VOGONS


First post, by mhdbox385

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I have been researching retro sound cards lately, the ones that were used in ms-dos games.
I try to understand some specifics about them and hopefully someone(s) can help me.
Hope for answers from fellows who uses/used these cards and knows for sure.

Do original Adlib and SoundBlaster cards require driver?

Last edited by mhdbox385 on 2019-04-22, 14:46. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 4, by matze79

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or at a different angle you can say each dos program with sb supports includes its own driver 😉

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 3 of 4, by bristlehog

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Depends on what you call a driver.

If you mean some software that should be loaded at DOS startup for the card to function - then no, it is not needed.

But anyway any software meant to interact with Adlib or Sound Blaster must include some piece of code that knows how to do it properly. This piece of code can be (and usually is) called a driver.

There might be some situations when more than one driver is involved. For example, let's say we're running Warcraft II on a Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum. This way, we have two drivers between the game itself and the sound card: low-level driver MVSOUND.SYS which is loaded via CONFIG.SYS during DOS startup process, and middle-level drivers PROAUDIO.DIG (for digitized sound) and PAS.MDI (for MIDI music) that are loaded during the game startup. These middleware drivers are interacting with MVSOUND.SYS instead of the soundcard itself.

Hardware comparisons and game system requirements: https://technical.city

Reply 4 of 4, by mhdbox385

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By driver I mean something that is loaded before running game, either manually or in config.sys/autoexec.bat. Also, by driver I do not mean setting irq or dma things for a device, that is just called setting. Example for a driver: mouse.com that must be loaded to be able to use mouse. Though I don't understand why mouse driver is required, can't programs/games directly access mouse? Maybe it is required so programs don't have to deal with mice from all manufacturers, without it we would be selecting mouse as well, just like sound cards. I think? But no, wait. In that case how come mouse.com can handle all kind of mouse? Whatever the tech mouse uses, ball/optical/other, if the signals are standard, how come we still need a driver. No, I still don't understand why we need mouse.com 😖