Idea: DOS Sound drivers from Linux Source

[SirPeale]

Currently there are *very* few DOS drivers being released for current soundchips.  This makes things kind of difficult for all-in-one motherboards to be used without having a soundcard hanging off the side.

How hard would it be to use the Linux drivers to make DOS drivers?  There's a lot of support there, as there are a *ton* of working drivers.

[Buddabing]

Currently there are *very* few DOS drivers being released for current soundchips.

[elvis]

The drivers you speak of are not standalone software.   They are integrated into packages like ALSA:

http://www.alsa-project.org/

Which in turn use hooks directly into the linux kernel.   I'm no driver programmer, but I don't think porting this across to DOS would be a trivial task.

Instead, I think you'd be better off trying to convince front end authors to consider porting their work to linux with SVGALib and FBDev support for X-less graphics in linux, or alternatively open-sourcing their work so that others can contribute non-DOS/Windows ports.

I know I'd LOVE to see a MAMEWah clone hit Linux.  Currently there's MAMEd which is SDL only:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~phulshof/pictures/mamed.jpg

Which is the prettiest of linux front-ends, but still no support for X-less setups ala AdvanceMenu (which isn't quite as pretty).

[GadgetGeek]

maybe this book might help?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201608375/002-5633404-3845637?v=glance

I wish I had more time to contribute to this.

[SirPeale]

The drivers you speak of are not standalone software.   They are integrated into packages like ALSA:

http://www.alsa-project.org/

I speak of the kernel drivers themselves, but likely those drivers have their hooks deeply embedded into the Linux kernel.  How hard it would be to separate those into standalone units, I can't say.

[wpcmame]

vsyncmame converted some ALSA sound drivers to DOS. That could be a start if someone want to convert more of them.

Advancemame uses the existing vsyncmame drivers so some ac97 chips are already supported. Try with "device_sound vsync/ac97"

[SirPeale]

vsyncmame converted some ALSA sound drivers to DOS. That could be a start if someone want to convert more of them.

Advancemame uses the existing vsyncmame drivers so some ac97 chips are already supported. Try with "device_sound vsync/ac97"

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally...guess I'll do some looking @ AdvanceMame.  I've looked before, but have never been able to get it to do what I want.

*shrug* I'll look again!

[SirPeale]

Burning an AdvanceCD now...we'll see how it goes!

[SirPeale]

Well, AdvanceCD discovered all my hardware, and made a nice little playable thing.

I couldn't get Killer Instinct 1 or 2 to play, but I suspect that's because I may be using incompatible versions of Mame/ROMs.

AdvanceMenu is interesting, to say the least.  It doesn't seem exactly cab friendly. 

But this was all running under Linux.  I haven't tried AdvanceMame on here yet.  The last few times I played with it I got nothing but garbled graphics onscreen.  And I played with it on a couple different systems, and on an arcade monitor.

[whammoed]

AdvanceMenu is interesting, to say the least.

[SirPeale]

Oh, it *looks* pretty enough.  It's how you select a game that wasn't so cool.  Although I'm sure if it wasn't on a CD you could change the defaults.

[maraxle]

Oh, it *looks* pretty enough.  It's how you select a game that wasn't so cool.  Although I'm sure if it wasn't on a CD you could change the defaults.

I use AdvanceMenu, and all I have to do is scroll to the one I want and hit the 1p start button.