Hi all,

I just ran a quick test, removing the blaster.drv from my FLTSIM4 folder and trying to run things.

Same as before - the digital sounds are working fine (a confirmation that it is using the driver found in the BLASTER folder?) but locks up when any speech is initiated.

So no cigar there. 🙁

Trent

Hi all,

No resolution yet, but a little progress I think.

I tried this in an 86-Box build with MS-DOS 6.22. Within this environment, I think the SGA install was better able to detect a Sound Blaster card, because it wound up copying some files into the FLTSIM4 installation directory.

The files it copied in were the SBTalker.exe, SBTalk.bat I think and maybe some others. This is different to my prior approach which was to leave those SB related files inside their own directory, and load SBTalker.exe into resident memory prior to loading FS4.

With these SB files in the FLTSIM4 installation directory I was able to run FS4 and use the ATC comms without the game locking up. So that's something. However, the speech-to-text still isn't working.

As someone once said, "we do these things not because they are easy, but because we think they will be easy..."

Trent

Hi all,

For those following along, or those that run into this same problem at some point in the future, I've come across an SGA help file document authored by Mike Barrs and updated by Robert M. MacKay on 9 March 1992, originally hosted on the Compuserve Flight Simulation Forum. I was able to get a copy of this from https://www.planetmic.com/orbit/fs4web01.htm.

I've copied section 4 of this document titled 'Speech Related Information' below:

IV. SPEECH RELATED INFORMATION

A.SBTALKER (for Soundblaster owners)

The digitized speech feature in SGA uses the SBTALKER program included with
the Soundblaster card (called by the SBTALK.BAT batch file). It will
automatically load most of itself into expanded memory if it finds any on
your system, leaving a 6K program kernel resident in conventional memory.

To run FS, SBTALKER, ASD, and SGA; it is recommended that you use DOS 5.0
and have some EXPANDED memory setup. SBTALKER will load into expanded
memory, and this should leave enough conventional memory for FS, ASD, and
SGA. You may need to tweak the STATIC/DYNAMIC scenery memory allocations
of ASD to get it to a good tradeoff point.

The SGA manual , incorrectly, recommends that you prevent auto-loading of
SBTALK into expanded memory by disabling your expanded memory driver, but
the manual is assuming you don't have ASD installed! Without expanded
memory, SBTALK hogs 184K in conventional memory. FS4 won't even boot up
with ASD installed, when SBTALK is using that much memory.

You might be able to load all of SBTALK into high memory, moving that 6K
kernel out of conventional memory... I tried using QEMM386's Optimize
program to do that but it failed to load it high.

SBTALK will run fine in expanded memory but you need to follow a few steps
to avoid problems. If you load SBTALK from inside your Soundblaster sub
directory, FS4 will lock up solid, either right away or when you first get
an ATIS or COM message. You need to use the modified BLASTER.DRV driver
installed into your FS4 sub directory by SGA, not the BLASTER.DRV included
with the Soundblaster. Easiest way to do this is to copy SBTALK.BAT,
SBTALKER.EXE, and REMOVE.EXE from your Soundblaster sub directory into your
FS4 sub directory. Then log onto your FS4 sub directory and type "sbtalk".
This way it will grab the new driver supplied in the upgrade. After running
FS4 remember to type "remove" in the FS4 directory to remove the driver.

You'll want to write a batch file like this to run FS4 if you decide to
keep SBTALK in your configuration... change the path names as necessary for
your system:

@echo off
cd\fs4
call sbtalk
fs4
remove

SBTALK digitized speech will pause the simulation while talking (at least
it does on my machine) and the synthetic "robot" speech is hard to
understand. Unless this voice synthesizer feature really knocks you out, I
would recommend not using it at all. The sampled engine and other sounds in
the SGA package are much better.

B.CANNOT GET SBTALKER TO WORK

First check to make sure that the SGA package has been properly installed,
*and* that the CT-VOICE.DRV and the BLASTER.DRV drivers are the ones that
come with SGA and *not* the ones packaged with the Soundblaster card.

The SBTALKER program is a TSR (terminate-stay-resident) program that
requires approximately 200K of memory. If expanded memory is available,
SBTALKER will automatically load itself into expanded memory, leaving only
a 7K shell in conventional memory. FS, SBTALKER, and the SGA package *can*
all fit together in the remaining conventional memory.

The stated memory requirements to run all with all the functions of FS,
ASD, and SGA are a minimum of 590K free conventional memory. This is a
minimum, and thus if that is all you have free, you will not be able to
have large amounts of ASD memory available or SGA memory. You will have to
trade off between the two as to which is more important...all sounds and
little ASD scenery, or some sounds and lots of ASD scenery. With DOS 5.0
and other memory utilities, users have been able to get all sounds plus a
very high memory setting for ASD of 61000-static, 30000-dynamic, and 30
items.

SBTALKER will perform slower in expanded memory, but this is the only
practical way to run all of the programs at once.

Wrapping this one up! The above document was very helpful to me. Turns out it's all very simple when you know what you're doing!

For anyone else who might be stuck with this, you need to copy three files from your SoundBlaster install - 1) SBTALK.BAT, 2) SBTALKER.EXE and 3) REMOVE.EXE. Drop these into your root FS4 install directory (ie. C:\FLTSIM4\).

Before running Flight Sim, load SBTALKER into resident memory by running SBTALK from the FS4 install folder. Then run FS4. If you continue to have problems, make sure your sound control panel in the FS4 menu is set up correctly.

When finished with Flight Sim, run REMOVE.EXE in order to remove SBTALKER from resident memory.

The extract above suggests that all this is hardly worth the effort as the synthesised speech sounds terrible. I can confirm. It is terrible. But it makes me laugh too so that's something...

Trent

Dr.Sbaitso the pilot 😅 Interesting to learn of a software outside of Creative that actually used SBTalk.