HD + AC97 audio & beyond the 137GB/128GiB barrier

[tillewolle]

8 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

WDM Audio drivers for 9x use the built-in SBEMUL.SYS driver which provides rudimental Sound Blaster emulation for DOS boxes inside Windows.
It does not provide OPL2/3 support as far as I know. That's why you can only hear sound effects and not music, more discussions about SBEMUL.SYS are here:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.tech/P1q1PCa0bag/KTCGkK3d86UJ
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/audio/kernel-mode-wdm-audio-components
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=12016

At least I'm not the only person wondering about this 

8 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

If you want good DOS compatibility on Windows 98SE, the onboard C-Media audio will never give you such support.
Best way is to get Sound Blaster Live/Aureal Vortex 2 PCI audio card, which have their own Sound Blaster emulation drivers.

So I think I'll wait for my soundblasters to arrive... My friend offered me a PCI SB128 and a PCI SB0060 Live 5.1. We'll see which one works better or even at all. While typing this I remembered a sound card that I do have in storage. Terratec Aureon 5.1 FUN. But the rear output has a loose connection I fixed with some scotch tape back in the days. It says MIDI on the PCB but no plug socket, just a connector. I'll have to dig around a bit to check drivers etc.

 

8 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

An even better way is to use an ISA Sound Blaster 16 card, although newer motherboards of course do not have the ISA slot any more.

My board doesn't support ISA  But someday I'll install a REAL Win98 motherboard!

 

8 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

Or...you can run DOSBox under Windows 98 although this kind of defeats the purpose

I better not try this. The purpose of building my Win98 machine was NOT to use a VM because they never work as expected!

[Goodmaneuver]

Your on the right track with DXdiag just press Test DirectSound and then once done that go to music and test DirectMusic using the various ports that are shown. Your motherboard and mine are similar and use the same audio chip. MSI are good for supplying drivers and if you download audio driver for win2000 it will be A3.99 which should work if you have not installed a later RealTek driver. ALC***.sys refers to ALCWDM.sys where as yours is CMUDA.sys because you are using a CMedia driver. CMI; I should have showed CM1 on the sound chip and means CMedia chip but yours is ALC655 the same as mine. Choose Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth. SW is short for soft ware check the about tab and it will say Roland. I have downloaded the Settlers 2 demo and the audio is easy to configure. There is no need for any SB audio cards as most later audio is sound blaster compatible. Open Drivers folder in the game directory and click on SetSound.exe. It will ask to select and configure MIDI music driver, click on this in the blue section and select Roland MT-32 Midi with MPU-401 Midi interface because you have selected Microsoft WaveTable GS Synthesizer. Then select and configure digital audio driver in the blue section. Choose Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro or 100% compatible, as your sound driver should be. Then select done at bottom. There should be now two new files in the Driver folder MDI.ini and DIG.ini. The game sounds should now work. Many Dos games of this age will configure similar, 1997.
 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Goodmaneuver
Added spaces where I should have

[tillewolle]

On 1/7/2020 at 1:10 PM, Goodmaneuver said:

Your on the right track with DXdiag just press Test DirectSound and then once done that go to music and test DirectMusic using the various ports that are shown.

DirectSound worked. DirectMusic also (except the Roland MPU-401 because it says it needs an external synthesizer)

 

On 1/7/2020 at 1:10 PM, Goodmaneuver said:

MSI are good for supplying drivers and if you download audio driver for win2000 it will be A3.99 which should work if you have not installed a later RealTek driver.

The A3.99 doesn't work. In the readme.txt it says that its compatible with Win98 Gold???

On 1/7/2020 at 1:10 PM, Goodmaneuver said:

ALC***.sys refers to ALCWDM.sys where as yours is CMUDA.sys because you are using a CMedia driver

yeah it says cmuda.sys

On 1/7/2020 at 1:10 PM, Goodmaneuver said:

Choose Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth. SW is short for soft ware check the about tab and it will say Roland.

Where should I chose this? And which About tab?

On 1/7/2020 at 1:10 PM, Goodmaneuver said:

Open Drivers folder in the game directory and click on SetSound.exe. It will ask to select and configure MIDI music driver, click on this in the blue section and select Roland MT-32 Midi with MPU-401 Midi interface because you have selected Microsoft WaveTable GS Synthesizer. Then select and configure digital audio driver in the blue section. Choose Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro or 100% compatible, as your sound driver should be. Then select done at bottom. There should be now two new files in the Driver folder MDI.ini and DIG.ini. The game sounds should now work. Many Dos games of this age will configure similar, 1997.

