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Tandy Sounds/PCjr emulation flaw

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First post, by tbcarey

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As of DOSBox 0.62, it appears that PCjr/Tandy Sounds emulation is only enabled when DOSBox is in 'Tandy mode'. This is a MAJOR oversight, because there are quite a few games available for the PC from the '88-'91 period that support PCjr sounds, but only EGA/VGA graphics.

I'll use Monkey Island 1 again as an example. If you run the game with DOSBox in VGA mode, obviously Tandy Sounds are not available by design now [since it has been disabled in any mode but 'Tandy']. However, if you run DOSBox in Tandy mode and attempt to start the game, you will receive an error that states: "This game requires a graphics card." Then, if you attempt to manually specify the graphics mode [i.e. by typing 'monkey e ts' or 'monkey v ts'], the screen will go blank and you will hear only Tandy Sounds/PCjr music without any visuals.

It is my opinion that the behavior should be restored to the way it was in DOSBox 0.61, where sound emulation is entirely dissociated from graphics emulation, simply because there are several popular games that supported non-standard configurations or Tandy add-on sound cards in PCs with EGA/VGA graphics adapters.

I hope I'm not alone in thinking this.

Reply 2 of 5, by tbcarey

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I believe that's how it was in DOSBox 0.61 and earlier, apart from the 'auto' mode. There used to be a setting in the config file called 'tandy=' that supported the booleans true and false. Your solution makes sense, however. When one selects Tandy graphics mode, they are obviously going to be playing a Tandy/PCjr game that will support the equivalent sound hardware. However, since PCjr sound cards were released for other PC's, locking PCjr sound support to Tandy graphics mode makes no sense whatsoever. That's why a 'true'/'false' setting is still required.[/quote]

Reply 3 of 5, by Kaminari

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tbcarey wrote:

I hope I'm not alone in thinking this.

You're definitely not alone. I raised the issue on the CVS forum a couple weeks ago, but received almost no feedback (not that it was the best place to discuss it, I admit). Hope you'll get better luck here 😐

It is my opinion that the behavior should be restored to the way it was in DOSBox 0.61, where sound emulation is entirely dissociated from graphics emulation

Can't agree more.

Reply 4 of 5, by robertmo

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If I remember correctly it was like this:
There was a game that detected tandy sound and cause of that the game tried to use tandy graphics too. This resulted in game not running. So developers just wanted to make sure no newbie will have such a problem. Am I right?

Reply 5 of 5, by tbcarey

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robertmo wrote:

There was a game that detected tandy sound and cause of that the game tried to use tandy graphics too. This resulted in game not running. So developers just wanted to make sure no newbie will have such a problem.

That makes sense, but then as you mentioned in a previous reply, there should be a switch to override that default pairing behavior of Tandy graphics/sound emulation within DOSBox. It's fine if it's on by default on account of such issues, but there should be a way to enable Tandy sound emulation without graphics emulation, just as there was before.

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