Well the BIOS has no option for the POST beep, but it does beep and also does that memory test ticking sound.

My theory is that Golden Axe is using the system timers in conjunction with its samples and expects that the timer be properly initialized in some way beforehand, and it will not be initialized unless the speaker makes a beep or another program does so first.

Is any one of you expecting sound effects coming out of the Sound Blaster? Because having debugged the game, I can tell you that there is no Sound Blaster code in the game's executables (GOLD.EXE and AXE.DAT) whatsoever. If the problem is that there's nothing coming out of the PC speaker when it should, why are you talking about Sound Blasters and IRQs?

NewRisingSun wrote:

Is any one of you expecting sound effects coming out of the Sound Blaster? Because having debugged the game, I can tell you that there is no Sound Blaster code in the game's executables (GOLD.EXE and AXE.DAT) whatsoever. If the problem is that there's nothing coming out of the PC speaker when it should, why are you talking about Sound Blasters and IRQs?

Quite right, it has been many years since I played the DOS port on real hardware. Impressive PC Speaker sampling. Its either PC Speaker or Adlib for music, but PC Speaker only for sound effects. Thus it probably is an issue with timer and or PPI initialization/usage.

It cannot be from a lack of initialization of the 8253 Programmable Interval Timer (PIT), as the music could not be heard either if that were the case. The PC speaker does not require any particular initialization --- at least on a normal PC. It might indeed be that the Teradrive specifically requires some sort of Speaker Enable routine, though I would not know how Commander Keen could possible be aware of that.

In any case, I have attached to programs. Megadisk: Disable the power-on beep again in the setup menu. After a cold boot, run BEEP and then Golden Axe and see if that enables the sound effects. Then after another cold boot, run BEEP2 and then Golden Axe and again see if that enables the sound effects. Post results here.

NewRisingSun wrote:

If the problem is that there's nothing coming out of the PC speaker when it should, why are you talking about Sound Blasters and IRQs?

Im pretty sure the problem only happens if/when any of the Sound blasters that I tested are installed thou.

NewRisingSun wrote:

In any case, I have attached to programs. Megadisk: Disable the power-on beep again in the setup menu. After a cold boot, run BEEP and then Golden Axe and see if that enables the sound effects. Then after another cold boot, run BEEP2 and then Golden Axe and again see if that enables the sound effects. Post results here.

Sure thing, I'll try that and will get back to you guys with the results asap.

Ok the results are in.

After disabling the "Setup menu Power On Beep" , the Golden Axe no speaker audio problem came back as before. And after running the programs each time in a cold boot this is what I got:

BEEP- In a cold boot, loaded BEEP.COM (an actual BEEP sound was heard), loaded Gold Axe and all sounds were there ok.

BEEP2.com- In a cold boot, loaded BEEP2.com (NO BEEP sound this time), loaded Gold Axe and the speaker Sound effetcs were missing.

😕

Thank-you. This means that in the Teradrive, the 8253 Programmable Interval Timer (PIT)'s initial Timer 2 setting somehow blocks the speaker position from changing. This is strange, because both Golden Axe and BEEP2 specifically disable the speaker's Timer 2 Gate, so they should be completely unaffected by it.

Im pretty sure the problem only happens if/when any of the Sound blasters that I tested are installed thou.

Could you do the BEEP and BEEP2 tests again with no Sound Blaster installed? I have absolutely no idea why the Sound Blasters should affect the Programmable Interval Timer or the speaker's I/O port --- unless Creative's SBP-SET utility (which I take you haven't disabled, unlike CTMMSYS and CTSBPRO) does something funny, in case of which you should try with the Sound Blaster card physically installed, but no Creative software at all running at startup. (Isn't this fun? 😀)

NewRisingSun wrote:

Could you do the BEEP and BEEP2 tests again with no Sound Blaster installed? I have absolutely no idea why the Sound Blasters should affect the Programmable Interval Timer or the speaker's I/O port --- unless Creative's SBP-SET utility (which I take you haven't disabled, unlike CTMMSYS and CTSBPRO) does something funny, in case of which you should try with the Sound Blaster card physically installed, but no Creative software at all running at startup. (Isn't this fun? 😀)

For the sake of this I went ahead and removed everything to start from scratch. I formatted the HD and re-installed the built-in DOS in English again.

The setup menu settings are back to: "Keyboard type":Japan, and "Power On Beeper": disable

Also removed the SBPRO2 card as suggested, and installed "Golden Axe" to the HD for the testing.

Now, this is totally weird and I must find the answer.

If I run Golden Axe in a cold boot, I get both PC speaker music and sound effects but it is not the music and sounds that one should expect from it, instead what I get are scratchy and garbled sounds/noises wtf? 😲 .

-In a cold boot I ran BEEP.com (there was the beep sound) and then loaded Golden Axe (again with no SBPRO2 card, just the speaker audio), and then all of the speakers sounds came out as they should for Golden Axe (no more scratchy noise) 😕 .

-Later, in a cold boot I ran BEEP2.com (no beep sound), loaded Golden Axe and same as above, the scratchy and garbled audio was there again, does seems like both speaker music and sound effects are there thou, they just are unrecognizable 😵 .

What's going on here?

.

Apparently, your BIOS does not set up 8253 counter 2 at all when POST beep is disabled, leaving its output in a high impedance state that blocks the speaker even if its Timer 2 Gate is disabled. This indicates that for proper operation, POST beep should always be enabled, and on machines where this is not possible (laptops?), BEEP.COM should be included in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Depending on the DOS version, ECHO ^G might be equivalent to BEEP.COM.

The difference in game behavior with and without the Sound Blaster installed seems to merely come from the fact that without a Sound Blaster, the game attempts to use the PC speaker for music as well. This is suggested by the fact that BEEP2.COM's behavior is unaffected by the presence of a Sound Blaster card.