Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Hi, I hate to dredge all of this up, but On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 3:16 PM, John Hupp free...@prpcompany.com wrote: I correct myself. I was using ide-cd.sys on another machine I was working with a couple weeks ago. On this machine I have been using the default uide.sys. But pursuing the driver-as-a-suspect angle anyway, I found a Lite-on DOS driver and installed that. CD playing now works. Thank you for the idea, Eric!! If there is a sad note, it is that uide.sys has fallen short on two machines in a row. On the other one, I had no CD function at all. In this one, I had data CD function, but no audio CD. John, which exact version of UIDE are you using? I'm assuming latest on iBiblio, which is Mar-05. You may want to try older versions. For that particular reason (among others), we often keep them in case of unforeseen regressions. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/ellis/old/ Actually, that's the reason I never uploaded Mar-18 for him. If you want, I can email you that version, but I doubt it's much better! You could also try his new (closed source) drivers. (Yes, he directly blames me for closing sources. Sigh. Totally imaginary offense, but hey, what can you do? Totally against FreeDOS and SourceForge, alas.) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15785527/dos/file/drivers.zip In fact, if you're really adventurous (and a glutton for punishment), email him directly! I wouldn't really recommend it, but if you insist on knowing why they don't work (assuming you've tried all of the above), that may be your only answer. But keep in mind that Jack is not exactly a friendly person. http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=uide P.S. Honestly, I don't even want to mention any of this. It's too annoying. But, for clarity, if you really want to know, those are your only options. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] DOS (network) Printing
There is Netcat for DOS ... http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Netcat And it can easily be used for printers that listen for raw connections on port 9100. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
On 6/4/2015 4:29 PM, Rugxulo wrote: It could be an incorrect or buggy driver, dunno. The only way to know would be to try something else. But I'm not sure of a good alternative. I don't even know where to (reliably) find such old DOS drivers. That seems to have been the case. In my post that followed the one you replied to, I noted that I successfully replaced uide.sys with a Lite-on driver to get audio CD working. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?
In the past I had half a dozen machines with various ESS chipsets which were (mostly) SB Pro compatible. Under DOS I would run ESSCFG followed by ESSVOL, and maybe set a BLASTER environment variable (or did the utility do that itself??? I can't remember) and then it would work. Check this archive http://www.hyakushiki.net/essdos.zip On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 10:46:04 -0400, Don Flowers donr...@gmail.com wrote: I have a Compaq Armada (Laptop) with a ESS1869 - I tried every SB/ESS driver I could find then by chance I loaded DOSSOUND and it worked. For my modern desktops with the oldest PCI cards (mostly ESS or Yamaha) I can only get sound through the internal speaker, but MPXPLAY QView work through the lineout - I think any successful configuration will be a compromise. On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 10:40 AM, Dale E Sterner sunbeam...@juno.com wrote: I've quit working on it for a while. Tried every address and interupt I can think of. None work I think the chip is in off mode and needs to be turned on by windows. These sound drivers work on sound blaster cards but not on a laptop with ESS. cheers DS On Wed, 03 Jun 2015 16:18:52 +0200 Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de writes: Hi! What I need for my Dell is a sound blaster pro driver that works on an ESS chip without windows being there. Windows turns the chip on somehow. The programs are for DOS running under windows. None of the drivers are for dos alone, even if they claim to be. Add windows to the background and they work but who wants that. There are many different ESS chips, so more information is needed: http://support.toshiba.com/support/viewContentDetail?contentId=107869 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_AudioPCI http://www.daqarta.com/ess.htm What would also help is a tool to detect I/O base, IRQ and DMA details without hanging. No matter which card you have, often one or several of those aspects go wrong. In particular with PCI cards trying to be compatible to ISA SoundBlaster standards of any type, failing DMA and mis-routed IRQ signals are a common source of havoc. In some cases, it even is a hardware problem (a new mainboard cannot make PCI stuff look sufficiently ISA compatible any more). With SB Live, SB PCI and the ESS Ensoniq Audio PCI, the SoundBlaster compatibility even is a completely fake driver generated virtual hardware experience in the first place. Regards, Eric - - ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user Protect what matters Floods can happen anywhere. Learn your risk and find an agent today. