Kamerat wrote on 2023-04-27, 07:07:

crazii wrote on 2023-04-26, 22:26:

mgtroyas wrote on 2023-04-25, 18:03:

If support can be extended to additional devices, Pentium III/M Toshiba laptops use this AC sound card: ULi/ALi M5451 AC-Link Co […]
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If support can be extended to additional devices, Pentium III/M Toshiba laptops use this AC sound card:
ULi/ALi M5451 AC-Link Contoller Audio Device
The motherboard is a:
ULi/ALi M1644 CyberALLADDiN

I have a P2010 with a Pentium III 866MHz and would love to test this.

There's no driver in MPXPlay for that. I have a Toshiba Portege 2000 laptop with the Ali M1535, CyberAlladdin-T board. it's not working last time I tested. I'd like to debug it but it's not with me right now and it's too slow compiling code on the machine.

The ALi M5451 audio core found in the M1535 series of south bridges are based of an actual sound card, the Trident 4DWave. Might this be an issue? The Trident 4DWave itself are capable of emulating Sound Blaster 16/Pro under DOS but I have never seen an initializer for the M5451 (the SiS 7018 which are also based on the 4DWave do have an initilizer/driver for DOS).

Mmm the Wave 4D has some VXD drivers for Windows 95 and a TSR for DOS mode. I downloaded them here:
https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … driverid=297851

The drivers are for a completelly diferent PCI ID and wasn't able to trick Windows to install them even editing the .inf file.

They had a TSR to run SB emulation on pure DOS mode, files "Wavetsr.com" and "Waveinit.com". Tried to run both of them from DOS mode, but they compained about not finding any Trident PCI device.

crazii wrote on 2023-04-26, 22:39:

mgtroyas wrote on 2023-04-26, 18:23:

I just tested it on my "modern" Z270 i5-7600k system. It works the same, what's more, Prehistorik 2 has perfect sound and music. On my ICH6 Pentium M laptop it has very distorted sound.

Can you post the ICH6 sound card info with SBEMU /scl switch?
the /SCL only works on the first run.

Sure:

11: ICH  : Intel ICH6 found on port :2200 irq:11 (type:ICH4, bits:16,20)

ave369 wrote on 2023-05-01, 19:25:

So I did a test with MPXPLAY, and the result was the same as with SBEMU. The software works perfectly, with no error messages, but no sound. The output on my display is as if it is playing an MP3 file, with waving levels and stuff, but no music plays. This is the same kind of issue I have with SBEMU: all drivers load correctly, but no sound plays.

Did you try this solution? MPXPlay faq text file:

Sound output/quality problems:

Q: I have an Intel HDA compatible soundcard. Mpxplay detects it, the playing starts,
but there's no sound on the output.
A: Try to use the -scc option with different values (-scc 1 or -scc 2 or -scc 3)
Try to use -scv option to set the soundcard output volume (-scv 1 or -scv 99)

I tried that. No results. I also tried -sct option, and MPXPlay only detected the emulated SB card. I tried to run it without SBEMU loaded. This time, it failed to run, throwing an exception (DOS4GW exception 0000 or something like that).

ave369 wrote on 2023-05-01, 19:25:

The output on my display is as if it is playing an MP3 file, with waving levels and stuff, but no music plays.

Could it be an issue with output to front panel audio jacks? Normally windows driver handles this but SBEMU probably doesn’t. See if jumpers have to be installed on header pins 5-6 and 9-10.

The Ensoniq AudioPCI ES1731 is an AC97 card; has anyone gotten this sb emulator to run with it? It'd be nice to finally have decent soundblaster support for that card...

Hello guys,

Thank you for the unique piece of software 😀

Tested on my Acer Aspire One netbook and works fine on DOOM, Duke3D, and Quake2

keep up the good job
Chris

Will SBEMU work with Realtek ALC262 ? anyone tried ?

Thank you

Hello,

new test done: Mainboard MS-6534 with Pentium4 2.0Ghz and ACL650 sound chip onboard. Same configuration as my previous test on another p4 machine.

All loads fine, but the volume is so low that, even with an external amplifier, I can barely hear it!

EDIT: Solved, two jumpers were missing from fromt panel audio connector (needed when not connected to anything).

P.S. I tried an Herrcules Muse LT PCI (CMI8738/PCI-SX chip), but this one is not recognized by SBEMU.

What's the compatibility of modern video chipsets with MSDOS applications?

For example, do Intel HD integrated graphics have vesa support, for SVGA modes?

keenerb wrote on 2023-05-02, 23:26:

What's the compatibility of modern video chipsets with MSDOS applications?

For example, do Intel HD integrated graphics have vesa support, for SVGA modes?

This one is off-topic for SBEMU but yes, newer video cards indeed started breaking VESA/VGA functionalities that are no longer important for modern OSes.

You can refer to some other topics on this forum for this question.

Just don't expected to play DOS games on modern PCs. Lack of Sound Blaster compatibility is just one thing. Modern PCs have rather limited support for EMS memory and (S)VGA compatibility was getting worse and worse every year. With UEFI there's no need to have (S)VGA compatibility at all, since UEFI provides its own standard. The only reason that modern PCs still support (S)VGA is because some people might want to use older GPUs in modern PC or modern GPUs in older PCs. For example Core2Quads are quite capable of running games with RTX GPUs.

However within 3-5 years PC hardware will drop legacy support for BIOS entirely.

SBEMU is really meant for 1998-2014 hardware, which had no ISA sound support, but still have great MS-DOS compatibility otherwise. You can find really cheap hardware from that period and really interesting ones, like those running Intel Atom CPUs which were useless for everything, except DOS and Windows 9x (though they lacked drivers).

