Keeping and restoring vintage hardware should never go away, but hopefully this alternative will make the former more affordable.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Agreed!

@terrydaktyllus1320

Жыл бұрын

It will allow you to hit the "sweet spot" when it comes to the cheapest used retro hardware - before sbemu, the only way to get proper sound output in an MS-DOS game was to have a PC with an ISA slot and an appropriate sound card. Those are the PCs and motherboards that now sell for a premium price and are getting so old now that you probably have to start replacing blown capacitors on many of them. Now you can use sbemu to simply emulate ISA slot sound cards on a newer PC with no ISA slots.

@falcon-ng6sd

Жыл бұрын

@@terrydaktyllus1320 As an added bonus, you could put the money saved towards a powerhouse GPU for modern games!

@terrydaktyllus1320

Жыл бұрын

@@falcon-ng6sd That won't be happening. The last AAA game I bought was pre-2010 except for Fallout 4. Paying $80 a pop for "games as a service" "just another Unreal Engine asset flip" that will be finished after 18 months of buyng more DLC for it is not my definition of "fun". I am already sticking a GTX960 and two GTX750TI cards on eBay because NVIDIA is a heap of sh1t on Linux, which is the only OS I use since Windows 7 died anyway. No, sir. When mummy and daddy buy their gamer-brat an expensive new GPU for Christmas, I'll be there eagerly awaiting on eBay to buy their old AMD GPU at a bargain price - at least they work in Linux.

DOSBox is out there since 2002. So... You could always play DOS Games on modern PC's. You can even route the MIDI Music to Windows and using COOLSOFT Midi Mapper and MIDI Synth to load SFZ Banks to improve Music quality.

@RetroGameSpacko

Жыл бұрын

Yeah,i honestly dont get it either. There are also OPL emulators as midi devices. This seems to be really some nieche thing. I am 42 btw. I lived through the DOS era. Dosbox always felt like the real thing. Sure, if you insist on the least amount of emulation then this is nice for you. But saying this is a game changer? No. sorry.

@MasterFrag91

Жыл бұрын

I suspect the REAL point of this is that it allows us to use an SB emulator in REAL DOS, on modern bare metal systems. DOSBox may well be a thing, as are countless other emulation options, but having support on modern, bare metal systems means that it removes the need to run 20+ year old hardware to have the requisite support for ISA cards, and also the need for the increasingly expensive ISA sound cards in the first place. It's the difference between a fully emulated system in something like DOSBox, and only partial emulation on a modern DOS like FreeDOS. Additionally, combined with the extremely low (read: basically non-existent) overhead on something like FreeDOS vs Windows, means that you can likely use every bit of spare power for the best quality emulations of OPL2/OPL3 FM chips, as well as the best quality emulation of other needed hardware. Combine this with a memory resident version of MUNT, and you can basically cover 90% or more of the entire DOS library with one system, barring compatibility issues like games with logic tied to CPU speed.

@enosunim

Жыл бұрын

This means you can run DOS on modern PC instead of oldschool retro PC. There is also a PCem project which makes real emulation, not that dosbox visualization thing. But PCem is slow. If one can run DOS on real machine and manage somehow processor speed, that will be a game-changer. Even running in virtual machine like VirtualBox would be nice.

@Xmaster1990

Жыл бұрын

I was born in 90 and didn't have an own PC till I was 11 or so.. it sad that I missed most of the dos era

@Jabe_VeX

Жыл бұрын

@@Xmaster1990 born in 2005 here, I feel the same way except I missed out on the ENTIRE old internet

This also potentially opens up windows 95 games as well since the sound portion is now covered with this project. If we could do the same for true color graphics and glide interpretation on either the CPU side or a basic driver layer for graphics card then that is almost every base covered for vintage PC gaming.

@elphive42

Жыл бұрын

See, I would love to see someone put this together with a basic installer package for Windows 95 or 98, so you can run older OSes on modern PCs with as little needed tinkering as possible. 3.x is the most immediate possibility with this kind of a solution, of course, but there are a lot of 9x games that would benefit immensely from better accessibility on modern hardware.

Жыл бұрын

Googling a bit, it seems there was a software 3DFx emulator project done by some Russian(?) guy many-many years ago (search for "3Dfx Emulator v0.2 from ELZ SOFTWARE"). Unfortunately the download is unavailable now. But it would be an interesting feat to emulate a 3DFx card in a similar way as SBEMU does with the audio portion. Since there's no such thing as DOS driver for modern 3D cards to translate calls directly, I guess the easiest would be to just do software rendering on the CPU into hires SVGA with UNIVBE. For 2D there's VBEMP which does something similar to drive modern VGA adapters with vintage Windows versions. There's a Mesa3D software renderer for it, maybe OpenGLide can run on top of it somehow?

@SnakeBush

Жыл бұрын

Here me out. New games

@term-827

Жыл бұрын

@@SnakeBush Eh, yes and no. While new games just work out of the box if you aren't Bethesda, older games from around this era often don't get remade or rereleased which leaves them in a state where they become lost forever and there are still games from this period that haven't even been rereleased yet, like interstate '76 or the early MechWarrior games that are almost impossible to play. It's projects like this that help aid in the historical preservation efforts of these games otherwise they become lost to time.

