Very nice!

Adlib Tracker demands a 286, but doesn't really run on it. It's slow as a snail on my 286.

Would be nice though to have a real tracker on that machine. I mean, there is Adlib Composer... So it should be possible!

so what youre saying is that all those programmers were too stupid to include, in an easy manner too, support for a popular platform without a good reason and only you made this possible in all those cases without fail?

mrau wrote:

so what youre saying is that all those programmers were too stupid to include, in an easy manner too, support for a popular platform without a good reason and only you made this possible in all those cases without fail?

MEOW, cattiness alert!!! 8088 was far past being a "popular platform" when those trackers/players were new. Nobody cared about XTs in 1994/5 and this doesn't imply anyone being "stupid". Easy there and retract those claws, Puss.

OP: good work! I recall Scali having some code to pre-process and play generic OPL2/3 streams (.DRO) which worked very nicely on 8088. These players could be handy as well, should probably give them a go on the 5160 with its SBPro 2.

VileRancour wrote:

MEOW, cattiness alert!!! 8088 was far past being a "popular platform" when those trackers/players were new.

didnt know that - even though pcs were so insanely expensive back then? i wouldn't have thought, thanks for the explanation

VileRancour wrote:

Nobody cared about XTs in 1994/5

ok, 94/95 seem a little bit late, a was thinking 90-92?

VileRancour wrote:

and this doesn't imply anyone being "stupid".

to my understanding that was OP's stance, it seems i got that wrong though; sorry about that

VileRancour wrote:

Easy there and retract those claws, Puss.

*kneats and purrs intensely*

so what software was in use before 94/95?

Heh, good question because I don't even remember any really good/well-known Adlib composition tools before that time period... trackers in general weren't popular on PCs until around 1993-ish, and even after that it took them longer to add focus on FM music (as opposed to sampled sound). I think people were just slow to realize what OPLx was really capable of, simply because most software/games under-utilized it so badly, so it took a while to shake off the general opinion that Adlib was trash. 😁

mrau wrote:

so what software was in use before 94/95?

While not a tracker per se, Adlib Visual Composer was released around 1987 (I think).

It's quite possible to drive the OPL2 on a stock 8088 CPU (at 4.77MHz); as mentioned before it most cases by the time PC audio really started to take off, there were more powerful x86 CPUs available and being sold in the market.

You could also consider EdLib v1.05a (along with the other programs) listed under Old DOS Programs (AdLib). Edlib's routines are fairly efficient and should playback with no issues on an 8088. The editor uses a VGA text mode; I can't remember if there is an option that run's in standard 80x25 text mode.

Hi,

It is an old post, but now my player play .SAT. .S3M Adlib and .RAD (v1) now 😀

Have to test those on my A2286/8 ET4000 SC1630 😀 thx!