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3165/556f0deaaf252dea23d8mp07duc ** From Dale Sterner - MS organic chemistry http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo00975a052 *** -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Thanks for the clarifications. I could add though, that I tried CDROM2 PLAY01 F: and it responded with something like F: is not an audio drive, but F: is. The CD-ROM cable is known working (confirmed via Win 98), and I turned up the CD volume in the sound card mixer. But it may be that the drive lacks the built-in audio playing function that your program requires. It has a headphone jack and volume dial, but no Play/Stop/Next/Previous controls like older drives did. (It's a 48x CD-ROM, a Lite-on LTN-485S manufactured in 2000.) I hadn't thought about the CD driver as a suspect. A couple weeks ago I had a thread named For CD: Error reading from drive D: data area: drive not ready in which I detailed my struggles with getting a working configuration. I'm currently using a driver named ide-cd.sys. I don't know where it came from originally, but I used it successfully on a machine a few years ago. Your alternative way is also referred to as digital audio extraction? I understood from Mateusz Viste that mpxplay will do that, though I don't know how and haven't pursued that. I think it may require a plugin (CDW). He also said it would draw more heavily on the CPU -- and this machine only has a Pentium 150. On 6/4/2015 1:13 PM, Eric Auer wrote: Hi! With cdrom2ui, I ran these two commands: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: CDROM PLAY01 F: In both cases it responded Error reading from drive F: data area: drive not ready. Only the larger CDROM2 tool supports audio commands and you have to omit the , so the proper command would be: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: However, this only tells the drive to use the built-in audio playing function which modern drives might lack. The sound gets output to the headphone jack of your CD drive (if it has the connector) and the output for 3- or 4-pin cables to your soundcard or mainboard (if it has that). If you use the latter output, you also have to have a cable connected and the volume control on your soundcard properly set. Last but not least, not all drivers of CD/DVD/BluRay drives might support audio commands. The alternative way is to read out the raw audio data and then either store that as WAV, convert it to OGG or MP3, or play it directly. I think this is now the more common way of accessing audio on CD via a PC :-) Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Hi! With cdrom2ui, I ran these two commands: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: CDROM PLAY01 F: In both cases it responded Error reading from drive F: data area: drive not ready. Only the larger CDROM2 tool supports audio commands and you have to omit the , so the proper command would be: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: However, this only tells the drive to use the built-in audio playing function which modern drives might lack. The sound gets output to the headphone jack of your CD drive (if it has the connector) and the output for 3- or 4-pin cables to your soundcard or mainboard (if it has that). If you use the latter output, you also have to have a cable connected and the volume control on your soundcard properly set. Last but not least, not all drivers of CD/DVD/BluRay drives might support audio commands. The alternative way is to read out the raw audio data and then either store that as WAV, convert it to OGG or MP3, or play it directly. I think this is now the more common way of accessing audio on CD via a PC :-) Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
On 6/4/2015 7:43 AM, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 8:16 PM, John Hupp free...@prpcompany.com wrote: With mpxplay now working, I am continuing with the quest to get a CD player working. I temporarily installed a Win 98 hard drive on this machine and got the sound card working in Windows. I also established how to connect the standard 4-pin audio CD connector on the CD-ROM drive with the non-standard 3-pin connector on the sound card, and CD Player then worked in Windows. But when I returned to FreeDOS with this now-known-good cable connection, my two CD players still failed just as before. I'd like to test with different CD players than CD-V and ACP. Suggestions? I haven't used a lot of CDs on my computers in recent years. So I'm somewhat out of touch. The two that immediately come to mind are these: 1). http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/cdrom2ui.zip That one's cmdline only, extremely minimal. 2). http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/software/sjgplay/sjgplay_dos.html That's an old favorite (not that I ever did karaoke, but it's a cool feature). With cdrom2ui, I ran these two commands: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: CDROM PLAY01 F: In both cases it responded Error reading from drive F: data area: drive not ready. But the CD plays elsewhere. Nonetheless I tried another CD with the same result. This same drive works fine for data CD's, and it works fine for audio CD's in Windows. With sjgplay, the auto-scan seems to fail. It uses drive a:, reports 1 track only, and the CD title is the generic CD00.CD. If I run sjgplay on the same hardware under Win 98 in a DOS window, it plays just fine. So both of these players seem not to see the drive. And CD-V reported Invalid media! Could all the players I tried be requiring MSCDEX, and failing with SHSUCDX? -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing
On 04/06/2015 17:17, Eric Auer wrote: I can only guess that there are network printer drivers or at least netcat for DOS. I actually wrote about something like this 8 years ago. This is a trick I was using to print files on my network printer from FreeDOS. https://www.mail-archive.com/freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06568.html Mateusz -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing
