Hello
What a nice tool, thank you!
Works great on K7T Turbo mobo (VT82C686B south bridge). Finally I can fine tune volume levels.
I'm not complaining, but I found out that sound recording in DOS using Line In and Mic inputs is not working for me.
I set volume levels for Line In and Mic and I hear incoming sounds clearly through speakers, but software (Fast Tracker 2 for example) records total silence. Are there any hidden recording levels by any chance? Or this VT82C686B thing is just incompatible with true Sound Blaster?

theshich wrote on 2021-03-13, 19:14:

Hello What a nice tool, thank you! Works great on K7T Turbo mobo (VT82C686B south bridge). Finally I can fine tune volume levels […]
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Hello
What a nice tool, thank you!
Works great on K7T Turbo mobo (VT82C686B south bridge). Finally I can fine tune volume levels.
I'm not complaining, but I found out that sound recording in DOS using Line In and Mic inputs is not working for me.
I set volume levels for Line In and Mic and I hear incoming sounds clearly through speakers, but software (Fast Tracker 2 for example) records total silence. Are there any hidden recording levels by any chance? Or this VT82C686B thing is just incompatible with true Sound Blaster?

According to my limited understanding of the datasheet, https://www.alsa-project.org/files/pub/datash … 20datasheet.pdf , record commands are supported in SB emulation mode, as is input selection in the mixer . Whether that means that recording actually can work or whether the register are just there so SB Pro application can write to standard Sound Blaster ports without crashing, I do not know .

Sound Blaster compatibility is primarily meant for DOS gaming , not recording, so it is rather hard to find info on whether recording should/can work or not .
Additionally, a Sound Blaster Pro is 8-bit only and tops off at 44.KHz in mono or 22KHz in stereo, for both recording and playback . I have difficulty imagining a use case where it would not be better record with practically any 16-bit (or better) sound card manufactured in the last 28 years using an external PC (retro or modern) .

darry wrote on 2021-03-13, 20:54:

According to my limited understanding of the datasheet, https://www.alsa-project.org/files/pub/datash … 20datasheet.pdf , record commands are supported in SB emulation mode, as is input selection in the mixer . Whether that means that recording actually can work or whether the register are just there so SB Pro application can write to standard Sound Blaster ports without crashing, I do not know .

Yes, it's totally unclear. If anyone can disprove that recording is impossible in pure DOS, please let me know.

darry wrote on 2021-03-13, 20:54:

Sound Blaster compatibility is primarily meant for DOS gaming , not recording, so it is rather hard to find info on whether recording should/can work or not .
Additionally, a Sound Blaster Pro is 8-bit only and tops off at 44.KHz in mono or 22KHz in stereo, for both recording and playback . I have difficulty imagining a use case where it would not be better record with practically any 16-bit (or better) sound card manufactured in the last 28 years using an external PC (retro or modern) .

To make a long story short, it's a crazy use case of reading data from "tape" using DOS emulator. 8 bit mono seems enough for it.
So it should be a gaming after recording, but chances are slim.

Did you guys see LGR's latest video about loading a game using tape in Windows...?

Carrera wrote on 2021-03-15, 13:40:

Did you guys see LGR's latest video about loading a game using tape in Windows...?

Yes, I did. But I dreamed about data loading long before this video.
The main question is whether it's impossible or did I fail to do it right?

JazeFox wrote on 2020-09-29, 08:13:

Tool updated to v0.12d […]
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Tool updated to v0.12d

.....

Some notes (Q&A):

Q: After running VIAFMTSR.COM volume levels are changing! (e.g.: CD-in)...
A: VIAFMTSR has its own volume routines, even when running a game that uses
FM only, some volume levels like CD-in or master, are affected. Nothing
can be done there unless VIAFMTSR.COM is patched to avoid this. If you
are not running a game or program using FM, avoid loading VIAFMTSR.

Hi JazeFox, thank you for the update to the program and welcome back to the forum after being away too!

I had a thought about this issue of VIAFMTSR messing with the volume levels. After running VIASBCFG for the first time, then loading the FM TSR, could you then run VIASBCFG a second time in a special mode that only sets the mixer levels without reinitializing the chipset?

I have the Termtek TK-3550 thin client, which is listed on the "Thin clients with SB Pro emulation" spreadsheet posted in this forum. The spreadsheet says it is SB Pro compatible with Emulation Via 82T686B. I have read the posts here, but I am still confused. Can someone please explain to me how do I get this sound blaster working? Thank you.

doomeyes wrote on 2021-05-18, 18:24:

I have the Termtek TK-3550 thin client, which is listed on the "Thin clients with SB Pro emulation" spreadsheet posted in this forum. The spreadsheet says it is SB Pro compatible with Emulation Via 82T686B. I have read the posts here, but I am still confused. Can someone please explain to me how do I get this sound blaster working? Thank you.

- Usage: run VIASBCFG /H to get usage help. But the easy steps are:

1. (optional) Set BLASTER environment variable with your preferred settings. Example: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P0 J0
2. Run VIASBCFG. (optionally set volume levels with /Vxxx options)

That's it.

Hi all!
I've recently bought HP t5710. Currently, I spent 3 days configuring sound in MS-DOS 7.1 (multi-booting under Win98SE). And it keeps freezing the system when it comes to FM in DOOM II and pretty much any sound in Wolf3D.
If this topic is still alive, could anyone please refer to or post msdos.sys, config.sys, and autoexec.bat that work on this device under DOS 7.1? Or is it only possible to reach under MS-DOS 6.22?

