wrote:Looks like Windows 95 OSR 2.1 doesn't recognize CDDA tracks on mounted discs. Bummer ....
What were you using to check? If you're using a mixed-mode CD, those were always tricky to access even on a real PC.
I was using the Windows 95 CD player.
Yeah, the first one I tried was a mixed-mode CD (Play Disc for Might and Magic VI) but then I tried a bin/cue of an audio CD; that didn't come up either. The Windows 95 CD player didn't recognize it as an audio disc.
The IDE emulation doesn't yet have the ATAPI commands: play audio, play cd, stop play. However, it should be possible to use D-Tools and mount the CD image inside 95; and then play back CD audio.
Edit: IDEDIAG is an IDE diagnostic program and works at the DOSBox commandline. Found another working program, HDAT2: http://www.hdat2.com. It is very extensive in its testing functions and can show the capabilities of the attached IDE devices.
wrote:The IDE emulation doesn't yet have the ATAPI commands: play audio, play cd, stop play. However, it should be possible to use D-Tools and mount the CD image inside 95; and then play back CD audio.
Edit: IDEDIAG is an IDE diagnostic program and works at the DOSBox commandline. Found another working program, HDAT2: http://www.hdat2.com. It is very extensive in its testing functions and can show the capabilities of the attached IDE devices.
I actually did try using Daemon Tools but Windows 95 OSR 2.1 would crash whenever I tried playing the audio tracks off the Might and Magic VI Play Disc using the CD player; Windows also crashes when you launch the game and it's set to play those tracks with the MM6 Play Disc mounted using Daemon Tools.
Thanks for the tip, though. I'll keep my eye on this project to see if those ATAPI commands get added at some point. Great work on this so far!
Try an older version of d-tools. (Edit: v3.47 should work; perhaps try another CD emulator in 95).
K. I'll see if I can hunt one down; I've been using v3.47. Thanks again!
wrote:Try an older version of d-tools. (Edit: v3.47 should work; perhaps try another CD emulator in 95).
Yeah, I'll see if I can find one that works. It seems the others have been able to get it to work in the past.
EDIT: Well, I think one other person says they got it working!
Bah! Alcohol 120% (older version with Win95 support) seems to have the same problem. There may be something missing in DOSBox emulation that prevents even virtual CDs from play CDDA audio ...
Have you tried mounting the image on the host system to make sure that the image has no issues? If all else fails, you could try ripping the tracks and patch the game with _inmm.
wrote:Have you tried mounting the image on the host system to make sure that the image has no issues? If all else fails, you could try ripping the tracks and patch the game with _inmm.
The image has no problems; it's dumped from my original disc in bin/cue format and all tracks verified. Plus, it's not the only image I've tried; if you look a few posts back, I also tried an Audio CD image.
I've already ripped the tracks to MP3 and used GrayFace's patch to play them inside MM6. Thing is, the MP3 tracks have a lot of popping and cracking when played in-game (and yes, I verified they play perfectly outside emulation). Wizardry Gold and Lords of the Realm II don't have this problem and I suspect it's because their sound tracks are WAV files. I'm curious to see if the PCM audio off CDs also plays without the popping/cracking in Might and Magic VI.
Okay, I just confirmed Nero ImageDrive has the same issue. So to recap, I've tried these three CD emulation programs with the same results:
Daemon Tools v3.47
Alcohol 120% v1.9.5.3105
Nero ImageDrive v2.23
Windows 95 OSR 2.1 always crashes the moment it attempts to play audio tracks off CD (and incidentally, no error messages, pagefaults or otherwise, show up in the DOSBox console). I think it's safe to conclude that DOSBox emulation is missing something needed to handle playback of Redbook audio in a Windows 95B guest OS, regardless of which CD emulation software is used. I suppose it's possible I'm missing something but everything else in my Windows 95 HDD images seems to work fine. Lords of the Realm II, Wizardry Gold and Might and Magic VI are all playable.
By the way, I'm using ykhwong's latest build (2013-11-17), but I tried some of this a year ago with what was his current build at the time using Daemon Tools in Windows 95B and had the same results.
hmm, maybe that's not the right thing, going with yhkwong's latest build, I know he's mostly current with this branch but I don't know whether his many other patches don't interfere.
wrote:hmm, maybe that's not the right thing, going with yhkwong's latest build, I know he's mostly current with this branch but I don't know whether his many other patches don't interfere.
Yeah, I suppose you have a point there. Is there a current Win32 build of DOSBox-X available? I know exactly squat when it comes to compiling source code (I've tried to teach myself a couple of times with no success; I think it's too much of a learning curve for me at present or I'm just too impatient!) so I have to rely on whatever Win32 builds are available that others have compiled.
yeah, I understand that. Maybe Truth can provide you with one, I'm on OS X so I can't easily build you a Windows version 🙁
I wish I had a test image with redbook audio. From what I understand, D-Tools has different versions, some handling analog audio and other including digital audio (selected in the device properties). There are also bugs in D-Tools itself which can cause a conflict with another CD drive. However, using the other tools shows it may not be D-Tools. Also, is it possible for the patched MM6 to run a cue/bin with uncompressed audio? I assume you tried to mount an ISO image, too.
wrote:From what I understand, D-Tools has different versions, some handling analog audio and other including digital audio (selected in the device properties).
