sound/beep

[frustin]

Got some old railway games that are ACSII dos based and when a train is late or delayed it caused game to make a beep. I've got the latest 2020.03.01 version and i've added a beep.wav to the vDos directory, but it's not making any noises.

Is there any config i need to change to get that to work?

thanks very much

[Jos]

You’re out of luck: vDos only supports the simple DOS beep. Anything beyond that, accessing the hardware to create some melody, doesn’t work.
You could eventually test the beep.wav by creating a text file with ASCII 7, and TYPE that at the command line.
But probably you have to use DOSBox, that supports sound systems.

Jos

[frustin]

Jul 1, 2020 17:08:26 GMT 1 Jos said:

You’re out of luck: vDos only supports the simple DOS beep. Anything beyond that, accessing the hardware to create some melody, doesn’t work.
You could eventually test the beep.wav by creating a text file with ASCII 7, and TYPE that at the command line.
But probably you have to use DOSBox, that supports sound systems.

Jos

that's ok, i'll take the dos beep, but that's not working either. is there a way to test the dos beep?

In another thread i saw you'd suggested testing:

TYPE beep.txt

...and that worked, but when i run the game, it doesnt beep.

DOSBox doesnt allow me to change fonts so the formatting of the ASCII is wrong.

[Jos]

So the DOS beep works, but your program will use another method to produce its sounds.

The ASCII characters are misplaced, your program uses ANSI escape codes to position text?
Did you consult the DOSBox forum for this?

Jos

[frustin]

Jul 1, 2020 17:59:15 GMT 1 Jos said:

So the DOS beep works, but your program will use another method to produce its sounds.

The ASCII characters are misplaced, your program uses ANSI escape codes to position text?
Did you consult the DOSBox forum for this?

Joe

No, the game worked and beeps worked with DOSBox. No config needed.

[Jos]

The picture is that in vDos.
How is that in DOSBox wrong?

Jos

[frustin]

in DOSBox, the ascii characters are a bit 'off'. On DOS on XP you could change the font size and this game looks best at 10x18 pixels. You can not alter the pixel size of the fonts on DOSBox.

vDos just seems to be right, straight out of the box.

[Jos]

vDos internal font has a 1:2 aspect ratio. I suspect the default DOSBox font is 9x16, and comes from the 8x16 font.
Some characters got extra pixels at the nineth position, most were just copied with a blank nineth column.
You would have to set the text display to 640x400 pixels, 80 characters of 8 pixels wide.
Should be an option of DOSBox, its forum will know how to.

Jos

[frustin]

Jul 1, 2020 20:02:55 GMT 1 Jos said:

vDos internal font has a 1:2 aspect ratio. I suspect the default DOSBox font is 9x16, and comes from the 8x16 font.
Some characters got extra pixels at the nineth position, most were just copied with a blank nineth column.
You would have to set the text display to 640x400 pixels, 80 characters of 8 pixels wide.
Should be an option of DOSBox, its forum will know how to.

Jos

Thank you, i've put a post on their forum to ask:



In the mean time, this is the sound config on DOSBox which works perfectly:


[mixer]

#   nosound: Enable silent mode, sound is still emulated though.

#      rate: Mixer sample rate, setting any devices higher than this will probably lower their sound quality.

#            Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000

# blocksize: Mixer block size, larger blocks might help sound stuttering but sound will also be more lagged.

#            Possible values: 2048, 4096, 8192, 1024, 512, 256

# prebuffer: How many milliseconds of data to keep on top of the blocksize.



nosound=false

rate=22050

blocksize=2048

prebuffer=10



[midi]

# mpu401: Type of MPU-401 to emulate.

#         Possible values: intelligent, uart, none

# device: Device that will receive the MIDI data from MPU-401.

#         Possible values: default, win32, alsa, oss, coreaudio, coremidi, none

# config: Special configuration options for the device driver. This is usually the id of the device you want to use. See README for details.



mpu401=none

device=default

config=



[sblaster]

#  sbtype: Type of sblaster to emulate.

#          Possible values: sb1, sb2, sbpro1, sbpro2, sb16, none

#  sbbase: The IO address of the soundblaster.

#          Possible values: 220, 240, 260, 280, 2a0, 2c0, 2e0, 300

#     irq: The IRQ number of the soundblaster.

#          Possible values: 7, 5, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12

#     dma: The DMA number of the soundblaster.

#          Possible values: 1, 5, 0, 3, 6, 7

#    hdma: The High DMA number of the soundblaster.

#          Possible values: 1, 5, 0, 3, 6, 7

#   mixer: Allow the soundblaster mixer to modify the DOSBox mixer.

# oplmode: Type of OPL emulation. On 'auto' the mode is determined by sblaster type. All OPL modes are Adlib-compatible, except for 'cms'.

#          Possible values: auto, cms, opl2, dualopl2, opl3, none

# oplrate: Sample rate of OPL music emulation.

#          Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000



sbtype=none

sbbase=220

irq=7

dma=1

hdma=5

mixer=true

oplmode=auto

oplrate=22050



[gus]

#      gus: Enable the Gravis Ultrasound emulation.

#  gusrate: Sample rate of Ultrasound emulation.

#           Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000

#  gusbase: The IO addresses of the Gravis Ultrasound.

#           Possible values: 220, 240, 260, 280, 2a0, 2c0, 2e0, 300

#     irq1: The first IRQ number of the Gravis Ultrasound. (Same IRQs are OK.)

#           Possible values: 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12

#     irq2: The second IRQ number of the Gravis Ultrasound. (Same IRQs are OK.)

#           Possible values: 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12

#     dma1: The first DMA addresses of the Gravis Ultrasound. (Same DMAs are OK.)

#           Possible values: 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7

#     dma2: The second DMA addresses of the Gravis Ultrasound. (Same DMAs are OK.)

#           Possible values: 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7

# ultradir: Path to Ultrasound directory. In this directory

#           there should be a MIDI directory that contains

#           the patch files for GUS playback. Patch sets used

#           with Timidity should work fine.



gus=false

gusrate=22050

gusbase=240

irq1=5

irq2=5

dma1=3

dma2=3

ultradir=C:\ULTRASND



[speaker]

# pcspeaker: Enable PC-Speaker emulation.

#    pcrate: Sample rate of the PC-Speaker sound generation.

#            Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000

#     tandy: Enable Tandy Sound System emulation. For 'auto', emulation is present only if machine is set to 'tandy'.

#            Possible values: auto, on, off

# tandyrate: Sample rate of the Tandy 3-Voice generation.

#            Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000

#    disney: Enable Disney Sound Source emulation. (Covox Voice Master and Speech Thing compatible).



pcspeaker=true

pcrate=22050

tandy=auto

tandyrate=22050

disney=false


[frustin]

i downloaded vdosplus and that works great.

[ganz]

Is there a way to mute vDos or remove sound/beep from config.txt? vDosPlus is way too complicated for me to use.

[Jos]

vDos doesn’t produce any sound, so options to disable that are not relevant.
Even if you would want the simple DOS beep, you have to place a BEEP.WAV file in the vDos directory.

Jos