VOGONS


First post, by xjas

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I've been playing around with the cool multi-format OPLx music player, RdosPlay. This thing can play a ton of stuff, including stereo OPL3 modules and ones intended for the SID & YM/AY soundchips(!), although the emulation of those over OPL isn't perfect. Unfortunately Rdos/Dimension lost the source code in a disk crash so v0.21b is the last one - it's a bit buggy, but does the job.

It used to be distributed with a whole library of example modules in a neat little package you could just grab. Looking around, it seems like that version didn't survive, even on the Wayback machine - I could only find a "bare" download of just the player from the usual places (Modland, VGMPF, etc.) Fortunately, I still had a copy, so I've uploaded it here for you guys to enjoy. As far as I can tell, this is "pristine" as you would have downloaded it in 1997. I had to remake the .zip myself, but the files are all there and the dates are untouched.

Honestly, I'd bet most of the included modules are available elsewhere (Modland) so I'm not sure how important for "preservation" this is, but I imagine it's nice to be able to get the archive with everything included again. There are a couple modules that weren't in the "full" archive for 0.21a (I checked), and some that are obviously ripped from packed data formats, probably by Rdos himself. Anyway, enjoy!

https://archive.org/details/rply-021-b

rdosplay_001.png
Filename
rdosplay_001.png
File size
31.47 KiB
Views
677 views
File license
Public domain

Tip: in DOSBox you have to set the cycles below ~3400, or it will fail to detect the soundcard on launch. After that you can crank them back up. It seems to suffer no such problem on real hardware and even works with my PCI CMI8738 on an 800MHz Transmeta Crusoe.

(Obvious disclaimer: RdosPlay is and always was freeware.)

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 1 of 5, by DeathAdderSF

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

RdosPlay blew my mind the first time I checked it out, many years ago. So many great tunes were bundled with the player, it was an overwhelming experience for me. It was singlehandedly responsible for inspiring me to go on a quest to record and preserve Ad Lib music from my favorite games. To that end I spent many productive hours with Roman's "Rdos Adlib Catcher" tool, in 2003 - 2004. And I still have all the tunes I "ripped" available for download, to give y'all some additional music to listen to:

http://diskman.com/presents/adlib/downloads/RAWADLIB.ZIP

Thanks for sharing and helping me recall the good times. RdosPlay is a great program indeed.

Cruise by Diskman Presents: filled with geektastic classic gaming goodness!

Reply 5 of 5, by wbc

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-10-19, 06:30:

Won't start on Toshiba T3200SX, gives black screen. Is the display mode something else than 640x480 with 16 colors?

it seems to run in 360x480 Mode-X, which may not been supported on laptop integrated graphics.

--wbcbz7