Windows 95c in VMware Workstation 9 with Sound

[JohnDuaneRice]

Greetings;

For the past week I have been experimenting with the ancient operating systems (dos, windows 1 through 2000 Pro).  One of my accomplishments was making sound work in Windows 95c running in Workstation 9 hardware mode (see below).

However, I do still have two unknown devices showing in device manager.  Unknown Devices Beta 1.4.20 gives the following information about them:

Has anyone had any luck in finding Windows 95 compatible drivers for these two devices?

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As for making sound work in Windows 95c while still at Workstation 9, I used the following steps:

1. Create a new VM of type "Other" and version "MS-DOS"
2. FDISK and format /s the hard drive
3. Copy your DOS/Windows 3.x soundblaster 16 install package to the newly formatted hard drive and install it (I used the default c:\sb16 location)
4. This generated the following AUTOEXEC.BAT lines for me:

   1. SET SOUND=C:\SB16

   2. SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

   3. SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E

   4. C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S

   5. C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q

5. Change your VM to type "Windows" version "Windows 95"

6. Install Windows 95 normally and you should have sound.
7. Continue on with installing vmware tools and the rest of your Windows 95 configuration.

[dariusd]

Hi JohnDuaneRice, and welcome to the VMware Communities!

The PIIX4 PM controller doesn't need a driver.  You can safely ignore it.  If such a driver exists, it'll most likely just exist for the purpose of silencing any complaints about the driver's absence.  It won't actually do anything. :smileylaugh:

Can you get the PCI Device ID or any other details for the mystery "PCI System Peripheral"?  (My first guess would be that it's a VMCI controller, but I wouldn't think we'd add one of those to a Win9x VM.)

Since you are interested in ancient OSes and sound, I'll include a shameless plug for my pet project in Workstation 10: Fun stuff: Experimental Sound Blaster 16 FM synthesizer (OPL3), AdLib

Cheers,

--

Darius

[JohnDuaneRice]

The other devices reads as:

* Hardware ID - VEN_15AD&DEV_0740

which I confirmed is the VMware VMCI Bus Device

Also, your project looks cool.  I wonder why the one kills the other?

[dariusd · Accepted solution]

Hi again!

The other devices reads as:

* Hardware ID - VEN_15AD&DEV_0740

which I confirmed is the VMware VMCI Bus Device

OK, there is no driver for the VMCI device for Windows 95/98/ME (see the Win98 section of VMware KB: Windows device manager shows yellow bang for VMCI device), so it's safe to just ignore it.  I think the device will go away if you downgrade the virtual machine's hardware compatibility to a suitably old level (Workstation 5?), or you can just disable the affected device inside the Win9x Device Manager.

Also, your project looks cool.  I wonder why the one kills the other?

It's an unfortunate consequence of the way that our old Sound Blaster 16 wave device emulation works.  I actually had to make it turn off PCM sound for OPL3 to work at all.  One of these days we'll get around to fixing it, but it will require rewriting a substantial chunk of the SB16 emulation...

Cheers,

--

Darius