DOS Sound

[Steve101]

Hi,

after I succeeded in resolving my memory problem, I have another problem running my DOS applications: sound.

I have several games using soundblaster Hardware. Other vmware fora suggest to set sound.virtualDev = "sb16" in my vmx config files. Unfortunately, this does not work.

Is there another way to get sound working?

Thank you,

Steve

[charles_tam]

You may want to try out "DOS Box". I have used it to play DOS games.

[Steve101]

I have used dosbox, too. Unfortunately, it frequently crashes on my Intel-based mac.

...and as Fusion is a tool to exactly support running other OSes, I would preffer using it.

[rcardona2k]

This is my sound block from the configuration file for a Windows XP VM:

sound.present = "TRUE"

sound.virtualDev = "es1371"

sound.fileName = ""[/code]

At a minimum, it sounds (no pun intended) like you need the sound.present line.

[Steve101]

Hi rcardona2k,

thank you for that comment. Unfortunatelly, it did not solve my problem. The sound.present line is part of the configuration by default. sound.virtualDev = "es1371" did not help.

Thank you,

Stephan

[rcardona2k]

Yes, in searching the Workstation forums, you should definitely stay with "sb16". I found one posting that had this block:

sound.present = "TRUE"

sound.virtualDev = "sb16"

sound.fileName = "-1"

sound.autodetect = "TRUE"

I imagine your configuration is very similar or the differences are minor. I consulted the Bible of VMX, Ulli's reference and there are many more options available. If you want to experiment with more options, visit:

http://sanbarrow.com/vmx-sound.html

[rich_becks]

I have been trying to get a few "classic" games running in a DOS VM under VMware Beta 3, unfortunately all of them need to support something like a soundblaster pro or soundblaster 16. After reading through a few threads it seems that all we have sound-wise is an Ensonic card "es1371" and although this seems to be enabled in DOS no "classic" games support this later device.

I tried changing manually the sound device configuration to "sb16", but the vmware log indicates that "sb16" isn't a supported device. Does this mean that this feature has been removed in Virtual hardware emulation version 6 onwards, or just Fusion Beta?

This is a real shame, as I was hoping to move all my old classics into a bunch of virtual machines. This is also a problem, as it breaks quite a few of my existing VMs that I have moved over from Windows.

Any other way round this problem?

[admin]

If SB16 is removed, its just yet anohter strike against VMware. One of the pluses was supposed to be the good hardware emulation. The choice of network card is highly questionable (support for AMD PCnet is far less than DEC tulip), but it works where I need it. As far as sounds cards, having SB16 is an absolute must. Everything works with it, and many things don't work with anything else. At least I haven't had to waste my time trying this. I'll just keep putting up with DOSbox till VMware gets a clue.

[bdkennedy1]

Have there been any updates on this? I've installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 and I'm trying to get sound to work.

Is SoundBlaster 16 supported yet? If it's not then it should be. SB16 was THE soundcard of the 90's. Almost every single game made supported it. I don't see why anything else would have been emulated for DOS and Win 3.1.

And this isn't just for hobbiests either. We have old games that we update or recode for modern times and sometimes we have to go back to see how things were, especially if an employee wasn't around back then. It only makes sense to support the most popular soundcard.

[oldskool]

Soundblaster support would be great in pure DOS, please make this available... it seems so close.

In the meantime from what I gather, it is possible to get sound in DOS mode on Windows 98. Going to try that out since I have an old copy of Windows 98 laying around. It may also be worth trying VDMSound under Windows 2000/XP.

[rcardona2k]

There is no sb16 support in Fusion 1.0 or 1.1. This was a decision apparently (or implicitly) made in porting the VMM to OS X. I'm not sure what would be involved in supporting legacy sb16 (doesn't sound like fun for VMware).

Either way you would have to contact VMware directly and voice your opinion on sb16 support. The forums are, at best, ad hoc communication.

[Grambau]

I have tried and tried to get my DOS 6.22 VM to use the es1371 SoundCard emulator. I see from the documentation on the vmware site that audio is simply not supported under DOS at this point. The information about DOS was not so easy to find on the site as the various relevant posts and user information statements are spread around. I can understand why this function has not been implemented. Old DOS games are only valued by older individuals who entered the computer world in the 1980s and began playing games as soon as they appeared. So many of the developers now involved in the field have never played these games. But, in any case, I thought I would point out the issue as seen from the user's point of view. Here are the results of my attempts to get the sound emulator running under my DOS 6.22 session.

In case one, the simplest approach, the installation software for the original Soundblaster/es1371 card works fairly well until it has to physically locate the card in the machine. This must reflect a hardware call of some sort and produces the following unhappy result:

If the installation is attempted manually, it still fails, but this time due to problem with the DOS extender. Both the original DOS extender and the newer version DOS/32a fail:

I would be very grateful if anyone on the FUSION team would be willing to address this issue. If not, please drop me a line and tell me not to hope for anything !

BTW, FUSION is a fantastic piece of software. Just amazing. My compliments to the chef and all that. I was able to get sound running under Win98 SE and even Win95. That is truly an achievement on the part of the FUSION development team. Thanks !

Rob

[bdkennedy1]

While yes it is fun to reminisce and play old games, there are more reasons than just games to have DOS sound support.

1. We research old games to see if there's any playability we can use in modern games. Back in the 80's, games were based on playability and skill instead of graphics. There are whole genres of games from the 80's that don't exist anymore, such as text based-games.

2. There was/is a lot of music software out there that was for DOS.

3. It's fun.

Is it not important to protect important old programs from becoming extinct? We have the technology today to emulate a system that required a huge computer to run DOS.

How hard can it possibly be to implement this into Fusion? Once the functionality is done, it doesn't have to be updated. Why not emulate Windows 3.1 and DOS correctly once and for all instead of half-as*ing it and leaving out a niche of users who would be very grateful?

[admin]

We don't emulate Win 3.1 or DOS or any other OS, we virtualize/emulate hardware that those OSes use (in the case of sb16, it would be emulation). This emulation is host-specific, and would need to be rewritten for OS X. My understanding is that it's actually somewhat difficult/annoying to do.

[BrianCox7]

Has there been any change in SB16 support in VMWare 2.0? I tried to configure it for my DOS virtual machine and the log seems to indicate that it is still not supported.

I understand that it may be difficult/annoying to implement SB16 virtual support under Mac OS X. But as many others in this thread state, there are a lot of people interested in using VMWare as a host for DOS to play classic games, most of which used the SB16 only. And we are paying a fur piece (upwards of $70) for VMware Fusion, so it seems like you should be willing to at least entertain the addition of SB16 emulation, no matter how "difficult/annoying" the development may be.

How can we get VMWare to add support for SB16 emulation?

[kungfuu72]

I second this motion... After all, VMWare's main specialty is virtualization and if you include MS-DOS, why wouldn't you include sound?