No digital sound in System Shock 1 with AWE64 \ VOGONS

No digital sound in System Shock 1 with AWE64

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First post, by CrimsonMachete

Posted on 2018-09-04, 07:02

CrimsonMachete Offline

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I've had no luck getting digital audio working through my AWE64 in System Shock 1. Midi works great via an external SC-55.

I've tried manually changing settings in the CYB.CFG file but still nothing.

The demo readme states:

1. Sound stuff: For space reasons, we have not included our install program which would automatically set your System Shock conf […]
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1. Sound stuff: For space reasons, we have not included our install
program which would automatically set your System Shock configuration file
appropriately for your sound card. The demo comes default configured for
no sound or digital effects. If you want either sound or digital effects,
you will have to edit your cyb.cfg file yourself. In cyb.cfg, you will
find, among some other things, the following lines:
1digi_card -1
2digi_io -1
3digi_dma -1
4digi_irq -1
5midi_card -1
6midi_io -1
7midi_irq -1
digi_card and midi_card are the big ones; they control what sound or
effect card the game thinks you have. You can set midi_card or digi_card
to the appropriate value from the table below:
1SoundBlaster 1
2SoundBlasterPro (old) 2
3SoundBlasterPro (new) 3
4SB16 3
5Adlib 4
6General Midi 12
7AWE32 13
midi_irq and midi_io can be set to the appropriate value of your IRQ and
I/O base address, respectively. Similarly, digi_io, digi_dma, and
digi_irq can be set to your digital I/O address, DMA, and IRQ. These
values are in decimal, which may be a bit confusing when setting digi_io
and midi_io since those values are normally expressed in hex. Note that
if you leave these values as their original -1, System Shock will attempt
to use the defaults.

So, if you have a vanilla SB16 (card 3), with all default settings, the
sound part of your cyb.cfg would look like:
1digi_card 3
2digi_io -1
3digi_dma -1
4digi_irq -1
5midi_card 3
6midi_io -1
7midi_irq -1
If you had an SB16 (card 3) on digital IRQ 7, and a Waveblaster
daughterboard for MIDI (card 12), the sound part of your cyb.cfg would
look like:
1digi_card 3
2digi_io -1
3digi_dma -1
4digi_irq 7
5midi_card 12
6midi_io -1
7midi_irq -1

_______________________________________________________________________

My AWE64 has all defaults - A220 I5 D1 H5 P300 E620 T6

I'm using these settings:

digi_card 13
digi_io -1
digi_dma -1
digi_irq -1
midi_card 12
midi_io -1
midi_irq -1

Again, just Midi is working.

Any ideas what I'm missing/ doing wrong?

Thanks for any help! I last played through the game back in 94, want to see if it's as good as I remember.

Cheers.

Reply 1 of 9, by dr_st

Posted on 2018-09-04, 07:47

dr_st Offline

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Why won't you specify the actual IO/IRQ/DMA instead of leaving them at -1?

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Reply 2 of 9, by CrimsonMachete

Posted on 2018-09-04, 08:40

CrimsonMachete Offline

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Posts: 11
Joined: 2018-04-29, 07:12

dr_st wrote:
Why won't you specify the actual IO/IRQ/DMA instead of leaving them at -1?

Hi, I guess I should have mentioned, I have tried putting them in, but still nothing.

Reply 3 of 9, by CrimsonMachete

Posted on 2018-09-04, 19:48

CrimsonMachete Offline

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Posts: 11
Joined: 2018-04-29, 07:12

Does anyone have a working CYB.CFG file that they could post here for comparisons sake? That might point me in the right direction.

Cheers.

Reply 4 of 9, by Osprey

Posted on 2018-09-04, 20:23

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Have you tried setting it to SB16, instead? If I recall correctly, the AWE32 was basically just an SB16 + MIDI, so you probably wouldn't be losing any quality. Don't forget to also try setting the IRQ/IO/DMA values again.

Reply 5 of 9, by CrimsonMachete

Posted on 2018-09-04, 21:42

CrimsonMachete Offline

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Joined: 2018-04-29, 07:12

Osprey wrote:
Have you tried setting it to SB16, instead? If I recall correctly, the AWE32 was basically just an SB16 + MIDI, so you probably wouldn't be losing any quality. Don't forget to also try setting the IRQ/IO/DMA values again.

I've tried changing the digi_card value to 3 (Sound Blaster 16), but that didn't work for me either. As I understand it, a setting of:

digi_card 3
digi_io 220
digi_dma 1
digi_irq 5
midi_card 12
midi_io -1
midi_irq -1

should be correct for my AWE64, but still no digital audio plays. The readme refers to listing the digi_io in hex instead of decimal though,
so I'm a little confused. Maybe the fact I'm using external midi instead of the internal is an issue?

Reply 6 of 9, by Osprey

Posted on 2018-09-04, 23:03

Osprey Offline

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Joined: 2017-07-27, 21:32

CrimsonMachete wrote:
should be correct for my AWE64, but still no digital audio plays. The readme refers to listing the digi_io in hex instead of decimal though,
so I'm a little confused. Maybe the fact I'm using external midi instead of the internal is an issue?

220 in hex is DC, so try:

digi_io DC

It's also possible that the demo and the full version are slightly different. Why are you reading the demo readme, anyways? It says that manually editing the file was necessary only because they didn't have space to include their install program, but surely the full game (which came on CD, I believe) came with that program. Why aren't you using that, or have you without success?

Reply 7 of 9, by CrimsonMachete

Posted on 2018-09-05, 00:14

CrimsonMachete Offline

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Posts: 11
Joined: 2018-04-29, 07:12

Osprey wrote:
220 in hex is DC, so try: […]
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CrimsonMachete wrote:
should be correct for my AWE64, but still no digital audio plays. The readme refers to listing the digi_io in hex instead of decimal though,
so I'm a little confused. Maybe the fact I'm using external midi instead of the internal is an issue?

220 in hex is DC, so try:

digi_io DC

It's also possible that the demo and the full version are slightly different. Why are you reading the demo readme, anyways? It says that manually editing the file was necessary only because they didn't have space to include their install program, but surely the full game (which came on CD, I believe) came with that program. Why aren't you using that, or have you without success?

I misplaced my CD ages ago so I copied an install from an old hard drive, the sound setup program won't save my sound card choices. which is why I'm stuck with this annoying manual method. However I definitely know digital audio works because the sound test plays properly! Oh and I googled a hex to decimal converter last night and tried using DC, that didn't work either...

Reply 8 of 9, by realoldguy23

Posted on 2018-09-05, 06:46

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Location: Leipzig, Germany

220 in hex is DC, so try:

digi_io DC

I think there is a misunderstanding here. The IO port 220 is already in hex. They say explicitely in the README that they expect this in decimal, so 220 hex is 544 decimal:

digi_io 544

Reply 9 of 9, by CrimsonMachete

Posted on 2018-09-05, 07:43

CrimsonMachete Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 11
Joined: 2018-04-29, 07:12

realoldguy23 wrote:
220 in hex is DC, so try:

digi_io DC

I think there is a misunderstanding here. The IO port 220 is already in hex. They say explicitely in the README that they expect this in decimal, so 220 hex is 544 decimal:

digi_io 544

Success! I guess my first step should have been actually following the readme instructions closely. With the correct digi_io of 544, and manually entering the irq and dma, digital audio is
working. Thanks for all the help.

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