[Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues...

Discussion:

John Ames

2011-10-03 22:49:42 UTC

I've got an ISA SB16 on a 486 box I've installed FreeDOS on. I had
trouble installing the driver software to begin with, as the installer
didn't want to run until I booted into MS-DOS 6.22. Now it's
installed, enough that games can recognize and use the hardware.
However, I'm still running into some trouble with it. CTSB16.SYS and
SBCD.SYS both have DEVICE lines in FDCONFIG.SYS, which I copied over
from the CONFIG.SYS created by the installer, as does CTMMSYS.SYS.
However, while CTMMSYS works without issue, CTSB16 and SBCD both crash
during boot.

This is a bit of a problem, as without these I can't use the companion
CD-ROM drive (and I don't have an IDE controller capable of driving a
newer CD-ROM on hand.) SBCD gives me "Invalid Opcode" error messages,
like some of the other utilities did until I ran them under MS-DOS.
CTSB16, on the other hand, goes insane and prints screenfuls of
gibberish. I've got them both commented out for now, but that still
leaves me with no CD access.

Does anybody have any idea what, if anything, can be done to get these
working on FreeDOS? Or should I just settle for finding a separate
CD-ROM drive and controller?

Michael C. Robinson

2011-10-02 20:24:35 UTC

Permalink

A Soundblaster is the industry standard card. If you have a 100% true
Soundblaster 16, freedos can use it. I successfully tricked Windows
98SE dos drivers for a PCI soundblaster 16 to work in Freedos. There
should be an open source replacement driver for the soundblaster 16
cards, but I don't know how similar these cards really are. I hope an
OSS driver is part of freedos 1.1.

Post by John Ames
I've got an ISA SB16 on a 486 box I've installed FreeDOS on. I had
trouble installing the driver software to begin with, as the installer
didn't want to run until I booted into MS-DOS 6.22. Now it's
installed, enough that games can recognize and use the hardware.
However, I'm still running into some trouble with it. CTSB16.SYS and
SBCD.SYS both have DEVICE lines in FDCONFIG.SYS, which I copied over
from the CONFIG.SYS created by the installer, as does CTMMSYS.SYS.
However, while CTMMSYS works without issue, CTSB16 and SBCD both crash
during boot.
This is a bit of a problem, as without these I can't use the companion
CD-ROM drive (and I don't have an IDE controller capable of driving a
newer CD-ROM on hand.) SBCD gives me "Invalid Opcode" error messages,
like some of the other utilities did until I ran them under MS-DOS.
CTSB16, on the other hand, goes insane and prints screenfuls of
gibberish. I've got them both commented out for now, but that still
leaves me with no CD access.
Does anybody have any idea what, if anything, can be done to get these
working on FreeDOS? Or should I just settle for finding a separate
CD-ROM drive and controller?
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Rugxulo

2011-10-04 12:02:12 UTC

Permalink

Hi,

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Michael C. Robinson

Post by Michael C. Robinson
A Soundblaster is the industry standard card.

You mean "was". :-( To say modern soundcards are incompatible is
an understatement. Your only hope is really old hardware or emulators
(DOSBox, QEMU, maybe DOSEMU).

Post by Michael C. Robinson
If you have a 100% true
Soundblaster 16, freedos can use it. I successfully tricked Windows
98SE dos drivers for a PCI soundblaster 16 to work in Freedos. There
should be an open source replacement driver for the soundblaster 16
cards, but I don't know how similar these cards really are. I hope an
OSS driver is part of freedos 1.1.

The only two people offhand that I think?? know anything about
soundcards are Michael Kostylev and Atila Padar. The former allegedly
ported OSS to DOS at one time for Mplayer (but he's not active
anymore). Also, Atila is the Mpxplay dude who has ported bits of ALSA
for his program. Very imcomplete, but at least having proof that
somebody can do it is hopeful, right?

But anyways, my real point is that (as Pat V. had mentioned months
ago) we should probably focus on importing drivers from another OS,
e.g. FreeBSD. I think there have been several attempts in the past at
making such "portable" drivers, but I don't know how useful they would
be to us. (If I wasn't such a noob, I'd try myself, but that's way way
way beyond me.)

I mention the following URLs here just for reference on the odd chance
that it helps somebody somewhere:

http://code.google.com/p/rosetta-os/w/list
http://www.projectudi.org/

Rugxulo

2011-10-04 11:55:14 UTC

Permalink

Hi,
Are you running latest FreeDOS kernel and HIMEMX + JEMM386?
(Somehow I doubt it.) Try upgrading a few of your system files and try
again. Else try booting a somewhat cleaner config without a lot of
extra TSRs and drivers. You'll have to give more details, though, for
further guesses.

http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=kernel
http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=himemx
http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=jemm386

bloger

2011-10-04 12:08:12 UTC

Permalink

В ответ на сообщение товарища John Ames,

Post by John Ames
I've got an ISA SB16 on a 486 box I've installed FreeDOS on. I had

My congratulations! :-)

Post by John Ames
However, while CTMMSYS works without issue, CTSB16 and SBCD both crash
during boot.

