[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Here's the deal. I have a Toshiba Portege 4010 laptop which has a really crappy ALi sound chip. Well, actually i think that just the drivers are crappy since it uses an AKM DAC (good quality chip), and the Linux ALSA drivers expose some hardware functionality which is not available under Windows, but that's a different story.

Okay, back on topic. Under Windows Me DOS games have Soundblaster sound, more or less buggy but they have. For example Warcraft II sounds perfectly, while sound in Tetris Pro (i have to admit this one IS really fussy) stutters like crap. While under pure DOS there's no more soundblaster... And there are no DOS drivers available for this chip. What puzzles me is how soundblaster emulation is possible under Windows. The sound drivers are WDM, and from my past experience i know that if you want to play DOS games under Win9x you NEED VxD sound drivers. As you guessed already, there are no VxD sound drivers for this chip...

What i want to do is get sound under DOS, but obviously for this i'll have to port the drivers. And as i'm not much of a coder i don't think i could do it by myself, also, i don't think it's possible to make a WDM driver run under DOS.

I read around and found out that all that the DOS "drivers" do on modern cards is activate built-in Soundblaster emulation. As it is available under Windows, i think i may be able to enable it under DOS if i find out the right hardware programming routine - but how do i gain access to what the sound driver "talks" to the hardware?

Awaiting ideas...

[togermano]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Jul 19 2008, 04:11 PM, said:

Here's the deal. I have a Toshiba Portege 4010 laptop which has a really crappy ALi sound chip. Well, actually i think that just the drivers are crappy since it uses an AKM DAC (good quality chip), and the Linux ALSA drivers expose some hardware functionality which is not available under Windows, but that's a different story.

Okay, back on topic. Under Windows Me DOS games have Soundblaster sound, more or less buggy but they have. For example Warcraft II sounds perfectly, while sound in Tetris Pro (i have to admit this one IS really fussy) stutters like crap. While under pure DOS there's no more soundblaster... And there are no DOS drivers available for this chip. What puzzles me is how soundblaster emulation is possible under Windows. The sound drivers are WDM, and from my past experience i know that if you want to play DOS games under Win9x you NEED VxD sound drivers. As you guessed already, there are no VxD sound drivers for this chip...

What i want to do is get sound under DOS, but obviously for this i'll have to port the drivers. And as i'm not much of a coder i don't think i could do it by myself, also, i don't think it's possible to make a WDM driver run under DOS.

I read around and found out that all that the DOS "drivers" do on modern cards is activate built-in Soundblaster emulation. As it is available under Windows, i think i may be able to enable it under DOS if i find out the right hardware programming routine - but how do i gain access to what the sound driver "talks" to the hardware?

Awaiting ideas...

Good luck i'd like some homemade dos drivers too.... Maybe somehow someone could port alsa from linux to dos

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

togermano, on Jul 20 2008, 12:14 AM, said:

Good luck i'd like some homemade dos drivers too.... Maybe somehow someone could port alsa from linux to dos

ALSA drivers for obscure soundcards are way too buggy, if i'd port something from Linux it'd be OSS drivers.

Edit: I checked Device Manager and there's nothing on port 220, irq 5, dma 1. So how the heck does Windoze do its soundblaster emulation? I removed the BLASTER variable and the sound is still fine and dandy, so it must be a driver thing. But how the heck could i intercept it...

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 19 July 2008 - 03:49 PM

[thydreamwalker]

Have you tried "CrystalCold-Fusion(CWC AUDIO.inf) or older SB(1373) drivers ,look for in MSFN as there is a topic for these SB drivers....I use Cold-Fusion on my Desktop-Laptop/ChemPC PIII-450mhz,128mb/sdram,with a special fan/temp cooler bios program(embedded)keepin the resources from this Dos installed Audio Program low and cool.....

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

thydreamwalker, on Jul 20 2008, 08:23 AM, said:

Have you tried "CrystalCold-Fusion(CWC AUDIO.inf) or older SB(1373) drivers ,look for in MSFN as there is a topic for these SB drivers....I use Cold-Fusion on my Desktop-Laptop/ChemPC PIII-450mhz,128mb/sdram,with a special fan/temp cooler bios program(embedded)keepin the resources from this Dos installed Audio Program low and cool.....

.INFs under DOS? Dream on.

[thydreamwalker]

That's what the Dos install file is named -Your guess is as "Good" as Mine???Alli know is i have sound ,gaming ,joystick ,and all in Dos,and normal capabilities in Windows too?Great on multi-media sounds in older SB-Creative Speakers i added?***Do not have SB-card installed unless its a "Hidden"feature of my ATI Rage LT Pro 133-3D AGP=2X Grapics card from 1999 era...oh well,thats all i like is it has internal and external speakers in Dos and any Windows i've used..... (*There are Laptop capabilities i have not used Yet with this ChemPC 1999=Avenia6613LP Desktop-Weighing in at 16#lbs. wet and ready to use always

[alexanrs]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Jul 19 2008, 06:11 PM, said:

Okay, back on topic. Under Windows Me DOS games have Soundblaster sound, more or less buggy but they have. For example Warcraft II sounds perfectly, while sound in Tetris Pro (i have to admit this one IS really fussy) stutters like crap. While under pure DOS there's no more soundblaster... And there are no DOS drivers available for this chip. What puzzles me is how soundblaster emulation is possible under Windows. The sound drivers are WDM, and from my past experience i know that if you want to play DOS games under Win9x you NEED VxD sound drivers. As you guessed already, there are no VxD sound drivers for this chip...

Windows 98SE and ME has its own generic SoundBlaster emulation WDM driver that can be used by any WDM sound driver that makes reference to it (SBEMU.SYS, if I recall correctly). The major problem here is that it emulates an SoundBlaster Pro, wich means 8-bit sound only. VXDs drivers, on the other hand, have to implement this manually. An easy way to spot this is to install both Win98se and WinME in a machine with a SB16 board. Windows 98 ships with a VXD driver which implements SB16 sound emulation for DOS boxes, Windows ME ships with a WDM one, so you'll only get 8-bit sound.

EDIT: typos xD

This post has been edited by alexanrs: 21 July 2008 - 02:54 PM