Don Flowers composed on 2015-06-04 11:26 (UTC-0400): All but one of my computers have parallel ports (the advantage of buying HP Enterprise machines off-lease) Parallel ports on a PC aren't much of a problem. PCI add-in cards with parallel ports are available new, and there are probably hundreds of thousands of them around used as pulls from retired PCs. - I'm just trying to find a reasonbly priced Dot Matrix printer :^) Adjusted for inflation since they were the standard printer type, prices now are much less than they were 30 years ago: http://www.newegg.com/Dot-Matrix-Printers/SubCategory/ID-631?Order=PRICE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828289009 looks exactly like my 25 year old 24 pin GSX-140. http://choiceprinters.com/dmsc/Citizen_GSX-140_AH10-M01.html -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Avoid the analog audio CD cable?
On 6/4/2015 3:11 AM, Mateusz Viste wrote: On 04/06/2015 01:58, John Hupp wrote: It occurred to me that this might be a cabling issue. Possible, but the CD-sound card cable is a basic analog cable, so it's really hard to connect it wrong. Often you have to enable the CD input in your sound card mixer so the sound card actually listens to what the CD says. Have you checked this? A good thought. CD was set to low volume but not zero. I set it high and still got no output. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing
On 6/4/2015 5:18 AM, Felix Miata wrote: Thomas Mueller composed on 2015-06-04 07:20 (UTC): I've been unable to get my printer, HP LaserJet Professional 1212nf MFP working. Now I think it might be nonstandard implementation of PostScript or whatever command language. Legacy DOS apps relied on drivers specific to them. DOS itself didn't support printers, much less MF devices. It merely provided access to the interfaces of the time, serial ports, and parallel ports. You could sent text or text files directly to printers via these interfaces, but not control the printers via postscript or other printer languages. Postscript wasn't even invented until DOS had been around a couple of years, and even so, it wasn't made available except in the most expensive of printers until quite some time after invention. The major apps like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 relied on printer drivers written specifically for those apps to produce control of things we now take for granted, like margin settings and font selection. Character sets were whatever the printer itself included, usually limited to 2 or 3 (fixed) pitches and line spacing choices of 66 or 88 lines per letter size page, in your orientation choice of portrait or portrait. Those that offered graphics modes were horrifically slow in those modes. Why would HP have hplip when other printer manufacturers have no such thing? Marketing in part, but also because none ever emulate any printer language other than its own, and the cheaper models typically omit postscript support or any but one particular dialect from among the many of its own. IOW, it's more complicated for mere mortals to figure out how to set up HP printers without it, a bigger hurdle than with other printer brands. But can a laser or inkjet printer with standard interface work in FreeDOS? What is a standard interface in FreeDOS? IBM/M$ DOSes date from long before the invention of USB and the ubiquity of networking, IIRC only ever knowing serial ports and parallel ports. This question interests me too, as I just bought a new HL-5470DW printer today to replace a Canon that provided no emulation of any kind. The new provides Epson FX, IBM Proprinter and PCL6 emulations in addition to Brother's own language, but neither parallel port nor serial port connectivity. In Linux I'll be using it via IP, but it would be nice to be able to use it directly from a DOS boot somehow to print old WP and spreadsheet files with embedded Epson FX printer control codes. Before postscript and HP's LJ* languages, the most popular printer languages that I can remember were IBM's own, Epson's, and Okidata's. Epson's seem to have become the most popular of those three, and continue to be included in some printers made by manufacturers other than Epson, Brother in particular, which is why I bought what I bought, and never consider buying HP for personal use. I remember reading that FreeDOS 1.1 has some measure of USB support. I have not tried anything USB myself yet. But of course there is still the question of talking a language that the printer understands. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing
All but one of my computers have parallel ports (the advantage of buying HP Enterprise machines off-lease) - I'm just trying to find a reasonbly priced Dot Matrix printer :^) On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote: Hi! This question interests me too, as I just bought a new HL-5470DW printer today to replace a Canon that provided no emulation of any kind. The new provides Epson FX, IBM Proprinter and PCL6 emulations in addition to Brother's own language, but neither parallel port nor serial port Quite multilingual :-) connectivity. In Linux I'll be using it via IP, but it would be nice to be able to use it directly from a DOS boot somehow to print old WP and spreadsheet files with embedded Epson FX printer control codes. I can only guess that there are network printer drivers or at least netcat for DOS. In some cases, you can also use a browser to config printers which provide a web interface, sometimes also allowing to upload and print files. I guess IPP is a popular print protocol now. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] dos usb driver!
