AC97 sound cards under DOS will not have drivers~~~ Only players or AC97 chip libraries (C/C++ library) will exist (you need to develop a playback program yourself using the library)
Many people are looking for AC97 or HD (Realtek, Intel ICH, VIA...) DOS driver programs~~ I can clearly answer that, except when the chip provides SB (Sound Blaster card) compatible mode, there will be no drivers. What exists will only be players or AC97 chip libraries
Among the above-mentioned chips supporting the AC97 standard, only VIA686B provides SB compatible mode. If your motherboard uses this chipset, congratulations, you can set it as follows according to the following settings, and almost all DOS games can have sound:
1. First, in the BIOS settings, there must be a leagcy sound setting, set to enable (there will be related options for IRQ and I/O PORT to set)
2. Find the AC97 driver of VIA686B (VIAUDIO.COM and VIAFMTSR.COM)
3. Set the following in autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T2
LH VIAUDIO.COM
LH VIAFMTSR.COM <-- This line is optional
For other AC97 chips~~~ there will be no drivers, the reason is
The support of PURE DOS games absolutely only supports SB compatible or ESS AudioDrive (may or may not be), because in the DOS era, there was no AC97 standard
The SB standard Control I/O is assumed to be 0x220, all control codes will be sent to this port address. If the motherboard has no compatible SB controller to process at this address, there will be no action at all.
So playback programs like MPXPLAY under DOS. If they support AC97 or HD audio chips, they must directly control the audio chip to make sound, vSyncMAME and MPXPLAY are all like this.
This is the DOS AC97 MP3 playback program I wrote http://www.cn-dos.net/forum/viewthread.php?tid=43606&fpage=1 which also directly controls the chip to make sound
Conclusion
a. AC97/HD will definitely not have DOS drivers (except for VIA686B chipset)
b. Pure DOS games (non-MAME) will also not have support for AC97 or HD
c. Only through direct control of AC97 or HD audio chips, to write players or libraries (C/C++ library)
So~~ don't look for driver programs anymore
Many people are looking for AC97 or HD (Realtek, Intel ICH, VIA...) DOS driver programs~~ I can clearly answer that, except when the chip provides SB (Sound Blaster card) compatible mode, there will be no drivers. What exists will only be players or AC97 chip libraries
Among the above-mentioned chips supporting the AC97 standard, only VIA686B provides SB compatible mode. If your motherboard uses this chipset, congratulations, you can set it as follows according to the following settings, and almost all DOS games can have sound:
1. First, in the BIOS settings, there must be a leagcy sound setting, set to enable (there will be related options for IRQ and I/O PORT to set)
2. Find the AC97 driver of VIA686B (VIAUDIO.COM and VIAFMTSR.COM)
3. Set the following in autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T2
LH VIAUDIO.COM
LH VIAFMTSR.COM <-- This line is optional
For other AC97 chips~~~ there will be no drivers, the reason is
The support of PURE DOS games absolutely only supports SB compatible or ESS AudioDrive (may or may not be), because in the DOS era, there was no AC97 standard
The SB standard Control I/O is assumed to be 0x220, all control codes will be sent to this port address. If the motherboard has no compatible SB controller to process at this address, there will be no action at all.
So playback programs like MPXPLAY under DOS. If they support AC97 or HD audio chips, they must directly control the audio chip to make sound, vSyncMAME and MPXPLAY are all like this.
This is the DOS AC97 MP3 playback program I wrote http://www.cn-dos.net/forum/viewthread.php?tid=43606&fpage=1 which also directly controls the chip to make sound
Conclusion
a. AC97/HD will definitely not have DOS drivers (except for VIA686B chipset)
b. Pure DOS games (non-MAME) will also not have support for AC97 or HD
c. Only through direct control of AC97 or HD audio chips, to write players or libraries (C/C++ library)
So~~ don't look for driver programs anymore

DigestI