Can reproduce all those steps. It creates those files but no MIDI-sound, yet. Maybe because I didn't found out where to choose Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth?

Edited January 8, 2020 by tillewolle
Quoted wrong

[Goodmaneuver]

In control panel select  Sound and Multimedia. In the audio tab here will be a selection for Midi music playback preferred device, select Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth and then select apply or OK at bottom. The About tab is under the Preferred device section. In SetSound select "Roland MT-32 Midi with MPU-401 Midi interface".
 

[tillewolle]

11 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

In control panel select  Sound and Multimedia. In the audio tab here will be a selection for Midi music playback preferred device, select Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth and then select apply or OK at bottom.

Yeah, it is already configured like you say.

11 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

The About tab is under the Preferred device section.

It says Roland like you said earlier.

 

11 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

In SetSound select "Roland MT-32 Midi with MPU-401 Midi interface".

Did that before and tried it again. No MIDI-Sound in Settlers II. When I go to the In-Game Options Menu I can try to play different MIDI-tracks but this also doesn't work.

Tried CHAMP Ms. Pac-Em which the guys at Vogons say is the best game to test DOS-Sound compatibility.

CHAMP Ms. Pac-em ver. 1.5
Registered version
(C) Copyright 1996, 1997 CHAMProgramming
All rights reserved.

*** Unauthorized duplication or distribution is prohibited! ***

Initializing sound card...
Sound card successfully initialized._

and freezes Windows.

Using VDMSound gives me the same command prompt with an extra Error:

Edited January 9, 2020 by tillewolle

[loblo]

The Roland mention in the about box refers to the use of Roland sound samples used for midi playback by the Microsoft "synthesizer". They are all in a single file in RIFF format along with some playback instructions such as loop points for each sample. That file is called GM.dls and is located in the system32/drivers folder and is likely the only file in this folder that isn't actually a driver.

 

 The Roland mention in the about box doesn't mean any kind of Roland hardware midi device is being emulated. If you want to use Roland MT-32 Midi with MPU-401 Midi interface you need that hardware device installed or a driver software emulation if there is one.
 

[DosFreak]

As far as using DOSBox is concerned it's not a VM it's a PC emulator specifically for PC games and currently it's officially supported on 95/NT4 and above with DOSBox 0.74-3.

If you are running 9x on a period correct box then I'd keep it around for those DOS games that still have issues.

If you are running 9x on a i7 and want to play DOS games then you definetly need it.

Now if you were referring to the command prompt in Windows 9x then yes that is a Virtual Machine and depending on the game it may work fine for you.

If you want OPL3 you can try this:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=57951

If you want MT32 you can try the 9x ver of MUNT:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/files/munt/SNAPSHOTS/

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by DosFreak

[Goodmaneuver]

Going back DXdiag, the MIDI sound check should work. There will be only output ports shown as your motherboard sound device has no game port. 

>> DirectSound worked. DirectMusic also (except the Roland MPU-401 because it says it needs an external synthesizer)

An external synthesizer will be connected to the game port of which you have none at the moment but is an input port so it does not matter and should not be showing up in the test port option as they should be all outputs. The output MIDI Mapper and Microsoft GS Wavetable port should work. Tillewolle you said that you tried installing the 4.04 and 4.06 driver, unless you remove the files created in the system or have a new system build then the 3.54 driver will not work as you have shown.

 

Note my default port is Microsoft Synthesizer. WinME has ASD.exe Automatic Skip Driver, make sure there are no devices disabled if you have ASD.exe in windows folder.

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[tillewolle]

13 hours ago, loblo said:

The Roland mention in the about box refers to the use of Roland sound samples used for midi playback by the Microsoft "synthesizer". They are all in a single file in RIFF format along with some playback instructions such as loop points for each sample. That file is called GM.dls and is located in the system32/drivers folder and is likely the only file in this folder that isn't actually a driver.

Found it!

13 hours ago, loblo said:

 The Roland mention in the about box doesn't mean any kind of Roland hardware midi device is being emulated. If you want to use Roland MT-32 Midi with MPU-401 Midi interface you need that hardware device installed or a driver software emulation if there is one.

