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Open Source DOS Sound standards! yay! (Developers)

posted by bretjohn Homepage E-mail, Rio Rancho, NM, 10.01.2013, 18:59

> I am not speaking about virtual machines!
>
> There should be sound to come out of physical computers!
If only it were that easy.

The problem is, there never have been any official standards, only de facto ones. The de facto standard for DOS sound is Sound Blaster, and hardware (and VM) manufacturers who have any interest in DOS compatibility at all will emulate SB. Newer hardware is almost never directly compatible with SB, but some will provide a special DOS utility to provide SB emulation.

If I were to write a USB sound driver (which I might actually try to do someday), it would virtualize a SB. However, unless something changes with regard to virtualization techniques from real/V86 mode, the virtualization would not work properly from protected mode (e.g., DPMI). You would need to make provisions in your program for that if you want it to work in the future with "real" DOS.

If you want your program to work with the most hardware (real and virtualized) with the least amount of work, assume Sound Blaster. You can add other (non-SB) possibilities later on if you decide SB isn't enough.

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