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A21p: Music (OPL) under DOS, how exactly?

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tinue
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A21p: Music (OPL) under DOS, how exactly?

#1 Post by tinue » Sun May 09, 2021 8:45 am

I got myself an old A21p from an auction site. I want to use this machine for DOS, and nothing else (I have a basket full of T42s for all of the other older operating systems, including OS/2).
The disk was broken and I had to use a newer 160GB one from Samsung, so I still installed Windows 98 to get FAT32. However, I changed the settings to only boot to DOS.

I am now struggling with getting the sound right. After installing the older 4.12 audio driver, instead of the newer 5.12 one, I have the necessary utility on the disk (cwcdos.exe). So far I only tried two games: Planet X works with both sound FX and Music, so this is ok. Doom on the other hand only has FX (I tried both Soundblaster and AdLib in the setup). The music starts and then rapidly gets quieter until it is barely audible. Even when cranking FX down to almost zero, music up to full (both in the game), and then setting the overall volume to maximum with the volume-up key, I can barely hear anything.

Does anyone know what is going on here?

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Re: A21p: Music (OPL) under DOS, how exactly?

#2 Post by dr_st » Sun May 09, 2021 9:05 am

So it's working, but too quiet?

Are you using the built-in speakers or external speakers/headphones? I wonder if there is a hardware fault somewhere which may affect specific channels and mono/stereo setups.

I suggest to try more games to get a larger sample size.
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tinue
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Re: A21p: Music (OPL) under DOS, how exactly?

#3 Post by tinue » Sun May 09, 2021 1:35 pm

With Doom it is too quiet, and with Planet-X it works fine. This is using the internal speakers.
It "feels" more like a software problem than hardware. But I agree: I should do more tests with different games or possibly testing tools.

Gui-gui59210
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Re: A21p: Music (OPL) under DOS, how exactly?

#4 Post by Gui-gui59210 » Wed Oct 12, 2022 6:10 am

I also had similar symptoms at the level of the crystal audio chip under DOS,

For my part it affected the sound under the game Alone in the dark 1, indeed, when playing the audio track under DOS Only and not under Windows 98.

I had a spitting sound that occurred when the audio track was played by the player when the laser came on I wondered where this could be coming from, and it turns out that the culprit is the port mini-Pci !
In reality, the Intel 10/100 card itself creates this problem, if it is installed in the mini PCI port, or if this port is empty, this problem will appear !

However, if you use the 3com 10/100 card, hated by owners of the A2Xp series for its driver problems in particular.... Then everything is fine, no more spitting when playing CD audio tracks under DOS !
At first I thought the audio hiss produced during CD playback but it is nothing in the end.
Maybe it can bring you some improvements. :)

tinue
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Re: A21p: Music (OPL) under DOS, how exactly?

#5 Post by tinue » Wed Oct 12, 2022 6:31 am

Thanks for your comment! My A21p died shortly after I had written this post, so I can't verify whether this helps or not.
I could later score a 390E model (with intact hinges), and there the audio works as expected. This machine has no ethernet at all, so your analysis is most likely correct.

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