Re: Sound report

Bart Oldeman
2003-01-24T20:31:16Z

On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:

> Stas Sergeev wrote:
> > Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:
> >
> >> [music from Wolf3d works but] Also, I can get either music or
> >> shooting sounds, but not both.
> >
> > That means that your card or driver doesn't support multiple
> > sound channels (hardware mixing). You have to try SB Live.
> >
> >> Sound Blaster not responding on selected port.
> >
> > Yep, the same problem.
>
> It cannot be a hardware problem only, because in Win98, Wolf3d
> produces both shooting sounds *and* good-sounding music on my
> card. And it cannot be simply something connected with your patch,
> because also in Win98, SB fmorgan produces no sound at all. This
> is all pretty confusing.

You should not compare DOSEMU to win98, but rather to Windows NT/2K/XP's
handling of DOS programs (with or without VDMSound). Win98 is quite happy
about giving DOS programs direct hardware access and running them using
iopl(3) (in which case also turning off the interrupts really turns them
off, so that cli;hlt halts the machine).

Some direct access *can* be given to DOSEMU, but only if it runs as
(or suid) root. This often involves a bit of "black magic" and it gets
really complicated or impossible once DMA is involved. iopl(3) is a no-no
(I think).

Bart