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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

I am posting this here so it will be web accessible.  I got playmidi to 
work by loading a sound bank, as suggested by David and by the TAG group.
My playmidi plays AWE perfectly, as does drvmidi which I also compiled.
I succeeded on a jumpered (non-pnp) card and will try pnp later after I 
get it working in DOS somehow.

Does anyone else reading this have an SB32 or AWE32 or 64 card that they 
want to use to play midi files with AWE?  If so, I can compile drvmidi and 
loadsfx for BL3 and/or post what I compiled for BL2 with glibc2.2.5 
upgrade.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 20:32:03 +0000 (UTC)
From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
To: The Answer Gang <tag AT lists.linuxgazette.net>
Cc: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
Subject: Re: [TAG] playmidi plays silently

PLAYMIDI PLAYS MIDIS NOW!!!!! (So does drvmidi).

Short summary to date:  Playmidi was playing silently on my AWE32 card. I 
suspected that I had compiled playmidi wrong (FM synthesis was said to be 
broken, and I compiled by remarking out anything in Makefile referring to X, 
gtk, or ncurses).  Someone at your list said I needed to load a sound bank with 
sfxload.  I thought it was not really needed for the card that worked in DOS 
without me loading anything into it.  I was also told to initialize my pnp 
cards, so I tried first with the only jumpered AWE3(2 I have (CT3930 Vibra16), 
which does not need initialization and works in DOS (the others do not yet, 
won't do AWE initialization in DOS).  aweutil /s initializes the card - won't 
play AWE without that.

I was indeed getting silence because I had not loaded any sound banks (fonts) 
into my AWE card.  See below for the details.  Drvmidi is much easier to 
compile without GTK or ncurses than is playmidi, and does not require libc5 
like playmidi did but both work now.

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> On Sat, 4 Jun 2005, sindi keesan wrote:
> > I have done some more experimenting on the ISA AWE cards.
> > I have a Vibra16 CT3930 which has jumpers (not pnp) and it is the only one 
> > that initializes AWE32 in DOS and plays AWE in DOS.  I have two CT3600s one 
> > of which is AWE32 and has 512K free RAM and the other SB32 without the free 
> > RAM, but all three cards have two SIMM slots (with 2x4MB) - one had a jumper 
> > to enable this RAM, the others did not.
> >
> > The CT3600s and two AWE642 (4520) play awe in a DOS box under Win98, which 
> > means Windows is initializing the awe part.  They play all but AWE in plain 
> > DOS.  I have not yet tried the Vibra16 in linux with playmidi.
> >
> > None of these cards needed sound banks loaded in DOS or Windows (unless 
> > Windows loads its own automatically) so I don't think that is my problem, I 
> > think it is initialization.
>
>
> The non-pnp Vibra16 CT3930 sound card, which should not need pnp 
> initialization, plays AWE in DOS but not in linux.  It has 1MB GM (general 
> midi) sound onboard so should not need sound loaded.  It also plays silently 
> with playmidi in linux. I made character device sequencer.
>
> insmod sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5
> insmod awe_wave
>
> One person also put mpu_io=0x620 on the sb line.

(This was not needed - perhaps only for external midi devices)

> I suspect my problem is that I compiled playmidi wrong.  Someone with a plain 
> SB16 card said that FM synthesis is broken.  I remarked out a bunch of lines 
> and parts of lines referring to things I did not want, so I would not have to 
> install GTK and other libraries related to producing a fancy graphical output 
> rather than just sound, and probably also broke the AWE part.  There is a 
> precompiled playmidi that worked for other people but not for me which I can 
> also try to get working.
>
> At the same site as the awesfx utilities for loading sound banks 
> (awesfx-0.5.0d.tar.gz source - 94K)), I found an alternative midi player in 
> the package awemidi-0.4.3c.tgz (366K) which I will attempt to compile 
> (hopefully it can be configured NOT to need the GTK-based interface or 
> someone here can suggest how to modify Makefile properly to avoid it). The 
> player is 'drvmidi'.

I compiled awemidi-0.4.3c.tgz (which is only 70K - very simple Makefile.sample 
could be edited to remark out all references to both ncurses and gtk/X11, 
unlike playmidi which insisted on them) and got drvmidi which also played 
silently.  I downloaded the source code for awesfx-0.50.d and it would not 
configure because it wanted alsa, so I got version 0.4.4 and it compiled 
perfectly (just type make, no configure needed for this version).  All the 
files compiled statically by default except for needing glibc/libcm/ldlinux.

I found in the DOS package (s64basic.exe - just run it to install SB16 with AWE 
support then delete the windows directories) along with aweutil.com one sound 
bank synthgm.sbk.

sfxload synthgm.sbk  (other sound banks are at the driver site)

Now both drvmidi and the playmidi that I compiled play midis now with awe, that 
sound just as good as the DOS players.  SB16 must have been loading this sound 
bank without me knowing it.

The precompiled playmidi apparently predated the AWE addition and works by 
default on an external midi device.  Only other options were gravis ultrasound 
or FM synthesis.  THis is why it played silently, and the playmidi I compiled 
DOES work for AWE but needed the sound bank installed.

Thanks for this suggestion.  I have learned a lot along the way.  I still need 
to try the other AWE cards (that won't work yet in DOS but do in Windows) with 
linux.

> The author suggests that if you have a pnp card you can initialize it in DOS 
> and then use loadlin.  I have four pnp AWE cards.  I downloaded some more 
> AWE32 drivers, which are available at a Finnish site - 130-AWE1.ZIP through 
> 4.ZIP, and also awe_REV4.zip (all from 1995) and some more faq and info 
> files, and will try to get these cards playing AWE in DOS.  I also found 
> sbldos.zip - DOS sblive drivers, for my two PCI (non-pnp) cards with a 
> similar EMU80?? awe chip.
>
> There is also an sb64basic.exe (the site was not working when I tried) and, 
> likewise inaccessible yesterday, 700031A.exe through E.exe for AWE32 
> (hopefully for DOS not just Windows), A being drivers and C utilities.
>
> You cannot initialize these cards in Win98 and then reboot to DOS and keep 
> them initialized - I tried that too.
>
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org