Sound Blaster 16 emulation in new systems

I'm trying to emulate SB16 with SBLive under DOS in real mode (not in
Windows)...

Note that the SBLive soundblaster driver under DOS requires EMM386
since it is mostly a software emulation. The SB16 emulation is partly
broken, it treats unsigned and signed samples the same way.

The emulation under DOS use port 220, irq 5, dma 0/5, midi port 330, these
resources are free, I have checked under Windows system manager, so I don't
think it's a resource conflict.

AdLib should occupy Port 388+389 - checked this? The SBLive also
supports adlib emulation (at least in the DOS box, never tried it
under real DOS).

Francesco wrote:
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.


My Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital is the latest of the Live series (I have
bought it right now), and it's shipped with a CD that contains only the new
WDM drivers, old VXD drivers that permits SB16 emulation are not more
supported, and with the new drivers I don't have the old SB16 emulation mode
available in the system manager.
So, I found the old LiveWare 3.0 package (no more available at Creative
site!) in some web sites and download it; LiveWare 3.0 contains the latest
VXD drivers and DOS drivers for Windows9x/DOS that allow SB16 emulation; I
have tried to install it in Windows 98SE but the installation abort because
of system errors (maybe the old VXD drivers are not compatible with new
systems, and Creative replace it with the more stable WDM drivers,
sacrificing SB16 emulation). I have manually extracted the DOS drivers
(SBEINIT,etc.) and configured it correctly, but the emulation under real
mode DOS don't work.


Someone uploaded the contents of the DOSDRV directory on an
old SBLive install CD he
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/SBLiveDosDrv.html

These are for the SBLive 4.1. I don't know if there's a difference
in the DOS drivers.

You said you've already extracted the drivers, but you might check
to see if anything is missing. I've read that Liveware does not
include DOS drivers that work in DOS mode, though it may include
DOS emulation within Windows. The difference is whether you're
rebooted to DOS mode or using a DOS Window.

The default location of the DOSDRV directory is
C:\Program Files\SBLive

The DOS install added these lines to my autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM

and these lines to my config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE


The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.
And your motherboard has to support NMI, as you've already mentioned.

"Ross Ridge" wrote in message
...
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

NMI's, as in Non-Maskable Interrupts? What motherboard doesn't support
NMI's. In fact, they don't have a choice, it's wired directly to the CPU, to
detect severe hardware problems.

Yousuf Khan

"Jenny100" wrote in message
link.net...
Francesco wrote:
If you're using WDM drivers than you're probably using Microsoft's own
craptastic SoundBlaster emulation. With the SBLive you need to use the
VxD drivers to use Creative's much much better SoundBlaster emulation.
But, if your motherboard doesn't support NMIs then Creative's emulation
won't work, niether under a Windows DOS box nor under plain real-mode
MS-DOS.

Christ, even most of the old MVP3 mobos work fine with SB emulation...




My Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital is the latest of the Live series (I
have
bought it right now), and it's shipped with a CD that contains only the
new
WDM drivers, old VXD drivers that permits SB16 emulation are not more
supported, and with the new drivers I don't have the old SB16 emulation
mode
available in the system manager.
So, I found the old LiveWare 3.0 package (no more available at Creative
site!) in some web sites and download it; LiveWare 3.0 contains the
latest
VXD drivers and DOS drivers for Windows9x/DOS that allow SB16 emulation;
I
have tried to install it in Windows 98SE but the installation abort
because
of system errors (maybe the old VXD drivers are not compatible with new
systems, and Creative replace it with the more stable WDM drivers,
sacrificing SB16 emulation).


