Audio driver for Realtek HD Audio Hardware? [Testing thread]

[FantasyAcquiesce]

I have just read the entire topic and hope to summarize it:
Download HDA Driver for Windows 3.1 here http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/
Or AC'97???
Then use one of deomsh's files and place in the C:\WINDOWS directory?

Please let me know! I want to try this on VirtualBox! I am also trying to document these drivers for NT 4.0 and Windows 3.1/95/98/98SE/ME systems. I've just discovered the NT 4.0-compatible one (developed by SciTech) and want to try this one as well. My goal is to properly preserve and make these things less obsolete and more user-friendly

I'm aware this is a 9x-topic, but has anyone tried the NT 4.0 SciTech HDA drivers on later OSes like Windows 2000 or XP? It's absolutely entertaining to find older drivers that work on much newer operating systems. My D600, R60, Acer Nitro 5, etc are all dying to test and revive all these systems and show Microsoft we don't need 10

Edited May 25, 2019 by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~

[deomsh]

On 5/25/2019 at 9:35 PM, ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ said:

I have just read the entire topic and hope to summarize it:
Download HDA Driver for Windows 3.1 here http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/
Or AC'97???
Then use one of deomsh's files and place in the C:\WINDOWS directory?

You need to download HDADRV9J.ZIP. The driver, HDA2.DLL must be placed in %windir%\system. HDATSR.EXE and WAVEOUT.EXE can be placed anywhere, but %windir% is convenient. In case of HDAICOUT.HDA, %windir% is mandatory.

In latest VBox 6 the driver gives good sound with Windows 3.1, crackles only if moving the mouse, but that's normal behaviour for this OS. In Windows 98se the behaviour of the driver is normally BETTER than in Windows 3.1, but in VBox much WORSE! 

I am still testing in VBox 6. Sound ist *somehow* better with DirectX 9.0c and extreme low MinFileCache/MaxFileCache settings, but still crackling.

So far I found following workaround in VBox: set  MinTimeSlice=100 (100 !!) in SYSTEM.INI [386Enh]. Playing a MP3 in Media Player is not bad with this setting. 

BTW: In VBox all Widget´s in HDACFG.INI  must be set to $03, as @UCyborg found out (SleepingWidget, PowerWidget and OutputWidget). HDAICOUT.HDA is not necessary, but I found out that an empty file speeds up the first playback considerably.

-------------------
HDAICOUT.HDA
-------------------
Begin
End
-------------------

BTW2: In VBox Windows 3.1 must be installed WITHOUT any System Acceleration. Windows 98se needs ALL System Acceleration enabled.

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by deomsh
Additions, delete one sentence

[FantasyAcquiesce]

I still don't know which driver I'm supposed to download from the original link...
http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/
HDA Driver 9 or AC'97?

Please translate into amateur computer user-friendly language. Tell me if I'm getting this right. 

This topic is so long and the files are all scattered
1. Download HDADRV9J.zip
2. Place HDA2.DLL in C:\WINDOWS\System
3. Make sure HDARSR.EXE and WAVEOUT.EXE are accessible (place in "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM" for convinience)
4. Place HDAICOUT.HDA in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

Notes:
Originally a Windows 3.1 driver, but works in Windows 9x with tweaks
The driver makes crackling sounds and needs improvement
Sound is much more clear with DirectX 9.0c installed and extremely low MinFileCache/MaxFileCache settings (crackling still remains)
In virtualbox, set MinTimeSlice=100 (100 !!) in SYSTEM.INI [386Enh]
VirtualBox installations of Windows 3.1 CANNOT use System Acceleration, but VirtualBox 98SE REQUIRE ALL System Accerlation.

Also, I am planning to install NT 4.0 on another hard drive of my Dell Latitude D600 and maybe R60 as well (probably gonna try ME on the R60 again).
Perhaps I can get ME working on the R600's 945GM chipset (LoneCrusader's unofficial INF), VEMP, use this audio driver (HDA), and then figure out ethernet and wireless...

Even if I don't succeed completely, it's one step closer to obtaining 9x on modern hardware9x with a Duo 2 T7200 would be great. Too bad it doesn't natively see dual cores.

