Hi there, I don't know the game good enough to judge, but..

Generally speaking, old Sierra On-Line games had a SB+MT32 option (optional driver available via BBS etc) in which the Sound Blaster card's DSP was doing all the MIDI.

This was necessary in the days before the Sound Blasters had an MPU-401.

The 8-Bit models did support SB-MIDI instead, at the expense of sound effects (the 8051 microcontroller couldn't handle both).

SB-MIDI was being supported up to SB16 and related models. Some SB clones like 688F could have supported it, too, I believe.

Anyway, that's old news probably. It just came to mind. Could well be that the game has another issue here.

As a troubleshooting step, have you tried selecting sound blaster for sound fx and for music instead of soundblaster + MT32 - do the sound fx work then in this configuration? If not, then getting the sound fx to work through sound blaster only first might be a step toward getting it to work with sound blaster + MT32. If the sound fx do work, then there could definitely be some bug or other conflict happening with the soundblaster + MT32 configuration.

I just tried Flashback on my P3 1GHz machine, and I am unable to get the install/setup program to correctly configure/detect the sound blaster when chosen for the sound fx. In game, the menu option for sound fx behaves in the same way you describe: disabled, and when toggled on are set off again. This is without an MT32.

In DOSBox, the install/setup program detects the sound blaster fine and I hear the gunshots in game. They do sound slightly different from when adlib is selected but they both sound like gun shots to me. I don't know if there are any other differences in sound fx between sound blaster and adlib.

Given my situation with my P3, the issue probably isn't related to the MT32 (unless you can get sound FX working with the MT32 out of the equation, then it might be...). I do know that many games have Sound Blaster detection problems for faster processors. How fast is your processor?

nobleEightfold wrote on 2024-04-12, 02:21:

As a troubleshooting step, have you tried selecting sound blaster for sound fx and for music instead of soundblaster + MT32 - do […]
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As a troubleshooting step, have you tried selecting sound blaster for sound fx and for music instead of soundblaster + MT32 - do the sound fx work then in this configuration? If not, then getting the sound fx to work through sound blaster only first might be a step toward getting it to work with sound blaster + MT32. If the sound fx do work, then there could definitely be some bug or other conflict happening with the soundblaster + MT32 configuration.

I just tried Flashback on my P3 1GHz machine, and I am unable to get the install/setup program to correctly configure/detect the sound blaster when chosen for the sound fx. In game, the menu option for sound fx behaves in the same way you describe: disabled, and when toggled on are set off again. This is without an MT32.

In DOSBox, the install/setup program detects the sound blaster fine and I hear the gunshots in game. They do sound slightly different from when adlib is selected but they both sound like gun shots to me. I don't know if there are any other differences in sound fx between sound blaster and adlib.

Given my situation with my P3, the issue probably isn't related to the MT32 (unless you can get sound FX working with the MT32 out of the equation, then it might be...). I do know that many games have Sound Blaster detection problems for faster processors. How fast is your processor?

Okay, yes, following those diagnostic steps it definitely has problems with Soundblaster effects, regardless of music source. My full system specs are:

AMD 5x86 133MHz
32MB 60ns EDO memory
VLB C&T 65550 VGA
ISA ESS1868f on A220, I7, D1, P330 - MIDI for Flashback only works using SoftMPU
ISA RTL8019 NIC with XTIDE ROM
64GB CF card (<1GB C:, 63GB D:)
Win 98SE DOS 7.1

Tried with no config.sys, HIMEM only, as well as my default HIMEM+EMM386 setup. Two different speeds; stock at 133MHz, and using SETMUL.EXE to disable L1 cache (it displays an indicated 33MHz at that point):

Adlib music + Adlib effects @ 133MHz
Adlib music is okay, effects are okay. In-game menu shows effects and music both enabled, and can be toggled on/off correctly.

Adlib music + Adlib effects, L1 cache disabled (setmul l1d, shows ~33MHz)
Adlib music is okay, effects are okay. In-game menu shows effects and music both enabled, and can be toggled on/off correctly.

Adlib music + SB effects @ 133MHz
Adlib music is okay, no effects played. In-game menu shows effects disabled and refuses to stay toggled on.