Nope, likely an .inf from the WDM package left in c:\windows\inf\other,
proper uninstallation necessary, or registry settings needing scouring in
extreme cases. The VXD drivers work fine, even in ME. The WDM drivers cause
stuttering issues sometimes with 98SE (ME is a mess I don't wish upon
anybody), the VXD drivers do not. And indeed, the legacy compatibility layer
works a lot better, no surprise, really. You have to manually install the
driver if you are in a mess because you didn't uninstall the WDM driver
completely, and it would help greatly to remove the traces of the WDM
package from your system (this at the least should be uninstalling
everything from "add/remove..." first, then deleting the information files,
maybe drvidx.bin and drvdata.bin as well, but the uninstall STILL leaves all
sorts of orphaned crap in the registry to be hunted down and eliminated
without mercy---thank you, Creative!---but you can likely not worry too much
about it if you uninstall things properly first instead of installing things
on top of another, especially older versions on top of newer, which may
result in version conflict and incompatibility issues.




I have manually extracted the DOS drivers
(SBEINIT,etc.) and configured it correctly, but the emulation under real
mode DOS don't work.


Someone uploaded the contents of the DOSDRV directory on an
old SBLive install CD he
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/SBLiveDosDrv.html

These are for the SBLive 4.1. I don't know if there's a difference
in the DOS drivers.

You said you've already extracted the drivers, but you might check
to see if anything is missing. I've read that Liveware does not
include DOS drivers that work in DOS mode, though it may include
DOS emulation within Windows. The difference is whether you're
rebooted to DOS mode or using a DOS Window.

The default location of the DOSDRV directory is
C:\Program Files\SBLive

The DOS install added these lines to my autoexec.bat
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM

and these lines to my config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE


The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.

Actually, it doesn't. This is just for the pure-DOS emulation layer, which
does. And it's not such a great idea to have loaded a real-mode expanded
memory driver while in Windows 9x, same as a CD driver TSR back in "them
days". I just install the card manually, pointing to the .inf file or skip
the DOS driver install while installing the package. Then, your expanded
memory manager and the DOS driver (the SBEINIT line) can be loaded from a
custom PIF to run something in pure DOS as required. Though, most things run
in a Windows fullscreen DOS environment ok, and there's no trouble with
sound. I would think that only with the really dusty legacy titles that this
would be any problem, and these will run the way I've described.

And your motherboard has to support NMI, as you've already mentioned.

Someone uploaded the contents of the DOSDRV directory on an
old SBLive install CD he
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/SBLiveDosDrv.html

Thanks, I check later...

You said you've already extracted the drivers, but you might check
to see if anything is missing. I've read that Liveware does not
include DOS drivers that work in DOS mode, though it may include
DOS emulation within Windows. The difference is whether you're
rebooted to DOS mode or using a DOS Window.

LiveWare 3.0 contains DOS drivers in a separate package that is installed
together with the Windows VXD drivers, but they works fine in real mode DOS
too;
look at http://atlas.hemmet.chalmers.se/live...page.php?id=39, it's
explained how to extract the files and configure it.

The SBLive requires EMM386.EXE for it to work.

I know, I've loaded EMM386.EXE correctly.

Nope, likely an .inf from the WDM package left in c:\windows\inf\other,
proper uninstallation necessary, or registry settings needing scouring in
extreme cases. The VXD drivers work fine, even in ME. The WDM drivers
cause
stuttering issues sometimes with 98SE (ME is a mess I don't wish upon
anybody), the VXD drivers do not. And indeed, the legacy compatibility
layer
works a lot better, no surprise, really. You have to manually install the
driver if you are in a mess because you didn't uninstall the WDM driver
completely, and it would help greatly to remove the traces of the WDM
package from your system (this at the least should be uninstalling
everything from "add/remove..." first, then deleting the information
files,
maybe drvidx.bin and drvdata.bin as well, but the uninstall STILL leaves
all
sorts of orphaned crap in the registry to be hunted down and eliminated
without mercy---thank you, Creative!---but you can likely not worry too
much
about it if you uninstall things properly first instead of installing
things
on top of another, especially older versions on top of newer, which may
result in version conflict and incompatibility issues.

