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Soundcard emulation in DOS on non-legacy hardware. Possible? (Emulation)

posted by Daniel3D E-mail, Netherlands, 03.11.2022, 09:47

> Graphics (ie, maintaining VGA-compatibility and a 16-bit Video BIOS and
> legacy BIOS) is going or has already gone out the window, discarded due to
> greed and (perceived) obsolesence). Way to go, for manufacturers! Break 30
> years of great software (ie, running DOS bare metal on modern systems),
> just to save a few cents by eliminating the BIOS and legacy 16-bit video
> BIOS, and kowtow to Microsoft's UEFI-only "requirement." It's absolutely
> insane, and an awful thing.
I agree. It's absolutely insane, and an awful thing. Fixing the systems that are being produced now is not possible. And probably never will be.

> Modern systems do not even have VGA-compatibility, let alone VESA 2 or VESA
> 3. If they do, their legacy VGA video BIOSes are broken, badly broken.
> There's been some discussion by myself, RayeR, and others here and on
> VOGONS forum about this. A few "wrappers" to fix VESA-compatibility have
> been made, but none so far "replace" the onboard VBIOS with a new,
> .......... but all of those cards are old, dedicated
> cards. None were onboard video, for laptops, and never any Intel Graphics
> were supported because it was too new. Development has stopped with those
> VGA / VESA wrappers because DOS "died" and there were too many cards to
> support. At least with Intel Onboard VGA wrapper / bugfix, it would solve
> MANY problems because of those Intel VGA onboard chipsets being 'common' in
> modern systems.
>
> (I do not know how to "modify" the Intel on-board VBIOS and "shadow" it in
> RAM, or if indeed it's easy to do). But it seems like it could be "easier"
> to do this video fixing / support on modern systems than support all those
> Intel ICH, IHD, and SKA PCI audio chipsets!).
I do not have any technical know how to value the possibility of this. But I think that you have a very good point. And found a good direction to aim for.

I have systems in mind from the late nineties until about 2015. When DOS support went out of the window. That is about 2 decades of hardware. Most of those will have the intel onboard chipsets or something similar enough. And are probably strong enough to do this in software* and keep resources for DOS. (*compared to emulating DOS on top of a different OS)

A wrapper (or collection of them) that can do this for sound and graphics in combination with FreeDos for instance could make DOS available for so many systems for years to come.

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