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Application Review |
Generic
Win16 Audio Drivers for winos2 |
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Year:
2000 Homepage
Link: N/A |
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This Generic WinOS/2 device driver is intended for use to provide wave in/wave out and MIDI out audio facilities to WinOS/2 in situations where an OS/2 audio driver is present, but a vendor - supplied WinOS/2 driver is unavailable. This driver operates independently of the hardware and should work with most audio cards for which an OS/2 MMPM/2 driver is available Unlike previous releases, this version uses a ring-0 data transport system which interacts with the sound card driver directly. No use of MMPM/2 is made at all, except to prevent OS/2 from using the card while the generic driver is generating sound. However, for modern PCI soundcard drivers that can support multiple streams, it is possible to switch this feature off at boot time using a command-line switch or at run-time using the graphical configuration utility. This will allow OS/2 and WinOS/2 to generate sound simultaneously. This feature should be used with caution as some soundcards, particularly older ISA models may only support one or two concurrent streams. This solution is considerably more efficient than previous releases. However, if a vendor-supplied WinOS/2 driver is available for your audio card, this should always be used in preference to the generic driver unless you have a reason not to. It is forseen that the generic driver will benefit those users particularly with newer PCI soundcards for which OS/2 support exists, but no WinOS/2 drivers are available. (2) Installation: For the common user (read: me) this is a pain in the butt. I had to move files from the eCS 2.0 CD 2 to Win and OS/2 directory as well as make sure lines were added to the config.sys. Not good. Here is what I had to do...sorry it's long (and thus wrong for the typical user...don't do this programmers!). Make sure to open the readme before installing What I need to do is learn how to use WarpIn and fix this. If someone is reading this and can do this please email me...please! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To install this version, follow the sequence outlined below. 1.From the 'bin' subdirectory of this archive, copy the files GENAUDD.EXE, VGENAUD.SYS, GWDTA.STS, GWACFG.EXE and GWACFG.HLP to your MMOS2 base directory (<MMOS2BASE>), usually <bootdrive>:\MMOS2 on most default installations of Warp 4 2.From the 'bin' subdirectory, copy the files OS2WAVE.DRV and OS2MIDI.DRV to your <WINOS2>\SYSTEM directory. The default <WINOS2> directory is usually <bootdrive>:\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2. Ensure that the following entries are added to your CONFIG.SYS DEVICE=<drive>:\<MMOS2BASE>\GWDTA.SYS DEVICE=<drive>:\<MMOS2BASE>\VGENAUD.SYS RUN=<drive>:\<MMOS2BASE>\GENAUDD.EXE 3.Locate the file 'midimap.cfg' in your <WINOS2>\SYSTEM directory, and rename it to midimap.bak or something similar. Then copy the MIDIMAP.CFG file from the 'bin' subdirectory of this archive to your <WINOS2>\SYSTEM directory, replacing the old MIDIMAP.CFG that was originally in place. This will ensure that the WinOS/2 Midi Mapper will correctly route MIDI data to the generic driver. 4.Ensure all WinOS/2 sessions are closed, then open SYSTEM.INI from the <WINOS2> directory in a text editor, locate the [Drivers] section and in this section add the lines WAVE=os2wave.drv MIDI=os2midi.drv 5.If there are already lines beginning 'WAVE=' and 'MIDI=', you probably have a vendor-supplied driver installed. If this works, it is recommended that you use this and do not install the Generic WinOS/2 Audio driver. If, however, you do want to install the generic driver anyway simply comment out the pre-existing 'WAVE=' and 'MIDI=' lines by placing a semicolon as the first character on the line before adding the WAVE=os2wave.drv and MIDI=os2midi.drv lines. 6.Reboot the machine. 7.IT IS ESSENTIAL with this release of the driver that the DOS session setting 'EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT' is set to ZERO for all WinOS/2 sessions from which you wish to generate sound. This is due to a memory mapping issue in the kernel. If this parameter is not set to zero, the result may be silence. 8.All should be well. The 'ta-da' should be heard on starting a WinOS/2 session. 9.Please consult the file CMDPARAM.TXT for possible command line options. (3) Startup: To get it working, you need to follow all the steps above. For the most part it is straight forward. Unfortunately, for some reason, eCS would not let me copy OS2WAVE.DRV and OS2MIDI.DRV to the suggested directory. It took me some time but I finally figured it out, I am not sure though if this was specific to my computer or it will happen to everyone but please be aware of this. What I had to do was edit the files with Enhanced Editor and then save both of them to WINOS2\SYSTEM directory. The first time I rebooted and tried it I got no sound. I remembered that I needed to edit the DOS session setting 'EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT' to zero. After that I restarted an Win 3.1 session and it worked! (4) The Program: I have a PCI Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1 and the OS/2 Drives that came with it do not work (They don't work with eCS either). I was excited to have the generic win16 drivers installed. Once you get it all put together it works. Kinda. I was using the stock Uniaud drivers (1.9.1) that came with eCS 2.0 on the first try and I was getting two problems, one major and the other is minor. The major one was that if I did a winos2 full screen, everything would work (sounds and the winos2 session), but on exiting, the computer would lock up hard. The minor problem was that I would get skipping, actually I want to call it echoing. Any sound in winos2 would continue for an extra half second after it played. Not a show stopper but annoying. I knew there was a newer version of Uniaud (Uniaud16 version 1.9.5 and Uniaud32 version 2.1.1 (based on ALSA 1.0.23)) so I downloaded it, installed it, and rebooted. After my reboot I was happily surprised that the major problem with the computer freezing on exiting winos2 was fixed. No more freezes. The sound was also On a positive note, both eCS and Win 3.1 sound works together. I was half expecting when running Win 3.1 that eCS would become silent. That is not the case though. Nice. (5) Final Thoughts: Honestly, this is a real pain. I had to think twice before editing the config.sys to make sure I was putting the devices in the right place. I changed the drive to C:\ but almost left the mmos2base there. Seriously, who changes the default MMOS2 directory?!? If there is like one person that does it...let them figure it out. This has to be easier...way to many steps. This needs to be turned into a WarpIn package and made to install in a few clicks. Otherwise you will have people (like me) who will groan when installing this and possibly not install it at all. Why go though all the work to make it if no one uses it because the install in unnecessary hard? If you use winos2 for anything that needs sound and you have not been able to get it working, this might work for you. I would say this whole process took me twenty minutes but if I needed to again, it would be something like five. It could be a worse install but it worked well in the end, with good sound. I am hoping latter versions of Uniad drivers fix the slight skip in sound, I will keep on trying new versions and report what I “hear”. (6) Updates after the review: None at the moment |
