Sound Blaster Gc7 Drivers
Jannet Nevels
I installed the appropriate drivers, however, MS-DOS games don't work since I don't see the drivers for MS-DOS for the sound card. The sound card is a VIA AC'97 that has Sound Blaster capability within the BIOS and the games just don't seem to detect it (mainly because the TSR driver for the sound card isn't there, or I have to guess where the TSR programs are). I had my Sound Blaster Blaster 16 WavEffects CT4170 installed, but the IRQ was wrong, no DMA, and Windows games won't detect the sound card (Rollercoaster Tycoon). The sound card's chipset last 4 digits are 686B.
The Sound Blaster Pro Compatible sound chip is integrated into the VIA
PCI audio device in order to have Sound Blaster compatible DOS games
running on the system.
If you want to play those Sound Blaster compatible DOS games under the
real mode MS-DOS or the "Restart in MS-DOS" from Win9x. Then you should
run this setup program to enable the OPL3 MIDI music. Otherwise, the
music will not be heard but the sound still could be heard.
c) The program will copy the relative files into the directory which
you assigned. Then the program will insert the following new line
into the AUTOEXEC.BAT and copy the original AUTOEXEC.BAT to
AUTOEXEC.VIA.
You should change the MUSIC setting in your Sound Blaster compatible
DOS game from FM MIDI to GENERAL MIDI. Otherwise, there will be no music
heard when the Sound Blaster compatible game is played.
One drawback of this driver is that VIAFMTSR.COM (necessary for FM) uses 39K of conventional memory. This can be mitigated by loading high with EMM386; otoh loading high with UMBPCI leads to a crash as soon as a game tries to output sound.
From a technical perspective, I remember VIA 686B southbridge supports special logics for trapping legacy SoundBlaster compatible I/O, so the driver actually uses that to emulate SBPro compatibility in DOS with AC97 audio. This was something that Intel had never bothered to support, but unfortunately VIA unique proposition wasn't very successful and not many people would buy into it. In fact, with PCI bus as the north-south interconnect in this generation of VIA chipsets, any PCI addon sound could trap SB I/O flowing downstream and implement their own SBPro emulation, making AC97 solution an even harder sell in general.
The README also mentions 2 Microsoft WDM Audio components which are supposed to provide SBPro compatibility for WDM-based drivers under Windows DOS box - SBEMUL.SYS and SWMIDI.SYS. Unfortunately, none of the AC97 vendor drivers would include them, making Windows DOS box essentially dead for DOS games.
SBEmul System Driver
The SBEmul system driver (Sbemul.sys) provides Sound Blaster emulation for MS-DOS applications. The SBEmul driver is a client of the SysAudio system driver. To render and capture content, the SysAudio driver uses the preferred wave and MIDI devices (as set in the Multimedia property pages in Control Panel).
SWMidi System Driver
The SWMidi system driver (Swmidi.sys) is the KS filter that provides software-emulated General MIDI (GM) and high-quality Roland GS wavetable synthesis. A midiOutXxx application uses SWMidi when a hardware synthesizer is unavailable. The SWMidi filter receives as input a time-stamped MIDI stream from the WDMAud system driver and outputs a PCM wave stream to the KMixer system driver. SWMidi mixes all of its voices internally to form a single two-channel output stream with a PCM wave format.
To enable Sound Blaster emulation, find the section of cwbwdm.inf listed
below and follow the instructions as outlined below and in the inf.
Accelerated legacy audio is not yet supported under NT5.0 and it is not
necessary to make any changes to the INF file.
CWBWDM.INF Section:
Yes, they wasn't, which in theory gives *free* SBPro compatibility for all AC97 solution within Windows DOS box, say Win98SE or WinME that supports WDM Audio. However, it was very strange that *NONE* of the AC97 vendor drivers, AFAIK include them for DOS support. It would be interesting if someone was able to get them working. If they really worked, then it should be equivalent in sound quality as a SBPro with GS/GM MIDI support, which I would say adequately decent sound system for DOS games.
Alright, look like Sigmatel C-Major AC97 WDM driver also include SBEMUL and SWMIDI in the INF. And, it also setup BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330 in Win98SE DOS box. I was able to get PCM/wave working for games, so that was sound effects through SBPro emulation. However, I couldn't get game music working with MIDI which, if emulated properly, would be a decent licensed Roland GS/GM MIDI from Microsoft software synthesizer.
I just want to make a quick note that DOS mode does work (using steps above - make sure you have both TSR's) on EPIA-5000 / 800 (and I presume V-series) boards.
HOWEVER, counter-intuitively you have to enable the (non existant) gameport and MPU-401 modes in the BIOS, otherwise the VIAUDIO.COM file just seems to hang in limbo.
I also wanted to clarify that you can use this in PURE MS-DOS mode on Win98, but you need to be using the VxD (Win95/98 FE) version of the Windows drivers - which can be manually installed from the 686MU220b.zip drivers (ugh no official site - needs a quick search.... and obtain VIAFMTSR.COM from link above).
What I discussed earlier was a generic SoundBlaster Pro and SWMIDI solution for *ANY* AC97 audio controller with WDM audio driver. You are right that VIA chipsets has special logic that works with their software for pure DOS support. However, Microsft WDM audio specification already includes SoundBlaster Pro and SWMIDI emulation through the OS if one plays the DOS games from Win9x DOS box, without the needs of any real-mode drivers from CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. I confirmed that SoundBlaster Pro wave/pcm playback indeed worked very well, but not the SWMIDI. The WDM audio driver even provides a correct BLASTER env (BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T4) a SoundBlaster Pro and MIDI port at 330h. I expected the MIDI support would have been routed to DirectMusic Roland GS synthesizer licensed by Microsoft for games supporting General MIDI, but that was not the case, which was a let-down.
i'm trying using the viaudio.com... i did the changes on autoexec.bat... when i reboot, i get these message:
"via legacy game software no install
please enable Sound blaster pro on BIOS Setup first!"
how if i don't have these option on BIOS?
i use the ACER Aspire 1690 laptop.
what you can tell me?
I have managed to get my AC 97 sound card working in DOS with instructions in this thread. I'm not sure that BLASTER variable should have "H1" though, if I'm not mistaken it's for High DMA - 16 bit sound which is often not supported on Sound Blaster clones. I do have Sound Blaster settings in BIOS but sound doesn't work without those two via tools.
I have tested the following games and sound works fine: Wolfenstein 3D, Tyrian 2000, Transport Tycoon, Duke Nukem 3D, F-22.
Sound works in Comanche 3 setup but not in game. Also works in setup of Command & Conquer Covert Operations but game crashes at launch. I haven't investigated what causes it though.
now i can work with AC'97 Sound blaster... what i need is getting the sound card parameters for use them on autoexec.bat for Prince of Persia and others use the sound blaster.
what you can tell me?
the Doom, DukeNukem3D, Heretic, Hexen, Jazz the Rabbit have sound Blaster normaly.
On really fast machines it's much better to use a covox sound-device in plain Dos. You can play some games with it.
There are some games that will still make problems with sweepinging noises on too fast machines (pinball-fantasies) but you can have fun with games and some scene-suff (demos/intros/mediaplayer).
It is even better if you have a disney-soudscource with an covox.