Edited May 26, 2019 by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~

[deomsh]

@~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~: You have to download "High Definition Audio Sound Driver 9".

Late EDIT (on behalve of Copilot GPT-4 too):

1) HDARSR.EXE does not exist for HDA2.DLL, should be HDATSR.EXE

2) only HDA2.DLL should be placed in the SYSTEM-directory, other files should be placed in the WINDOWS-directory (HDATSR.EXE, WAVEOUT.EXE and if needed HDAICOUT.HDA)!

Edited July 22, 2024 by deomsh

[Dave-H]

@deomsh

Sorry to bump this thread for an off topic question, but does the Windows 3.1 HD Audio driver I've now got installed on Windows 98 also work in DOS?
A big ask I'm sure, but just wondering!
I'd like to have sound in old games running in DOS mode if it's at all possible.
If it's a "no" as I suspect it will be, no problem!
Thanks, Dave.

[deomsh]

No.

About a year ago I tried emulator VDMSound (9x, alpha) playing Prince of Persia 1 in a DosBox inside Windows, with hda2.dll as wave-device. Sound worked, but the game crashed as soon Midi had to be played. I didn't find a solution yet to use DirectMusic (Hda2.dll is not a WDM-driver!).

Edited August 1, 2019 by deomsh
Language

[Dave-H]

Thanks, I thought that would be the case, but I thought I'd ask just in case!
I guess there is no way to get sound in DOS games in DOS mode with the audio hardware that I have now.

[deomsh]

What do you mean with "Dos mode"?

[Dave-H]

I mean raw DOS mode, without going via Windows.
What you get if you select "command prompt" from the Windows 98 F8 startup menu, or "restart in DOS mode" from the Windows 98 shutdown menu.

[pangoomis]

Raw DOS mode require raw DOS Audio drivers for those old games...which for HD Audio are non-existent. There are modern DOS utilities that can work with HD Audio such as MPXPLAY, but for old games - not a chance.

Best bet is to use a PCI SoundBlaster/Yamaha/ESS/Aureal soundcard which has pure DOS drivers which emulate SB16/AdLib/OPL which those old games expect.
For real DOS sound experience, an ISA soundcard is the best bet, whenever you like it or not. Once all the focus went into making WDM drivers once PCI soundcards appeared, pure DOS drivers emulating old SB16 often were an afterthought (especially in the case of SB Live and alike). And there is no hope once we got to PCI-E.

No wonder people just want to use PCem/86Box/DOSBox for good DOS experience with sound, as doing it on modern hardware natively is impossible, and old hardware suited for it can be expensive these days.

Look here for more details:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=59532
 

[Dave-H]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought!

I think I was very lucky to find an HD Audio driver that would work in Windows 98, I thought DOS would be pushing it!

[opeaget]

On 4/30/2019 at 4:02 AM, deomsh said:

@Dave-H: Good to here your system is stable with the 16-bits HDA driver. I still have no definitive opinion regarding stability issues, but I will do thourough testing with Virtualbox, no real risks involved (thanks to UCyborg)...

Working with an unknown system was stimulating, especially with such a careful tester.  Gave me some new insights and idea's too.

 

As a sort of spinoff from this project I made three quasi-universal versions of HDAICOUT.HDA. Instructions which one to choose inside.

Especially useful if there is the Sound of Silence after installation of the driver.

Hdaicout.hda.000 8.5 kB · 15 downloads

Hdaicout.hda.100 8.5 kB · 14 downloads

Hdaicout.hda.200 8.5 kB · 17 downloads

SORRY

How do I install ALC883 on Windows 98?

 

what is it ?---->Hdaicout.hda

[deomsh]

On 5/28/2020 at 10:34 PM, opeaget said:

SORRY

How do I install ALC883 on Windows 98?

 

what is it ?---->Hdaicout.hda

There no Windows 98 driver.

HDA2.DLL, the driver mentioned in this thread is a Windows 3x driver. Use in Windows 98 is experimental.

HDAICOUT.HDA is a file used by HDA2.DLL to give certain presets to the High Definition Audio Codec.

