I only used Windows on top of os/2 when I worked for a financial institute, so I might be wrong, but does windows in OS/2 have direct access to the hardware?

And I don't think there are any pci cards with win 3.11 support.
I didn't know there is dosbox for os/2

To answer your first question... yes as far as I know, Win 3.x does have direct access to the hardware. Hence why it needs drivers.

Also, I just discovered that Ensoniq did release an AudioPCI driver for Win 3.x. Whether or not it will work remains to be seen.

Yes... an OS/2 version of DOSBox does indeed exist. It's up to about version 0.72... which is pretty darn close to the latest version.

Matt

He he 0.72 is close in number but not in code 😉

Edit: apparently there are a number of pci sound cards with win3.1 drivers.

The Aureal Vortex 1 has Windows 3.1 drivers.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 had a PCI version as well. Windows 3.1 had built in Sound Blaster drivers, though creative labs did release updated versions as well. I seem to recall my PCI SB16 working fine in Windows 3.1, but I'm not 100% sure about that, it may have been an ISA card with 3.1, and I didn't get the PCI card until Windows 95. I do remember that when I got the SB Live!, I think it was, the DOS drivers (absolutely requred to use the card in DOS and huge memory hogging TSRs,) were total crap (and they haven't improved any since then either.)

There are several PCI soundcards with Win3.1 drivers (ALS4000, Crystal Soundfusion, Ensoniq AudioPCI, Aureal Vortex1), but these drivers are useless in OS/2 and WinOS/2 sessions. The only PCI cards with WinOS/2 drivers AFAIK are the SoundFusion based cards (CS4280, CS4614, CS4624). All other cards including AudioPCI (SoundBlaster PCI and friends) do not have special drivers for Win3.1 under OS/2.
There is also a generic WinOS/2 audio driver (search for genaud-v3.1r02.zip) which works with any soundcard with OS/2 support, but its compatibility is said to be questionable.

Wow thanks for sharing that information! I had no idea. Now if I can find the card you mentioned on eBay so that Win-OS/2 doesn't complain... 😀

I tried the generic audio UNIAUD driver, and quite frankly, it sucks. Win-OS/2 most of the time won't even recognize that the sound resource is free and usable.

EDIT: Would this be the correct card to get btw?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Crystal-CS4280-CM-64- … =item1c2d5d03e8

Matt

1Would this be the correct card to get btw?
2http://www.ebay.com/itm/Crystal-CS4280-...1c2d5d03e8 

Yes, it should work.
Btw, UNIAUD and GenAud are two different beasts: the former is a universal audio driver for OS/2 that supports many chips, the latter is a generic audio driver for Win3.1-Sessions in OS/2.

Aaah... thanks for the clarification then good sir. Much obliged. 😀

I just hit Hobbes and downloaded the drivers ahead of time. I'm not entirely sure my eComStation installation CDs will come with the necessary out-of-the-box support.

Matt