Getting that pesky sound to work in Redneck

By Jon Hunt

While this FAQ won't solve every sound problem, it will get sound to work in about 95% of all no sound cases.

First, If you have to run the game in windows, don't run it from those stupid desktop shortcuts. Make a windows DOS box shortcut on your desktop.
To do this, right click on your desktop. Choose the 'new' option. Next select 'shortcut'. In the command line type in: c:\windows\dosprmpt.pif Click next, until your shortcut is finished.

Now that you have a DOS shortcut on your desktop, its time to get on to solving your sound problem.

Double click on your shortcut. You should now be in a windows DOX box with a line that looks something like this:

C:\windows>

Type cd\intrplay\redneck to change to your redneck directory.

--NOTE: intrplay\redneck is the default install directory. If you changed the install directory, substitute it for intrplay\redneck.---

Now you should be at what is called your Redneck DOS prompt. It will look like this:
C:\intrplay\redneck>

Now you need to see if you ran the sound setup. So, at the redneck prompt type, 'setup' .
At your setup choose the 'set sound' option.
Next choose your soundcard. Usually soundblaster. Go with all the defaults.

--NOTE-- Most soundcards are soundblaster compatible. So you would usually choose the soundblaster option---

Now you should be at the main setup menu. Choose the test sound option. If it works, great, play the game. If not read on.

How to choose different sound card types.

Go to your redneck prompt. Type SETUP.
Choose the setup sound option.
Choose soundblaster.
The next screen will show your current settings. Soundcard type, IRQ, DMA etc. Below that you will see that you can change these options.
Select the 'change soundcard type' option.
Now try a different soundcard type, such as soundblaster pro.
Now go back through the sound setup menu, until you come back to the main setup menu.
Test your sound again. If it still don't work, go back and try different settings until it does.

How to find out what your IRQ, DMA, etc settings are, and how to change them.

You can do this either one of two ways. Using notepad, locate and open up your autoexec.bat file. You can also, at your windows desktop, hit 'start' then 'run' and in the box type SYSEDIT.
Look for a line that looks like this:
set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p330 t6

--NOTE. If you don't have a line like this in your autoexec.bat like this. Then you don't have your soundcard installed in DOS. You will need to locate your sound driver disk that came with your computer and install it according to the manufactures instructions.--

Write down those numbers, and go back to redneck setup.
Choose the sound setup option.
Select soundblaster.
On the next screen, you will see your sound settings. Using the example above, my sound settings would be:
Address 220
Interrupt (or IRQ) 5
8 bit dma 1
16 bit dma 5
Yours will of course be different, but you get the idea.

Changing them
If you look below you will see options allowing you to select another address or dma channel. Just click on one and change the setting.
Now go back to the main sound setup menu and test your sound.

Another way to check out your sound settings is to:
Right click on 'my computer'
Choose 'properties'
Select the 'device manager' tab.
Select your soundcard. And hit properties.
This will also show your current address, IRQ, DMA, etc settings.

If your sound doesn't work, keep playing with your soundcard type, and sound settings until it does.

Other Tips:

In sound setup:
Reduce the number of voices.
Reduce the mixing rate to 11khz
Instead of running the game by typing RR or RA, use the pighead command.
At your c:\intrplay\redneck prompt type PIGHEAD.


Some sound problems will require you to spend an awful lot of time playing with soundcard type and address settings to get them right.

Other possible causes
Too many programs running in the background. Close everything except EXPLORER and SYSTRAY.

Not enough free DOS memory. I have found DOS needs to have at least 590k of free memory to run redneck properly.
Type MEM at the dos prompt to see how much you have.

This memory is different than RAM memory. To free up DOS conventional memory, you will need to search the net. There are several good tutorials on memory management.

If all else fails, pick up a $15 soundblaster 16 card. It will work every time and doesn't have that bad of sound. Plus its cheap.


I hope I was able to help. I will be adding to this as the info becomes available. If you have any hints or sound tips that may have worked for you, send them to me and I will add them.

Jon, email: fred@triton.net

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