General EQWatcher Concepts > Installation > System Requirements

While I cannot say exact minimum specifications that are supported, EQWatcher should be fine with:

• EverQuest-capable computer
• Windows 98/2000/XP/NT
• Sound card with multiple waveout device support (OR the newest DirectSound)
• 5MB free hard drive space
• 64MB RAM (note: EQWatcher Advanced requires about 6MB itself)
• Microsoft SAPI for Text-to-Speech is optional (Caution: Some sound cards do not support multiple waveout devices.  Since SAPI 5.0+ has no DirectSound support, a sound card that supports multiple waveout is required for this option to work within EverQuest.  If you do not fill this requirement but have TTS installed on your computer, you will need to manually disable EQWatcher's TTS.) 
• 128MB RAM or higher recommended for Text-to-Speech

RAM is dirt cheap, I really should recommend 256MB.  If you run Luclin, I'd recommend 512MB.

Determining whether your sound card supports multiple waveout devices

New to EQWatcher Advanced Beta 5 is DirectSound support.  It has been tested with DirectX 8.1.  EverQuest requires (if I am thinking correctly) DirectX 8.0 or higher, so it is likely that there will be no bugs found in this DirectSound support caused by older versions.  I believe DirectSound 8.x will bypass EQWatcher's previous requirements of multiple waveout devices. 

Generally, any mid to high end sound card sold in the last few years supports this.  Lower end cards such as any ESS, some built-in sound processors on motherboards, Creative AudioPCI 128, may not.  The easiest way to determine this is to play a nice long sound that uses a waveout device rather than any of CD/Aux/Microphone/Line in/midi (a .WAV, MP3, RealAudio, AVI, MPG, any of those generally would work).  Playing a CD at the same time as playing a .WAV is an invalid method because, as you plainly see in the windows volume control, they are separate.  The sound you test with must use the Wave device (or DirectSound, or similar name) volume control.  If you can hear these sounds while playing EverQuest, and hear EverQuest sounds while playing those sounds, your sound card supports multiple waveout devices.

Users have suggested a method of hearing EQWatcher sounds but not EQ sounds.  If your sound card does not support multiple waveout devices, you can read this message board thread and try it.  Thanks Adalei Seraphie!