sofakng wrote on 2023-09-29, 19:54:
Can anybody explain the situation with WSS and the CS-4237? It sounds like certain games (ie. Sierra 16-bit and 32-bit?) have problems but there exists patches (thanks 640k!enough).
How well any software will work with the CS4237 depends largely on the title's detection routines. If they specifically depend on the additional configuration features being present (ports 530H to 533H), as on Microsoft's original design, they are not likely to work. If they use other detection routines, or allow the resources to be specified manually, getting them to work is fairly likely.
What many fail to mention in such discussions is that the CODEC part of the CS4237 is actually a good deal more capable, in a number of ways, than the Analog Devices part that Microsoft originally used. At the time, the Crystal parts were often considered superior.
Where Sierra titles are concerned, it is important to mention that the driver that we are using is an official Sierra driver that was shared by Cloudschatze via keropi. That driver was originally released by Sierra, at the request of Mediatrix Peripherals, for the Audiotrix Pro. My only contribution was modifying one instruction so that the output was mostly correct for those using output via S/PDIF (and only when the base port is 534H).
I had intended to do a good deal more work with those drivers, but the machine I was using for the bulk of that work is basically dead. It could be fixed, but it would cost so much (time and especially cash) that it's not worth the effort. So, unless I have cash to spare for an extra machine at some point, or someone else adopts the task, the currently-available drivers will have to do.
sofakng wrote on 2023-09-29, 19:54:
Is there a list of Sierra games that received official WSS support patches? (I'm interested in trying them)
Is there also a list of Sierra games that are 16-bit versus 32-bit? (not sure if this makes a difference)
We're not really dealing completely with official support, but when we were first discussing this, mothergoose729 did a good deal of the guinea-pig work; the original posts can be found here and here.