VOGONS


No Sound

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First post, by Dromklof

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¤ Have been searching in earlier posts, but without any good outcome ¤

Trying to play Discworld II - Missing Presumed on my laptop, installed through DOSBox.
It runs smoothly, but I get no sound.

This is what it says in the DIG document in the Discworld dir:
--------------------------------------------------------------
;
;Miles Sound System V3.04 of 6-Mar-96
;

DEVICE Creative Labs Sound Blaster or 100% compatible
DRIVER SBLASTER.DIG
IO_ADDR 220h
IRQ 5
DMA_8_BIT 1
DMA_16_BIT -1
--------------------------------------------------------------

And this is what my DOSBox config says:
--------------------------------------------------------------
[mixer]
# nosound -- Enable silent mode, sound is still emulated though.
# rate -- Mixer sample rate, setting any devices higher than this will
# probably lower their sound quality.
# blocksize -- Mixer block size, larger blocks might help sound stuttering
# but sound will also be more lagged.
# prebuffer -- How many milliseconds of data to keep on top of the blocksize.

nosound=false
rate=22050
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10

[midi]
# mpu401 -- Type of MPU-401 to emulate: none, uart or intelligent.
# device -- Device that will receive the MIDI data from MPU-401.
# This can be default,alsa,oss,win32,coreaudio,none.
# config -- Special configuration options for the device. In Windows put
# the id of the device you want to use. See README for details.

mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=

[sblaster]
# sbtype -- Type of sblaster to emulate:none,sb1,sb2,sbpro1,sbpro2,sb16.
# sbbase,irq,dma,hdma -- The IO/IRQ/DMA/High DMA address of the soundblaster.
# mixer -- Allow the soundblaster mixer to modify the dosbox mixer.
# oplmode -- Type of OPL emulation: auto,cms,opl2,dualopl2,opl3.
# On auto the mode is determined by sblaster type.
# All OPL modes are 'Adlib', except for CMS.
# oplrate -- Sample rate of OPL music emulation.

sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=22050

[gus]
# gus -- Enable the Gravis Ultrasound emulation.
# gusbase,irq1,irq2,dma1,dma2 -- The IO/IRQ/DMA addresses of the
# Gravis Ultrasound. (Same IRQ's and DMA's are OK.)
# gusrate -- Sample rate of Ultrasound emulation.
# ultradir -- Path to Ultrasound directory. In this directory
# there should be a MIDI directory that contains
# the patch files for GUS playback. Patch sets used
# with Timidity should work fine.

gus=true
gusrate=22050
gusbase=240
irq1=5
irq2=5
dma1=3
dma2=3
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker]
# pcspeaker -- Enable PC-Speaker emulation.
# pcrate -- Sample rate of the PC-Speaker sound generation.
# tandy -- Enable Tandy Sound System emulation (off,on,auto).
# For auto Tandysound emulation is present only if machine is set to tandy.
# tandyrate -- Sample rate of the Tandy 3-Voice generation.
# disney -- Enable Disney Sound Source emulation.

pcspeaker=true
pcrate=22050
tandy=auto
tandyrate=22050
disney=true
--------------------------------------------------------------

What should I try to do???
Would be grateful for help!

Reply 2 of 15, by MiniMax

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Or set

[sblaster]
irq=5

In which case I would also disable GUS which also tries to live of IRQ 5:

[gus]
gus=false

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Reply 3 of 15, by eL_PuSHeR

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Change SB IRQ inside dosbox.conf to 5?

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Reply 4 of 15, by h-a-l-9000

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> In which case I would also disable GUS which also tries to live of IRQ 5:

Doesn't matter as long both aren't used simultaneously

1+1=10

Reply 5 of 15, by wd

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True, but as general rule it's wise to have them separated
to avoid conflicts with sound detection especially.
So DosFreak's way is the preferred (either by using the
setup of the game or directly modifying that cfg file).

Reply 6 of 15, by DosFreak

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I'm glad this was brought up. I sometimes see people modifying the dosbox.conf for the SB to IRQ5. In all of my DOS game testing 800+ games I've never had to do this. (Doesn't mean there isn't some cases out that require it tho). I'm wondering how many of these cases are people just not bothering to configure their game properly and just adjust dosbox.conf instead?

or perhaps there are strange people out there using the XP Sound emulation (which uses IRQ5) instead of using VDMSound? and they don't want to bother changing the game configuration when they switch back?

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Reply 7 of 15, by wd

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Basically dosbox is a bit non-standard with the irq, as the sb16
(default in dosbox) was set to irq5 by default.
Some games seem to be set up for sb16/irq5 (as here) but in
all cases it's easily possible to change that in some installer.

Reply 8 of 15, by MiniMax

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I keep separate dosbox.conf's for each game and prefer to edit it to match the expectations of the game. It serves as a kind of documentation for where DOSBox's defaults don't match the game.

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Reply 9 of 15, by Dromklof

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Thanks for all the replies!
The problem still remains though!

I have in the DOSBox.config set the irq to 5 and "falsed" the GUS, but without success...

Discworld's own soundsetup only accept one configuration:

"Creative Labs Sound Blaster or 100% compatible"
I've also tried to change the above's configurationsettings manually to:
I/O: 220
IRQ: 5
8-bit DMA: 1

But in the DOSBox.config the [sbtype] is set to Sb16, while in the Discworld setup is only "Creative Labs Sound Blaster or 100% compatible". There is in this games soundsetup a few other SB-types to choose from, but only the one above is the one accepted!

I have VDMS installed! Should I try to open DOSBox by rightclicking on it and choose run with VDMS - 'couse that doesn't work either, if I'm at all doing it right?!?

// Cheers

Reply 10 of 15, by Dromklof

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PS: I've also notised that I can't save a game... or I can't load it... argh whatever! What to do?

Reply 11 of 15, by Dromklof

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ripping my hair out over here.... 😒

Reply 12 of 15, by wd

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Well then try again with a clean dosbox.conf that has the irq at 7 and
use the game's installer/setup to change the sb values accordingly.
And re-check if the values are actually saved.

Reply 13 of 15, by Dromklof

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Ok... just reinstalling everything... but how do I work with VDMS when the game is run through DOSBox? And what about that I can't save a game? The "load game" list is totally empty the second after I've saved!

Not a walk in the park...

Reply 14 of 15, by Dromklof

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PS: How do I make the dosbox.config default... is there a command or do I have to reinstall it?

Reply 15 of 15, by wd

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Delete your old dosbox.conf, start up dosbox and type "config -writeconf dosbox.conf".
That's in the readme btw.

dosbox emulates the sound so sound doesn't reach vdmsound anyways
(sort of).

Saving, well maybe some directory is missing, some files have been left
read-only, just be creative.