I presume) the software for the installed SoundBlaster card. The contents are too large to save on one floppy, so I would find it easier to copy the contents onto 2 floppys using a DOS Shell interface.

DOS Shell includes common features seen in other file managers such as copying, moving and renaming files as well as the ability to "launch" applications with a double-click. The shell could be run by the command "DOSSHELL".  The shell was one of the first successful attempts to create a basic graphical user interface (GUI) type file manager in DOS.

From DOS 6.0 the DOS Shell was not included with the OS, but was added on a supplemental disk.

Looking at the contents of the disk, it's easy to overlook the SETUP command because the contents scroll by so fast. One easy method of viewing a page at a time, is to type dir /p at the command prompt.

To run SETUP, the command plus the drive and directory must be entered. In my case, I had to enter 

SETUP C:\DOS 

You'll be asked if all of the utilities should be installed or only selected components. I went through the list and only chose MS-DOS Shell. Once installed, navigating back to C: drive and into the DOS directory, the shell can be launched by entering dosshell.

Next, I'm using the dosshell to format some disks. This is easily acheived by clicking on Disk Utilities (located towards the bottom screen) and following the prompts.

Copying the SOUND directory, requires selecting the C: drive and then selecting the SOUND directory. A list of it's contents can be easily scrolled through.

From here, I selected the files I wanted to load on the first floppy. Then, going to FILE in the menu, I was able to choose COPY. 

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Saving important DOS system files

The Gateway 2000 P5-100 has a pre-installed version of Microsoft DOS 6. There are three files I would like to copy for safe keeping. They are:

CONFIG.SYS
AUTOEXEC.BAT
OAKCDROM.SYS

The  CONFIG.SYS is a text file that contains commands that configure your computer's hardware components (memory, keyboard, mouse, printer and so on) so MS-DOS  and your applications can use them. When MS-DOS starts, it carries out the commands in your CONFIG.SYS file first.

The AUTOEXEC.BAT file is a batch program that MS-DOS runs immediately after carrying out the commands in your CONFIG.SYS file. Your AUTOEXEC.BAT file can contain any commands you want carried out when you start your system--for example, commands that define the port your printer is connected to, clear your screen of startup messages, or run your favorite menu program.

OAKCDROM.SYS is a generic CD-ROM driver that will work with the majority of all IDE CD-ROM drives. It may be useful to keep this copy.

The computer has a functioning 3.5 floppy drive, so I'll be saving these files on a 1.44MB diskette. In order to do this, navigating in DOS and using some basic commands will be necessary.

First, let's look at the contents on the hard drive C:\   This can be done by typing DIR at the C: prompt and the contents are as seen in this screenshot:

To save the files on the floppy, type  COPY CONFIG.SYS A:  

and then repeat with COPY AUTOEXEC.BAT A:

To copy the CD-ROM driver, you will have to open the MS-DOS directory (this is where the driver is located). To do this, type

CD\DOS (lower case works as well, such as cd\dos). The prompt will confirm by appearing as:

C:\DOS>_

Now you can copy the file by typing copy oakcdrom.sys a:

To return to the C directory, type cd\ after the C:\DOS>_  prompt.

Now that the files are saved to disk, let's look at the contents of the CONFIG.SYS and 

AUTOEXEC.BAT with a text viewer on a modern PC.

It's quite possible, you may not see anything except the OAKCDROM.SYS file. This is because WINDOWS is generally set up to hide important system files. To show these files, you must go to Folder Options and deselect Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). This will give you access to the system files on the disk.

To view the system files, open a general text editor and change the file setting to All Files.
Starting with CONFIG.SYS, the contents are:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD01
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE
DOS=HIGH
FILES=30
STACKS=9,256

The contents of AUTOEXEC.BAT are:

SET CTCM=C:\CTCM

C:\CTCM\CTCU /S

C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X

C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD01

C:\DOS\MOUSE.COM

@ECHO OFF

PROMPT $p$g

PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS

SET TEMP=C:\DOS

These may be of good reference later when a fresh system is installed later.