VOGONS


First post, by Great Hierophant

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King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (SCI) is among the few pre SCI 1.1 games that supports digital samples. It has a driver for the Sound Blaster Card and the Tandy TL/SL series. It also supports 3-voice sound without the DAC. When I select the Tandy TL/SL driver, I am disappointed to hear that the portcullis in the beginning gives barely any sound when it finally reaches the ground. The sound from the Sound Blaster is impressive and there is a real digitized sound when I play the game on my Tandy 1000 TL.

Last edited by Great Hierophant on 2009-07-09, 04:09. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 20, by Kippesoep

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Have you tried with a CVS version? Proper Tandy DAC support was recently added by wd.

My site: Ramblings on mostly tech stuff.

Reply 2 of 20, by robertmo

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in cvs you need to set sbtype=none for tandy low level dac support

Reply 3 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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Should have mentioned I was using the official .73 release. I will try it with the latest CVS and report back.

Reply 4 of 20, by wd

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sq3 works fine, at least that's a nice test case when comparing against sb output.
This does work in 0.73 though, didn't check kq1.

Reply 5 of 20, by robertmo

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Great Hierophant can you check Rise of the Dragon on your real Tandy computer?

I have checked rise of the dragon and it doesn't detect tandy sound although by editing its .cfg file i can force it to work (only TX, cause TL says it cannot initialize sound driver when i start the game). In other Dynamix games with simmilar setup it is detected properly (Stellar, David Wolf, A - 10 Tank Killer v1.0) And also with Dynamix games with a bit more modern setup (Adventures of Willy Beamish, Heart of China, A - 10 Tank Killer v1.5).

If you could also checking Ghostbusters I would be nice as it is very slow in dosbox when set to machine=tandy. (only machine=pcjr works with proper speed). While the box says tandy was supported http://www.mobygames.com/game/pc-booter/ghost … eCoverId,20048/

Reply 6 of 20, by h-a-l-9000

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About Ghostbusters:

Depends if the Tandy uses IRQ5 as vertical retrace interrupt. So what type of Tandy does DOSBox emulate? 😀

From RBIL:

the Tandy 1000, 1000A, and 1000HD use IRQ2 for the hard disk;
the 1000EX, HX, RLX, RLX-HD, RLX-B, RLX-HD-B use IRQ5 instead;
the 1000RL, RL-HD, SL, SL/2, TL, TL/2, and TL/3 are jumper-selectable for either IRQ2 or IRQ5 (default IRQ5);
the 1000SX and TX are DIP-switch selectable for IRQ2 or IRQ5 (default IRQ2);
the RSX and RSX-HD use IRQ14.

Tandy systems which use IRQ2 for the hard disk interrupt use IRQ5 for vertical retrace.

1+1=10

Reply 7 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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The digitized sound effect of the portcullis landing is present on the cvs version using the Tandy TL/SL driver.

The 16 color version of Rise of the Dragon seemed to work great in the latest DOSBox CVS as well. The machine must be set to tandy in order for the install program to allow you to select the Tandy TL option.

Reply 8 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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robertmo wrote:

Great Hierophant can you check Rise of the Dragon on your real Tandy computer?

I have checked rise of the dragon and it doesn't detect tandy sound although by editing its .cfg file i can force it to work (only TX, cause TL says it cannot initialize sound driver when i start the game). In other Dynamix games with simmilar setup it is detected properly (Stellar, David Wolf, A - 10 Tank Killer v1.0) And also with Dynamix games with a bit more modern setup (Adventures of Willy Beamish, Heart of China, A - 10 Tank Killer v1.5).

If you could also checking Ghostbusters I would be nice as it is very slow in dosbox when set to machine=tandy. (only machine=pcjr works with proper speed). While the box says tandy was supported http://www.mobygames.com/game/pc-booter/ghost … eCoverId,20048/

I checked Rise of the Dragon 256 color version with the Tandy TL driver manually set with resource.cfg in my Tandy TL with a VGA card and got the same message, "Cannot Initialize Sound Driver." I assume the same thing would happen with the 16 color version with an EGA or VGA card installed.

Since my Tandy TL uses a upgrade CPU chip, I don't think my test would give good results.

Reply 9 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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Funny enough, The Last Files of Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Serrated Scapel also fails to detect a Tandy TL/SL/RL in a real Tandy 1000 TL. Selecting the driver in either DOSBox or the real thing just makes digitized sounds stutter. The install program will select a Tandy TX/SX/EX/HX, but is hardly the prefered way to hear digitized sound. Selecting this option in DOSBox does not give accurate sound.

Reply 10 of 20, by wd

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The digitized sound effect of the portcullis landing is present on the cvs version using the Tandy TL/SL driver.

Does kq1 work with both soundblaster enabled (no lowlevel tandy dac) and disabled?

Reply 11 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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wd wrote:

The digitized sound effect of the portcullis landing is present on the cvs version using the Tandy TL/SL driver.

Does kq1 work with both soundblaster enabled (no lowlevel tandy dac) and disabled?

It does not work properly if the Sound Blaster variable is enabled. The portcullis sound is clearly incorrect. The Sound Blaster variable must be set to none in the cvs for it to give a proper sound.

Reply 12 of 20, by wd

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Iirc the only missing thing for the sb style emulation is volume control.

Reply 13 of 20, by robertmo

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with sbtype=anysb its just a short sound like setting bucket on the floor

with sbtype=none its a great long sound

check it yourself

Reply 14 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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robertmo wrote:

with sbtype=anysb its just a short sound like setting bucket on the floor

with sbtype=none its a great long sound

check it yourself

An excellent description!

Reply 15 of 20, by robertmo

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Rise of the Dragon doesn't have that helicopter sound at the beginning with tandy? I noticed that helicopter sound is done by opl, not dac. Am i right?

Reply 16 of 20, by wd

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tandy dac stuff is quite rare...

Reply 17 of 20, by Great Hierophant

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By Mobygames' count, there are only three PC games that took advantage of the Tandy DAC without supporting the Sound Blaster, Outrun, Gauntlet and Simcity.

Reply 18 of 20, by wd

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Outrun and Sim City work for sure with the tandy dac (in dosbox).

Reply 19 of 20, by robertmo

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moby says it is Gauntlet II

if you view the .exe file you will see:
Usage: GAUNTLET d d = display device: C for CGA, E for EGA, V for MCGA or VGA, T for Tandy 1000 Insert enhanced sound disk, if desired

and i think a version with this file: gtadss.snd may be needed.