Originally posted by vladr Have you set VDMSPath properly?

Yes. C:\VDMSOUND, just as you gave in example.

See attachment for new version of the vxd.

The new VXD allows it to load properly. Operation seems very "spotty", although I suspect that it's "in contention" with the Philips' "Legacy" emulation.

With most titles, I couldn't be certain which audio I was hearing. With "Duke Nukem 2" however, I could confirm proper FM audio which was missing completely with the Philips audio.

Dang... I can't seem to get the VCREDINST.EXE working... I tried to run it but nothing (Yes, I mean nothing) happens! Help me out here a bit will ya!

Without DOSRV the games should work with the original souncard. Also put "SET BLASTER A220 I7 D1 H5" in DOSDRV.BAT this way it won't interfere with Windows, etc., but will apply to games started from the DOSDRV.BAT box. I should have thought of adding it there myself, but too late now. 😀

V.

Pege wrote:

Sry for double post, but this forum doesn't allow me to edit my posts...

Does it mess with my original sound card setup if I put "'SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330" in my Autoexec.bat? And does it allow other games to access my original sound card setup if I don't have the DOSDRV.bat running?

vladr wrote:

Also put "SET BLASTER A220 I7 D1 H5" in DOSDRV.BAT this way it won't interfere with Windows, etc., but will apply to games started from the DOSDRV.BAT box. I should have thought of adding it there myself, but too late now. 😀

Ah. That was what I was really asking about in my post. You said that this has the same functionality as the WinXP version, except that the Windows XP version allows you to specify what ports you would like the various features to be emulated on. This merely uses defaults. So, it's using port 220, I7, D1, H5. That's OK for Sound Blaster. I think Adlib pretty much only has 1 standard port, and all stuff uses that, so that's OK. What about MIDI?

Originally posted by vladr Without DOSRV the games should work with the original souncard.

Kind of figured that, but since it's an alpha running in Win9x, I'm not discounting anything.

Also put "SET BLASTER A220 I7 D1 H5" in DOSDRV.BAT this way it won't interfere with Windows, etc.,

Unless, of course...that's what is already being used. (Not in my case...)

Originally posted by Pege Help me out here a bit will ya!

&^$%# Board blew up my post. Trying again.

Try downloading the executable again as it sounds like you have a corrupted executable. If it still doesn't work you try installing manually from this zip. Understand that you have to place them into the Windows "System" directory at the DOS level. You also need to check and make sure that you aren't replacing newer files with older ones.

UPDATE: After four times, the board is refusing to accept my ZIP file. Don't know what to tell you.

jez wrote:

So, it's using port 220, I7, D1, H5. That's OK for Sound Blaster. I think Adlib pretty much only has 1 standard port, and all stuff uses that, so that's OK. What about MIDI?

The defaults are there for convenience, there is absolutely no reason in the world that I can think of why you'd like to choose a different port/IRQ/etc, but if you really want to then you can do it like in NT/2k/XP via VDMS.INI. Also, MIDI emulation is working just fine (read other posts on this very thread), just make sure that MIDI files (*.mid in Windows\MEDIA) play well in Media Player first.

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut
Unless, of course...that's what is already being used. (Not in my case...)

Does not matter. I don't expect any sound driver will actually use BLASTER, though if it does then it will only read it at boot time. Once the driver is up and running who cares; Chris IIRC actually has a real-mode soundcard driver for a real SB (i.e. one would naturally think "you can't have both VDMSound and the driver working"), but it works because Chris only intercepts the dialogue between the DOS game and VDMSound, not between VDMSound and the driver. So the two don't interfere with each other, you can even use VDMSound on port 220/IRQ7/DMA1 on a system that has an ISA card on the same port/IRQ/DMA, according to Chris' tests it works just fine.

V.

Originally posted by vladr Does not matter. I don't expect any sound driver will actually use BLASTER, ...

Good thing. It turns out that real IRQ is flip-flopping back and forth between 5 and 7. While the blaster "setting" is fixed at 5. *gah*

vladr wrote:

The defaults are there for convenience, there is absolutely no reason in the world that I can think of why you'd like to choose a different port/IRQ/etc, but if you really want to then you can do it like in NT/2k/XP via VDMS.INI.

Well, the only reason I mentioned it is that it's at the very top of the dialogs in Launchpad, the port which it is being emulated on.

Also, MIDI emulation is working just fine (read other posts on this very thread), just make sure that MIDI files (*.mid in Windows\MEDIA) play well in Media Player first.

No no, I realise that the emulation's working fine, I was merely asking what the default port that it was being emulated on was. Doesn't the DOS program need to know that? And don't some DOS programs use the SET BLASTER variable to check what ports SB, MIDI, etc are on?

All DOS programs rely on SET BLASTER.

There should be a "P330" for the MIDI in the SET BLASTER line.