[sweaterfish]

I'm trying to set up Windows 98SE on a Thinkpad X61 and as I now gather is to be expected, I'm not getting any sound. This thread seems like the most promising thing I've seen anywhere, so I want to see if we can generalize this success a little. From what I understand at this point, though, every single audio device could potentially require unique troubleshooting. Is there any chance we can come up with some step-by-steps in this thread that allow people to do it themselves?

My Thinkpad X61 has an Analog Devices AD1984 sound device running on Intel HDA (there's a datasheet for the AD1984 available here). Using the GENHDA16.INF deomsh posted on the first page of this thread, I've installed HDA2.DLL from HDADRV9J and added HDATSR.EXE to my autoexec. This seems to work okay. One of my unidentified PCI Cards in Device Manager becomes a High Definition Audio Controller and an HDA Sound playback option appears under Multimedia Properties. HDALOG.TXT and HDAcfg.ini are also generated and so is HDAICIN.TXT if HDAICOUT.HDA is present. See my attached files for what these look like on my system.

I can open WAV files in mplayer or sndrec32 and they appear to play, but I get no sound. Not through the laptop's internal speaker or through the headphone jack. I think this is "The Sound of Silence" as deomsh calls it, so I tried changing the volume or playback widgets listed in the HDAcfg.ini. I don't really understand what I should be changing them to, though. According to the datasheet for the AD1984, I have Audio Output widgets on nodes $02 (S/PDIF DAC), $03 (DAC_0), and $04 (DAC_1). Are these what I want to put into HDAcfg.ini? Or do I actually want to use the "Pin Complexes," which are $11 (headphone jack), $12 (line out), and so on? Or something else altogether?

I've also tried using INTELHDA.EXE from this post, which seems like it should be a super useful program if only I could understand it. At least it confirms most of the widget info from the datasheet and I can also use it to see that node $12 is my laptop's internal speakers and that node $11 sees headphones when I connect them. INTELHDA.EXE also suggests that maybe (?) there's another Audio Output on $01.

So all I've been doing so far is just testing all sorts of combinations of these node values in the HDAcfg.ini, but I haven't come across anything that produces any sort of sound. I definitely don't actually know what I'm doing, though, and there's lots of combinations to try. Some advice about what these widgets are supposed to be and how to identify the right nodes from either a datasheet or the "widgets" tab from INTELHDA.EXE might be useful and allow more people to troubleshoot their setups.

One other oddity I've noticed on my system is that when I cold boot Windows, HDALOG.TXT shows nothing is returning and the CODEC section of HDAcfg.ini is all zeroes, but if I "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and then return to Windows using an EXIT or WIN command HDAcfg.ini does seem to populate correctly. The log and cfg files I'm attaching here are what I get after doing that. With a cold boot, HDAcfg.ini has CODEC BITMAP=00000011, CODEC Index=$1, and all the other CODEC lines are zeros. This seems to be some sort of failure, I think, right? I'm actually "cold booting" Windows 98SE from GRUB4DOS, so I don't know if that's part of the issue or what.

Any advice or feedback would be much appreciated. It would be amazing to get sound working in my 98SE install, especially since it's otherwise working very well.

HDALOG.TXT HDAcfg.ini HDAICIN.TXT

[deomsh]

@sweaterfish Nice you have taken interest in Watlers Win3x HDA-driver and trying to use it in Windows 98SE.

I will try to support your Quest!

On 8/16/2020 at 1:11 AM, sweaterfish said:

This thread seems like the most promising thing I've seen anywhere, so I want to see if we can generalize this success a little. From what I understand at this point, though, every single audio device could potentially require unique troubleshooting. Is there any chance we can come up with some step-by-steps in this thread that allow people to do it themselves?

Many desktops will run out of the box, especially the one with Realtek codecs, but success depends on the HD-Audio controller too, used by the specific chipset. Which steps are needed is not always to say beforehand. Once I had the idea to make a list of 'all' codes with their values for SleepingWidget=$.. & VolumeWidget=$.. & OutputWidget=$.. but without a community of testers I think it´s a waste of time.

