DOS ain't dead - Open MPT123

Laaca

Czech republic,
13.01.2022, 21:58

Open MPT123 (Announce)

Maybe in the past I have heard something about OpenMPT123 but Ithought that it is some library for some Windows sound stuff.
But suprisingly it can work in DOS, it contains a command line DOS module player and it is still very active project.
Look here: https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/download/

Personaly I prefer to use MPXplay with plugin for listening MODs., XMs, S3Ms...
but it can be interresting for someone.

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DOS-u-akbar!

glennmcc

North Jackson, Ohio (USA),
14.01.2022, 01:14

@ Laaca

Open MPT123

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http://glennmcc.org/

Zyzzle

14.01.2022, 06:46

@ Laaca

Open MPT123

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> Maybe in the past I have heard something about OpenMPT123 but Ithought that
> it is some library for some Windows sound stuff.
> But suprisingly it can work in DOS, it contains a command line DOS module
> player and it is still very active project.
> Look here: https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/download/
>
> Personaly I prefer to use MPXplay with plugin for listening MODs., XMs,
> S3Ms...
> but it can be interresting for someone.

It is very interesting and modern project, however it does not play sound on any modern PCI soundcards. It would be interesting to compile this without the old Allegro sound libraries and use the modern PCI-sound drivers in the code of MPXPlay instead.

Another interesting Module player is MikMod:

http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/

It claims to be able to be compilable for DOS, but no DOS binaries are included. I could use some help in getting a DOS binary compiled, get errors in CWSDPMI and gcc. There is a very old 1.x binary version for DOS called "Extended MikMod":

https://modland.com/pub/software/players/DOS/Extended%20MikMod/

Also, I see Dumb module player is still being actively supported in source, but there is NO DOS binaries:

https://github.com/kode54/dumb

This fork adds great sinc re-sampling and other goodies that would make it the BEST player for DOS, period. If anyone has any DOS compilation tips, they'd be most helpful!

It has a wonderful diskwriter program (dumb2wav) which I can't get this to compile under Watcom or gcc and DJGPP, either. The acctual player also relies on the old Allegro sound libraries which of course wouldn't work in DOS for PCI-based IDH or ICH8 or ICH9 "modern" embedded cards.

With the dumb2wav program one could "dump" MODs at the ultimate quality to disk, then actually play the .WAVs with MpxPlay. That would be a solution.

sezeroz

14.01.2022, 19:23

@ Zyzzle

Open MPT123

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> Another interesting Module player is MikMod:
>
> http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/
>
> It claims to be able to be compilable for DOS, but no DOS binaries are
> included. I could use some help in getting a DOS binary compiled, get
> errors in CWSDPMI and gcc.

Well, it is easy to build: Go into libmikmod/dos and build libmikmod
using Makefile.dj (edit the makefile and/or config.h if you want to.)
Copy mikmod.h and the newly generated libmikmod.a into mikmod/dos and
build using Makefile.dj. Anyways, here is a dos/djgpp build from the
latest git repo: http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/tmp/mikmod-dos.zip
It supports SB output (also includes GUS and WSS drivers but they have
never been tested by me.)

glennmcc

North Jackson, Ohio (USA),
14.01.2022, 19:53
(edited by glennmcc, 14.01.2022, 20:22)

@ sezeroz

Open MPT123

Post reply

> > Another interesting Module player is MikMod:
> >
> > http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/
> >
> > It claims to be able to be compilable for DOS, but no DOS binaries are
> > included. I could use some help in getting a DOS binary compiled, get
> > errors in CWSDPMI and gcc.
>
> Well, it is easy to build: Go into libmikmod/dos and build libmikmod
> using Makefile.dj (edit the makefile and/or config.h if you want to.)
> Copy mikmod.h and the newly generated libmikmod.a into mikmod/dos and
> build using Makefile.dj. Anyways, here is a dos/djgpp build from the
> latest git repo: http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/tmp/mikmod-dos.zip
> It supports SB output (also includes GUS and WSS drivers but they have
> never been tested by me.)

Thank you.

FYI... it works GREAT and is currently playing an Impulse Tracker .IT file
and in Linux dosbox to-boot.

Will now reboot into OpenDos v7.01 to test it there.

BRB

Also works like a charm booted to DOS

Thanks again... that's another track player added to my collection. :)

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http://glennmcc.org/

Zyzzle

15.01.2022, 04:49

@ sezeroz

Open MPT123

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> Copy mikmod.h and the newly generated libmikmod.a into mikmod/dos and
> build using Makefile.dj. Anyways, here is a dos/djgpp build from the
> latest git repo: http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/tmp/mikmod-dos.zip

Thank you! I wasn't copying the libmikmod.a or mikmod.h files properly! No wonder it didn't compile using DJGPP!

Really appreciate your DOS binary compile of MikMod.

