some notes regarding sound and dosemu
Hello.
Quoted 2 lines · Dave Phillips
The other day I read some posts on this list regarding failures to get sound and music working for certain MS-DOS games. I'd like to know what some of the major offenders are
Unfortunately in most cases the offenders are not the games itself. There are multiple problems. The first problem is that the sound code currently in dosemu, expects too much from the underlying driver. I was not aware that there are so many audio drivers out there that do not follow the specs. So you may end up with the distorted sound, or stuttering etc. Another problem is dosemu itself. Adlib support is still not there, for example.
And several games do not produce sound for unknown reasons (mortal kombat, ishar), several do not work when configured with sound.
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I'd be willing to test them here in my studio.
It seems like you got lucky with the audio card, in which case it will pretty much work for you.
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As you can see, my interest has been primarily in the MIDI side of things.
Note that midi is an easiest part. It requires almost no efforts on dosemu side, it completely relies on an external tools (midid, timidity, ALSA sequencer etc), so midi will work perfectly. DSP sound is much harder (depends on your audio driver) and Adlib is not there at all.
Quoted 1 line · Stas Sergeev
Hello.
Hi Stas !
Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 2 lines · Dave Phillips
The other day I read some posts on this list regarding failures to get sound and music working for certain MS-DOS games. I'd like to know what some of the major offenders are
Quoted 14 lines
Unfortunately in most cases the offenders are not the games itself. There are multiple problems. The first problem is that the sound code currently in dosemu, expects too much from the underlying driver. I was not aware that there are so many audio drivers out there that do not follow the specs. So you may end up with the distorted sound, or stuttering etc. Another problem is dosemu itself. Adlib support is still not there, for example.
And several games do not produce sound for unknown reasons (mortal kombat, ishar), several do not work when configured with sound.
Interesting. I guess it makes sense: MS-DOS games became popular during a period of standardization, and I recall that there were various compatibility issues with Adlib, PAS16, and SB cards. Frankly I'm amazed at how well the dosemu team has handled those problems so far.
Quoted 3 lines
It seems like you got lucky with the audio card, in which case it will pretty much work for you.
I should have mentioned that I'm using a SBLive! Value with ALSA 1.0.4. My system is a Planet CCRMA Red Hat 9 installation, the machine CPU is an 800 MHz Duron.
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Note that midi is an easiest part. It requires almost no efforts on dosemu side, it completely relies on an external tools (midid, timidity, ALSA sequencer etc), so midi will work perfectly. DSP sound is much harder (depends on your audio driver) and Adlib is not there at all.
Well, I must say again that the dosemu team has done a great job with MIDI support. Btw, did your MIDI input patch ever make it into the dosemu sources ?
Best,
dp
Hello.
Quoted 1 line · Dave Phillips
Btw, did your MIDI input patch ever make it into the dosemu sources ?
Yes, it is there for the long time
already (1.2.1, 1.3.0).
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Drummer MIDI rhythm programmer, works well, but has mouse problems (the mouse works but doesn't scale to window size)
Use full-screen mode or mouse grab mode.
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Sound Globs boots but doesn't work (no sound)
If this is available for download, there are
chances.
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M/pc boots, but I haven't figured out how to get a mouse working in it (and it really needs the mouse)
The only thing you can do here is to run it
under console and set up an access to the
serial mouse.