You´ve already done a great deal of work on your Thinkpad X61 - no installation problems, great!

On 8/16/2020 at 1:11 AM, sweaterfish said:

I can open WAV files in mplayer or sndrec32 and they appear to play, but I get no sound. Not through the laptop's internal speaker or through the headphone jack. I think this is "The Sound of Silence" as deomsh calls it, so I tried changing the volume or playback widgets listed in the HDAcfg.ini. I don't really understand what I should be changing them to, though.

Once HDACFG.INI is set, following values can be changed (apart form setting [busmaster]-values):

Mytimer= values 1 (default) or 0;  Mytimer=0 needs HDARUN.EXE to produce sound (not needed in your case, as Sound recorder is playing)
Verbinterface= $1 (default) or $0; two different ways to communicate with the codec through the HD-Audio controller
wait1= value $100 is default; can be set higher if sending verbs to the codec needs more time
wait2= value $100 is default; can be set higher if receiving verbs from the codec needs more time
pcipatchB=$0000; changes ONE register of the HD-Audio controller PCI-register - up to $FFFF (changing register 100h is NOT possible)

SleepingWidget= value $02 (default); powers up one widget, can be needed on Laptops
VolumeWidget= value $14 (default); set the widget number that will set Volume - can be a DAC, a Mixer or even a PIN-widget
OutputWidget= value $02 (default); set the widget that will receive Digital Audio from the HDA-link and convert to Analog Audio (DAC) - SP/DIF sends Digital Audio to output, not of interest for us.

The three widgets are the most important settings.

On 8/16/2020 at 1:11 AM, sweaterfish said:

INTELHDA.EXE also suggests that maybe (?) there's another Audio Output on $01

In that case their are more Audio Devices in the system, like modems or audio for HDTV. In that case their CODEC Index will show a higher value than $0 (cannot be set as far as I know)

On 8/16/2020 at 1:11 AM, sweaterfish said:

So all I've been doing so far is just testing all sorts of combinations of these node values in the HDAcfg.ini, but I haven't come across anything that produces any sort of sound. I definitely don't actually know what I'm doing, though, and there's lots of combinations to try. Some advice about what these widgets are supposed to be and how to identify the right nodes from either a datasheet

In case of reading a datasheet the most important part to start is the widget Function Block Diagram. The AD1984 gives this on page 1, but their numbers/interconnections in Table 5 on page 16! So read them together. Best is to try the simple stereo-channel, so DAC-0 => Mixer => Port A. Table 5 tells the DAC-0 is widget 03, connected to Mixer 07, connected to PIN-complex 11.

According to Parameters on page 5, the DAC´s have output volumes, the Analog Mixers only input volumes.

So I guess best to try is:

SleepingWidget=$03
VolumeWidget=$03 (otherwise $07 but not likely)
OutputWidget=$03

On 8/16/2020 at 1:11 AM, sweaterfish said:

or the "widgets" tab from INTELHDA.EXE might be useful and allow more people to troubleshoot their setups.

To use INTELHDA.EXE first study Intel´s High Definition Audio Specification http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/product-specifications/high-definition-audio-specification.pdf Chapter 2 and Chapter 7 both in depth (and a quick reading of Chapter 4 to have a global understanding of the difference between the two interfaces CORB and Immediate Command).

On 8/16/2020 at 1:11 AM, sweaterfish said:

One other oddity I've noticed on my system is that when I cold boot Windows, HDALOG.TXT shows nothing is returning and the CODEC section of HDAcfg.ini is all zeroes, but if I "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and then return to Windows using an EXIT or WIN command HDAcfg.ini does seem to populate correctly.

I have never heard of this, can be some problem with the HD-Audio controller. First let´s neglect this and try the suggested HDACFG.INI settings and use "Restart in MS-DOS mode", in this stage please without HDAICOUT.HDA.

Listen with Headphones if you hear the slightest tick´s or click´s during all bootup stages.

Please report back and upload HDALOG.TXT and the version of HDACFG.INI after returing from MS-DOS mode.

Edited August 18, 2020 by deomsh
Typo