Hi,
try this: go in the BIOS and disable parallel port, serial ports and the ethernet.

Ciao! 😉

Thanks for the reply. Already tried this and it made no difference 🙁

I do not get engine sounds with Stunts, but other sound effects do work.

I'm not sure if there's an issue with my case in particular or something else but it turned out that FM/Adlib synthesizer is very unstable.
I installed pure MS-DOS 6.22 on HP t5710 and tried various recourse and BIOS settings. The SB emulator wors great but FM not so much. Only once I've managed to get them both working but not for long. It seems like it was some random thing. In the Duke 3D setup, they both were configured and tested ok but the game crashed during the load process. After rebooting, exactly the same configuration just refused to work.

Thank you very much for providing such an amazing tool but I'd like to have more discussions about its settings and use experience. Hopefully, my experience will be useful for someone. 😀

carlosjor wrote on 2020-05-18, 20:30:

Does this work with DOS mode of Windows 98 SE? I dont know how to install pure MSDOS 6.22 in my T5710....

Win98 has pure DOS with it, not sure about the version though. Press F8 before Win98 startup and chose "Command line prompt only" or something like that and it's done. I bought a HP T5700 after I read this thread and used VIASBCFG and VIAFMTSR and everything works fine.
BTW, the AC97 driver has sound blaster compatibility enabled in Win98SE as I tested several DOS games with my T5700, the only problem is the MIDI. They all have no problem pure DOS, while in Win98 I set the sound driver as SB and MIDI driver to MPU-401 compatible(some games have this option); it works too, but the MIDI sounds weird and different from DOS. it's just like the MIDI of VDMSound in XP as I recall. I read some threads here at VOGONS and it seems like soft MIDI mapper related. But not clear why it works so perfectly in DOS.

To avoid choppy sound and other hangs with protected mode (DOS4GW and similar) DOS extended games/software you must also use DOS32AWE despite it was designed initially for AWE Sound blasters. It is fixing the VIA's SB emulation for protected mode games and now you will get sound without being choppy . You can download the DOS32AWE from here:

DOS32AWE - DOS/4G compatible DOS Extender with Sound Blaster AWEUTIL MIDI synthesizer support for Protected mode,VIASB

Hi,

I've a HP t5710 with vt8231 chipset (with MsDOS 6.22) and I'm trying to run The 7th Guest game (two versions game: v1.2 and patched with v1.30) but always have the same error message:

Error: couldn't load the sound driver

VIAFMTSR is loaded and it works fine with other games. I've tried to select and configure the game with different SB options, but I get always the same error message.

Please, Could you help me?

Thanks,
Shark

I'm trying to run this on Windows 98 Dosmode.

I put
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P0 J0
VIASBCFG.COM /V99 /VF99
VIAFMTSR.COM

in autoexec.bat.

am I'm doing this correct?

When I set up Doom with these values and run it it crashes saying "transfer stack overflow on interrupt 0Dh at 70:0015C810
TSF32: prev_tsf32 4864
then a table with a lot of assembler code stuff.

I got duke nukem working with music at least, but no sound.

Any plans to release the source of this tool ?

I am interested in making some experiments regarding my issues with monkey island (I think they are related to the way VSR is initialized in the codec), but also about how volume control works.

For example, I have found that VIASBCFG /VXX seems to be setting BOTH the AC97 mixer as well as the virtualized SBPro mixer to the same level, but on my T5710 at least both mixers are
A) separate: they are not kept in sync, changes in one do not affect the other
B) accumulative , i.e. if I reduce the volume by 10% on both of them, I get 20% less volume total, not just 10% less
So by setting the same volume on both I think we are getting much lower output volume than should be.
Actually this was fixed in 0.12d , sorry for being obtuse.
/v and /vw go to the AC97 mixer, the rest go to SBPro mixer.

Also it would be useful to be able to set volume levels _without_ reinitializing the AC97 part, which confuses viafmtsr.
I already made a small Watcom C tool to set the AC97 / SBPro mixer settings separately but I've just tested it on my T5710. May release it if there's interest.

And another curiosity.
Looks like the VIA VXD drivers for Windows (95) rely on the SBPro emulation for DOS boxes (rather than SBEMUL.SYS like the WDM drivers),
so you need to run VIASBCFG before booting 95 (e.g. on AUTOEXEC.bat) if you use these and want audio in your DOS boxes .
I can't test this 🙁 ( I am running ME on my T5710 😀 ), but this means that on 9x you should have the choice to use:

• Either the WDM drivers, in which case you get SBEMUL.SYS in DOS boxes: software SBPro emulation, no FM synth, and MIDI @0x330 is redirected to SWMIDI.SYS (i.e. the Microsoft SW Synth).
• Or the VXD drivers: in which case you get hardware SBPro emulation for DOS boxes, FM synth under Windows ! (there seems to be a VXD equivalent of viafmtsr called VIAFM.DRV) but MIDI @0x330 is just redirected to the hw port.

I have motherboard with VIA VT82C686 and I managed to make FX sounds to play, no music for me, maybe I'm doing something wrong?

haker120 wrote on 2022-05-09, 16:09:

I have motherboard with VIA VT82C686 and I managed to make FX sounds to play, no music for me, maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Hi ! Remember you must launch the VIAFMTSR.COM tool too to have FM music ! 😀