China DOS Union

Today someone gave me a P200MHz computer, and inside it was a Sound Blaster AWE 64 Value sound card. This is the best ISA sound card! Delighted, I took it to install under the MS-DOS 7.10 I use, but when loading CTCM.EXE it displayed some baffling message like "Win95 system configuration has changed". I then found that before loading it automatically checks the DOS version number, and if it finds the version number is 7 it refuses to run. However, simply using commands like SETVER to set the DOS version number below 7 is still useless, because it checks whether the winbootdir environment variable exists; if it does, it assumes Win9x is running, and so refuses to load. As everyone knows, %winbootdir% is a lowercase environment variable, and ordinary commands like SET cannot modify it. But there is a way after all: for example, a program called ENVMASTR.EXE can easily solve it. For example, the command "ENVMASTR /L winbootdir=" can remove the lowercase winbootdir environment variable. Once this variable is removed, CTCM.EXE can run completely normally. This way, this SB AWE 64 sound card can, under my MS-DOS 7.10, use various players (such as QV, MPXPLAY, CDP, etc.) to play beautiful MP3s and MIDI tunes...

Hehe, I have one too, and the sound really is quite good.

Brother WENGIER, I also have an AWE 64 GOLD, but I just don't know how to set up the drivers under DOS.
How should I set up CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT?

Actually, to drive the AWE 64 Gold sound card, you just need to add the following lines to AUTOEXEC.BAT:
CTCM
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET SOUND=the path where the drivers are located
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
AWEUTIL.COM /S
Also, if the system supports PnP, you don't even need to load these drivers, but in that case it won't be able to play MIDI music.

Nothing needs to be added in CONFIG.SYS at all?

What is CTCM?

Indeed, you don't need to add anything at all in CONFIG.SYS. CTCM is the PnP manager.

I use a SOUND BLASTER 16 isa with PnP support. I downloaded something called SBASIC.. from Creative's official website (I forgot the exact name). Under MSDOS71, after installing and rebooting, "Win95 system configuration has changed" also appears (I already loaded CTCM). WENGIER, do you think the method you mentioned will work? (Actually, I already got TEST successful with that diagnostic program, it's just that the prompt appears on reboot.)
If I modify winbootdir in MSDOS.sys, or even directly delete that environment variable, will that work?
Where can that software be downloaded?

I've already tried it. As long as you delete the WINBOOTDRV environment variable in MSDOS.SYS, the "Win95 system configuration has changed" prompt asking to initialize the system will no longer appear, and then the sound card can be used in plain MSDOS

Great, it was all thanks to WENGIER's reminder that I managed to set it up successfully.
Many, many thanks!!

Of course deleting the winbootdir= setting in MSDOS.SYS also works, but then Win9x won't be able to boot, so it's not as good as the method I mentioned above.

"%winbootdir% is a lowercase environment variable, and ordinary commands like SET cannot modify it."

A lowercase environment variable? An uppercase environment variable? What's the difference? I don't understand.

Also, where can that software be downloaded? Give me a link.

The winbootdir variable really is a very special kind of environment variable; all the letters in the variable name are lowercase. If you don't believe it, try using the SET command and see whether you can modify it.