Message-Id: <199807012348.AAA04266@sable.ox.ac.uk>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <mert0407 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk>
From: George Foot <george DOT foot AT merton DOT oxford DOT ac DOT uk>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 00:43:22 +0000
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Subject: Re: Allegro Fails to Recogize my souncard for MIDI !!
Reply-to: george DOT foot AT merton DOT oxford DOT ac DOT uk
CC: Oliver Batchelor <batch AT netaccess DOT co DOT nz>
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On  1 Jul 98 at 16:34, Oliver Batchelor wrote:

> My soundcard is a Creative labs SB16 or AWE 32
> 
> When I try all of the auto detect routines in allegro It comes up with
> Alib souncards, when I try setting awe 32 manually it says it isnt
> supported !! Adlib just doesnt nearly sound as good on midi files !!!
> 
> What Is wrong ?

Do you actually have a SB16 or an AWE32?  There is a big difference
;).  The AWE32 has the same basic digital chipset as the SB16 (and
so is directly compatible with it) but also has the EMU8000 chipset
for the music.  The SB16 just has the OPL3 (slightly better than old
Adlib OPL2) chipset for MIDI music.  If you only have a SB16 then 
it's not surprising that it doesn't detect an AWE32.

If on the other hand you really do have an AWE32 then something's 
wrong.  Allegro's code for the AWE32 driver is based almost entirely 
on official documentation from Creative Labs, but they didn't say how 
to detect the card, so that bit is based on unofficial documentation. 

The first thing you need to do is try it in a few different 
circumstances.  Does it work from plain DOS 6.x (having installed the 
Plug'n'Play drivers if appropriate)?  How about DOS 7 (i.e. Win95 DOS 
mode), after running `ctpnp'?  What about in a DOS box under Win95, 
again after running `ctpnp'?

Try also running the utilities such as "diagnose /s", "aweutil /s",
to see what they say and if they are happy with your card.  "ctpnp"
is particularly important if you're in Win95 DOS mode or a DOS box,
because it sets your BLASTER environment variable to the correct
settings.  Allegro uses this in the autodetection; if it's set 
wrongly then your card will not be detected.

If your card cannot be autodetected then it is unusable for this 
driver.  The autodetection process tries to do some register writes 
and reads to the card, and if it can't do that then there's no way 
that it will be able to use the card.

When the autodetection fails, make sure you print out the message 
stored in the `allegro_error' string.  This will tell you why it 
failed; in some cases it will complain about the BLASTER variable.  
In others it will tell you what port it tried to reach the AWE32 on.

If after all of this you still can't get it to work, and you're sure 
you really have an AWE32, let me know and I'll try to send you some 
test programs to diagnose the problem more fully and hopefully find a 
way to correct Allegro's code, if it's at fault.

-- 
george DOT foot AT merton DOT oxford DOT ac DOT uk