@De-M-oN

Жыл бұрын

the majority of these run on your modern system with dgvoodoo2 (some might need a few compatibility flags)

Not clickbaity enough; try harder!

Came for the DOSBox vs native arguing in the comments. Wasn't disappointed. Or was.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

It’s all out war! I had no idea 😂

I love when a new open source project starts being used and promoted. But I'm having a hard time figuring out why this should be better than usin QEMU or DOSbox.

@PascalBrax

Жыл бұрын

@@1pcfred i remember going to the mall and paying like $60 for a Red Hat Linux box with 6 cd-rom inside. 😅

@1pcfred

Жыл бұрын

@@PascalBrax I bought a Red Hat 5 boxed set myself. I turned that into the first embedded Linux distro. It sucked so bad I threw it and it stuck in the wall. Never get the .0 release!

@xxnoxx-xp5bl

Жыл бұрын

Agreed - it's great to see an new emulation option out there, but DOS gaming hasn't been held back for decades. If this were for Windows 95/98 era games I'd be much more excited.

@BalokLives

Жыл бұрын

I came here to see if anyone has made this comment. I have been using DOSbox for years.

@andrewwatson4314

Жыл бұрын

Yeah DOSbox, does SB emulation and allows MSCDEX use for CD Rom games also

Can it emulate the legendary awe 32? there are many games where the unique music available to that setting have been gatekept. For example magic carpet will never sound close to its ps1 counterpart unless heard on an awe 32.

This makes me want to try to set up a small USB flash drive with FreeDOS and SBEMU. The games I played barely depended on SoundBlaster capabilities but I can see this being more excitement than having a DOSbox fork running in a window which I can close all the time.

@dh2032

Жыл бұрын

me too, never free unused, USB drive when you need one 😞

@BMPK

Жыл бұрын

Hipsters = full usbs XD

All hardware will eventually die. How can with keep it alive? Via emulation, software and/or hardware. From the perspective of a hardware collector and preservationist, this is an awesome project that I hope everyone will take into consideration when getting into the hobby. Vintage PC parts are really expensive to get a hold of nowadays so innovations like this will keep the community alive decades from now, especially with SBEMU and many other software and hardware projects being open source!

@dh2032

Жыл бұрын

sad but true as it integrating with the sound card (the bit that makes the sound noises, and even on moden systen there will plenty of head room, could not mix in some orthentic old timer pc sound play at tha prorate time Hard disc clicks jet engine fans at intense time, and anything else Pc make sounds come from old PC kit?

@syrus3k

Жыл бұрын

this is fine, as long as the schematics are kept alive the hardware can be recreated perfectly using FPGAs.. well, sort of fine.

How's the support for MIDI sound, I mean beyond the _basic_ sound blaster? In Windows 10 I use CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth with an AWE-32 soundfont. I can run it with with DOS Box it's like I'm playing Duke Nukem 3D with the soundcard I had in the '90s.

Only question, does this work in NTVDM? Sort of interesting that I came from the PCIE-PCI adaptor video - because one of the reasons I would want such an adaptor is because the main thing missing from DOS or NTVDM in a modern system was Sound Blaster support. I still couldn't use NTVDM now anyway due to the deletion of some graphics palettes from the modern graphics adaptors (EGA at least) but ya know, whatever.

Why is the audio crackling in Doom? Is there any way to use the USB or wireless Xbox or PlayStation controller?

I wasn't aware that we had problems emulating SoundBlaster 16 audio in 2023, but finding out we did and that it's no longer an issue is awesome. Some of my fondest memories are rooted in SB16 and Pentium 1/2 era gaming...back when games were released in a completed state, and you didn't have to worry about patches and updates.

@alexanderwald2046

Жыл бұрын

and DLCs 😂

@dude60415

Жыл бұрын

I miss that Era. Games were fully functional before the customer got in. No patches, no updates, no dlc, no bs. Games just worked!

@actuallynotsteve

Жыл бұрын

@@dude60415 You and me both, I loved knowing that everything I ever needed to care about was on the disc or cart already.

@chrisdobbins4436

Жыл бұрын

we did not have a problem we had dos box since 2002 it runs dox on windows many programs to help it as well try dos box with d-fend reloaded is very user friendly easy an you dont need a bootable usb

Жыл бұрын

@@dude60415 Except they didn't. If I run Duke Nukem 3D off of the CD the games crashes near the sewer part in the 2nd level, there are several bugs regarding difficulty levels and enemy behaviours in Blood without the patches, to get my 3DFX Voodoo 3 working with Need for Speed III I need to apply some community fix, otherwise it's software mode only. And God forbid you try to play some early 90's or late 80's games with a slightly too fast cpu.

So what makes this any different to DOSBox or VDMSound, amongst many others?

@explorer9049

5 ай бұрын

I'm late towards the party to replying about this but... You really shouldn't care about this unless you are dealing with hardware thats old enough not to have an ISA slot. good luck running DOSbox on a pentium 4 or on low end Core 2 Duo. i'd rather stare at paint drying on grass than to deal with that.