My printer is an old PCL 6 command language printer. Just send it a simple PCL string and it will do anything I want. New win printers have all their smarts removed and placed in a windows file. Windows now does what the inner works of the printer use to do. It forces you to use windows. cheers DS On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 07:20:45 + Thomas Mueller mueller6...@twc.com writes: Excerpt from Eric Auer: High Definition Audio controllers are currently not supported. By the way: I think it works like these stupid win printers; it waits for windows to start it up. After all dos is dead isn't it - ha. I will have to search for this dossound. It might be the answer. That is not the only problem. Winmodems and Win GDI printers etc. often do not support normal command languages. Instead, there is only a proprietary interface to some low level device. In the Winmodem case, this is often a simple soundcard. All the smart things to turn data into tones and back have to be done by some Windows (or Linux) driver, so just starting Windows is not enough to activate the modem for DOS. For printers, your mileage may vary - they may at least support plain text but that might indeed depend on some Windows driver activating the printer at boot. What I have is Intel Hogh Definition Audio: works with FreeBSD and NetBSD current versions, but I haven't tried with FreeDOS. I've been unable to get my printer, HP LaserJet Professional 1212nf MFP working. Now I think it might be nonstandard implementation of PostScript or whatever command language. Why would HP have hplip when other printer manufacturers have no such thing? But can a laser or inkjet printer with standard interface work in FreeDOS? Considering that I can't boot FreeDOS with EMM386 or anything of that kind, I'm very reluctant to try anything too complicated with FreeDOS: leave that to FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux or Haiku. Tom - - ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user Protect what matters Floods can happen anywhere. Learn your risk and find an agent today. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3165/557063225d92263211c16mp03duc ** From Dale Sterner - MS organic chemistry http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo00975a052 *** -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?
I like to play cds with SJGPlay which is a great dos cd player. I also use PV and quickview to watch home movies. They work well on my desktop but not on the laptop unless Windows is there. I'm running DOS on cf chips without Windows. I could also could use a method to control screen resolution. The standard screen doctor dosn't seem to work here. cheers DS On Wed, 3 Jun 2015 11:33:09 -0500 Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com writes: Hi, On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Dale E Sterner sunbeam...@juno.com wrote: What I need for my Dell is a sound blaster pro driver that works on an ESS chip without windows being there. Windows turns the chip on somehow. The programs are for DOS running under windows. None of the drivers are for dos alone, even if they claim to be. Add windows to the background and they work but who wants that. But what kinds of things are you trying to play on it?? What file formats or programs?? Are you just looking for a universal driver that emulates ye olde SB16 entirely (100%), thus working with (almost) all classic DOS software?? Allegro 4.2.2 was the last DJGPP release, AFAIK. One of their examples was PLAY.EXE, which could play *.mid or *.voc or *.wav. I'm not sure if you need an additional PATCHES.DAT file (converted by pat2dat on Soundfont .sf2 or whatever) for your particular machine. Heck, maybe your machine isn't (properly) supported, dunno. All I'm saying is that one of the few well-supported libraries / toolsets was Allegro, so (generally speaking) it is one of the foremost things to test if you're trying to see if your sound hardware works under DOS. (Actually, I don't remember if PLAY.EXE was broken / regressed since Allegro 3.1.2. I had put the older .EXE on my RUFFIDEA, and it worked on my old AWE64, but that was years ago. No idea if either will truly work for you, but it's worth a shot. Well, 4.2.2's version works fine under DOSBox [SB16/OPL3], at least.) http://na.