Hi, >> - There is not such thing as "VESA audio"
There was, but nobody used it and it was only supported by PCI graphics cards with built-in sound or similarily "exotic" hardware as far as I remember. I doubt that any significant number of games supported that either. >> - SB16, are the common "de facto" for DOS Yes. >> - Right now, there is not emulation software for it. For Windows: VDMsound, Dosbox, various virtual computers Problem with Dosbox: Slow, because CPU is virtual, too. For Linux: Dosemu, Dosbox, various virtual computers Same problem as above ;-) For DOS: Only the proprietary SBLive / SBPCI drivers which are "locked" to work only with those (actually AC97) cards and VSB, but VSB only emulates SB 1.0 and supports only Covox (simple printer port adapter) and similar hardware. > There is some emulation software for PCI cards but it > needs proprietary hardware. See above. >> 1. Use VMware or Dosbox. > Or Bochs, Qemu, DOSEMu, many others... I would suggest Dosemu if you have Linux, Bochs if you want maximum hardware independence, Dosbox if you want slow but adjustable CPU speed ;-). Qemu or a commercial (VMWare, Virtual PC, ...) product for more speed, but most of are bad either speed or SB16-compatibility wise. >> 2. Buy an old SoundBlaster 16 PCI card. Better SBPCI or SBLive, if their virtual soundcard is okay for you. Or hardware adlib cards like with ForteMedia FM801 or (bad) CMedia chipsets: Those try to be SBPro / SB16 compatible, too, but will often fail with that on modern mainboards. But at least their Adlib / OPL3 / FM part will still work ;-). >> 3. Start a project to make my card work under FreeDOS/MS-DOS. Depends on your soundcard, lowlevel programming skills or ability to raise funds to motivate skilled people. You can use parts of VSB, Mpxplay, Bochs, Dosemu, Alsa- Project and similar components to implement the driver. >> 1. I don't want to use emulation software. Depends. Emulating nothing basically means that you either have to buy a PC with ISA or rewrite all your games. Emulating a bit means that K6 / Pentium III and FM801 generation cards will be your choice. Next step is emulating the whole soundcard (SBLive, SBPCI) then whole external hardware (Dosemu) then allll your hardware (Bochs, Qemu, VMWare, Virtual PC, ...) and finally even emulating DOS (VDMSound, Dosbox) :-p >> 2. I've found in eBay some used SB16 PCI cards. Not sure about those. SBPCI / SBLive are more known to work. Not really sure about Audigy either ;-). >> Are old PCI slots compatible with the new ones? Yes. Actually for DOS, it does not even make a real difference whether you have PCI, AGP or PCIe. You only miss the extra speed of the latter with DOS. > SBLive works well on XP, Vista untested. No idea. Almost every mainboard has built-in sound with AC97 or HDA anyway, so you can use that in your Windows and the good old SBLive / ... in DOS :-). >> I could (a) Adapt my sound card to FreeDOS. DOS never uses soundcards. Only DOS games do, and you do not have their source code to adapt them... >> (b) Create an ALSA DOS-wrapper to make to convert >> SB calls to sound cards calls. There are no SB calls. Games try to access hardware, and you can intercept that (emulate hardware). Quite challenging but VSB and the SBLive / ... drivers show that it can be done even inside DOS. Note that ALSA does not run in DOS at all, it might be easier to use the MPXPLAY for DOS drivers as starting point. Note that it only supports a few modern soundcards, but it is open source so you can start my making at least MPXPLAY itself work with your soundcard :-)). Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