Apparently you actually boot the PC into a DOS and run the old games directly on the metal. It wasn't clear whether it was all running in a virtual machine (which of course it can as well). That's impressive.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

That’s right! This is native DOS, with sound, on a modern PC :-) Glad we can keep playing DOS games “on the metal” for some more years to come :-)

@laci272

Жыл бұрын

@@jamesfmackenzie why is that better than dosbox? genuinely asking

@n0xx295

Жыл бұрын

@@jamesfmackenzie your still gonna run intro problems due to the modern hardware being many orders of magnitude faster than the hardware most DOS games where conceived for, and that renders a huge chunk of games completely unplayable unless you also severely underclock your CPU... and that may also cause system instability because modern CPUs are simply not built to run at 33/66MHz (which is already too fast for most 80s games).

@OhFishyFish

Жыл бұрын

Basically more hassle than Dosbox for the same experience.

@OhFishyFish

Жыл бұрын

@@laci272 It's not.

Honestly I don't see the appeal. In a world in which DOSBox exists and offers support for SB, SB32, AWE64, GUS,...., bothering to run it natively is just redundant.

@lordwiadro83

Жыл бұрын

For me it's a nice addition to my DOS VirtualBox VM. Not everyone wants to use the pseudo-DOS that is embedded in DosBox. I prefer to have a custom built system in a VM. Also, with a VM you run things on the actual CPU, not software emulated. Performance is so much better.

@firmyth

Жыл бұрын

@@lordwiadro83 I really disagree with this. You 100% are able to customize dosbox to your hearts content. Hardware these days can easily run any dos program or dos in disbox itself without breaking a sweat. Running it directly on the cpu or emulated has such a marginal difference as to be unnoticeable

@lordwiadro83

Жыл бұрын

@@firmyth Nothing is more customizable than a system that you build yourself. And good luck running late DOS games at high resolutions in DosBox.

@firmyth

Жыл бұрын

@@lordwiadro83 what do you mean? With disbix you customize with a few commands- with a physical box you have e to actually find, buy, build, troubleshoot hardware etc... and in dosbox I have never had an issue running at any resolution- not to mention dos programs would never run higher than say 1024x768 anyway... not sure what kind of gotcha you thought you were saying there

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

I love DOSBox. But I also love real hardware 😎

does it have live save / restore states ? and run on Linux ? or Virtualbox with DOS needed ?

does it support direct hardware calls to Voodoo 2 or just 3dfx driver support? asking for EF2000 support lol.

is there an SBEMU equivalent for graphics? if i run colonel's bequest or any other cga/ega (and in rare case, VGA like mega man), the graphics don't work. cga/ega don't show anything on screen, just the prompt from where the game was executed, but i hear the music in the background, so the game is running. in megaman, i get garbage on screen, even on VGA, however, quest for glory 3 in VGA works just fine through and through. windows 3.x works, but the graphics are wonky. apparently every video card and GPU is capable of base VGA, but a bug is what's causing this issue and manufacturers simply did nothing to fix it because there was no real need for it.

Does the chainsaw sound in Doom work properly with this? If you were “firing” the chainsaw while you pressed the end level button a cool chainsaw sound would play. It doesn’t work in any of the newer Doom versions I’ve tried over the years.

cool indeed, but can it read microphone inputs or line in or is it just output only?

This is a good alternative to DOSBox and other similar emulators, but I hear some crackling and scratching happening in the sound, particularly in DOOM. I wonder what's causing that.

@TheVicar

Жыл бұрын

That's the setup emulating having a mouse loose inside your PC, gnawing away at things This was a common issue in the 1980's and 1990's

@explorer9049

5 ай бұрын

@@TheVicar and don't forget about that message you sometimes get on the computer. i remember it had something do with a high ranking military officer named General Failure and reading something called Drive A: or C: If i recalled correctly?

Cool. When you play doom at the end with sound, where is the constant background crackle coming from? Is that SBEMU or just how it was recorded?

are there any CPU killers for DOS win 3.x? we still have the issue of games running too fast :(

May I ask if SBEMU works on the HP T5710 thin client? Thank you

Dumb question, I have audio coming out of my HDMI cable from my Nvidia graphics card. Would SBEMU work? (I assume not given description says Intel chipset needed). If not I hope that becomes available.

@falcon-ng6sd

Жыл бұрын

Modern GPUs do have HD Audio controllers used for sending audio data to HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, however I'm not sure if that gets configured by the BIOS/UEFI initialisation code during POST. It may be possible to use some Linux GPU driver code to get this going under DOS - could be an interesting project!

No time, does it emulate other stuff? Like specific Adlib cards, or SB cards? Roland stuff, or even Ultrasound or Yamaha XG stuff?

But does it emulate the MPU-401 MIDI interface? And what about Gravis Ultrasound?

Now i have FreeDOS installed on my Acer Aspire One D270.Can i configuration the sbemu via Ubuntu livecd with sudo thunar (root) ?

@jamesfmackenzie

6 ай бұрын

You should be able to, but it’s probably easier to use text editor tools directly in FreeDOS 😎

Is it working on nForce 1/2/3? Its always been extemely hard if not impossible to get PCI soundcards working in DOS with nForce. If this works it opens up the world of Socket 939 nForce3..

