sound dos problem

[ushkar]

hi,
recently i've bought an old arcade cabinet (pictures later) and now i'm building a mame-system.
right now i have an older PC with win98SE installed on it.
i'm planning to boot it only in dos, to run arcadeOS in combination with mame or advmame. (and a J-pac)
everything works fine except...the sound.
In the beginning i tried to use the onboard sound chip but that was pretty useless in DOS.
now i've plugged an older "soundblaster PCI 128" in one of the PCI slots of the main board.
in win98 everything works fine.
but if i boot in DOS, sound isn't working

in my autoexec.bat i have the "SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T2" and the correct location of the sndscape.ini file included.

if i start apinit.exe, everything looks fine (i even hear a little cracking noise in the speakers)
if i start apload.exe, no problem.
after that, i try to run aptest.exe and it starts complaining about "could not find PCI audio legacy device"

problem is, i have no idea in what direction i have to find a possible solution.

any ideas anyone?

a great thank you

[EightBySix]

Are you sure the 'SET BLASTER' parameters are correct?

Did the built in sound work, but not very good sound?

I reckon the 'new' sound card will at the least have a different interrupt, which would mean changing the 'I' parameter.

Code: [Select]

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T3 P330 H6 E620
 |    |     |    |  |  |  |    |  |
 |    |     |    |  |  |  |    |  |_______ AWE 32 Only Parameter
 |    |     |    |  |  |  |    |__________ "High" DMA Channel
 |    |     |    |  |  |  |_______________ MIDI Port
 |    |     |    |  |  |__________________ Type of Card
 |    |     |    |  |_____________________ DMA Channel
 |    |     |    |________________________ Interrupt
 |    |     |_____________________________ Port Address
 |    |___________________________________ Environment Variable
 |________________________________________ DOS Command

more info here: http://www.rinkworks.com/apogee/s/6.4.2.shtml

[ushkar]

hi, thanks for the fast replay.

about the build in sound: no sound at all, but to be honest i gave up on that pretty fast because i have more faith in an oldschool PCI card.

Is there any way to determine what irq i have to use? if i boot the system in win98 and i look the driver properties i found irq 7. will this be the same in dos?

on the other had, i found a very promising tool (although i still need to check it) : http://www.syschk.com/
this should give me more info about my irq settings.

i'm getting a bit lost in those things i'm afraid

[Thenasty]

if you use advmame, and have onboard ac97 compatible soundcard, then just use the Paramenter Advmame gives you.


Take a look at the doc. Been a while since  I looked at the RC file but something along the lines     sound/ac97
If you have the sound onboard card, no need to for DOS environment. Just use the paramenter.

[tikbalang]

browse these threads to troubleshoot the soundcard in DOS.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=78528

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=94229

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=94496


btw, what is the built-in soundcard? use AIDA (DOS) to get hardware info. you may be able to use vsyncmane or advancemame and their built-in audio drivers.

[ushkar]

onboard soundcard is CMedia 8738

any idea how i can find out on what irq my soundblaster PCI128 is?

[EightBySix]

The IRQ might be assigned in your BIOS settings for the PCI slot you have the card in. It may also me a jumper setting on the board itself.

If I were you I would go through different settings in the SET BLASTER line for "I=" until one works, you cant hurt the board if its wrong... somewhere between 3 and 15 should work.

Are there any other cards in the machine? You can get conflicts sometimes

[tikbalang]

onboard soundcard is CMedia 8738

attached is the dos driver for your card.
CMI8X38D.zip (73kb)

any idea how i can find out on what irq my soundblaster PCI128 is?

use AIDA, attached in one of my replies. another is NSSI hardware info tool.
http://www.navsoft.cz/

[ushkar]

i've made some progress thanks to tikbalang! (a very big thank you)

i've kicked out my SB 129 pci card and installed the onboard drivers

what happens now:
1. if i boot the pc, it loads the drivers correctly
2. if i start mame to test it, it doesn't fail anymore on the "soundblaster" option, but...no sound
3. if i return to dos and start a little testr ap (sbplay) i don't hear music but a loud noise. (like the white noise on older televisions). once i have that, it continues 'noising' until a reboot

any idea?

i'm really grateful for everyones help. i'm feeling like a total noob with those sound issues.

