DOS ain't dead - Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp

martiniturbide

Quito, Ecuador,
16.02.2020, 14:40

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

Hi

I’m Martin Iturbide from the OS/2 community and I usually hang out on the OS2World.com forum (I’m the administrator there). Maybe you remember that OS/2 Warp has a Virtual DOS session (DOS VDM) that allowed it to run DOS programs too.

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.

But things has changed for OS/2 (and for the new ArcaOS which is an OS/2 OEM version), now we have a sound driver based in ALSA called UniAud, and for DOS something was created called DTA (DTAudio) that can make the DOS VDM sessions to produce sound and Win-OS/2 sessions too. But DOS programs have support for sound blaster and not for that DTA kind of audio, so we don’t have sound on DOS applications.

What is required is some kind of DOS Sound Blaster emulator driver that can bridge the request for audio from a sound blaster supported DOS application to the DTA driver so OS/2 Warp can get back the desirable DOS VDM sound support.

So, I’m looking for ideas like:
* Can you point me to some open source DOS Sound Blaster driver that can be adapted?
* Maybe it can be interesting to meet some developer that can be hired to create this bridge/driver.
* Any other ideas of what can else on the DOS open source community can help with this idea?

Thanks for reading.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
Quito - Ecuador

Rugxulo

Usono,
16.02.2020, 18:56

@ martiniturbide

Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp

Post reply

> I’m Martin Iturbide from the OS/2 community and I usually hang out on the
> OS2World.com forum (I’m the administrator there). Maybe you remember that
> OS/2 Warp has a Virtual DOS session (DOS VDM) that allowed it to run DOS
> programs too.

While I've never properly used OS/2, I'm still sympathetic. For years I thought OS/2 devs should partner with DOS ones, but nobody cared. (Certainly I'm not skilled enough to do much hacking.)

Can you confirm that ArcaOS runs okay under VBox? I think that was a big stumbling block for some people in the past (ring two? ugh).

Oh, I sadly haven't checked OS/2 Museum in several months, but it always had some interesting articles and commenters.

> So, I’m looking for ideas like:
> * Can you point me to some open source DOS Sound Blaster driver that can be
> adapted?

You could look at VSB.

> * Maybe it can be interesting to meet some developer that can be hired to
> create this bridge/driver.

Not sure, there aren't many professional devs around anymore. Maybe hire Ruslan??

> * Any other ideas of what can else on the DOS open source community can
> help with this idea?

freedos-devel mailing list might minimally help. But, mainly, people seem to always forget exactly what compilers and tools are available for DOS. So at least one archive of dev tools is on iBiblio, for FreeDOS, under /devel/ (or see Development package list).

martiniturbide

Quito, Ecuador,
17.02.2020, 02:53

@ Rugxulo

Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp

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Thanks for the reply Rugxulo.

I'm checking the links you provided.

> Can you confirm that ArcaOS runs okay under VBox? I think that was a big
> stumbling block for some people in the past (ring two? ugh).

ArcaOS 5.0.4 and OS/2 Warp 4.52 runs fine under VirtualBox. There was some tips on the OS2World.com forum and I have a little article about it on the Wiki.

https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/ArcaOS_5.0.x_as_a_VirtualBox_5.2.x_Guest

It would be great if the DOS and OS/2 community can get more collaboration. At OS2World I'm open for that.

Regards.

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Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
Quito - Ecuador

marcov

17.02.2020, 09:25

@ martiniturbide

Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp

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> 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.

martiniturbide

Quito, Ecuador,
17.02.2020, 14:15

@ marcov

Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp

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Hi Marcov

> > 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.
>

I think you are right and I made a mistake there. In OS/2 you used install the Audio driver and on the DOS VDM you configure the session so it can pass the sound to the OS/2 driver and hardware. It had been a long time since I had configured OS/2 on an old hardware that is supported by OS/2 and DOS.

Regards

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Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
Quito - Ecuador

Laaca

Czech republic,
17.02.2020, 16:22

@ martiniturbide

Sound Blaster, DOS and OS/2 Warp

Post reply

If you want a bridge just between OS/2 sound API and DOS hardware interfacing with SoundBlaster (or Gravis or few others) you could look into Allegro library (you need the Allegro 4.x.y because in Allegro 5 was the DOS support removed).
Allegro is considered as "best" C/DJGPP library for game development (mainly VIDEO+AUDIO) and it is open source and the sources are pretty clear.
The advantage for you is the fact that Allegro is multiplatform so the interface for AUDIO in very flexible and well-written
https://www.allegro.cc/files/?v=4.2

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DOS-u-akbar!