this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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"This game doesn't work unless you set IRQ to 7 and DMA to 1 and tell it you have a Sounblaster"
Soundblaster?
Nope, you have to go manually rename a .dll to "Sounblaster.dll" or it will crash at the start of level 3.
The d is silent.
Especially if the IRQ and DMA are set wrong.
i can't remember what those did anymore, i just remember having to get them exactly right on the bootdisk
IRQs were for setting up interrupts (stands for interrupt request). The CPU supports arbitrary interrupts from other hardware installed on the PC (like a soundcard saying that its buffer has room or is almost empty) but needed to map them to IDs so that they could be handled by the correct driver/code and didn't try to handle that soundcard interrupt as if it was coming from the keyboard and treating it as a keypress.
DMA stands for direct memory access and is used for communication between devices and the system. You had to set it up so that it didn't overlap with other important memory, like another device's DMA region, or memory used by the game or kernel (which, at the time, weren't really seperate).
Both of these things are still present on today's PCs but just have better management and support for the edge cases that previously caused issues (like drivers can support sharing an IRQ with other devices and the OS can handle allocating DMA spaces).
The installer for Command & Conquer was so magical. It had a voice guiding you through the installation without you having to configure it.
I remember one of them requesting the CD key, adding "YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO COMPLY".
12 year old me never entered a code so quickly.
GTFO of here with your ancestral soundblaster chants!
I am DOSPROMPTR, keeper of beep & boop!
Shielder from .exe!