Admiral Sea Battles sound problem

[wackypanda]

I'm posting in here way too often.

I'm running the game in Windows 98, Virtual PC 2007. Basically, the menu and in-game music sound like poo. Splash screens and the Introduction are okay. The affected tracks are MIDI files, which continue sounding like poo when played with WMP in the virtual machine. So it's not a problem with the game per se, but I can't find information on this anywhere else.

Thanks in advance.

[dosraider]

Did you install the VM addition files in VPC/W98?

[wackypanda]

Pretty sure I did. I can get 32-bit colour and move my mouse freely in and out of the window. And I think it has been reinstalled at least once, though not because of this problem.

[dosraider]

Pretty sure I did. I can get 32-bit colour and move my mouse freely in and out of the window.
If you can do the mouse trick, they are installed.
Do you have by any chance a backup of your VM installation without them VMadditions installed?
If yes, try the game without them VMadds.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I've seen VM Additions cause issues on my own setup too.

[wackypanda]

Didn't have a backup, so I set up a fresh machine and installed Windows 98 SE. Still sounds the same. I let the installer reinstall DirectX as well.

[dosraider]

Crap, ah well, at least you have a fresh installed VPC now ...:lol:

BTW, what are the sound settings in VPC-W98? Playback device and such ? Somewhere in control panel, euuurhhh must check where, darn, forgot .... I'll be back.

[Edit]
Control panel -> System -> Device manager -> Sound , video and game controllers -> SB 16 or AWE -> properties -> resources
Should be:
Interrupt 5
DMA 01
DMA 05

And control panel 'multimedia'
preferred device -> SB16
advanced properties -> desktop speakers.

If that's all OK, I simply don't know where it goes wrong .....

[Edit²]
Also when you open a command window and input set you should see the SB settings, should be:
BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 T6

[wackypanda]

Thanks. The only part where what I can see differs from yours is that under DMA 05, I have two more entries:

Input/Output Range 0220-022F
Input/OUtput Range 0380-038F

If I turn off automatic settings and try to do anything with those, I get the error message: "This resource setting cannot be modified".

[dosraider]

Input/Output Range 0220-022F
Input/OUtput Range 0380-038F
Same here, didn't include them as they are assigned by W98 resource manager.

So it comes to: I simply don't know.
Can be a hardware incompatibility, maybe.

One thing you could eventually try is to install original SB16/AWE W98 sound drivers in the VM without VMadds.

Or you could try asking if someone knows@ http://vogons.zetafleet.com/index.php
There are some real nerds over there..... :p

[Eagle of Fire]

If the game is DOS based then you will have to edit the autoexec.bat of your Win98 machine to set up soundblaster (and other options if you like) for when you use DOS programs or games.

[dosraider]

wackypanda, PM in ya box.

[wackypanda]

Thanks for the replies. Most of my old games that I have problems with are Windows-based though. I need to get better taste in games.

Update on the situation at VOGONS (http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?p=213314#213314).

Basically, bad MIDI playback is a known issue with Virtual PC. The solution is to use a software synthesiser as the MIDI output device instead of the default. I'm using Wingroove 0.A4 Beta (http://www.wg7.com/en/wgdl.html), though I've heard that it's not the best for games. At least it's entertaining and doesn't sound like someone raping my ears with a 2x4.

In Windows 98 setting up the softsynth of choice is Start > Settings > Control Panel > Multimedia > MIDI.

More information here (http://cinnamonpirate.com/2007/08/virtualbox-midi-in-an-xp-guest/), although that's not written for VPC or Win9x.

VMware Player seems to be okay with MIDI, but there are other reasons I'm not using it.