Virtual Cd-rom Control Panel Download

[Paul]

Im fiddling around with my retro system again right now. I had a Windows 98 SE with that third-party sp3 installed (or whatever it's called) and suddenly I had this urge to reinstall everything anew. I hoped that the reinstall will help me to get rid of that problem I'm talking but it looks like it's still there.

The problem I'm having is that I couldn't get CD audio from a CD image to work. I'm trying to use either Alcohol 120% 1.9.5 build 3105 trial or Daemon Tools 3.47. I'm running Windows 98SE on a P4 3ghz, i875 chipset system with Audigy 2ZS or Aureal Vortex SQ2500. So I have few CD games in my collection with CD audio tracks (or RedBook audio as it is sometimes called). One of them being "Ignition" and the other is "International Rally Championship". They both play fine when I'm using a real CD in a real CD-ROM drive. The only quirk is that I can't enable "Digital audio" in "Multimedia Properties" in Control Panel since I'm using VxD Creative Drivers for better performance (WDM ones sometimes cause stuttering and microfreezing in games with hardware accelerated audio). So I have to use that tiny little cable which goes from the drive to the soundcard but that's not a problem.

The problem is that I don't want to use physical CDs for obvious reasons. Not only that is a hassle to insert/eject CD each time I want to play this or that game but I also hate how Windows 98 handles access to the CD-ROM drive (the autorun which automagically drops me into game each time I insert the "Ignition" game cd, and that terrible microfreeze when Windows 98 detects the CD and so on) and the painful noise my drive makes when the spin speed reaches its maximum.

Now, I know that Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120% both have support for CD Audio. When a game tries to read some music track, the emulation software intercepts that call and streams the needed track directly to DirectSound. And while it sounds dodgy on a paper, I'm 10000% sure that once it worked for me with the same exact audio card,drivers and games on the other system (a P3 i815 system, on which I also can't get the emulated CD Audio to work at this moment too). So I enabled "Analog audio" in this software's settings and chosen the proper audio device but had no luck with all this in games.

I'm also sure that the CD Images are proper since the games and Windows Media Player detect the CD audio tracks. By the way Windows Media Player can even play them fine! The games detect CD tracks just fine too and kinda start playing them but there's no CD Audio can be heard ?

So my question is: does anybody here have a working CD Audio with CD emulation software on a Windows 98 system? Or maybe someone have an idea why it might not work? I've tried great many configurations and settings. I've tried installing WDM drivers so I can enable digital audio; I've tried changing around drive letters so the emulated drive is the first in a row; I've tried to get it working with different soundcards (that being SB Live! 5.1, SB Audigy 2ZS, Vortex SQ2500); I've even tried different PCs (one on i815 chipset, one on VIA Appolo 133 (or something like that) and one I'm using now - the Asus P4C-800e Deluxe i875 one). Nothing helps ?

This is the one you want. When I had Windows 98SE this was the only virtual CD program that worked with mixed mode images. They need to be in BIN/CUE format but otherwise should work properly even with regular audio CDs.

I am having almost the exact same problem as the OP. I'm using Win 98SE with unofficial SP3, a Diamond Monster MX300 and a non-5.1 Sound Blaster Live! With Daemon Tools 3.47, I can hear CD Audio music in DOS games like Tomb Raider running in Windows. However, I cannot hear the CD audio in Windows games like Outlaws and Tomb Raider II. I have tried setting the analog audio emulation to use one sound card and the game to use the other sound card, but that does not work. I also tried MagicIso as linked by Stretch, but it wouldn't even let me play the CD audio from the Windows CD Player application. I have not tried the version of Nero discussed in the post Stretch linked to yet.

I tried Nero 5.5.10.20, and after installing it, finding a serial and going through its rather cumbersome disc image making process so its Drive Image program could load a nrg image. it did not improve on Daemon Tools.

Install Daemon Tools 3.47 in Windows 98 SE

Make real CD-ROM drive E:

Make virtual CD-ROM drive D: (the drive letter that games typically look for)

Enable 'Digital CD Audio' in multimedia control panel for the virtual CD-ROM (I briefly looked yesterday and it was greyed out)

If cannot enable 'Digital CD Audio' (greyed out) then try the following.

Had a chance to play with it today and forgot that Daemon Tools 3.47 can emulate analog audio so there was no need in messing with registry for digital audio. I set the virtual drive as D: and used the latest version of ImgBurn ( I highly recommend this program no matter what version of Windows you are running) to rip a retail Quake CD into Bin/Queue format. Installed Quake for DOS and everything, including CD audio, worked great. In control panel I also made sure default CD-ROM for audio was set as D:.

Same general setup as the OP [Daemon tools 3.47, Win 98SE]. I'm able to get the redbook audio working in most games (solution was assigning the virtual drive to the highest possible letter, incase anyone is wonder), but some games now act very strangely when trying to read the audio tracks.

Say for example I start said game without the CD mounted. It loads normally and plays without issue, but obviously there is no music. I then mount the .CUE file, and open the game again. It will lock up constantly for a few seconds, and basically renders the PC useless unless I terminate the program. All while this is happening, no music is playing.

I've verified that the .CUE files mount correctly, and CAN play the audio tracks when using any CD Player software. Could this an issue related to "digital audio", as when checking the drive properties in Control Panel, the option is greyed out.

98SE will only support global digital audio extraction with WDM audio drivers installed. Some programs like WMP9 support it independently. VxD drivers are often preferable or the only option, and then you're stuck with the CD emulation program's implementation of fake analog audio extraction. I bet it can put a toll on a low spec system.

My mistake, I meant in ascending order [Virtual drive is set to E:\]

Two games I've experienced this with are Z.A.R, and Earthworm Jim 95 so far. Other games that use Redbook such as Rayman, run just fine.

Could be a far fetched idea, but do you think it could be an issue with the .CUE file? The drive emulation software does work with Redbook during games without hassle, usually. The problems I'm experiencing have surfaced in maybe 10% of the titles I've tried on the system. Since it's only isolated to a few titles, I've wondered if anyone else has faced similar flukes.

Do any of the CD audio games you play also support digital sound effects? Since you are using VxD drivers and the AWE64 only supports one wave output device, I bet only one or the other can be used, and if the game initializes its SFX driver first, it gains exclusive access to the sound hardware and then Daemon Tools' emulation can't open a wave stream.

Win98se -> Outcast PC Game (Audio-CD)

I used Deamon-Tools to mount the Audio CD-Image.

If I start the game I can only hear the SFX but not the Audio-CD-Tracks mounted with Deamon-Tools.

If I let the game run and go back to Windows-Tas Manager (Shift+Tab) I CAN HEAR THE AUDIO-CD-MUSIC playing from the mounted image,

going back to the game, the music is gone. So what is the problem here?

After a few hours of tinkering, I finally got the Redbook audio to work. Installed some WDM drivers for the AWE64, set Windows to treat the drive as if it were playing music using digital audio, then set Daemon tools to have the drive use analog audio. Works like a dream now ?

Never thought to mess around with WDM, so thanks for the pointers guys.

3a8082e126