DOS ain't dead

Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC (Emulation)

posted by RayeR , CZ, 29.09.2018, 18:48
(edited by RayeR on 29.09.2018, 19:01)

Hi,
according to recent discussions on Vogons (e.g. here http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=61238 ) I found a working solution of SB emu for modern motherboards (intel core based, PCIE+PCI) as my Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3 with core i7-2600K. It's well known that Creative SB Live/Audigy SB emulation DOS driver is no longer working on PCIE motherboards. In the best case Adlib emulation may work but no SFX. No way to make it working.
But there emerged that 2 old forgotten PCI soundcards use some different and better SB emulation drivers for DOS that works even on modern MBs. They are Yamaha 72x/74x and Aureal Vortex AU88x0. It is still possible to buy them on eBay. I was very excited about this info so got the YMF724, YMF744 and AU8820 and test them: http://rayer.g6.cz/hardware/gap67ds3.htm#DOS_SBEMU (sry, CZ-only, use trans, tables are self-explanatory). So in my case I can now run games like Doom, Qauke, Blood, Duke3D, Sand Warrior and some demos with native sound and high resolution (if available) without worying about slow DosBox emulation.
One disadvantage is that those soundcards doesn't support WaveTable synth only FM synth. While Yamaha FM synth sounds quite good the Aureal Vortex FM synth sounds ugly. Fortunatelly there is a solution. I have build the DreamBlaster (using SAM2695 chip) external WaveTable synth that is feed by MIDI out from game port of the soundcard and feeding this sound back to line-in and mix it with SFX.
I know that most modern MBs now don't have PCI slots but there is a possibility it would run via external PCIE2PCI bridge. In my case the intel P67 chipset also lacks native PCI support and it use onboard ITE IT8892E PCIE2PCI bridge. So it shouldn't matter if the bridge is onboard or on a PCIE card. More testing is needed. Till now, it's confirmed these soundcards works on intel X58, H55 and P67 chipset.

For Japheth: I found a strange behavior that when Yamaha TSR DSDMA.EXE is loaded and I use JEMMEX in my config.sys I got this error from DOS4GW extender when trying to run a game:
"DOS/16M error: [17] system software does not follow VCPI or DPMI specifications Spawn Error: Error 0"
It was figuerd out that disabling VME by NOVME JEMMEX option solve this problem. Maybe some incompatability how JEMMEX use VME?

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Complete thread:

• Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC - RayeR, 29.09.2018, 18:48 (Emulation)
  • Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC - Japheth, 30.09.2018, 14:27
    • Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC - RayeR, 30.09.2018, 22:12
      • Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC - RayeR, 01.10.2018, 22:25
        • Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC - Rugxulo, 02.10.2018, 02:38
      • Working solution for HW Sound Blaster emulation for newer PC - Japheth, 02.10.2018, 10:29