First post, by crazii
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- Oldbie
The RetroWave OPL3 board has a ymf262 chip with genuine OPL3. It's intended for DOSBOX-X on modern system, I bought one piece and tested it in DOSBOX-X then an idea pops to me: how about making it work in real dos, like OPL3LPT? I'm not a hardware guy so If anyone capable & interested in the hardware, you can make a similar board. My ideal hardware is either a PCMCIA sound card with sound blaster & OPL3 working in DOS and 9x, or a USB audio with sound blaster & OPL3, so that there're more choices to pick a laptop, like one of late win98 era. Unfortunately RetroWave OPL3 is like OPL3LPT, it only have FM but no digital audio.
If anyone here happens to have a RetroWave OPL3, you can test the driver with it. There's a video about the device: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg33QLkHAu4
I put the binary here for now. It will be open sourced later.
It is basically working. I've tested it in VirtualBox with OHCI. the UHCI (USB1.1) support is just added and tested on real hardware (a laptop). I only tested a few games. and some stereo OPL3 game might have glitches and L/R channel switched. but overall it's working and need more tests.
RWDDOS.EXE: RetroWave Driver for DOS.
USBDDOS.EXE - USB driver for DOS.
Retrowave OPL3 Requirement: HIMEM.SYS; EMM386 4.46+
Memory usage: ~10K conventional memory; ~200K himem(XMS).
USBDDOSP is a driver uses DPMI (EMM386 still needed ). The zip file also contains a modified HDPMI32i.exe that support protected mode io port trap, allowing the driver to have support for protected mode games. Add 'HDPMI32i -r' to your autoexec or do it manually.
Memory usage: <2K conventional memory (when using HDPMI); ~4M himem.
Notes: It's NOT an official driver; working through port 388h~38bh, Adlib interface driver; real mode games only. DOS/4GW games may work.
Warnings:
Do not use it if you have other USB driver (storage/cdrom etc) installed, this driver will take over control of the USB controller and do nothing about other devices;
It's test only and might freeze your PC or even damage your data (in a very rare chance but still possible). use at your own risk.
UPDATE:
Now the driver supports protected mode games. Tested doom on my laptop and it's working. RWDDOS.EXE only support real mode games. RWDDOSPM support both real mode and protected mode games.
This source code could be found here: https://github.com/crazii/USBDDOS
The source of modified HDPMI could be found here: https://github.com/crazii/HX
UPDATE: 12/25/2022
Merry Christmas!
New feature added, name changed to USBDDOS.EXE/USBDDOSP.EXE. new feature available in USBDDOSP.EXE (new download uploaded) only, the USBDDOS.EXE has some function to be implemented, not it is not available yet is ready and uploaded.
1. USB disk support, using switch "/disk" (default off).
FAT16 & FAT32 tested, size ranging from 2G~64G. For large disk (8G+), using DOS7.0+(win95osr) with FAT32 is recommended, because it will boost the initial DIR command, otherwise it may take very long to calculate free disk space on the first DIR command each time system reboots. If BIOS supports the disk as a DOS drive, the drive will be remounted using new driver.
2. USB keyboard & mouse support, using switch "/hid" (default off)
I tested the USB keyboard & mouse driver with Retrowave driver (Adlib Gold setting) together in Warcraft2 on my DOS7.1(win98se) laptop and it works, but maybe more test needed, since I only played the human scenario 1, with some harvesting & building stuff.
the mouse driver only works with CTMOUSE (cute mouse), ohter driver like MOUSE.COM not tested.
The original Retrowave support uses switch "/RW" (default off), and the three switches can combine and not case sensitive. For example USBDDOSP.EXE /rw /hid /disk
If you want use it only as an thumb drive driver or keyboard driver, that's OK.
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