Mail Archives: djgpp/2000/05/16/14:47:57
Stephan Diestelhorst wrote:
>
> Dear djgpp folks,
> I'm in serious trouble with the Creative Labs soundcard SB128 PCI. I
> wrote my own soundlibrary, (perhaps published soon) which worked well on
> SB Pro and also on SB128 in the DOS Box of Win98.
> But under DOS-Mode of Win98 my IRQ-handler doesn't seem to be called
> correctly by the soundcard (better to say it's driver).
Ok, let me clear this up. I have had that #¤%"&@$!! "sound card"
(as creative calls it) And I threw it away for an SB16 ISA.
Reason: the SB emulation that the card's DOS driver uses depends
strongly on EMM386's VCPI services. The driver virtualizes
the entire card. For some reason the driver is unable to pass the
IRQ to a *protected* mode ISR.
The card is also a plain DAC, which means it does all the MIDI and FM
sound generation in software.
Dunno what DMX (the sound lib that doom etc. uses) does
to get it work, it might use V86 mode. No, Allegro does not work.
There is no workaround. Get the Ensoniq ES1370/1371 specs from
ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/manuals/ and write a native driver.
> The handler is just a protected mode handler written in assembly.
> I suppose that this are some protected mode problems, as the driver of the
> soundcard is using VCPI stuff to emulate the SB 16 (could be exception
> handling for several ports, etc.)
Exactly. A GPF for each port access. Ouch =)
> It is also strange that games like Quake I or DOOM (which are also using
> protected mode) work fine.
> Of course I can't expect to get detailed instructions, but I hope that
> some of you had simillar problems and/or could give any advice.
Advice: Awful card. Throw it away. Honestly.
> Thanks for any support/help in advance,
> Stephan Diestelhorst aka. SyoN
--
- Antti
Windows, a 32 bit extension for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating
system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor by a 2 bit company
that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
- Raw text -