What exactly is the breakthrough that was made? It would seem like emulating a sound card from the 90s would be trivial. Was it just not made before due to low demand of such emulation, or why?

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

In DOS there is no driver layer - games are programmed to hit the hardware directly. So it is not easy to implement something like this - I have a lot of admiration for this project and how it achieves a good level of compatibility :-)

Wasn't SBEMU the sound blaster emulation program of the original Gravis Ultrasound back in the early 90s? The one that needed EMS and therefore was not really "that" compatible with a some games? (not that native Ultrasound support didn't sound better by a long shot anyways - 8bit mono or in the case of the SB16 16bit 2channel vs. 16 bit 32 channel stereo)

Will SBEMU work on the most common onboard sound card like Realtek High Definition Audio? In the past, MPXPlayer already allowed high quality wave playback on Realtek HD Audio.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Currently the supported hardware is Intel ICH/HDA, nForce audio, VIA VT82C686/VT8233 and SB Live/Audigy. SBEMU already leverages the MPXPlay drivers, so if Realtek support is already in there, perhaps it will be added soon 😎

@jekunP

Жыл бұрын

​​​@@jamesfmackenzie Hello James! I've recently tested and confirmed that SBEMU works in Realtek HD Audio. Realtek HD Audio Cards are based from Intel HDA

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

@@jekunP that’s really great! Glad you were able to get this working :-)

Can this emulate modules like the Gravis Ultrasound?

Can anyone help me with Strike Commander. I have to disconnect all game controllers and play it only with mouse in DosBox because when I have a controller connected to the computer the cursor drifts. I have looked all over the internet for a solution but the problem always shows up no matter what I’ve tried. I wonder if this new program will help.

Keep up the great work, James! This could fix the shortage of both FPGAs and retro parts in the near future, and prevent people from having to drop a load of money on new equipment.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Thanks Lawnie! 100% agree - this opens up options, and that can only be a good thing 😎

@Thornskade

Жыл бұрын

I don't quite understand what's going on. Why aren't people just using DOSBox?

@RodBeauvex

Жыл бұрын

@@Thornskade This actually sounds more akin to the long abandoned VDMSound.

@Thornskade

Жыл бұрын

@@RodBeauvex I don't even understand what you're trying to tell me

@AyratHungryStudent

Жыл бұрын

@@Thornskade Exactly what I was thinking. It's like some people are living in a parallel universe where dosbox doesn't exist. Edit: just googled it and found a reddit post shitting on this clickbait video.

Cool, but how is it any different from DOSBox? Sound Blaster emulation has been baked into that for years now.

I wonder if it supports the Roland MPU401...? Was a MIDI Device for gaming back in the day...

Not sure; why not to use DosBox or build a virtual machine with Win9x / ME / XP on a Win7 PC (c:\users\\virtual machines) ?

But what about controllers if our Modern Machine only has USB (which is highly likely)?

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Yes, unfortunately DOS support for USB controllers isn't so good 😞I'm looking for a good solution but none found yet

@MrAlan1828

Жыл бұрын

There is none. Do you see any usb controllers now on any hardware platform? maybe zip drives, parallel, serial, sound simple low speeds. best option is to get a USB docking solution. You're better off running dosbox if you want the full dos experience with MIDI emulation too

Nice, this is fantastic news. Hopefully it'll work well with some of the older thin client boxes that are cheap to pick up.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Agreed! I have a mini Lenovo ThinkCenter PC (m93p Tiny) and it works great!

@EvanBThompson

Жыл бұрын

Plan to try on HP T610, Was going to sell as only useful up to now for DOS gaming with DOSBOX or similar.

This is a great advancement, but it won't kill the old DOS Gaming PC's. A lot of people like playing on original hardware, and not emulators. That said, there is only so much of the old hardware around, and it is increasingly becoming unreliable, and as you mentioned, very expensive. Thanks for the great video.

@reminon

7 ай бұрын

I would rather emulate a sound cards and play on a cheap and available motherboard, then spend out the ass for proper Era accurate hardware. It's still bare metal; it's just the sound. Another option is to add an isa card with the lpc bus.

There has to be some delay as it has to translate the sound, right? But since it's so basic, maybe it's only 1-5 ms?

@RedSaint83

Жыл бұрын

That said, I'm really happy that this exists. What a feat. FreeDOS is amazing in itself, but SBemu adds another layer of awesomeness.

would this work on a dell mini 9?

Good with alternatives, but I will stick with my dos rig.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

There is always a place for real old hardware. I have lots 😎

What's with all the crackle on the DOOM audio? That didn't sound "high quality".

but how is this different from using a well configured dosbox setup?

How is this different from DosBox?

Can you do a video explaining why this is better than dosbox? I thought sound blaster was pretty well emulated

@delphicdescant

Жыл бұрын

Every time I've set up an emulator for DOS or even Win95 games, I've eventually given up trying to get rid of audio stutter. It's not that it's unplayable, but every so often you'll hear a stutter, and it kind of just gets to a point when you don't want to put up with it and have spent literal days trying to fix it, trying different emulators, asking questions to empty forums, trying everything under the sun...