Point taken, but with Daemon Tools v3.47 from the tray icon you can deselect the Analog Audio option; I did try it both with and without that option selected (I was thinking along similar lines that maybe the problem was it was trying access the CD tracks via analog signal). Thanks for the suggestion, though. This was something I'd missed during my initial testing. Also, I don't recall seeing a similar option in Alcohol 120% or Nero ImageDrive ... but then again I didn't really look for it!
wrote:Also, is it possible to run a cue/bin with uncompressed audio? Does that patch support it?
Not sure what you mean. I'm pretty sure the audio tracks on a bin/cue image aren't compressed; they're just 16-bit PCM audio.
EDIT:
By the way, sorry for somewhat hijacking this section of the thread! I do think this issue may be a tertiary concern to the development of DOSBox-X, though, if more work is done in the future on the ATAPI implementation.
I checked further on the redbook audio emulation. See here: Windows 95 and CDs.. First, dosbox doesn't support USB devices, so that may be a possible problem with d-tools playing back audio. Many other programs are equally problematic and require that USB supplement which is supported by 95/OSR2.1 (2.0 and under have no such support). The steps I would try is first test 98se to rule out it's an OS issue. Next, find a CD emulator which isn't dependent on the USB supplement.
wrote:I checked further on the redbook audio emulation. See here: Windows 95 and CDs.. First, dosbox doesn't support USB devices, so that may be a possible problem with d-tools playing back audio. Many other programs are equally problematic and require that USB supplement which is supported by 95/OSR2.1 (2.0 and under have no such support). The steps I would try is first test 98se to rule out it's an OS issue. Next, find a CD emulator which isn't dependent on the USB supplement.
I just confirmed that in Windows 98 SE using Daemon Tools v3.47 the same thing happens; if you try to play the mixed-mode MM6 play disc in the Windows CD player, Windows freezes up (still no errors in DOSBox console). The mouse cursor still functions but other than that Windows hangs.
Thanks for confirming. I also haven't found a working CD emulator for 95a (or OSR2), so much for cd audio capability. I've started to look at the ATAPI documentation.
Edit: In a real Win95 system, I believe cd audio is enabled by connecting a cable between the cdrom drive and the sound card. If this is the case, then the problem of redbook audio is not just about reading the disk, but then sending the data to the virtual soundblaster card. A solution could be devised that is similar to regular DOSBox + SDL_sound? The later Windows versions may not have had this requirement to playback redbook audio; however, the most recent versions apparently(?) do not support it at all.
It would be ideal to install an older version of daemon tools (v3.17 or earlier, perhaps 2.60), but the MSI installer does not work with 95a/b - these versions should be tried with 98se. If the file and registry settings could be extracted from the msi file, then perhaps it could be installed in 95a/b, too; given it uses a virtual scsi device and is compatible with 95. The older versions may not require the usb supplement and have a hope of working with cd audio. Another option is to emulate a partial or full USB device which may allow these cd emulators to fully function, but this is also given that this is the cause of the redbook audio not playing.
A last imperfect solution, given the mp3 (compressed audio) is laggy in 95/DOSBox, is to write the cd audio to uncompressed audio files (wav) and play those back in the 95 guest OS. It would be interesting to verify that the lag is caused by the playback of compressed audio, especially in the MM6 case (even though the patch only supports mp3, wav files could be played external to the program; further, that patch could be modified to accept wav files instead of mp3, but the patch is in Delphi and this may be a low reward solution).
Further tested the redbook audio problem in 95. With 95b and patches, it is possible to install d-tools 3.47. The required patches are USB supplement for 95, IE4, Installer 2.0 (InstMsiA.exe); and had previously installed directx7 so it is unknown whether it is required. 98SE presumably would not require these patches for installing d-tools 3.47. After patching in 95b, d-tools 3.47 installed along with its SCSI adapter. Neither d-tools 3.17 nor 2.60 would install (resulted in error or blue screen). D-tools 3.47 would not work with a bin/cue image of cd audio; it resulted in the screen freezing as reported above. My best guess is the SCSI adapter is not compatible with DOSBox, but it is unknown why.
I think an immediate solution is to make uncompressed wav audio files of the music tracks and play them directly in the 95 guest OS. We'd have to confirm that this would not result in slow emulation speed while gaming, as occurs with the mp3 compressed audio files. If playing the wav files results in high CPU usage (and laggy gaming), then perhaps the cd emulation solution is not good either. We could confirm that in qemu, given it supports cd audio. I also don't know how common 95 redbook audio games are.
Some solutions include trying to make d-tools 3.47 (and its scsi adapter) fully compatible with DOSBox emulation; making patches for a few games, such as MM6 by "greyface", where a 3rd party program routes cd audio requests to locally installed compressed audio files; adding the required ATAPI functions which would communicate with the SDL_sound library (directly or indirectly); or just play the audio in an external player, whether in the guest or host OS.