Also keep in mind that SBEMU isn't changing much. It's of course great to get SB support in newer hardware, but for most people DOSBox or PCEM are the better choice. Also SBEMU will probably never reach a compatibility on a real ISA sound card level. Having period correct hardware, or those somewhat rare 1+ GHz PCs with ISA slots will always be the best choice for playing DOS games on real hardware.

For me the only reason to use real hardware is to use CRT display. This gives real zero input lag in MS-DOS games. If you use LCD display, then it's irrelevant if a game is running with or without emulation.

I've been tinkering with this all afternoon, and its kind of hard to setup.
I wanted to have portable setup so I installed freedos to usb stick, then put this to it and games.
Now it works but it took hours to get it working... especially complicated process was getting freedos to install to usb stick.
It would be nice to know if there is a easier portable solution.
If someone like philscomputerlab would make a tutorial for this it would be great 😁

Kekkula wrote on 2023-05-03, 13:33:

I've been tinkering with this all afternoon, and its kind of hard to setup. I wanted to have portable setup so I installed freed […]
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I've been tinkering with this all afternoon, and its kind of hard to setup.
I wanted to have portable setup so I installed freedos to usb stick, then put this to it and games.
Now it works but it took hours to get it working... especially complicated process was getting freedos to install to usb stick.
It would be nice to know if there is a easier portable solution.
If someone like philscomputerlab would make a tutorial for this it would be great 😁

Installing FreeDOS on a USB stick is really easy/effortless using Rufus https://rufus.ie, but it copies just the bare minimum files to run FreeDOS. After that, you copy over the SBEMU files and some games and then update/create Config.sys and Autoexec.bat.

There's actually a nice tutorial on YouTube already, it's how I stumbled across this project. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg-ci97DDow

Just make sure you use a quality brand, fast USB drive. I found that I had some issues that I thought was a bug in SBEMU or HDPMI32i and it ended up being that the random, crappy, 1GB USB stick I pulled out of a drawer was just that, crap.

Kekkula wrote on 2023-05-03, 13:33:

I've been tinkering with this all afternoon, and its kind of hard to setup. I wanted to have portable setup so I installed freed […]
Show full quote

I've been tinkering with this all afternoon, and its kind of hard to setup.
I wanted to have portable setup so I installed freedos to usb stick, then put this to it and games.
Now it works but it took hours to get it working... especially complicated process was getting freedos to install to usb stick.
It would be nice to know if there is a easier portable solution.
If someone like philscomputerlab would make a tutorial for this it would be great 😁

I'm not sure about the right way to install FreeDOS on a USB stick... but in my case, I simply clone a FreeDOS instance installed in a VM HDD to an actual USB stick and that's it.

I'm using Linux, and VirtualBox's NAT allows the VM to SSH into the host. So I can simply install FreeDOS inside a VM, then boot Linux in that VM and dd the installed FreeDOS hard disk to an image file on the host via SSH. I could then write the created image to an actual USB stick and it'll boot on an actual system. I can also resize the image post-restore via GParted if desired, just be careful with the partitioning tools you use as some may break booting in the process.

You can add additional files into the USB stick later on. As long as you don't touch core system files, it should not break its ability to boot.

PS: FreeDOS doesn't even have to be installed. Unlike other DOS variants, some boot managers such as GRUB/GRUB4DOS can boot FreeDOS' KERNEL.SYS directly, without relying on the boot sector.

Just make sure you use a quality brand, fast USB drive. I found that I had some issues that I thought was a bug in SBEMU or HDPMI32i and it ended up being that the random, crappy, 1GB USB stick I pulled out of a drawer was just that, crap.

I was having all kinds of glitches and was just thinking that the issue might be my crappy usb stick 😉
Some other problems I'm experiencing are probably freedos based for example indiana jones fate of atlantis hangs if I touch my laptop pad mouse.
But there are also sbemu problems like if I use laptop with intel hda there is no sound at first, but when I change output to headphones with /o0 switch and back to speakers /o1, then the speakers starts to work.

Bruno128 wrote on 2023-05-02, 17:53:

Could it be an issue with output to front panel audio jacks? Normally windows driver handles this but SBEMU probably doesn’t. See if jumpers have to be installed on header pins 5-6 and 9-10.

I don't have a front panel. I plug my speakers directly into the motherboard's sound output jack.

ave369 wrote on 2023-05-03, 20:50:

I don't have a front panel. I plug my speakers directly into the motherboard's sound output jack.

That's exactly what I was pointing out. In the absence of Windows audio driver your sound card may be under impression that there is a front panel which overrides your connected speaker. A link to the discussion.
To test this theory, either jumper your AAFP accordingly or connect an actual front panel with a speaker to it.

Thanks for this great project!
I just wanted to propose to put information in the readme (included readme and the one on GitHub) about how to change IRQ etc..

Bruno128 wrote on 2023-03-24, 17:25:

Test report, Realtek ALC888 @ VT8237A MS-DOS 6.22 SBEMU ver.1.0b2-8233fix […]
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crazii wrote on 2023-03-24, 15:19:

You can test the latest one that tries to fix interrupt problem.

Test report,
Realtek ALC888 @ VT8237A
MS-DOS 6.22
SBEMU ver.1.0b2-8233fix

No change:
Internal stack overflow
System Halted

Try to disconnect any SATA SSD. "SBEMU Internal stack overflow System Halted" happens whenever a SATA SSD is present on PC. Once it is physically disconnected, SBEMU may work fine.

[Edit] Error above happend under MSDOS. Using FreeDOS, an exception occurs as described in other posts. Thus, on both operating systems, disconnecting all SATA SSDs was the workaround.

[Edit 2] The problem is happening on that motherboard (Biostar) at least. On Intel DG41RQ, it did not happen and it also has a SATA SSD.

_____________________
Biostar P4M900 M7 - VIA VT8237A