I got the old version of dumb 0.9.3 player here:

http://dumb.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=downloads

to compile (for DJGPP), but not the newer fork here:

https://github.com/kode54/dumb

Are you able to try? It would be outstanding to have a DOS version. I'm using old version of gcc, perhaps that is why I can't compile it, I get many compilation errors and no binary.

sezeroz 15.01.2022, 09:17 @ Zyzzle	Open MPT123 Post reply
	> to compile (for DJGPP), but not the newer fork here: > > https://github.com/kode54/dumb > > Are you able to try? Oh-ho, allegro dependencies _and_ your christmas family fun of cmake.. Nope, won't try.

Zyzzle

15.01.2022, 12:14

@ sezeroz

Open MPT123

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> > to compile (for DJGPP), but not the newer fork here:
> >
> > https://github.com/kode54/dumb
> >
> > Are you able to try?
>
> Oh-ho, allegro dependencies _and_ your christmas family fun of cmake..
> Nope, won't try.

Understandable. cmake is your family fruit cake, alright! I was really only trying to get the dumb2wav (diskwriter) file built, I couldn't care less about the actual dumb player, since we have MPXPlay which can actually play the .WAVs which dumb2wav.exe will write to disk. And Allegro sound library is obsolete, now with MPXPlay's DOS PCI drivers and support.

Your new DOS build of MikMod is outstanding, with its text interface, diskwriter support, etc.

By the way, the rather bloated Open MPT123 (2.38 mb DOS binary, 800kb UPX'ed) does not have any built in diskwriter support. It only has wonky --stdout options, however this seems to produce something playable by MPXPlay, ie:

openmpt123 --stdout --no-float yourfile.mod > yourfile.pcm

But, then you have to know that this outputs 44100 khz, signed, 16-bit word-length, 2-channel audio to actually convert that output to .WAV with sox:

sox -r 44100 -c 2 -s -w -t raw yourfile.pcm -t wav yourfile.wav

RayeR

CZ,
18.01.2022, 03:48

@ Zyzzle

Open MPT123

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> It is very interesting and modern project, however it does not play sound
> on any modern PCI soundcards. It would be interesting to compile this
> without the old Allegro sound libraries and use the modern PCI-sound
> drivers in the code of MPXPlay instead.

:(
maybe sezeroz could bundle it with libau from Q2DOS to make DOS sound great again :)

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

RayeR

CZ,
18.01.2022, 07:07

@ RayeR

Open MPT123

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Well I tried it under real DOS with my 2nd soundcard PCI Yamaha YMF724 and it plays good. Except the MikMod player leave playing last samples from DMA buffer endlessly after exit. OpenMPT123 correctly mute the output at exit.
I tried to recompile LibMikMod and the player from sources and it works fine, no messing with configure, just make, any warnings...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

sezeroz 19.01.2022, 21:54 @ RayeR	Open MPT123 Post reply
	> Except the MikMod player leave playing last samples from DMA > buffer endlessly after exit. Is it my build from current libmikmod git or that ancient version at modland?

RayeR

CZ,
20.01.2022, 03:06

@ sezeroz

Open MPT123

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The new 3.2.9 that I just rebuild from sources.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

sezeroz 20.01.2022, 07:39 @ RayeR	Open MPT123 Post reply
	> The new 3.2.9 that I just rebuild from sources. Which driver are you using? Do you have a patch? (I was only able to test the SB driver as SB16 a long time ago when I pushed a fix to it.)

RayeR

CZ,
21.01.2022, 23:21

@ sezeroz

Open MPT123

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I didn't explicitly specified any driver, just run mikmod.exe and played a module file. I think it's autodetected or SB16. The YMF724 PCI driver dsdma.exe emulates SB16. Maybe there is some inacuracy or quirk, I can only say that compared to OpenMPT123 that properly terminates the playback...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

sezeroz

22.01.2022, 11:16

@ RayeR

Open MPT123

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> I didn't explicitly specified any driver, just run mikmod.exe and played a
> module file. I think it's autodetected or SB16. The YMF724 PCI driver
> dsdma.exe emulates SB16. Maybe there is some inacuracy or quirk, I can only
> say that compared to OpenMPT123 that properly terminates the playback...

Without further knowledge, I can't do anything about it and I don't have
that hardware to test it. (I had only tested it with a real SB16 back in
the day.)

Please send a patch if you ever find a fix for it.

RayeR

CZ,
24.01.2022, 21:21

@ sezeroz

Open MPT123

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Sorry, my knowledge about sound programming is ~0 so I will not going dive in to it as long as I can use MPXplay with module plugin that works well enough for me...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

RayeR

CZ,
25.01.2022, 04:03

@ RayeR

Open MPT123

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BTW why mikmod is creating its config files in C:\ instead of directory where the exe is placed?

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.