Hi Mikkel, well the rugxulo.googlepages.com distro does not even have an installer, so it does not break your Linux either :-). Just copy the files over your existing DOS to update your old DOS...
Note that DOS basically never really has drivers for sound: DOS games expect soundblaster hardware and some soundcards - like yours - come with some tool which switches the hardware into soundblaster compatibility mode. As the games try to communicate with your hardware directly, they will not even try to use a driver... Only very few games would. The only common soundcard which has no soundblaster-in- hardware compatibility but STILL works in DOS is the SBPCI and SBLive series from Creative: They do have a "driver" which traps all attempts to talk to soundblaster hardware and "converts" them into the different access style that the ACTUAL SBLive/SBPCI hardware needs. Only works with emm386-compatible games, though... By the way, > http://groups.google.de/group/de.comp.os.msdos/msg/ca0e07ae1d32c531 > http://groups.google.de/group/de.comp.os.msdos/msg/b803266bfc07816a explains what the ESStech.com Allegro audio tool for DOS does: > essolo.ini hex: 20 02 01 00 88 03 05 00 01 02 30 03 01 00 00 00 > Content: ioport dma adlib irq joyst midi unknown Test PC: www.bttr-software.de/members/robert/p500dk/ Pentium 200 with ATI Mach64 / Acer ALI M1511/1513 Aladdin / CMD 646 EIDE / D-Link DLK2201 DE-220P ISA network / ST340016A 37 GB IDE / 64 MB Note that ISA compatible PCs often work better with PCI cards that try to have a soundblaster compatible mode - my ForteMedia FM801 card worked in a PC with ISA+PCI+AGP in the PCI slot but in my new PC without ISA slots (PCIe+PCI) only the Adlib part still works. Back to Robert's information: The ESS driver only installs in Win9x even though it is a plain DOS tool - which only does a bit of init: > ftp://ftp.esstech.com/pub/audio-modem/VXD/Allegro_ES1988-1989/A1VXD_7130_Sign_29739.zip Quoting settings from his post, shortened: > ESS PCI Audio DOS Device Setup Utility, Version 2.31S > (c) ESS Technology,Inc. 1996-1999. All rights reserved. > ES1938/ES1946 PCI IRQ: 5 PCI IO Base: 7000 DMA Mode is TDMA > SBPro Game...: SB IO=220h IRQ=5 DMA=1 MPU401 IO=330h Game...=201h > Robert found with www.uwe-sieber.de/files/pciset.zip that only PCI config bytes 40, 41 and 51 changed: 7f->5f, 90->10, 0->21 > He read www.alsa-project.org/alsa/ftp/datasheets/ess/DsSolo1.pdf and found that this means "switch 10 to 16 bit I/O port base", "enable legacy audio" (:-)) and "select normal IRQ and TDMA", where bits 6:5 of byte 51h are 0 no IRQ / 1 normal IRQ / 2 non- standard IRQ / 3 reserved and bits 2:1:0 are 0 Distributed DMA, 1 Transparent DMA, 2 PC/PCI DMA, 3 reserved, 4 to 7 WBDMA. All are different attempts to have ISA style DMA on a PCI soundcard. My FM801 has similar settings, alas all fail on my new board... Robert used the small testsound players here: > ftp://ftp.eunet.bg/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sound/plany15.zip > ftp://ftp.eunet.bg/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sound/promod11.zip I hope you enjoyed this summary / translation :-) Eric PS: About another PCI sound chipset: > www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/specials/ViaAC97enableDOS.c is a small code snippet explaining how to do what VIAAUDIO.COM does and what VIAFMTSR.COM is: one enables VIA audio soundblaster mode, the other is a virtual Adlib thing and sort of complex. But VIAAUDIO is minimal: "outb 80h,39h / outl 0cf8h,80003d48h / outl 0cfch, inl 0cfch and not 1" unmutes the card :-) If you had Win3, you would also do outb 80,19 and ... cfc or 1 at start and outb 80,29 and ... cfc and not 1 at end of it. In the example, 80003d48 means "bus 0 slot 7 function 5 register 48" where 0.7.5 is the PCI location of your VIA audio chip which you can fetch with tools like DOS PCISLEEP or Linux lspci :-). You can check by doing outl 0cf8h,80003d00h -> is inl 0cfch 30581106h VIA VT82C686? Instead of 80003d00h you can use 80000500h or (slot shl 11) ... ;-). You also have to tell in BIOS CMOS setup that you want to bootstrap the card in legacy mode - then outl 0cf8h, 80003d40h -> inb 0cfeh will return an odd number which shows that the card is enabled. The BIOS does most bootstrap - VIAAUDIO only sets one last reg 48 bit! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