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/djgpp/current/v2tk/allegro/ http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/dl/ofc/current/v2tk/allegro/all422b.zip/alle gro/bin/play.exe A quick run of PLAY.EXE (without filename) shows the following supported hardware: === Sound code test program for Allegro 4.2.2, djgpp By Shawn Hargreaves, 2007 Usage: play [digital driver [midi driver]] files.(mid|voc|wav) Digital drivers: ESC - Soundscape ESS - ESS AudioDrive WSS - Windows Sound System SB16- Sound Blaster 16 SBP - Sound Blaster Pro SB20- Sound Blaster 2.0 SB15- Sound Blaster 1.5 SB10- Sound Blaster 1.0 MIDI drivers: AWE - AWE32/EMU8000 DIGI- DIGMID OPL3- Adlib (OPL3) OPLX- Adlib (dual OPL2) OPL2- Adlib (OPL2) MPU - MPU-401 SB - SB MIDI interface If you don't specify the card, Allegro will auto-detect (ie. guess :-) === - - ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user Protect what matters Floods can happen anywhere. Learn your risk and find an agent today. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3165/557062f49c7a962f451b2mp09duc ** From Dale Sterner - MS organic chemistry http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo00975a052 *** -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing
Hi! This question interests me too, as I just bought a new HL-5470DW printer today to replace a Canon that provided no emulation of any kind. The new provides Epson FX, IBM Proprinter and PCL6 emulations in addition to Brother's own language, but neither parallel port nor serial port Quite multilingual :-) connectivity. In Linux I'll be using it via IP, but it would be nice to be able to use it directly from a DOS boot somehow to print old WP and spreadsheet files with embedded Epson FX printer control codes. I can only guess that there are network printer drivers or at least netcat for DOS. In some cases, you can also use a browser to config printers which provide a web interface, sometimes also allowing to upload and print files. I guess IPP is a popular print protocol now. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Avoid the analog audio CD cable?
On 04/06/2015 01:58, John Hupp wrote: It occurred to me that this might be a cabling issue. Possible, but the CD-sound card cable is a basic analog cable, so it's really hard to connect it wrong. Often you have to enable the CD input in your sound card mixer so the sound card actually listens to what the CD says. Have you checked this? My latest thought, however: Does FreeDOS and/or a certain CD player support sending the sound digitally to the sound card over the ribbon cable and the PC bus, the way modern Windows does it? In this case I can dispense with the cable. As I wrote earlier already, MPXPLAY does exactly that (but it comes with a higher CPU usage, than using hardware capabilities of your CD player of course). Mateusz -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] dos usb driver!
Excerpt from Eric Auer: High Definition Audio controllers are currently not supported. By the way: I think it works like these stupid win printers; it waits for windows to start it up. After all dos is dead isn't it - ha. I will have to search for this dossound. It might be the answer. That is not the only problem. Winmodems and Win GDI printers etc. often do not support normal command languages. Instead, there is only a proprietary interface to some low level device. In the Winmodem case, this is often a simple soundcard. All the smart things to turn data into tones and back have to be done by some Windows (or Linux) driver, so just starting Windows is not enough to activate the modem for DOS. For printers, your mileage may vary - they may at least support plain text but that might indeed depend on some Windows driver activating the printer at boot. What I have is Intel Hogh Definition Audio: works with FreeBSD and NetBSD current versions, but I haven't tried with FreeDOS. I've been unable to get my printer, HP LaserJet Professional 1212nf MFP working. Now I think it might be nonstandard implementation of PostScript or whatever command language. Why would HP have hplip when other printer manufacturers have no such thing? But can a laser or inkjet printer with standard interface work in FreeDOS? Considering that I can't boot FreeDOS with EMM386 or anything of that kind, I'm very reluctant to try anything too complicated with FreeDOS: leave that to FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux or Haiku. Tom -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing (was: dos usb driver!)
