DOS ain't dead - Emulation of Adlib in DOS

Laaca

Czech republic,
23.12.2017, 00:47

Emulation of Adlib in DOS (Miscellaneous)

I found this page about getting the Adlib sound on modern computer. It needs a special hardware interface but it can be handy for someone.
https://virtuallyfun.com/2017/12/14/opl2lpt/

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DOS-u-akbar!

RayeR

CZ,
24.12.2017, 22:59

@ Laaca

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

Post reply

> I found this page about getting the Adlib sound on modern computer. It
> needs a special hardware interface but it can be handy for someone.
> https://virtuallyfun.com/2017/12/14/opl2lpt/

Nice try, but patching tons of closed-sources games and demos is hard work and it doesn't solve SB emulation...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Guti

28.12.2017, 13:52

@ RayeR

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

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It makes sense. It patched serial port to use parallel port instead.

> > I found this page about getting the Adlib sound on modern computer. It
> > needs a special hardware interface but it can be handy for someone.
> > https://virtuallyfun.com/2017/12/14/opl2lpt/
>
> Nice try, but patching tons of closed-sources games and demos is hard work
> and it doesn't solve SB emulation...

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KormaX

04.01.2018, 21:55

@ Guti

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

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If you have a new hardware, you could just use DOSBox HX.DOS 2.17+ runtime on DOS and it will emulate AdLib and SoundBlaster. All these v86 emulator-drivers are "halfsoulutions" I think. A full emulation is far better, such DOSBox. A "transparent emulator" would be the best way, but it still doesn't exist.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

RayeR

CZ,
05.01.2018, 18:22

@ KormaX

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

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DOSBox is fine for very old SW but there are still DOS games and demos from '90/'2k era that needs a lot of CPU power and even on latest HW it cannot run smoothly via DOBox in higher resolution. As DOSBox cannot utilize multiple CPU cores the power is stopped for many years because we are limited by CPU clock that still keeps in 4-5GHz range...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

KormaX

19.01.2018, 11:22

@ RayeR

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

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You are right, but there are two solutions for that. None of them is using v86 mode emulator, because it would be simply inaccessible for most software. If we are planning to use a CPU-feature, it should be, as you mentioned, the multicore architecture to increase the emulation quality. A second solution, and surely a more simple one is just adding a possibility to DOSBox, to simply pass through the video output to the real operating system instead of emulating any videocard. That would make us free of the most powersource-hungry part of the emulation.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

RayeR

CZ,
19.01.2018, 16:07

@ KormaX

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

Post reply

> more simple one is just adding a possibility
> to DOSBox, to simply pass through the video output to the real operating
> system instead of emulating any videocard.

I never looked into dosbox sources but I would expect, that at least VBE 2.0 linear framebuffer emulation is quite straightforward in dosbox, that simply dos app gets some allocated buffer that is shared with SDL which quickly copy it on the screen so there shouldn't be much overhead... I think that e.g. SB emulation takes more overhead.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

KormaX

20.01.2018, 13:15

@ RayeR

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

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Then perhaps the first soulution could be the way by moving the process of the sound emulation from a thread into its own task and placing it to a new core. But in my experiences the high resolutions lower the speed even without sound. The problem may be caused by some unnecessary vice-versa translations from the game's VESA commands through the genereated image and its SDL forwarding to HX.DOS re-VESA-ization until it finally reaches the real video circuitry. The mouse is also subject to unnecessary vice-versa translations, and in my experience it is enough to generate lags and sound glitches when I am running Windows9x in Qemu under DOS with HX.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Laaca

Czech republic,
07.01.2018, 14:16

@ KormaX

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

Post reply

> If you have a new hardware, you could just use DOSBox HX.DOS 2.17+ runtime
> on DOS and it will emulate AdLib and SoundBlaster. All these v86
> emulator-drivers are "halfsoulutions" I think. A full emulation is far
> better, such DOSBox. A "transparent emulator" would be the best way, but it
> still doesn't exist.

Hm, I tried in the past the Dosbox with original HX-DOS and with this modified HX-DOX too but in both cases was the result unusable. Some Dosbox builds resused to start some started but virtualy any runned application (game) lead to crash.
To you have some out-of-the-box archive for testing?

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DOS-u-akbar!

KormaX

19.01.2018, 11:16

@ Laaca

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

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Today I will upload my config for you onto a temporary storage and I'll post it here so you'll be able to download it. If you don't download that in time, just send me a mail at kormos.x@gmail.com and I will send it to you. Actually I use DOSBOX 0.72, 0.74, the SVN-LFN build and the ehternet passthrough biuld. They work fine. I load them with DPMILD32 -G DOSBOX.EXE -NOCONSOLE command. Also I use DR-DOS, but it is reported that DOSBox runs on various DOS versions.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

KormaX

20.01.2018, 13:08

@ Laaca

Emulation of Adlib in DOS

Post reply

Sorry for being late! It's here.

http://s1.toldacuccot.hu/letoltes?sid=17535c216261d6f9330ea977f16660e5&file=ARCHIVE.ZIP

Tha page is in Hungarian but you will recognize the big yellow/orange button with the arrow directed to the bottom (Letöltés). It's a picture so it looks the same even from DOS browsers until it displays the graphics. You will find a PLAY.BAT is my command for controlling the initialization of the preconfigured programs supposed to run through DOSBox. They are configured by placing some files in their directory (or temporarily on my Z: ramdrive) so the batch script looks for them and gives a default command line to run them. It's overridible by parameters, as you will see. But this way I can run a program by simplichanging to its directory and typing the PLAY command. It will finally result something like this:

DPMILD32 -G C:\PROGRA~1\APPS\DOSBOX74\DOSBOX.EXE dbx.bat -NOCONSOLE -CONF local.dbx

where dbx.bat is the batch script DOSBox will execute and local.dbx is the DOSBox config file for that particular program for an external CRT monitor. For my built-in 1366x768 LCD PLAY must find the required files on the ramdrive and then a 382.DBX in the working directory, which contains the DOSBox configurations for the 382 VESA mode.

If the file is unavailable when you will try to download it, just send me a mail to kormos.x@gmail.com

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.