Reply 220 of 406, by zyzzle
crazii,
I can report success with SBEMU! It is wonderful. I have a few questions, and although it works, it seems very finicky, giving lots of exceptions, divide by zero, and / or system freezes. But, most importantly it works on the three new core i5 and i7 systems I've tested it on so far: two Broadwell chipsets with Intel HDA PCI audio: Intel i5-5300, i5-5600, and one i5-8250u Kaby Lake with Intel IHD audio (but the SBEMU program detects the card as Intel HDA.)
First off, I only get sound out of my laptop's headphone jack. Not out of the Internal speakers. Is there an option to switch between the two using SBEMU, as there is in MpxPlay, which has the -scc 0, and -scc 1, and -scs options. This is a major limitation since it means I must connect headphones, and can't use Internal speaker for the sound.
I also had to manually SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1.
And the emulated Sound Blaster card only detects as an SB Pro Card, and gives stereo 8-bit samples up to 22.05 Khz. I also got it to output up to 8-bit 44.1 Khz in mono using Dual Module Player v.3.01 in real mode.
Is there a way to get SBEMU to emulate and detect fully as an SB16? Ie, 16-bit 44.1 stereo sample output? I tried to tweak SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 T6 but this did not change detection in the MODule players. It's been over 25 years since I tweaked with Sound Blaster settings, so perhaps I've misremembered how to tell DOS there's a 16-bit Sound Blaster in the system through this environment variable setting. I tried (DOS versions of DMP, MikMod v. 3.2.9, OpenMPT123). The following games I tested and worked, although sometimes would crash randomly:
Doom v. 1.9
Wolfenstein 3D v 1.4
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Stargunner
Descent
Quake 1
Quake 2 for DOS
The following games detected the Sound Blaster Card in setup, and sound could be successfully heard in the setup programs, but upon running the game executables either froze or had no sound output:
Need For Speed SE (no sound, but ran)
Screamer 1 and Screamer 2 (froze upon running with both DOS4GW extender, and DOS32A stubbed, setup program fine with sound)
Tyrian 2000 -- Gives error upon running executable and doesn't detect sound, but will detect music)
I'm still testing.
Also, very strangely, the Kaby Lake system I referenced above: MPXplay v. 1.66 itself will not work at all, even with its "native" PCI soundcard detection, even with -scs 1 and -scc options. It claims to detect IHD but there's no sound, can't seek between files, etc. However, *your* SBEMU program works *wonderfully* and gloriously while MpxPlay doesn't! That's very strange, considering your code is based upon MpxPlay's PCI detection code! Possible explanations?
Over at Dos Ain't Dead forum, Candyman reports that "In addition, the consequence of installing SBEMU is that IRQ interrupts in 32-bit programs that use dos extenders do not work and terminate." I can confirm this behavior. As well as many quirky exceptions, freezes, and system erratic behavior, such as "Unable to load Command.com" after quitting programs (both CWSDPMI-extender and DOS4gw Extender) and real-mode MODule players. There some sort of memory / IRQ corruption happening, but in the main, these problems aren't too annoying considering I've got GREAT sound and music coming out of "new" Intel core systems.
As this is a work in progress, please let me know if there's any more testing I can do, or anything you want me to try, or other feedback which may help you work out some of the bugs and / or erratic behavior.
Congratulations and thanks for releasing one of the BEST tweaks / wrappers ever done in DOS. They though it couldn't be done, but you've managed it!