Below I will share my small experience. I do not have troubles with
following setings.

fdconfig.sys
DEVICEHIGH=D:\DRV\AWE64\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5
DEVICEHIGH=D:\DRV\AWE64\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS

fdauto.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET SOUND=D:\DRV\awe64
SET CTCM=D:\DRV\awe64\ctcm.exe
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
D:\DRV\awe64\ctcm.exe
D:\DRV\awe64\aweutil.com /s
D:\DRV\awe64\mixerset /p /q

--
bloger

Eric Auer

2011-10-04 18:53:54 UTC

Permalink

Hi John,

Post by John Ames
I've got an ISA SB16 on a 486 box I've installed FreeDOS on.

Very old hardware :-)

Post by John Ames
installed, enough that games can recognize and use the hardware.

Very nice. Only true ISA soundcards really please old games.

Post by John Ames
However, I'm still running into some trouble with it. CTSB16.SYS and
SBCD.SYS both have DEVICE lines in FDCONFIG.SYS, which I copied over

I do not think that you really need those or CTMMSYS for anything today.

Post by John Ames
This is a bit of a problem, as without these I can't use the companion
CD-ROM drive (and I don't have an IDE controller capable of driving a
newer CD-ROM on hand.) SBCD gives me "Invalid Opcode" error messages,
like some of the other utilities did until I ran them under MS-DOS.

That is odd... ATAPI CDROM should be very similar to any IDE
as far as I remember, so I am not sure whether it is truly
not possible to run them on your old main IDE controller...

Of course soundcard CDROM tended to so somewhat incompatible
so I would not expect those to run with any other controller.

Post by John Ames
leaves me with no CD access.

Hard to tell what goes wrong with your SBCD driver. I guess
you would just load that - possibly with some options when
it has no autodetection of right settings - and then SHSUCDX
(the MSCDEX replacement). Maybe there are some issues with
other drivers loaded at the same time - try without EMM386.

Regards, Eric

Ralf A. Quint

2011-10-04 19:19:01 UTC

Permalink

Post by Eric Auer

That is odd... ATAPI CDROM should be very similar to any IDE
as far as I remember, so I am not sure whether it is truly
not possible to run them on your old main IDE controller...

There where a few "non-ATAPI" CD-ROM drives around back then with the
interface simply not compatible. Don't know the details after more
than 15 years, but it had to do with the controller chips (either
there was one on the SB card that didn't go along with the one on the
drive or the other way around).
There were also some SB cards that in fact had SCSI controllers on
them, for use with SCSI based CD-ROM drives only. I used to have one
of those back at the company I was employed at from '85-'94, actually
'borrowing' a SCSI CD-ROM drive from a Sun "Pizzabox"...

Ralf

John Ames

2011-10-05 03:09:34 UTC

Permalink

Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues...
Hi,
Are you running latest FreeDOS kernel and HIMEMX + JEMM386?
(Somehow I doubt it.) Try upgrading a few of your system files and try
again. Else try booting a somewhat cleaner config without a lot of
extra TSRs and drivers. You'll have to give more details, though, for
further guesses.

That helped; I updated the kernel and installed JEMMEX in place of
HIMEM.EXE and EMM386.EXE. CTSB16.SYS now loads without issue. SBCD.SYS
still crashes, however; JEMM seems to be catching some kind of
protection fault. Here's the output, now that it politely prints one
message instead of perpetually scrolling up the screen ;)

JemmEx: exception 0D occured at CS:EIP=09DE:00010000, ERRC=00000000
SS:ESP=09DE:00002CE8 EBP=F8002D02 EFL=00033286 CR0=80000013 CR2=00000000
EAX=00000000 EBX=000099FF ECX=00000000 EDX=000009DE ESI=01709087 EDI=000A9087
DS=9DC6 ES=9DC6 FS=C81F GS=09DE [CS:IP]=00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Press ESC to abort program

It goes on to produce an indefinite number of further errors, the only
difference being that EFL increments by random amounts and [CS:IP] now
contains FF FF FF FF 00 C8 51 11. Not sure what all of that is
relevant, but unless someone can tell me how to get a core dump in the
middle of the boot process, that's all I can offer at the moment.

Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues...
That is odd... ATAPI CDROM should be very similar to any IDE
as far as I remember, so I am not sure whether it is truly
not possible to run them on your old main IDE controller...
Of course soundcard CDROM tended to so somewhat incompatible
so I would not expect those to run with any other controller.

Yeah, that's the problem. According to everything I've read, it's not
a standard IDE interface, it only works with SB16. I could just track
down a separate controller and a newer CD-ROM, I suppose, but I'd
prefer to work with what I have for the moment.

Rugxulo

2011-10-05 11:54:07 UTC

Permalink

Hi,

Post by John Ames

Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues...
Are you running latest FreeDOS kernel and HIMEMX + JEMM386?
(Somehow I doubt it.) Try upgrading a few of your system files and try
again. Else try booting a somewhat cleaner config without a lot of
extra TSRs and drivers. You'll have to give more details, though, for
further guesses.

Try "JEMMEX X=TEST I=TEST" since by default I think it's less careful
than it perhaps could be regarding UMBs. Or even read the docs and try
the ultra super safe option. Hmmm, lemme find and quote it (for
convenience): "X=A000-FFFF NOHI NOVME NOINVLPG" (if that doesn't
work, nothing will).

BTW, this is a naive question, but do you really need EMS? If not,
avoid JEMM386 altogether and just load HIMEMX (or XMGR or FDXMS or
similar). It may avoid some rare problems (including this one, though
I halfway doubt it without trying it). And if you also really need
UMBs, you could try UMBPCI, but I doubt that would fix anything.