@pin00ch

Жыл бұрын

@@delphicdescant I never had an issue tbh. I first installed Doom on my 486 DX2 machine with SB16 and still play on DOSBox. I totally dont see an issue.

@bakatoroi

Жыл бұрын

@@delphicdescant Have you tried Dosbox-X? I don't understand why this project is so overlooked. It works great in many games I tried, including sound obviously.

@delphicdescant

Жыл бұрын

​@@pin00ch Yeah it's great that you haven't had trouble with that specific game, on your specific system.

@terrydaktyllus1320

Жыл бұрын

Who said it was "better than DOSBox"? It's simply a way of playing DOS games more on native hardware than using emulation - whether one is better than the other is purely down to personal taste in most cases.

i like how when you load up doom it says free of charge but next to that it say suggested retail price $9.00 must be a later release of the game

IMHO retro gaming hardware is not just about the ability of running retro games. It's also the nostalgia, the memory lane of playing the old game on the old hardware. A time capsule if you will. Much like when you play on an original console and not an emulator. Like having audio from a SID chip instead of the software emulating the hardware of the SID chip. Having an old computer, the experience of old mechanical keyboards, the analog CRT charm, the noises an old computer makes, the smell of 3M floppy disk labels, it flies you (back) to a world of its own. No amount emulation or bridging the gaps between new systems and old software can substitute this, but this is just my two cents.

@catvaska1627

Жыл бұрын

in addition to retro gaming, retro components and old computers are part of the interior, a collection moment, museum exhibits, investments, and just pleasant moments of nostalgia. No emulator will do this!

@brugges

Жыл бұрын

... and once you're into the game, you forget all about it. It's all in your head guys. To me it's all about the games, the rest is just a waste of place and money.

How does this beat DOSBox(-X) in terms of playing emulated games? With DOSBox, you have all the rendering stuff you need for graphics, excellent SB support; and in X, really solid MT32 support with the ability to install sound fonts. I’m not really sure the problem this is trying to solve is a genuine one. For that matter, VMWare & Qemu both handle soundblaster well.

can you or someone please provide exact step by step process how to setup the bootable usb stick with Freedos and system config files? or ideally upload the whole setup in zipped package so can be downloaded and extracted and its good to go ? I assume you put DOS games on the same USB stick? as if the PC has Windows XP it would be running NTFS file system which the DOS system from the USB stick wont be able to see. thanks in advance.

@jamesfmackenzie

2 ай бұрын

I put together some setup instructions (and a video). You can find them here: www.jamesfmackenzie.com/2023/03/22/how-to-install-sbemu-on-bootable-usb-stick/ Good luck! :-)

So how is it different from DOS Box?

Yes, but does it also play PC speaker sounds?

Does it work on Computing Stick PC?

What if you have Realtek audio chip, or an ASUS PCIx sound card? (Or better yet, an SB PCIe sound card.) My understanding is that the Intel audio chipset exposes the old IRQ that the ISA bus has access to, so that is why it works so well on modern PCs.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

I haven’t explored too much with sound cards - yet! My feeling is that it’ll be harder to make work vs video cards - as they often rely on quirky DMA features etc. do you have experience on this? Would love to hear more!

@Kizoky.

Жыл бұрын

I've tried it on my PC, it has Realtek It seems it works, but it's a hit or miss Heretic worked fine, but Shadow Warrior froze my PC

It's a cool project but I'll stick to DOSBOX given it has many other benefits such as MT-32 emulation if you use certain forks, shaders, savestates, etc. and of course you can multi task.

@Galimah

Жыл бұрын

I use RetroArch

Er, wasn't there a program called dosbox which does wonders for old dos games?

I spent so many hours playing dos games, Dune 2 and anything battle of Arakis related is my jam. When you were playing C&C I had some good nostalgio with the "yessir, affirmative, youuuuu got it, boarding!"

I grew up in the 90's and had a few consoles but my first love was the potential of pc gaming to the point of obsession. Problem was for many of these old games i didn't have the patience of an adult to take my time, now that i do i find myself really enjoying many old titles in both a sense of nostalgia and a new sense of adventure and purpose to complete these dusty indie titles (most of all when it's 1 am and everyone is asleep and its just me, the game and some crickets outside).

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

I feel exactly the same! It’s a great feeling to rediscover an old game and fully experience it 😎

@krashd

Жыл бұрын

I love that feeling of nostalgia when you hear the theme tune to something like Fury of the Furries and immediately you are 13 again for a few moments with the smell of floppy disk labels fresh in your mind.

@BMPK

Жыл бұрын

@@krashd says "furries"

Finally a solution! I posted a video 2 years ago showing another way of getting sound in dos. But this way is so much easier and works flawlessly! Thanks for the video!

@jamesfmackenzie

10 ай бұрын

No worries! Glad you enjoyed it!

Will this be incorporated into Dosbox?

Thanks for your video. I'm trying it on my HP Vectra 400VL (i815+ICH1) and its working as SB Pro (default settings) I will see if I can setup it also as SB16.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Awesome! Glad this works!! 😎

Does this mean the Doom I have been hearing for 20 years on Dobox, all the source ports and the newest revision on Steam are just emulated sound?

