Sound card autodetection for the DOS version...

Medox · Post by **Medox** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:47 pm

Hello all,

Maybe a crazy/stupid idea but would it be possible to make the dos version of zsnes to autodetect the (compatible) sound card/driver like mpxplay does?

It would be a great add-on that autodetects the old sound cards without all that set blaster stuff or the right drivers for the card and if the sound card isn't supported it would just disable the sound...

Post by **grinvader** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:50 pm

Sorry, we're not supporting the DOS version anymore. Anyone feeling like it can take up the challenge, though. Source's available, as usual.

Medox · Post by **Medox** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:08 pm

grinvader wrote:Sorry, we're not supporting the DOS version anymore. Anyone feeling like it can take up the challenge, though. Source's available, as usual.

Yes, I know... I already tried to contact mpxplay's developer but no response...

so I've came here to get some answers.

So would it be possible? I think so... but I'm not really an expert in doing things like this... if somebody already had this idea or wants to make this last feature for the dos version, it would be great

Isn't there any app for dos that autodetects the old soundcards? I've already searched everything up but nothing... only mpxplay and it's source but it's complicated...

Suce an app would be great for every dos app... (oldschool, I know

)

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:12 pm

First of all, anything involving DOS sound is something that the user should know something about. It isn't really the developer that has to figure this stuff out.

The best you can do is force 8-bit sound if you have a sound card that is properly set up in DOS. There's no other way around this.

In your poor example, the app has built in special hardware detection, which won't account for every hardware in existance. That's not universal like DirectSound is for audio output in Windows.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:14 pm

DOS sound card detection was always pretty hit and miss.

Everything that included an autodetect feature back in the day ALSO included an "If this crashes your system, then..." warning and an option to key your data in manually, because... well, it crashed a lot of systems and often got things wrong when it didn't crash them.

Medox · Post by **Medox** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:43 pm

ok, I just wanted to be sure that it's really a hit and miss... (like I saw for quite some time)

Thanks for the responses.