The VDMSound Project / Support Requests / #2 SB/Roland/Thunderbird Bugs

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Hello,
I have just tested SQ5 and FPFP with VDMS2 Alpha 2 SP3. I
managed to get both to work with MT-32 music, General MIDI
music, and SoundBlaster audio.

First, here is a little explanation as to what is
happening. :) The blinking Scroll Lock is actually
being 'blinked' by VDMS to indicate that the DOS program is
not stuck, but that on the contrary, it is busy. The DOS
program is busy uploading SysEx messages to what it thinks
is the MT-32 synthesizer (the MIDI option you selected in
the install.exe program). Unfortunately, the Sierra MT-32
drivers abuse the MPU-401 port in a way that might not have
a preceivable effect under DOS (where direct access to
hardware is permitted), but that under Windows incurs
severe penalty (every MPU-401 port access involves
switching back and forth between kernel and user mode at
the operating system level, which incurs considerable
overhead). The ensueing delay (sometimes of the order of
minutes!) may give the impression that the game is stuck,
which is why I implemented the led trick (the led blinks
every time a SySex packet is being uploaded by the game to
what it thinks is the MT-32). The driver can however be
patched to eliminate the overhead.

As far as digital sound effects are concerned: this is a
known problem with most Sierra drivers that affects all
486+ computers in Windows as well as true DOS. The game
will complain "Unable to initialize your audio hardware".
Working drivers from other Sierra games (with the same file
name and dating from the same period as the impaired game)
can usually be succesfully substituted.

Now, for your solution:

1) If you do NOT own a physical MT-32 box or LAPC-1 card,
or if you don't know what I'm talking about :), skip to
step 4.

2) In install.exe go to the Music section and
select "Roland MT-32, MT-100, LAPC-I ...".

3) After making a backup copy, replace the file MT32.DRV
with the MT32.DRV attached to this reply (it eliminates the
huge delays -- the led should blink much faster, and the
game should be up and running in less than 5 seconds).
Skip to step 5.

4) In install.exe go to the Music section and
select "General MIDI sound driver"

5) Also in install.exe, go to the Audio section and
select "Sound Blaster". Exit install.exe and save.

6) To get rid of the "Unable to initialize your audio
hardware" error, make a backup copy of the file
AUDBLAST.DRV and replace with the AUDBLAST.DRV attached to
this reply (this driver comes from Leisure Suit Larry 6; it
works with KQ6 and SQ5, i.e. you can hear the digital sound
effects with VDMS, and probably also works with FPFP, which
did not give me an error anymore, but neither did it
produce any digital sound effects during the intro -- don't
know if it's supposed to).

7) Edit VDMS.INI in notepad.exe, search for the
string "mt2gm.map" (without the quotes) and replace
with "identity.map" (also without the quotes). The reason
for this is explained in the Alpha 2 release notes as well
as in various posts on the Bravenet forum. Failure to
perform this change will result in strange-sounding music
(wrong musical instruments).

8) Finally, run SIERRA.EXE. You should get music and even
SoundBlaster sound effects.

Also, please include your e-mail address in the e-mail
field when submitting or modifying a report. Thank you.

Vlad.

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#2 SB/Roland/Thunderbird Bugs

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