No, I don't have traces of WDM drivers, because I have installed the VXD
drivers in a clean installation of Win98SE; I have installed Win98SE with no
drivers for the SBLive, then I soon installed the latest VXD drivers from
Creative; during installation of the sound drivers, the install process
abort because it say that I don't have enough space on the disk drive, but I
have a FAT32 partition of 20GB with many GB free...I've tryied to install
the drivers in a FAT16 partition too, but with the same errors.
The WDM drivers works fine, until now, except for SB16 emulation...

NMI's, as in Non-Maskable Interrupts? What motherboard doesn't support
NMI's. In fact, they don't have a choice, it's wired directly to the CPU,
to
detect severe hardware problems.

I report a post of a Creative technician in the Creative forum about NMI:

Legacy emulation under DOS Creative/Ensoniq cards will not work on systems
that . .

a) do not route the PCI SERR# signal to the processor NMI
b) have a capacitor between SERR# and ground or between NMI and ground that
is too large.

Some background is required here. The Creative/Ensoniq PCI cards use the PCI
SERR# signal to indicate that someone has accessed a Legacy device register
(i.e., Sound Blaster, MPU-401, ). This SERR# signal must generate a
processor NMI before the I/O instruction completes so that the Legacy
emulation software can perform proper emulation of the trapped I/O event
before the processor executes the subsequent instructions.

In the event that the SERR# signal is not connected to the NMI input, the
software is never notified and cannot perform any Legacy device emulation.

In the event that there is a capacitor on the line that is too large, the
NMI does not propagate to the processor in time to emulate the I/O before
the next processor instruction(s) execute(s). If the I/O event is emulated
too late, it may have an adverse effect on the system as it may change the
state of processor register al at a time when the processor is not expecting
it.

Note that the SBLive soundblaster driver under DOS requires EMM386
since it is mostly a software emulation. The SB16 emulation is partly
broken, it treats unsigned and signed samples the same way.

Yes I know, SBEINIT requires EMM386 that put the CPU in "Virtual 8086 Mode",
so it's not correct to talk about "Real Mode" DOS, I just want to mean that
I boot in DOS.

AdLib should occupy Port 388+389 - checked this? The SBLive also
supports adlib emulation (at least in the DOS box, never tried it
under real DOS).

Yes, FM synthesis use port 388 of the AdLib card that is emulated by the
Sound Blaster through OPL3 chip, I've checked the port in the system
manager, it's free and not used by other hardware.

Yousuf Khan wrote:
NMI's, as in Non-Maskable Interrupts? What motherboard doesn't support
NMI's.

Some don't. Like my craptastic MSI 845PE Max2. *sigh*

In fact, they don't have a choice, it's wired directly to the CPU, to
detect severe hardware problems.

They have a choice to not wire it to the CPU. They have a choice not to
wire SERR# to the southbridge. They have a choice not to enable SERR#
NMIs in the southbridge's configuration registers. They have a choice
not to provide an NMI handler in the BIOS.

They are all sorts of stupid things they can do break NMIs, and something
a simple as not wiring a pin can make the difference as to whether another
expensive layer on the motherboard is needed. Most motherboards don't
support two floppy drives anymore because it means having one less pin
to wire that way.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rridge/
db //

"Francesco" wrote in message
...

snip

No, I don't have traces of WDM drivers, because I have installed the VXD
drivers in a clean installation of Win98SE; I have installed Win98SE with
no
drivers for the SBLive, then I soon installed the latest VXD drivers from
Creative; during installation of the sound drivers, the install process
abort because it say that I don't have enough space on the disk drive,

The install pack is likely corrupted, you should try installing the drivers
manually thru Device Manager.


but I
have a FAT32 partition of 20GB with many GB free...I've tryied to install
the drivers in a FAT16 partition too, but with the same errors.
The WDM drivers works fine, until now, except for SB16 emulation...