Yeah, it's already on my to-buy list.

12 hours ago, DosFreak said:

As far as using DOSBox is concerned it's not a VM it's a PC emulator specifically for PC games and currently it's officially supported on 95/NT4 and above with DOSBox 0.74-3.

If you are running 9x on a period correct box then I'd keep it around for those DOS games that still have issues.

If you are running 9x on a i7 and want to play DOS games then you definetly need it.

It's a AMD Sempron 2800+. Not really periodic correct. I'll give DOSBox a try and will report.

12 hours ago, DosFreak said:

If you want OPL3 you can try this:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=57951

If you want MT32 you can try the 9x ver of MUNT:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/files/munt/SNAPSHOTS/

That's a lot to read for the weekend! Looking forward!

9 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Going back DXdiag, the MIDI sound check should work. There will be only output ports shown as your motherboard sound device has no game port. 

It's also showing Roland MPU-401 as input.

9 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Tillewolle you said that you tried installing the 4.04 and 4.06 driver, unless you remove the files created in the system or have a new system build then the 3.54 driver will not work as you have shown.

3.54 driver? Weren't you talking about 3.99? And it's a new system. I rebuilt it completely after all the driver troubles in the beginning.

 

9 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Note my default port is Microsoft Synthesizer. WinME has ASD.exe Automatic Skip Driver, make sure there are no devices disabled if you have ASD.exe in windows folder.

Mine too. There is ASD.exe in C:\WINDOWS. I also have Roland MPU-401 in the list.

[Goodmaneuver]

See if Roland MPU has a properties tab when selected in the picture you have shown above and temporarily select do not use this device and do not map through this device for a try with Settlers 2.
 

[tillewolle]

9 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

See if Roland MPU has a properties tab when selected in the picture you have shown above and temporarily select do not use this device and do not map through this device for a try with Settlers 2.

Yeah, I tried this but it won't work.

I tried DOSBox 0.74-3 and it works fine! Settlers II is running with sound without problems.

On 1/10/2020 at 2:03 AM, DosFreak said:

If you want MT32 you can try the 9x ver of MUNT:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/files/munt/SNAPSHOTS/

I also installed MUNT from the mt32emu_qt-1.7.1-win9x.zip. I was able to find different MT-32 Roms that work with MUNT. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post them here. I also found a huge database full of different roms but wasn't able to test them out yet. MUNT works if I try .mid files with MT32_CONTROL.1987-10-07.v1.07.ROM and MT32_PCM.ROM. But I'm stuck, at getting MUNT to work with DOSBox. There is just mt32emu.drv, oemsetup.inf and a readme in mt32emu_win32drv-git_ac4f1f0dee-win9x.zip. 

Where should I place mt32emu.drv?

oemsetup.inf just says

[disks]
1 =. ,"MT-32 Synth Emulator",disk1

[Installable.Drivers]
mt32emu = 1:mt32emu.drv, "MIDI", "MT-32 Synth Emulator",,,

The readme tells me

Quote

For building, Windows Millenium DDK can be used which provides 16-bit C compiler
and other required header files, libraries and tools.

Found Windows 2000 DDK on waybackmachine but I'm not sure what to do with it.

[loblo]

I would try to place the drv file in the system directory (or any other folder that is in the path) and add mt32emu=mt32emu.drv to the drivers section of the system.ini file and reboot.
 

[tillewolle]

7 hours ago, loblo said:

I would try to place the drv file in the system directory (or any other folder that is in the path) and add mt32emu=mt32emu.drv to the drivers section of the system.ini file and reboot.
 

Did that. Now I need to open MUNT and DOSBox at the same time?

[loblo]

You need to have Munt running to make actual use of that driver (as per readme file) and it should be available as mt32emu in any software from which you can select a midi ouput device.

You need to configure DOSBox to make use of it.

In DOSBox config file:

mididevice=win32 (default should be OK too)
midiconfig=x (where x is a numeral digit correponding to the device you want to use)

Set midiconfig to 1 and run DOSBox with the \LISTMIDI argument and see which device is selected, if it's not the right one, set it to 2, etc, till you find it.

 

[Goodmaneuver]

The last RealTek driver for Win95 was A3.55. Win98 Gold was Win98 First Edition. RLoew had a driver system in which files greater than 4GiB can be used in a ##64 folder where the file is split but is continuous when in use. It was called FILE64.