Re: XT-IDE BIOS, partially working?

Posted on 2019-07-29, 10:23

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have a non-US keyboard layout? That could explain why the keys for booting don't work as XT-IDE will be looking for key codes rather than characters. There should be no conflict with an existing BIOS, as XT-IDE replaces the BIOS calls. When programs call the BIOS they end up speaking to XT- …

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Re: Commander Blood - Not Enough Conventional Memory

Posted on 2019-02-25, 22:55

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Have you run the "mem" command with the "/c" or "/p" parameter to see what is loading where in memory? This will let you see which programs are using conventional memory instead of UMBs. Only having 488 KB free is pretty bad, you should get way over 500 KB without any issues. Definitely include the …

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Re: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 40-Pin Header

Posted on 2019-02-20, 12:45

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

5V is 5V so it generally doesn't matter where you get it from, except in special cases where there is a dedicated power supply for things like low noise/ripple/etc. But I don't think that's the case here. The real question is how much power is available from the 5V connectors, and how much do you …

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Re: Sound Blaster ticking noise while CDROM is accessing Disc

Posted on 2018-12-23, 07:52

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I remember having a similar issue back in the day with my Pentium 100. It's just electrical noise coming in, and it's the way things were back then. This is why it was such a big deal when the Sound Blaster Live came out, as its noise floor was way lower than any mainstream card that came before. …

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Re: Need help fixing a Startech VGA splitter

Posted on 2018-12-18, 07:30

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Check the output of the voltage regulators and make sure it's in spec (one is -5 VDC and the other could be +5 VDC). Desolder the caps (at least one lead) so you can measure their capacitance with a multimeter while they are disconnected from the rest of the circuit, and see if any have gone out of …

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Re: Pure DOS gaming system with 100% digital audio output

Posted on 2018-12-10, 22:23

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

RayeR wrote: Nono, all that my utility currently do is setting bit 0 of SPDIFOUTCTRL from 0 to 1 as I saw via R&W tool and PowerYMF 2.0.1 so it cannot be read-only status bit. Bit 0 is writable but I meant bit 1 could be the read-only status bit, since you said that changes value even though you …

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Re: sb32 cdrom support

Posted on 2018-12-10, 13:02

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it's definitely IDE (which as others have said it should be if it's an AWE32) then yes, any IDE drive will work. Doesn't even have to be a CD drive, I've successfully used a Zip drive connected to the sound card without any issues and I've heard of people using hard drives as well. Only …

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Re: Jill of the Jungle Sound Effects

Posted on 2018-12-09, 00:46

by

by Malvineous

in DOS

in DOS

Interesting, thanks for confirming. Pretty much every CMF file I have has the instruments change after pause/resume. Some testing reveals that it's only SBFMDRV v1.34 that is affected (either OPL version). It affects all Kiloblaster songs, Jill of the Jungle, Word Rescue, Math Rescue, Solar Winds, …

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Re: Pure DOS gaming system with 100% digital audio output

Posted on 2018-12-08, 13:18

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The problem is that in ymfpci_main.c they set bit 1 of word 18 but in my case bit 0 is changed. If you look in the Linux header file, register 0x18 is defined as YDSXGR_SPDIFOUTCTRL. If you search the C code for this, you can see where it's used and which bits are changed. The whole register has …

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Re: Pure DOS gaming system with 100% digital audio output

Posted on 2018-12-06, 22:32

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Looks like you're making some good progress! The Linux header file seems to list many registers, maybe that will explain what the registers you are seeing changed are for. It looks like there are a few SPDIF registers, for setting things like the volume, so I'm guessing these are the ones that are …

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Re: Are There Any Source Ports for Doom/Doom 2 + Expansions That Support External MIDI Devices?

Posted on 2018-12-06, 13:42

by

by Malvineous

in DOS

in DOS

@MusicallyInspired: OT but I really like your music packs! Do you have any plans to go back and re-record those songs that didn't get recorded properly the first time? e.g. for Rott one of the channels drops out in smooth,ogg at 0:07-0:10, spray.ogg at 0:55-0:58 and stairs.ogg at 1:43-1:56.

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Re: Jill of the Jungle Sound Effects

Posted on 2018-12-05, 00:40

by

by Malvineous

in DOS

in DOS

Very interesting! Nice collection of SBFMDRV versions too. I see from your notes that it is only a default kind of stereo support - I take it the driver doesn't respond to MIDI panning events? Although I've written a few CMF players from scratch I haven't investigated SBFMDRV too closely other than …

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Re: Jill of the Jungle Sound Effects

Posted on 2018-12-03, 10:54

by

by Malvineous

in DOS

in DOS

That's very impressive. As a long time fan of the music, do you have any insight as to why the CMF player was changed? I didn't realise there was a version that *didn't* use the Worx toolkit, and also didn't realise there was a Creative SBFMDRV that supported stereo output. I wish there was …

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Re: Messed up a Win98 driver install, advice needed

Posted on 2018-12-02, 01:00

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Didn't it copy all that stuff into C:\Windows\inf? If you look in there for recently created files you might be able to find the .inf for the driver and then delete it. The actual driver files will be left behind, but without the .inf files Windows will no longer know about them and won't be able to …

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Re: soundblaster 16

Posted on 2018-12-02, 00:45

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The pitch bends in that file look normal to me. They seem to be set in the normal way. The problem would appear to be the MIDI driver not supporting them properly. I thought Windows 95 supported pitch bends just fine. I presume if you use mplay32.exe to play the files instead then you get the same …

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Re: PCI questions

Posted on 2018-11-28, 00:01

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No idea but you can always boot an old 32-bit Linux live CD and run "lscpi -v" to see 😀

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Re: PCI questions

Posted on 2018-11-26, 22:03

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I see that there is such a thing as 32-bit 66 MHz PCI as well. Has anyone seen one of these slots? IIRC the nForce2 chipset supported 66 MHz 32-bit slots, because I remember hunting down a 32-bit 66 MHz capable gigabit ethernet card for it, and was very happy when Linux reported the card running at …

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Re: soundblaster 16

Posted on 2018-11-26, 12:54

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

That MIDI file has standard pitch bends in it (you can hear the notes changing pitch while they are audible) however it sounds extremely off-key. It seems like the creator of the MIDI file did not set the range of the pitch bends properly, or used a program that had them set incorrectly. The result …

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Re: PCie-to PCI, PCI to ISA, # of slots multipliers - bridges, risers, backplanes, research, especially for DOS, WIP.

Posted on 2018-11-26, 12:34

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The USB to ISA adapters just provide a USB interface to use ISA signals. They are expensive because they are produced in such small numbers, however for such a device like this commercially produced they are actually very cheap. Your idea to get an ISA card running on a modern computer is not …

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Re: PCie-to PCI, PCI to ISA, # of slots multipliers - bridges, risers, backplanes, research, especially for DOS, WIP.

Posted on 2018-11-25, 12:54

by

by Malvineous

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It depends how pure you want to get. If you install a PCI SoundBlaster Live with an adapter into a PCIe slot, then it include DOS drivers that emulate the ISA SB16, so you could play a DOS game with SoundBlaster support on a card connected via PCIe. But the problem is that you're emulating the card …

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