I tried it on my old Pentium 3 box with Intel 915 chipset but couldn't get any sound. On Vogons I gathered that only up to ICH4 is supported, but not ICH6. I hope it'll get support in a future release, too.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

I’ve successfully used this on a Z87 Haswell PC (Intel PCH with High Definition Audio) - so much newer machines than ICH4 are supported 😎

@Shifter-1040ST

Жыл бұрын

@@jamesfmackenzie Oh well, Update: I got it to work. Turns out I had to set "Plug and Play OS" to "NO" in BIOS, cuz DOS shirley ain't Plug'nPlay, duh! Works perfectly fine now!

@falcon-ng6sd

Жыл бұрын

@@Shifter-1040ST I remember needing to do this in order to get an Ethernet controller working under DOS as well (imaging PCs with Symantec Ghost). When the option is set to Yes, the BIOS only configures PCI devices needed for booting, such as VGA and ATA/SATA - the rest is left up to the OS and its drivers. If you set it to No, all devices get configured before loading the bootloader.

I have no clue how you got the .exe because when I download it there's no .exe?

Oh wow just tried this on a core i7 laptop. Same method, freedos and now I have a bootable usb pen drive loaded with dos games and almost all of them have full dos sound.😮 Thanks for the video that's pretty incredible. I had no idea this existed

Does it work with the wing commander series? That is the true test.

how is this different then just running dosbox? I don't get it

I've got an old Pentium3 for DOS, but it's showing its age. A modern PC would still have the downside of not letting me have my floppy disk drives, but that's not an insurmountable obstacle once I back everything up. What I'm kinda curious about is how well SBEMU reacts with SLOWDOWN. I use SLOWDOWN for a small handful of very old games that would otherwise see the P3 as too fast, and for the most part it works well on bare hardware. I'm curious if SBEMU would have trouble mixing with it, considering it's a software solution.

@phattjohnson

Жыл бұрын

You can get a 3.5" USB floppy drive for cheap these days.. Unless you mean a 5.25" drive.. good luck in that case :P

@lasskinn474

Жыл бұрын

yeah the (non)compatibility with slowdown apps would be an interesting thing to know, maybe slowdown could be added to the program itself so the audio wouldn't get affected

@BringMayFlowers

Жыл бұрын

​@@phattjohnsonBut those are USB devices inherently, which DOS has no support for.

@bbertram2

Жыл бұрын

@@BringMayFlowers I believe i seen a USB driver floating around but maybe only for a memory stick...

Doesn’t that background process use up some available conventional memory?

Also another question, if you put free dos on a usb stick. Why can't someone just make a PCIe card that has a memory chip so you can do the same thing just make it boot able so you can place free dos on it and have it boot auto.

@MrAlan1828

Жыл бұрын

usb stick vs pcie card cost! a few bucks vs $$ you can do the math

So does it mean my ThinkPad X220 (2011, Core i5 2nd Gen) can finally play DOOM and Duke on FreeDOS with audio?!

What about GM, MT23 / CM32L, GUS and Tandy sound (using cards like Orpheus II and Tandy Nano inside something like a Pentium 233 MMX system), Voodoo (2) support, speed sensitive games and so on? FreeDOS also has compatibility problems of its own (already tried it for DOS games). About speed sensitive games, I used different slowdown programs under real MS-DOS and they all had their issues. I still have to use these for some games as my 233MMX can only be slowed down to 386 DX-25 levels (using SetMul and Phil's 136 in 1 guide). DOSBox cycle settings are also problematic. I like using Ultima 7 Part 1 as a test and having played it back in the day, it never felt right under DOSBox. In the end all solutions have their downsides and I find old hardware with ISA and PCI slots to be the most versitile hardware solution. It also depends on how much you are really into these old games besides DOOM and similar meme games. DOSBox would be a replacement if the speed and other potential issues can be solved. I actually run it on a laptop with VGA out, hooking it up to my CRT Monitor and forcing 320x200@140Hz so it displays real 320x200 instead of using doublescan, something I can't do on my DOS PC.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

100% agree with this sentiment. There is no single solution that works for all. Real hardware, DOSBox, SBEMU etc all have their place For me, the more options the better. I use them all! 😂

That didn’t sound right. The adlib sounds in the opening screen of Doom were all messed up and the sound during the game had all those crackles.

what about disk drives and floppies ?

Does the audio get stuck old skool style? ;)

Cool, but from the review it's not clear why I should use this rather than DosBox which also emulates sound cards. What are the advantages? Also, if the game supports midi I'm able to hook up my Roland SC-55 to DosBOX. Can you do this here as well? I guess that would have to be a freedos feature maybe.. not sure 😊

@MrAsmontero

Жыл бұрын

Me too, I dont get it.

@championman7992

Жыл бұрын

Dosbox has input lag, stutters and needs a very power cpu. This is limited but bare metal. Cant compare both.

@retroandgaming

Жыл бұрын

​@@championman7992 thanks for clearifying. About 2 min into the video he was working on configuration in windows and my brain thought he was running freedos inside windows. Always good with more alternatives:)

@MrAsmontero

Жыл бұрын

@@championman7992 I can't relate to that experience if i'm honest

What about Roland sound?

Waiting for the first review of this. Would be interested to see how much memory the driver occupies since could be an issue for memory sensitive games.

