Magnuz wrote:

I kick myself mentally everytime I think about it.

Why are you crying over spilled milk about warez here? There's probably only a 1% of that even supporting the Awe32 anyway (and that's not counting MT-32 or General MIDI).

There's fewer games that take advantage of the AWE than you think.

The onboard AWE32 set is located in ROM and has 1 Mb in size. 512 Kb of built-in RAM are used for additional samples uploading. For instance, few samples are uploaded there for MT-32 mode emulation.

Here I started a thread where I develop an utility to use SF2 soundfonts in DOS. Maybe you'll find it interesting and even participate in testing.

One thing i nvr knew is must the game be coded specifically to make use of Awe32 special emu capabilities or any game supporting soundblaster standard will automatically be "enhanced" via emu?

On the topic of sf2, i did nt know it can be loaded into dos banks. Always thought sf2 was for loading into banks in windows only and sbk for dos only. And they are not related.

Is there a way to make use of sf2 banks to run pure dos games like say dune2? Cause that will make the whole wavetable concept redundant. We can virtually use any soundcard in existence, much like how dosbox emulates Gravis ultrasound.

1) The game must explicitly support EMU8000. SB AWE32 consists basically of two parts: SB16 and EMU8000. So, for older games without AWE32 support only the SB16 part would work.

But, many games did not have any card-specific support code at all, using universal DOS audio driver libraries, like Miles Audio Interface Library (AIL). Creative Labs made a driver update for some older games using AIL 2.0 driver library, that would allow them to fully support AWE32.

2) SF2 in DOS is possible. I made an utility to do so. Besides, there is at least one game that uses SF2 for AWE32 in DOS: Eradicator.

3) Theoretically, yes, if there existed a reliable protected and real-mode compatible utility that would emulate a MPU-401 port AND load a SF2 bank into AWE32 memory.

In practice, we have only AWEUTIL.COM, which emulates a MPU-401 port and loads a SBK bank into AWE32 memory. But SBK banks are very rare compared to SF2, and to the worst of it, AWEUTIL.COM is not compatible with DOS protected mode, which most games are using.

Maybe I will be able to create such an utility. I am not sure, since my programming skills are weak enough.

As for mentioned Dune 2, it supports neither MPU-401, nor AWE32. Luckily, it is using AIL 2 library. I have updated its SOUND.PAK file to substitute Roland MT-32 driver with an AWE32 one.

Make a backup copy of your SOUND.PAK file, and replace it by one I provide here. Then choose Roland MT-32 (LAPC-I) in game setup.

Dune2 supports the Sound Canvas, read MPU-401. but it takes a large amount of base mem to have SB+MPU simultaneously.

Oh right, blind me 😒 It really supports a Sound Canvas.

Hmmm... I wonder if this new MPU-401 TSR fits into the mix:

http://bjt42.github.io/softmpu/