I don't think it will be possbile to add as the reading is done from the videocard ports and those can not be altered.

(Correct me if I'm wrong. But you can't overwrite a port can you ?)

you could try Dosbox though as it is a full emulator so there it possible to do so. Dosbox is located on this forum as well.

I trying to find workaround.
Port just can be handled correctly, I wonder why things changed in Win XP because in Win 9X everything is almost good, sometimes programs run not so smooth but they do run. Any ideas?

Games should be able to read out the retrace being active or not, although there might be chance that windows just task switches at the moment there's a retrace. But another problem is games trying to set a timer that they synchronize with the retrace, that is somewhat impossible with windows timer emulation, so those games normally screw up big time. not much you can do about this though i think, unless windows get better timer emulation.

O.K.

Does anybody know why under Win 9X everything is ok but not under Win XP/2000 ???

There are many reasons why things could work differently under 9x than 2000/XP. They are completely different operating systems: Win9x sits on top of DOS 7, whereas Win2000/XP are newer versions of Windows NT, which was made from the ground-up to let Windows have full control of the system. This control includes putting layers of OS security and abstraction between the hardware and applications that run on it. In addition, since WinNT doesn't sit on top of DOS, any DOS support it has is largely emulated. So now it's more like DOS on top of Windows instead of the other way around, and you can probably imagine what kinds of problems that can cause (reduced graphics and other hardware support, timing problems, etc.).

Well, if somebody know how to avoid problems with programs (games, demos etc.) that read vertical retrace signal in addition to system clock (timer) to syncronize video and/or audio please post ideas here.

Thanks everybody for your attention.

If the mentioned problems are that bad then I can think of only two good solutions:
1. Use DOSbox for programs that it can handle.
2. Dual-boot Win9x or even DOS from another partition or a floppy disk.

You forgot about sound emulation.

I already have DOS partition on hard disk with MS-DOS 6.22. My soundcard drivers produce no sound under DOS although they have to.

I have C-Media 8738 PCI on my motherboard. Sound card is ok and I don't want to buy anything else. I also have one GUS, two GUS MAX, one Pro Audio Studio 16, but all of them are ISA that my motherboard lacks and all other motherboards lack too.

DOSBox (at least official version 0.58) can't run protected mode programs.

It can't be so bad that NOBODY know anything about problem mentioned above. We just have to wait...

Period.

Hard Launch wrote:

Does anybody know why under Win 9X everything is ok but not under Win XP/2000 ???

When you compare Windows 9x with Windows NT/2000/XP, you have to keep in mind that they are very different systems.

Windows 95/98/Me are operating systems that run on top of 16-bit MS-DOS, and although they replace almost all the functions originally provided by MS-DOS, they are designed to let programs have access to several low-level hardware resources. This design allows Windows 9x to run a lot of old MS-DOS programs and it gives a lot of freedom to programs and device drivers. It also lets games run at a reasonable speed even with all the OS tasks also running.

Windows NT, 2000 and XP are part of a different family of operating systems, designed to be more secure and stable, even if this means that old programs (mostly games) would not be able to run. It imposes limits on low-level hardware access and it also has a much more restritive environment for the device driver themselves.

Given all this internal differences, several games that rely on hardware access are not supposed to run under Windows NT/2000/XP. Sometimes this can be worked out, like VDMSound does, by emulating the hardware behaviour, but eventually we encounter some restrictions that cannot be avoided. Timers are usually a problem under NT, and the vertical retrace sync seems to be another.

I already have DOS partition on hard disk with MS-DOS 6.22. My soundcard drivers produce no sound under DOS although they have to.

I have C-Media 8738 PCI on my motherboard.

I also have this sound chip and I was unable to make it work under MS-DOS, even with the DOS drivers provided at C-Media web site. I'll see if I can do some more testing and post the results back.

Regards,

Hard Launch wrote:

You forgot about sound emulation.
DOSBox (at least official version 0.58) can't run protected mode programs.

The cvs builds you can find in the DOSBox forum, here, can run a lot of protected mode programs. You should try it.

Can you make binary/Win XP for me?? I have no VC++ or something...

Hard Launch. The ms-dos emulation on the CMI8738 is very very bad. I also have an integrated CMI8738 (ASUS A7V333) and i have had little success with it under real ms-dos.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

Hard Launch. The ms-dos emulation on the CMI8738 is very very bad. I also have an integrated CMI8738 (ASUS A7V333) and i have had little success with it under real ms-dos.

I have to agree with you, since I spent a few hours last weekend trying again to get my CMI8738 to work on pure MS-DOS. I had to change a BIOS setting in order to make the BIOS initialize the card (set "Plug and Play OS installed" to "No"), and even if the C-Media driver seemed to load correctly, there were problems with sound in half of the tests I did. Sound effects worked most of the time with a SoundBlaster Pro setting, but getting FM music was a real pain.

Finally, I would not recommend this for anyone, the chances of success do not look very good.

Regards,

WOW!

In my case I can't get digital part working but FM was VERY good...

You probably found the solution to set "Plug&Play aware OS" to "NO". I haven't tried it yet.

For FM part try to use latest drivers from Chaintech (dosdrv.exe) or ASUS (cm288_Dosdrv.zip) site. They are the latest I found (C-Media site have older ones) and working good in FM.

Actually I found C-Media8738 to produce most quality FM sound I ever heard.

P.S.: please anyone compile for me latest CVS build of DOSBox for Windows XP. I have no Visual C++ so that's that problem...

I have also set plug & play aware OS to NO. Another thing i have made is to re-route sound card's IRQ 10 to 5. Go to pci configuration and reserve IRQ10.

I found I have no possibility to let BIOS initialize Plug&Play devices, I mean "Plug&Play aware OS" or "Plug and Play OS installed"...

That's sad, will try to write a letter to Chaintech or manually turn on this option in BIOS. It's possible using "BIOS patcher".
http://www.rom.by/

Some time ago I also set IRQ to 7 and found that hardware IRQ and BLASTER IRQ are different, hardware IRQ is 7, but BLASTER IRQ is 10(A)...
I changed something and now hardware and BLASTER IRQ's are the same...

Will try to make it back again 😀

I saw that Hard Launch already mentioned it, but I would recommend scraping together the absolute newest drivers available for the chipset. Drivers supplied by your motherboard vendor (e.g. Asus) are likely to be older than those supplied by the chip vendor (e.g. C-Media) or by other motherboard vendors using the same sound chip. Many motherboard companies are lazy about providing the latest drivers for their hardware, especially if you don't have the latest model (actually that goes for all computer product companies, hardware or software based).

Good Luck! I think if I ever want to run something in pure DOS in the future, I'll put together an old system to do it, as it seems that hardware support is moving too far away from what DOS is able to handle.

Funny enough, the DOS drivers provided by Chaintech for the CMI8738 are newer than those on own CMI's web page. Odd!

Most funny thing that driver for Windows XP on windowsupdate.microsoft.com (ver. 643) is newer than on C-Media site (ver. 639).
I wrote to C-Media several times but they keep silence.