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

It's pretty good! After running SBEMU, I still have 602KB of conventional memory free (28KB used)

@syrus3k

Жыл бұрын

@@jamesfmackenzie that's incredibly good.

This absolutely does not make old hardware obsolete, for many reasons: 1. EFI systems may not be fully IBM compatible, which means bad news under DOS, Windows NT (2000, XP, 7, 10, 11, etc.) uses a virtual machine where the DOS program has no direct hardware access, EFI systems also do not support the floppy drive interface, and DOS is severely limited without a floppy drive or hardware floppy emulator. If you want a BIOS system, you're looking at a motherboard that is 10 years old or more. 2. For many people, historically accurate experiences are an end in themselves, including the experience of building and using the computer. Sure, I could use a floppy emulator in my Athlon, but I have real floppy drives in both 3.5" and 5.25". I could use a generic $10 SATA optical drive with an adapter, but I scored a very early DVD-ROM drive made for a beige Mac with an old-school ATAPI interface and a '90s aesthetic. I could use any random 4:3 LCD monitor with a VGA output, but I use a 21" Trinitron that weighs over 80 pounds. I could just have the Athlon and be done with it, but I'm also building a 200 MHz Pentium Pro machine. 3. Some games have specific hardware requirements other than a Sound Blaster, like a processor that runs in a certain range of acceptable speed (like Wing Commander and Descent), weird video modes, etc. SBEMU won't help you with these, you need a computer built to a specific set of specs (or DOSBox). 4. Driver software like Sound Blaster emulation cut into conventional memory in DOS, which is extremely precious--you get 640 kB, and some of that will be used by the system itself even with all the tricks for loading as much as possible "high". One of the rules for my Athlon build was that it had to have an ISA slot for its sound card for this reason. Some DOS games (especially around 1991-93 when budgets and scope started ballooning but DOS extenders were not yet popular) requited 600kB of conventional memory or even more! Sound Blaster emulation is a *notorious* memory hog and will make some games unplayable. 5. The primary users of this will likely be running old hardware anyway, it will just open up full DOS support to a larger range of old hardware--there were millions and millions of late '90s/early '00s consumer-grade PCs with nothing but motherboard AC97 for audio, and they can be turned into (limited) DOS rigs with SBEMU. It will let your great aunt's old eMachines run Doom (though it won't let it run Wing Commander, TIE Fighter, or Ultima VII). It isn't really worth much of anything on a modern EFI machine. 6. DOSBox already exists and runs old DOS titles *far* better than they could possibly run natively on modern hardware. You can create custom virtual machines to simulate very specific hardware configs required to optimally run finicky titles like Ultima VII and TIE Fighter. It runs under Linux and Mac, it corrects for aspect ratio on widescreen monitors and pixel-scales to an arbitrarily large resolution, it is much easier to configure than a real DOS machine. Yeah, it's cool, but it's not a revolution, and it's not a replacement for my Athlon, let alone a 386 or 486.

Doesn't dosbox or qemu ate able to do the same?

It sounds just like my childhood !!! Thankyou !!

That C&C music sent shivers down my spine! Nostalgia overload.

A bit behind on this video, but I'll comment anyway. SBEMU is a DOS Gaming PC killer? So was VDMSound, DOSBox, WHDLoad and Bochs. I am sure I missed a few others, but point stands; when these tools released each claimed to end the retro PC idea, but those retro PCs are still being built and bought. For us that don't currently have the money though, or willing to be seen in your local thrift store, recycle center or dump; these tools are great. While attempting to get to the "bare metal" as closely as possible to play these old DOS gems is the best possible path for an enjoyable experience, SBEMU at least for me, is not my choice and doesn't have the feature set for my personal vast library of DOS games requires. I have managed to hold on to 99% of the DOS software I had growing up. My father was also an avid video game nerd and we both amassed a large library of games and his occupation the US Air Force afforded us the opportunity to even invest in some things the average gamer has. I also have a set library of installed games, ready to be used with DOSBox and its flavors. I am currently on DOSBox-ECE and so far, for me it, it is the best flavor I have used this far. I am on Arch Linux and couldn't be happier. I have watched from the VOGONS board and have had interest a slight bit in the SBEMU project. However, I don't think I will actually be using it. No Roland Sound Canvas support is a problem for me. I prefer the DOS environment DOSBox emulates to allow me to setup the MIDI and OPL of Rolland instead; All my MIDI is piped through it and sounds much better. No Gravis support. One day, while poking around a computer shop, the owner (whom I got to know as helped me, with my father tagging along, pick parts for my first computer that I would build on my own. 1992 and 10 years old was a good year for me) He had an extra Sound Canvas set he suggested I take home and try using. I already had a couple games that were designed with it in mind. I had it for a few weeks and was about to return it, but a series of unfortunate events for that owner forced him to close shop and we lost contact with him. So I kept it. For me, I don't think I will be using SBEMU as a daily driver any time soon. What I am excited about is that Sound Blaster emulation might be more efficient than what is in the DOSBOX main code that it borrowed from anyway. It has already made its way back into DOSBox Staging. In the end, what is going to win over a user's preference is the ease of setup and joy they get out of it. My computer is not 8 years old. I haven't kept up on the update path I was supposed to, half those 8 years has been spent in poor job prospects, pandemic, job loss and inflation. This next year however, I am building a new computer and might be switching to PCem to emulate hardware and get closer to a "real machine". Why am I doing this as I mentioned you can still get that old hardware? Space. I don't live in a large enough place yet. Also in Las Vegas, most of the retro hardware is gone and the dump doesn't allow people to sift through it.