Thomas Mueller composed on 2015-06-04 07:20 (UTC): I've been unable to get my printer, HP LaserJet Professional 1212nf MFP working. Now I think it might be nonstandard implementation of PostScript or whatever command language. Legacy DOS apps relied on drivers specific to them. DOS itself didn't support printers, much less MF devices. It merely provided access to the interfaces of the time, serial ports, and parallel ports. You could sent text or text files directly to printers via these interfaces, but not control the printers via postscript or other printer languages. Postscript wasn't even invented until DOS had been around a couple of years, and even so, it wasn't made available except in the most expensive of printers until quite some time after invention. The major apps like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 relied on printer drivers written specifically for those apps to produce control of things we now take for granted, like margin settings and font selection. Character sets were whatever the printer itself included, usually limited to 2 or 3 (fixed) pitches and line spacing choices of 66 or 88 lines per letter size page, in your orientation choice of portrait or portrait. Those that offered graphics modes were horrifically slow in those modes. Why would HP have hplip when other printer manufacturers have no such thing? Marketing in part, but also because none ever emulate any printer language other than its own, and the cheaper models typically omit postscript support or any but one particular dialect from among the many of its own. IOW, it's more complicated for mere mortals to figure out how to set up HP printers without it, a bigger hurdle than with other printer brands. But can a laser or inkjet printer with standard interface work in FreeDOS? What is a standard interface in FreeDOS? IBM/M$ DOSes date from long before the invention of USB and the ubiquity of networking, IIRC only ever knowing serial ports and parallel ports. This question interests me too, as I just bought a new HL-5470DW printer today to replace a Canon that provided no emulation of any kind. The new provides Epson FX, IBM Proprinter and PCL6 emulations in addition to Brother's own language, but neither parallel port nor serial port connectivity. In Linux I'll be using it via IP, but it would be nice to be able to use it directly from a DOS boot somehow to print old WP and spreadsheet files with embedded Epson FX printer control codes. Before postscript and HP's LJ* languages, the most popular printer languages that I can remember were IBM's own, Epson's, and Okidata's. Epson's seem to have become the most popular of those three, and continue to be included in some printers made by manufacturers other than Epson, Brother in particular, which is why I bought what I bought, and never consider buying HP for personal use. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Hi, On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 8:16 PM, John Hupp free...@prpcompany.com wrote: With mpxplay now working, I am continuing with the quest to get a CD player working. I temporarily installed a Win 98 hard drive on this machine and got the sound card working in Windows. I also established how to connect the standard 4-pin audio CD connector on the CD-ROM drive with the non-standard 3-pin connector on the sound card, and CD Player then worked in Windows. But when I returned to FreeDOS with this now-known-good cable connection, my two CD players still failed just as before. I'd like to test with different CD players than CD-V and ACP. Suggestions? I haven't used a lot of CDs on my computers in recent years. So I'm somewhat out of touch. The two that immediately come to mind are these: 1). http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/cdrom2ui.zip That one's cmdline only, extremely minimal. 2). http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/software/sjgplay/sjgplay_dos.html That's an old favorite (not that I ever did karaoke, but it's a cool feature). -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
I correct myself. I was using ide-cd.sys on another machine I was working with a couple weeks ago. On this machine I have been using the default uide.sys. But pursuing the driver-as-a-suspect angle anyway, I found a Lite-on DOS driver and installed that. CD playing now works. Thank you for the idea, Eric!! If there is a sad note, it is that uide.sys has fallen short on two machines in a row. On the other one, I had no CD function at all. In this one, I had data CD function, but no audio CD. On 6/4/2015 2:06 PM, John Hupp wrote: Thanks for the clarifications. I could add though, that I tried CDROM2 PLAY01 F: and it responded with something like F: is not an audio drive, but F: is. The CD-ROM cable is known working (confirmed via Win 98), and I turned up the CD volume in the sound card mixer. But it may be that the drive lacks the built-in audio playing function that your program requires. It has a headphone jack and volume