[tikbalang]

get AIDA here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=78528.msg821401#msg821401

or NSSI in my previous post above.

run either program before loading audio drivers and get the correct values for you BLASTER settings (see eightbysix's post above). you may be able to see or even edit these settings in your BIOS. apply to your batch file (cmi8x38d.bat).


btw, what DOS mame are you using? try vsyncmame+. it supports more audio cards natively.

http://x15khz.hp.infoseek.co.jp/

Code: [Select]

     0. Eternal Silence
     1. Sound Blaster (Auto Detect)
     4. Ultrasound Max
     5. Ultrasound
     6. Windows Sound System
     7. Ensoniq Soundscape
     8. ESS Audiodrive
     9. Sound Blaster Pro (interrupt driven)

    10. Sound Blaster 2.01 (interrupt driven)
    11. Sound Blaster 1.0 (interrupt driven)
    12. Sound Blaster 2.01
    13. Sound Blaster Pro
    14. Sound Blaster 16
    15. Sound Blaster Pro (for stereo 32KHz, 48KHz)
    16. Sound Blaster 16 (for 48KHz)
    17. CMI8338/8738 as SB16 (DOS Box & Native Dos)

    19. EV1935 MachOne as SBPro (DOS Box only)
    20. EV1935 MachOne as WSS (DOS Box only)
    21. Trident 4DWave DX/NX as SB16 (DOS Box & Native Dos)


[ushkar]

strange behavior...
if i run nssi before audio drivers are loaded, it gives me n/a for all settings.
if i run nssi after i did a SETAUDIO, it gives me values (H=5, D=0, P=330, T=6, I=5 )
but if i change my autoexec.bat unfortunately i still have the same issues.

my mame version: 0.37 build 14
unfortunately your like to vsyncmame+ results in a 404 if i want to download the file.

thank you very much for your help!

[tikbalang]

try this url:

Code: [Select]


http://hotfile.com/dl/26560314/74855a5/vsyncm(2009-11-27).zip.html



[ushkar]

thanks for the link, but unfortunately, the same issues.
with the onboard sound: with option 2 (soundblaster) : failed to initialise, with option 9 (soundblaster pro) white noise or a hanging system

if i try vsyncmame with the soundblasterPCI card, it gives 2 times "failed to initialize"

[tikbalang]

if using official dosmame, you need to make the audio card functional first (onboard or otherwise) then configure mame to use soundblaster since that's what your CMI card emulates.

if using vsyncmame+, do not load any drivers for your onboard CMI, not even "SET BLASTER=" in your batch file. use this option for your mame.cfg:

Code: [Select]


17. CMI8338/8738 as SB16 (DOS Box & Native Dos)


i'll try to look for other CMI dos drivers.

if you want to proceed using SBPCI, turn off onboard audio completely then look at these pages:

http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/snddosdr.htm
http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/sndhelp.htm
http://dosmame.mameworld.info/

you may need to look for a "sweet spot" for the SBPCI card, find the right pci slot.

in all cases, turn off "PNP OS" in your bios.

[tikbalang]

please post your config.sys and autoexec.bat.

[ushkar]

cf.sys

device=c:\windows\himem.sys
device=c:\windows\emm386.exe noems
dos=high, umb

ae.bat

c:\pciaud\setaudio
set blaster=A220 I5 D0 H5 P330 T6
c:\pciaud\c"dmix /M88000 /FCC000 /WCC000 /L00100 /E00100 /A00100 /C00100 /P20000 /400000 /R0F0FF /D040FF /Q0

keyb be


PS the setting in the BIOS "pnp detect OS" yes/no doesn't make any difference

PSS i really appreciate your help! a very big thank you

UPDATE about vsyncmame (the one from your downloadlink : i don't have a sound-option 17. it ends with 8 or 9...)

[ushkar]

it works!

how did i do it?
1. use vsyncmame+
2. use an autoexec with a setblaster=...
3. load the dos driver for the CMI chip
4. sound option in mame.cfg = 17

and i have sound!

a very very big thank You for the efforts. if you drop by in Belgium on holidays orso, i will buy you a whole bunch of beer.

PS i assume vsyncmame is also capable to be used with arcademonitors?

[tikbalang]

unfortunately, i don't have experience working with arcade monitors so i can't answer. you can remove emm386, mame does not use it.

congratulations. enjoy your games!

[ushkar]

thanks again for the efforts. tonight i will start experimenting with the monitor.  i assume vsync is some kind of port from dmame, so i don't expect much limitations with arcade-mon's...