Port 330 is pretty standard for MIDI. 388 is *very* standard for AdLib. Most program will assume 330 for MIDI but will generally let you configure it. I know of no program that lets you configure AdLib. For historical reasons I guess (fact that 388 is in the middle of nowhere, having SB clones with different factory settings, etc.).

I haven't "ported" LaunchPad to Win98 yet (it shouldn't really need any modifcations so to speak, though) because it relies on DOSDRV.EXE but there is no DOSDRV.EXE in this Alpha release.

V.

Seeing as the most common standard for SoundBlaster seemed to be port 220 I5 D1, why did you make the default IRQ for VDMsound 7?

heh. You only see IRQ 5 chosen for default in the few most popular DOS games. Overall you'll see 7 chosen by default and recommended in many readme's.

IIRC, the earlier SoundBlasters usually defaulted to IRQ 5, later models defaulted to 7 (I think this started with one of the SoundBlaster Pro models).

Running DOSDRV.BAT (VXDS1.EXE) (sometimes):

1VXDSLOAD caused an invalid page fault in
2module <unknown> at 0000:00000001.
3Registers:
4EAX=00000000 CS=0167 EIP=00000001 EFLGS=00010202
5EBX=82bda000 SS=016f ESP=0063fe32 EBP=0063ff78
6ECX=00000005 DS=016f ESI=81640db4 FS=3447
7EDX=00000000 ES=016f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
8Bytes at CS:EIP:
901 00 00 00 04 70 00 16 00 88 09 65 04 70 00 65 
10Stack dump:
11004010fc 00000000 b5600040 0000bff8
120db40000 00008164 78560053 6f6c7364
1345006461 00004558 00000000 00000000
1400000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 

Running VXDSBOOM:

1VXDSLOAD caused an exception c06d007eH in
2module ATL.DLL at 0167:5f3e9873.
3Registers:
4EAX=0063fb8a CS=0167 EIP=5f3e9873 EFLGS=00000246
5EBX=00000000 SS=016f ESP=0063fb4e EBP=0063fb7e
6ECX=c14047d0 DS=016f ESI=5f3ea98c FS=1237
7EDX=8164fd78 ES=016f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
8Bytes at CS:EIP:
98b 45 f8 e9 ff 00 00 00 57 ff 76 08 ff 15 dc a0 
10Stack dump:
1100000000 5f3e0000 8164ff00 00000024
125f3ea98c 5f3ed634 5f3ea930 00000001
135f3eae50 00000000 00000000 00000485
140063fc36 5f3e8b2e 000000a8 0063fb5a 

The former only occurs when set BLASTER is set incorrectly. The latter seems to happen every other instance of VDMSound.

The 7th Guest will not run with VDMSound except if I choose "Sound Blaster or compatible," in which case it still freezes up this computer.

Error: pcm sound hardware not found at port/irq in groovie.ini
please check to make sure you have properly set-up groovie.ini
and that you have no hardware conflicts in your system

Whoooo! BSODs! Trilobyte's programmers really suck.

0028:C0054DED - manually closing the DOS box after it froze up (order of events: started slowly, got more slowly, became even more slow, stopped responding completely) using WaveWriter.dll. The slowdown could be attributed to my writing a 128 log, but I doubt it. I've attached the log, less 'attempted to read from write-only port' error. (You'll see I've "-- SNIP --"'d it.)

0028:C025B65A => VDD(0F) + 00002D66
This one kept going and going and going. (I had to 3-Finger Salute out of the loop.) I was running The Eleventh Hour with the sound card's provided SBPro emulator, while still having VDMSound loaded. Don't ask me why this happened. Everything was on different ports, interrupts and memory addresses. (VDMS: A220h, I7, D1, P330h; NATIVE: A240h, I5, D0, P340h -- amazingly enough, except for the DMA, these are the DEFAULT settings for the native emulator. Go figure.)

VDMSound appears to be working hard in the log. Probably Windows fucking up with WaveWriter (Win9x is a piece of [amphibian?] shit when it comes to disk I/O). You can try running with nothing (no WaveOut, no WaveWriter), see if you still get slowdown (the control logic in DMAController and DSPController would still be hard @ work).

V.

The slowdown doesn't occur with DirectSound, it just sounds like static. 😜

See? This is why I swore never to touch 9x again. Typical 9x shit drivers. Heck, it would freeze on me every 2 min in VmWare when testing the 9x port of VDMSound (just Windows by itself, without VDMsound loading or anything, Explorer would stop responding, the keyboard would work in some windows/applications but not in others, etc.), imagine working in those conditions "natively" on Win9x (i.e. not in VmWare) -- ouch!!! All this to say: your drivers suck (DirectSound drivers suck because of static, waveout drivers suck because of performance/crash, disk drivers suck because of ..., I dunno man, how can I put this, Win9x sucks 😜 ).

Snover wrote:

The slowdown doesn't occur with DirectSound, it just sounds like static. 😜

Yeah, basically, except that they work fine VDMS9x works fine with, for example, Terminal Velocity.