dial, but no Play/Stop/Next/Previous controls like older drives did. (It's a 48x CD-ROM, a Lite-on LTN-485S manufactured in 2000.) I hadn't thought about the CD driver as a suspect. A couple weeks ago I had a thread named For CD: Error reading from drive D: data area: drive not ready in which I detailed my struggles with getting a working configuration. I'm currently using a driver named ide-cd.sys. I don't know where it came from originally, but I used it successfully on a machine a few years ago. Your alternative way is also referred to as digital audio extraction? I understood from Mateusz Viste that mpxplay will do that, though I don't know how and haven't pursued that. I think it may require a plugin (CDW). He also said it would draw more heavily on the CPU -- and this machine only has a Pentium 150. On 6/4/2015 1:13 PM, Eric Auer wrote: Hi! With cdrom2ui, I ran these two commands: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: CDROM PLAY01 F: In both cases it responded Error reading from drive F: data area: drive not ready. Only the larger CDROM2 tool supports audio commands and you have to omit the , so the proper command would be: CDROM2 PLAY01 F: However, this only tells the drive to use the built-in audio playing function which modern drives might lack. The sound gets output to the headphone jack of your CD drive (if it has the connector) and the output for 3- or 4-pin cables to your soundcard or mainboard (if it has that). If you use the latter output, you also have to have a cable connected and the volume control on your soundcard properly set. Last but not least, not all drivers of CD/DVD/BluRay drives might support audio commands. The alternative way is to read out the raw audio data and then either store that as WAV, convert it to OGG or MP3, or play it directly. I think this is now the more common way of accessing audio on CD via a PC :-) Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Hi, On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 1:06 PM, John Hupp free...@prpcompany.com wrote: Thanks for the clarifications. I could add though, that I tried CDROM2 PLAY01 F: and it responded with something like F: is not an audio drive, but F: is. The CD-ROM cable is known working (confirmed via Win 98), and I turned up the CD volume in the sound card mixer. Do you think that's the problem?? Then try this: http://www.bttr-software.de/products/sbmix/sbmixb.zip But what exactly are your (Win98 and DOS) CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT relevant lines? Maybe you used some incorrect settings. But it may be that the drive lacks the built-in audio playing function that your program requires. It has a headphone jack and volume dial, but no Play/Stop/Next/Previous controls like older drives did. (It's a 48x CD-ROM, a Lite-on LTN-485S manufactured in 2000.) No idea about hardware limitations. I hadn't thought about the CD driver as a suspect. A couple weeks ago I had a thread named For CD: Error reading from drive D: data area: drive not ready in which I detailed my struggles with getting a working configuration. I'm currently using a driver named ide-cd.sys. I don't know where it came from originally, but I used it successfully on a machine a few years ago. It could be an incorrect or buggy driver, dunno. The only way to know would be to try something else. But I'm not sure of a good alternative. I don't even know where to (reliably) find such old DOS drivers. As much as I think the term Linux is overused and less useful than implied (*especially* for legacy hardware), there are some ancient distros which are fairly lean. My point is that you could try and see if they work (with their drivers), or at least to tell you more about your actual hardware. One old (2006) but good example is the two-floppy BlueFlops: http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/blueflops/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/blueflops/files/blueflops/blueflops-2.0.15/blueflops-2.0.15.zip/download I know you say Win98 works fine, but if even Linux doesn't work, then I don't think DOS has much chance (anymore, since everyone abandons / forgets everything old). Granted, if Win98 isn't good enough, neither is Linux, but I'm just saying ... I'm curious whether even that works for you! Your alternative way is also referred to as digital audio extraction? I understood from Mateusz Viste that mpxplay will do that, though I don't know how and haven't pursued that. I think it may require a plugin (CDW). He also said it would draw more heavily on the CPU -- and this machine only has a Pentium 150. I could be wrong, but I think Eric means you should rip whatever audio you want into .mp3 locally, which can then be played without needing direct CD access at all. For example, this is what the DJGPP port of Hexen2 supports (although you can't rip from DOS itself). Of course, you'll still need a DOS-friendly soundcard (or use DOSEMU or DOSBox or similar). -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
