First post, by crazii
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Hi, I'm happy to announce that SBEMU is ready for more tests. 😁
Purpose: for PCs with AC97/Intel High Definition Audio sound cards that doesn't have Sound Blaster support (vintage PCs after 2000 era, or modern PCs with HDA).
Supported PCI soundcards:
- Intel ICH
- nForce (nForce2 tested working)
- Intel High Definition Audio
- VIA VT8233 & VT82C686
- SB Live/Audigy (thanks to Baron von Riedesel for debugging)
Emulated cards: SB 1.0, 2.0, Pro, 16, 8 bit DMA & 16 bit DMA.
Notes: All on chip AC97 mother boards including Intel ICH and nForce both will reported as ICH. And it doesn't report the actual codec (e.g. realtek), but only the board (ICH). For HDA codec its the same.
Supported both real mode and protected mode games. Requirements:
HDPMI32i is needed for protected mode support, which is included in the zip file.
QEMM or JEMM is needed for real mode support. JEMMEX is included in the zip. It's optional, SBEMU can run without it and so without real mode support.
For more information, read the readme.txt in the zip and use /? in the command line.
Thanks to:
- MPXPlay's: sound card drivers
- DOSBox: DBOPL emulation
- HDPMI & JEMM: Port traps
- Folks in the forum that helped guiding & testing & improving the emulation
The original discussion can be found here: Possibility to write OPL3 sound driver for protected mode games, which initially intended for RetroWave OPL3 but then led to a pure soft emulation of SB & OPL.
The source code of SBEMU can be found here: https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU
Known issues: some games might not work properly, need more tests & improvement. 16 bit protected mode games are not supported - this remains a challenge so far.
Some games prefer VCPI over DPMI, need use "JEMMEX NOVCPI" AFTER loading HDPMI, or remove QEMM/JEMM and run the system without VCPI (also no real mode support).
Use /t6 to enable SB16 emulation.
Use /i5 to change the virtual IRQ if you get an IRQ conflict error, or adjust IRQ assignment in the BIOS.
Any suggestion and bug report are welcomed.
1.0 Beta3(latest):
Merge commit from HDPMI: add -x[n] option to limit memory further, -x1 limit mem to 128MB, -x2 limit mem to 64MB. this may help some games that do work with large memory. - thanks to @Baron von Riedesel.
Remove debug message for HDPMI.
Fix Epic Pinball sound spedup.
Add delay to DSP command 0Fh (IRQ request) to make Dynablaster work, and potentially other games.
Add DSP commands: 0E4h/0E8h (test read/write), 0E2h (DMA id), 045h (continue auto DMA).
Fix /Tn bug, /t2 as SBPro, instead of SB2.0. Thanks to @jtchip
Bugfix on VIA VT8233/8235/8237
1.0 Beta2c:
Add "/R" option to reset sound card driver, in case the soundcard is touched by other utilities.
Add SB direct mode handling (non-DMA, DSP command 10h) previously requested by @Bondi. tested game: Shanghai 2 - experimental, may have noises.
Bugfix on BLASTER env set. (seen on FreeDOS or MSDOS prior to 7.0)
Set power states for Intel HDA, fix compatibility issues for some PCs.
Bugfix on volume settings, disable mixer resetting on DSP resetting, make volume consistent among games and can be set properly by SB utilities.
Hack: double the "volume" of OPL so that it sounds near to the digital volume.
Other bugfixes that may fix functionality or improve stability.
1.0 Beta2b:
Fix SB Live/Audigy interrupt.
Add option "/SCL" to list sound cards, use "/SC[n]" to select sound card.
Experimental: adjust sound buffer to reduce latency. (1/8 to original).
This is a single binary of SBEMU. You need HDPMI32i and JEMMEX in the 1.0 Beta2 zip.
1.0 Beta2:
Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300 - YMF744, Savage IX
Toshiba Satellite 2805-S501 - YMF754, GeForce 2Go
IBM Thinkpad A21p - CS4624, Mobility Radeon 128
main: Intel NUC11PHKi7C Phantom Canyon: i7-1165G7 RTX2060 64G 2T760PSDD