Adlib music + SB effects, L1 cache disabled
Adlib music is okay, no effects played. In-game menu shows effects disabled and refuses to stay toggled on.

MT-32 music + Adlib effects @ 133MHz
MT-32 music is okay, effects are okay. In-game menu shows effects and music both enabled, and can be toggled on/off correctly.

MT-32 music + Adlib effects, L1 cache disabled
MT-32 music is okay, effects are okay. In-game menu shows effects and music both enabled, and can be toggled on/off correctly.

MT-32 music + SB effects @ 133MHz
MT-32 music is okay, no effects played. In-game menu shows effects disabled and refuses to stay toggled on.

MT-32 music + SB effects, L1 cache disabled
MT-32 music is okay, no effects played. In-game menu shows effects disabled and refuses to stay toggled on.

It's any combination of Soundblaster effects that doesn't work. Music source works regardless of what I set, and Adlib effects always work, too.
I'm not overly worried about lack of Soundblaster effects, since the Adlib option seems to be equivalent except a slight loss of clarity. It's just *why* Soundblaster doesn't appear to work on my real system in this one game.

SB-MIDI and MPU-401 don't use any kind if DMA.

Sound Blaster SFX may use DMA or PIO.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-04-12, 21:07:

SB-MIDI and MPU-401 don't use any kind if DMA.

Sound Blaster SFX may use DMA or PIO.

The flashback config utility shows the right base address, interrupt and dma channel set by unisound and used in all other games without issue.

No idea why Soundblaster effects are not working in this game.

I have confirmed that the same installation of the game (cut and pasted from the CF card in this real system) works perfectly in Dosbox with Soundblaster effects and Adlib music, so there is nothing wrong with the installation or game data.
Gunshots and datacube beeping are present. In-game menu shows effects (and music) enabled, and can be toggled on/off at will. This was Dosbox from svn a week or two ago, running with 10000 cycles.

I am wondering if there is some specific incompatibility with the ESS1868F card I am using - though of 213 games I have now installed and thoroughly tested, there are very, very few which don't work when set to Soundblaster/Soundblaster Pro mode with this card (like single digit figures):

Commander Keen in Keen Dreams - Soundblaster greyed out in in-game settings and no Adlib music either
Dune (CD) - digital audio locks up the intro movie (SB or SB Pro mode)
Flashback - no effects (SB mode)
Wing Commander Privateer - no digital audio at all (SB or SB Pro mode)

After your last post, I was wondering if the game really is just one of those rare ones that needs a real SB Pro. My P3 is using an AWE32 CT2760, so it's not a real SB Pro either, technically.

So I went ahead and swapped out the AWE32 and put in a real SB Pro 2 CT1600. Now the game install/setup *does *detect the card correctly and saves the settings - it gave me a bad sound card configuration error before and refused to save the sound blaster FX configuration. However, in game, there is still no Sound FX and still has the same toggle behavior. So with this, I don't think it's necessarily an incompatibility with the ESS1868F you are using.

Checking the game's requirements, on the box it states it's compatible with a 286, 386, and 486. We might still both be running into the processor being too fast and the sound card isn't properly detecting during run time (though I understand that you have used SETMUL to slow down the system, I still don't have any other theories). Other games do have problems with sound card detection when the CPU is too fast, and some games have patches to fix that problem. Example: http://sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches … ardDrivers.html - I did a quick search for the same kind of patch for Flashback, but I didn't find one yet.

I have a 486 DX2 66Mhz that I want to try the game on to see if that gets it going with sound blaster sound fx, but it's out of commission at the moment. If it does work when I get the 486 up and running, I'll update here.

It's an odd one, for sure.

Applying SETMUL.EXE L1D brings the system down to something around ~486DX 33, or thereabouts. This has been enough to fix odd speed related issues (mainly too fast, or joystick calibration problems) in everything else so far (except Wing Commander 1, which needed a bit more slowing down).

I'm sure that's slow enough for the game to work properly... but since Adlib effects appear to be broadly comparable, I'm not going to lose much sleep over it. I'd much rather have my Legend Entertainment games not lock up with SoftMPU than have to settle with Adlib instead of Soundblaster effects on Flashback!

Thanks for investigating though!