Star Control Discussion Board

Command line parameters would come immediately after starcon.exe, separated by a space on the same line. For example, from Krulle's description:

starcon.exe /S:adlib

That should instruct the game to start using the adlib sound settings.

Hope this helps you get it working better.

Draxas already gave the answer I would've thought works.

I don't know if you remember DOS times.
the mount command is not DOS. It is an adaptation necessary for Dosbox.
C: means switching to drive "C:" (which has just been defined by the "mount" command. My Dosbox autorun commands usually are done with g:, g for game, to avoid the OS mixing up my system harddrive c: with the dosbox definition of "c:"...) (or O: for Masater of Orion2)
"cls" stands for "clear screen", you can easily remove that, that will not change anything, except allowing you to read whatever the OS/Dosbox wrote after the previous two commands.
"exit" just tells Dosbox it can end itself, thus exits from Dosbox.
If you want to read error messages, you can try:

To end dosbox afterwards, you need to enter "exit".
But this will allow you to read error messages from starcon.
Also allows you to test a bit around.

Executables of that time often had a commandline parameter to show you available options.
Thus before exiting dosbox, try
(these are the 4 most commonly used help requests, others may exist, and most programmers caused all of them to show the same information which may or may not be helpful)

At least one of these should give you a list of available options/parameters.
Then you can see which sound options actually exist.

Also, you're using windows? A desktop icon?
Can you tell us what the command line of the desktop icon leads to?
(right click the icon, and tell us what the "target" is, and the "start in")

"C:\[...]\DOSBox.exe" -conf "..\dosboxSC1.conf" -conf "..\dosboxSC1_addon.conf" -noconsole -c exit

I presume the "start in" reads something like "c:\program files\GoG.com\Star Control 1 and 2\" or similar.
And the "target" likely is something like "c:\program files\GoG.com\Star Control 1 and 2\dosbox.bat" -conf dosboxSC1_setup.conf -noconsole ...
The .conf file is the one where the batch execution is defined within -> the [autoexec] part cited above.

If you want to run the keys editor or the scenario editor, it's best to copy the .conf file (twice), rename the copies (e.g. dosboxSC1_keys.conf or dosboxSC1_edit.conf ) then edit the ..keys.conf to read in the autoexec part

and the ..edit.conf to read:.

Then copy the desktop link twice (really copy, not creating a shortcut: grab the icon with the mouse, move it, press the <ctrl> button additionally, move slightly more to the place you want the new icon, and then let the mouse button go while keeping <ctrl> pressed).
Edit the names of the new desktop links to reflect the intention (keys, scenario editor), then right click the new icons, go to "properties" and in the "target", replace the "dosboxSC1_setup.conf" part with "dosboxSC1_keys.conf" or "dosboxSC1_edit.conf" accordingly.

Dang, I should set up my own Starcontrol 1 again. But then I'd still not use the GoG installation script, so I'd still run against other walls.
But at least I would not guess names of files blindly.