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FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 16. Jun 2017, 13:47
by graffy
Hello,

I'm currently working on getting FreeDOS to run some old games in a VirtualBox VM, and I can't quite figure out how to get the audio working. At first, I figured it was FreeDOS's problem, but I've tested the same iso under qemu and everything works fine. For the FreeDOS VM, I'm using the PulseAudio driver and emulating a SoundBlaser16. I've tried ALSA, but with no luck. I'd really prefer to use VirtualBox rather than QEMU or DosBOX since both depend on SDL, which doesn't play well with multi-monitor configs...

Any suggestions?

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 16. Jun 2017, 13:52
by socratis
Moving to "Other Guests" from "Linux Hosts".

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 16. Jun 2017, 16:10
by mpack
Please provide a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 17. Jun 2017, 15:36
by graffy
See attached.

Thanks.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 17. Jun 2017, 17:45
by mpack
I'm afraid that we only support VirtualBox here. You are not using VirtualBox, you're using the Ubuntu fork. You need to either go to the Ubuntu forums for their support, or install the actual, official version of VirtualBox. Then confirm that you still have a problem.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 17. Jun 2017, 22:02
by michaln
graffy wrote:I'm currently working on getting FreeDOS to run some old games in a VirtualBox VM, and I can't quite figure out how to get the audio working. At first, I figured it was FreeDOS's problem, but I've tested the same iso under qemu and everything works fine. For the FreeDOS VM, I'm using the PulseAudio driver and emulating a SoundBlaser16. I've tried ALSA, but with no luck. I'd really prefer to use VirtualBox rather than QEMU or DosBOX since both depend on SDL, which doesn't play well with multi-monitor configs...

Any suggestions?
There's no such thing as "DOS audio", just like there's no such thing as "DOS graphics". DOS does provide any audio support, everything is done on application basis. So unless you can describe specifically what you're running and what's happening, there's nothing to say.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 20. Jun 2017, 00:24
by graffy
I'll try the other version of VirtualBox and see if that helps. Regarding "DOS audio", I was referring to the audio settings in the VM - not anything specific to the FreeDOS environment.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 20. Jun 2017, 03:20
by graffy
Installed virtualbox (amd64) and tried the FreeDOS vm again. Same effect. Same audio settings.

Attached is the log file.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 20. Jun 2017, 09:32
by michaln
I'll repeat myself. There's no such thing as "DOS audio". If you can't tell us exactly what you're trying to do, what you're expecting to happen and what's happening instead, you might as well be talking to yourself because it's just as effective.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 21. Jun 2017, 02:25
by graffy
I think there's an assumption at play here that's not making sense to one of us. I'm not trying to achieve some sort of "DOS audio" as if it were a thing itself. I just want soundblaster audio to function when I run FreeDOS. To achieve that, I set the VM audio emulation to SoundBlaster16 / PulseAudio. Then, in FreeDOS, I made sure the soundblaster environment variable (which provides DOS software the hardware DMI / interrupt / port, etc) was set.

Chances are, the problem is in the virtual machine settings or in the Linux host audio stack, which is historically been problematic. That said, I've gotten SoundBlaster audio to run fine under QEMU, so it seems more likely that the probelm is with VirtualBox specifically, than anything else.

All that said, I don't believe I've ever referred to "DOS audio", as if it were a thing in and of itself. I want what I've already stated - I want soundblaster audio to function when I'm using my FreeDOS virtual machine in VirtualBox. Currently that does not happen. To the point, nothing happens.

I really don't know what more I can say to describe what I want to accomplish.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 21. Jun 2017, 08:45
by mpack
graffy wrote:Currently that does not happen.
I think what's missing from your report is the details of what isn't working. How do you know it isn't working? Which DOS application is failing to use audio?

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 21. Jun 2017, 10:52
by michaln
graffy wrote:I want what I've already stated - I want soundblaster audio to function when I'm using my FreeDOS virtual machine in VirtualBox. Currently that does not happen. To the point, nothing happens.
So you're sitting there staring at the C:\> prompt and waiting for it to make a sound. No wonder nothing is happening.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 21. Jun 2017, 11:02
by socratis
mpack wrote:I think what's missing from your report is the details of what isn't working.
michaln wrote:So you're sitting there staring at the C:\> prompt and waiting for it to make a sound.
1) absolutely, 2) no, but we still have no clue whatsoever what the OP is staring at ;)
graffy wrote:I'm currently working on getting FreeDOS to run some old games in a VirtualBox VM, and I can't quite figure out how to get the audio working.
As you can see "graffy" the confusion could be a *lot* less if you could identify at least one old game. With the VM audio settings, drivers loaded in FreeDOS, game name/source, game settings etc. Leaving it as "some old games" leaves a *lot* of room for interpretation...

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 21. Jun 2017, 11:51
by mpack
Identifying the game wouldn't actually help me much - I would have it on hand to check how to configure the audio.

What would be ideal is an easily available audio test app for DOS (*) which everyone agrees should work (*) when DOS is properly configured (*) for a SoundBlaster card (*).

(*) = points requiring substantiation.


Finally, I want to remind everyone that the OP is not using VirtualBox. He's using a fork.

Re: FreeDOS audio under virtualbox

Posted: 21. Jun 2017, 13:54
by graffy
regarding VirtualBox, I downloaded the appropriate ubuntu amd64 version from the VirtualBox downloads page and resubmitted the log using that version instead of the version I originally used.

If that's not the appropriate version, I don't know what else to do, apart from building it natively on my machine.

As for the old games, One actually predates Soundblaster - so it supported adlib cards. But that's no matter - they were compatible - if it ran on adlib, it ran on soundblaster. But, just to check, I ran another that did directly support soundblaster, but achieved the same result - no sound.

Soundlbaster support runs out of the box under QEMU - I had to do no additional configuration within FreeDOS to get applications to see the emulated audio hardware. That said, I was generally assuming that the same could be expected for VirtualBox.

If that's not the case, the only other thing I can do is try to dig up an old soundblaster *.SYS driver and have it loaded in the FreeDOS config.sys file when it boots. I haven't done that for two reasons: 1. previous searches suggest that's not necessary, and 2. I can't figure out what file I need, anyway!

Jim Hall (who wrote FreeDOS) did provide a little help, but his VM experience is limited to QEMU, unfortunately. He did not suggest the need for any additional support drivers to be loaded into FreeDOS - but again, that's under QEMU.

Anyway, I can understand if the problem is impossible to resolve without better diagnostics... I may try to dig up some old DOS diagnostics, if I can. I remember running them back in the day...