@LovelyAlanna

Жыл бұрын

the nostalgia and fun of playing with the real metal will always be there, but if there's one software that's made me feel like it's a DOS Gaming PC Killer it's PCem, the support and capabilities it has are just out of this world

@championman7992

Жыл бұрын

Both PCem and DosBox have input lag. I play action games, so a bare metal solution like sbemu is godsend.

@championman7992

Жыл бұрын

Having said that I love PCem because of all the flexibility it affords for win95, win98se even dos specially with 3DC.

@JamesRichardsPlays

Жыл бұрын

@@championman7992 No doubt. Bare metal is the best solution, but not available to everyone. A stronger CPU I have noticed with DOSBox allows for twitch responses. So far, with my setup, I haven't noticed much in the way of lag. I am on an i5-660K, no overclocking and low latency RAM. But, I am also on an Arch Linux system for the last year and a half, so... that may also have something to do with it. Once I am employed though, I would like to invest in a machine for DOS gaming. We will see ;)

@LovelyAlanna

Жыл бұрын

@@championman7992 I've yet to see any input lag in either of those, that being said I'm rocking an 11th gen i9, so I'm sure that's got something to do with it

That's pretty cool actually! Thanks for sharing! But I hear a nasty high frequency noise on your recording - what's with that?

@jamesfmackenzie

4 ай бұрын

Yeah, it was my fault - I got my recording levels wrong (microphone vs line-in). The actual sound quality is great 😎

@zloboslav_

4 ай бұрын

@@jamesfmackenzie I'm glad, I'm definitely gonna try it, as I'm getting afraid of using my old machines when I haven't replaced the caps yet...

Could it be run from Windows?

Does this work on native dos on an older machine ?

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

I've tried it on my HP T5710 thin client (800MHz Transmeta CPU) and it works reasonably well. On older machine, it may struggle due to the CPU overhead of SBEMUs software emulation. Good luck!

Can... I build the UDM out of a new PC now?

how do you download this? dont see any files on gethab

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

I made a separate video on how to setup/install this: How To Install SBEMU on a Bootable USB Stick kzread.info/dash/bejne/pJthxctyZ6eqn9o.html Enjoy!

Apart from DOOM and Duke Nukem, there is no sound anywhere. Wolfenstein 3d, Spear of Destiny, Flashback, Black Thorne, Warlords 2, Warcraft 2 - sound is not detected.

Retro PCs won't die until there's a program to turn your monitor into a CRT.

@3rdEyeWide

Жыл бұрын

"Love me lovely cathode-ray, mother me in your glow" - Regurgitator _Happiness_

@caligoclarus

Жыл бұрын

You need an adapter, not a program.

@migovas1483

Жыл бұрын

@@caligoclarus indeed, miss those days looking at the pixels on the CRT monitor, there was magic there.

@beardsntools

Жыл бұрын

Nah I don't really have much nostalgia about these awful CRT monitors, they are bad for eyes, awful for recording. Nothing good about them. The only thing I always liked about CRT monitor was that moment when old cheap 14 inch crt changes resolutions. I like that effect. Same for the old harddrive.. I never liked just how loud they are, but I like the noise it makes when it spins up and that head clicking when it's counting ram, but after that it should just STFU, or make noise only when it seeks, no that loud spinning noise platter makes. Someone made the hdd click emulator.. but that's just not it, someone needs to make a device that would make the spinup noise.. it wouldn't be too hard, maybe I will make one to use with the CF card. But yeah for me I pretty much only care about the tower itself minus the original noisy and unreliable hdd.

@thewhyzer

Жыл бұрын

@BeardsNTools Variable resolutions look best on CRTs. Flatscreen only display their native resolutions well, while for CRTs every supported resolution was "native". Old games also require aspect correction on new monitors, which screws up the pixel art as it can't be done lossless.

A good idea, but those github pages are source code. Where are binaries for it?

Nice! This gives me some ideas for using a few PCs I have kicking around to natively run DOS games nicely, maybe for a LAN party 🤔

Does this work in ms-dos6.22?

@jamesfmackenzie

7 ай бұрын

Yep! It works great! (of course, so long as SBEMU supports your sound hardware)

HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME! I haven't heard of this yet; I just hit the Sub button Awesome Video! Gotta figure out how to set this up within my Retroarch possiblty

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the sub!

So it's a sbemu for Intel onboard sound only?

@jamesfmackenzie

Жыл бұрын

It also works on nForce/VIA chipsets, and also with Sound Blaster Live/Audigy cards. More details here: www.jamesfmackenzie.com/2023/03/22/how-to-install-sbemu-on-bootable-usb-stick/

Did you try Ultima 7?

God I love hearing that FM sound for the midi music instead of the crappy awe32 soundfonts we usually hear