Interesting. I'll check it out and see if I can't post a patch. Sorry for the late response!

I really hate to ask (and also hijack someone elses thread) but do you have any plans/strength to bring the Windows driver up to the same level as the DOSBox implementation?

DOSBox is a killer for some games and VDMSound works very well 😀

Many thanks in advance!

I think I could add here that Mortal Kombat crushes dosboxmt32 the moment it should start playing after loading roland sysex. It works with other cards.

I was unable to crash QFG2 with the MT-32 emulator. Could you give me more information as to what version of the software you're using and what CPU emulation you're using in DosBox?

I'm using the MT32DosBox binary from the project website download page (http://www.artworxinn.com/alex/downloads.htm), but I replaced the SDL.dll and SDL_net.dll with the ones from http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/stepman … by/sdl_net/lib/ (following a post from this board, I think)
I attached my dosbox.conf file, so hopefully you have all the needed details there.

Thanks for checking it out.

Do you play the game with both: mt-32 and sound blaster? Cause you have adlib=false - you should never turn adlib off if you use sound blaster. Adlib is a part of sound blaster and in most cases the game cannot work without it if you use sound blaster. Adlib part is for music and sound effects. Sound Blaster part is only for digitalized sound effects.

Unfortunately in QFG2 you can have only one sound device, I tried playing the game only with MT32 so I didn't need the adlib.
I checked the MT32DosBox with the original SDL.dll and SDL_net.dll but unfortunately it's still crashing.
the simplest way I found to crash it is by starting a new game, leaving the katta tail inn, walking north in the plaza into the street and waiting 1:30 - 2:00 minutes. In my case it never fails to crash.

Ok.. you're right. I was able to make it crash. I'm working on a patch now and should have it fixed by the end of the weekend. (Wife's birthday today so I can't spend to much time on it.. sorry!)

Don't worry about it man, some things ARE more important.
By the way, can you perhaps tell me why I can't get the windows driver to work properly?

Is windows driver really needed? As a patch for dosbox it is multi platform. I was wondering what games do you want to use with it. Here is what i have checked:

All adventure games should run properly with dosbox version. They were vga and have no need for fast cpu. The SVGA should already have General MIDI option. VGA adventures (Legend of Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate) already use General MIDI too. I think it is the same with puzzle games.

First RTS game Dune2 (1992) already have Roland Sound Canvas support. This game is really fast in dosbox. I think there should be no problems with other strategy games too.

Almost the first FPS game Doom has General MIDI support. Wolf3D works fast in dosbox (doesn't even use mt-32). All 2D action game should have no problems with speed I think.

RPG - I have checked Dungeon Master 2 - it has General MIDI support and is not slow in dosbox. Older RPGs shouldn't need faster CPU.

I suppose the only problem may be with flight simulators. X-Wing and Privater alrady use General MIDI. Commanche uses Roland but I wasn't able to run it in windows. Wind Commander I uses MT-32 but it is too fast in windows. I generally think all those old simulators will be too fast or not runable in windows.

robertmo wrote:

Is windows driver really needed? As a patch for dosbox it is multi platform. I was wondering what games do you want to use with it.

Yes, i think that a driver is the best option for some things... It depends on what CPU power you have and for those [like me] who cannot afford to upgrade their machines, DOSBox isn't a viable option for some (most) games. I wouldn't want to argue about the reason behind DOSBox but I use these tools on a Windows platform to play retro games.

I asked canadacow for info of what the plan was but he didn't respond so I now doubt there will ever be an update to the driver. A shame but that's the way life is! It's such a complicated topic I doubt it'd be a very good idea to unpick the necessary bits from DOSBox and put into the Windows driver - hey, maybe that's not even feasable? Either way, I respect the authors decision to do what he wants with it.

I really wish I had a functional Win32 driver rather than the straight DosBox configuration. The reason I don't is because the driver source as it stands is unstable. I will play a song until its stopped, but once that happens the driver will crash any application using it. I assume this is due to a memory leak or overrun that cropped up during the driver development hiatus.

Could you do with some assistance in the matter? I know nothing at all about sound generation but am happy enough with Windows code (been doing it long enough...). Drop me an e-mail if ya like...

If you can't make the windows driver work properly, maybe you could try to fix the soundblaster support on the Dosbox/MT32. In games like Monkey Island 2 or especially in Indiana Jones, Fate of the Atlantis CD version digital sound would be great.

Karpo_007: mt-32 patch was added to dosbox when it was in a very early stage of rebuilding. That is why it is far from perfect.

Still it does prodce that best music in Dosgames. The biggest problem for me is the lack of soundblaster support. It would be great to have sound effects and voices in those games.

Hmmh I wonder what I have done then coz I'm pretty sure I was trying maniac mansion day of the tentacle cd version which had speech and stuff a week ago.. too bad the game crashed dosbox after a while. Or maybe I'm just totally lost and forgot which box I used.. I'm pretty sure I was trying the dosbox/MT-32 with all games I have that have support for it so I think it was.. and first time i started it there was no music but only sound, then I added the flag that old lucas games used for roland and it had music too. Well too bad I aint home for a few days so I can't check it now.

Or maybe I'm talking about something all different than you guys :P

The following attachment is the dosbox executable with the bug fixed. I've been short on time recently so I haven't had time to update the site... so bear with me.

As for getting both the sound blaster and MT-32 playing simultaneously, if I remember correctly, such a task was nearly impossible with the real hardware too!

Sorry for the late post. I'll try to keep you guys posted!

It needs WPCAP.DLL, PACKET.DLL (possibly other things as well).
Is WinPcap (http://winpcap.polito.it/install/default.htm) needed?

Mirek

Edited: removed some confusing questions from this mail.