DOS ain't dead

Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp (Developers)

posted by marcov, 17.02.2020, 09:25

> The audio on DOS VDM worked this way, you installed the OS/2 sound driver
> and also you needed to install the DOS sound driver on the DOS VDM. So, you
> installed a Sound blaster driver on OS/2 and a DOS sound blaster driver on
> the DOS session to have audio on both places.

Those were probably not real drivers, but code that initialized the soundcard into SB compatible modus.
Most compatibles, and later "PNP" cards used this to prepare the card for pure DOS use, as the PNP cards were not hardcoded to port/interrupt/dma either.

Games and other programs actually have their own sound drivers, which they do by talking directly to hardware port addresses (typically 220?) irq (usually 5 or 7) and for later SB models DMA, as well as the Roland MPU related equivalent on SB16+.

So your OS/2 driver needs to emulate a SB (or other soundcard, e.g. wave based cards Gravis Ultrasound might be a better match for current systems) hardware interfaces for the dos box. Then the programs will pick it up.

Complete thread:

• Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp - martiniturbide, 16.02.2020, 14:40 (Developers)
  • Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp - Rugxulo, 16.02.2020, 18:56
    • Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp - martiniturbide, 17.02.2020, 02:53
  • Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp - marcov, 17.02.2020, 09:25
    • Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp - martiniturbide, 17.02.2020, 14:15
      • Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp - Laaca, 17.02.2020, 16:22