Author Topic: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)  (Read 12568 times)

R.M. Klippstein

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SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« on: May 11, 2015, 09:50:33 pm »
Does anybody know if there is actually a working driver for OS/2 for this PCI card, its a SB 4740? eCS  2.2bII detects this and installs a UNIAUD driver that doesn't work. Both Linux & Windoz install a correct working driver for this card. I need a 16 bit SoundBlaster card that will install and produce sound with VirtualBox Guests. I don't care about the quality of the sound, I would be happy with anything that qualify's as sound  -- hum, static, or buzzing, --- however, listenable music would be a probable un-attainable PLUS! As far as I can tell the only sound that ever worked on VirtualBox or VPC was on a ISA motherboard, (Please somebody tell me I'm wrong about this!). If anybody has ever got sound working with OS/2 - eCS (on a PCI Motherboard) as a host and working sound on any guest OS please enlighten me!

Thanks for taking the time to read this,  klipp

Pete

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2015, 12:50:11 am »
Hi klipp

What does uniaud report during boot? - I use this line in config.sys to Pause boot and read (some) driver output:-

DEVICE=H:\OS2\BOOT\PauseIt.sys

To check uniaud output I would add the above line just after the DEVICE=H:\MMOS2\UNIAUD16.SYS /V /C line.

The file \OS2\BOOT\PauseIt.sys does not exist so boot stops with a complaint about a missing file and a "Press Enter to continue..." which allows plenty of time to note down driver output.

If the driver seems to identify the hardware and load fine then you need to check the mixer settings are OK. Use the following command in a command window open in \MMOS2:-

unimix -list > unimixer.txt

Open unimixer.txt, with a text editor, and check if playback switches and volume are set correctly; if not try to turn on switches/set volume levels.


I seem to recall the SB CT4740 card is an older card, Soundblaster 512?, and have vague memories of an older driver that *may* work if uniaud will not. A quick hunt through  http://www.os2usr.org/os2sound.html  suggests this is what I am thinking of http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/system/drivers/sound/sbliveos2-081b.zip


Hope something above helps

Pete
« Last Edit: May 12, 2015, 12:57:49 am by Pete »

R.M. Klippstein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2015, 03:54:46 am »
Hey Pete! Good to hear from you once again, How ya been?. Boot stops when trying to load the driver and gives " Error detected while resetting the Sound Blaster 16" and won't load the driver. This was the common error on the older ISA machines when loading with a already used IRQ or DMA parameter. I've tried different IRQ's & DMA's with no luck. A working PCI driver for this card would not need these entries in the SB16D2.sys driver as this is a PNP card. I'm pretty sure this Uniad driver is for ISA cards. I've also played with the installing a SBLive card with the same results, however eCS does Identify the SBLive card correctly. I'm not familiar with the sbliveos2-081b driver you mentioned and I will give that a shot tomorrow.
  The "kicker" is Virtual Box (in its present working OS/2 releases) requires a 16 bit SoundBlaster  Audio card. I suspect sound probably has never worked  in Virtual Box in a PCI motherboard but only in the older ISA MB's. I wish someone could verify this as I'm only guessing, with the hope that it can be made to work with a PCI SoundBlaster card & Driver.

Thanks much for the response, and if the driver works, I'll let you know.

klipp

Roderick Klein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2015, 07:37:01 am »
Hi klipp

What does uniaud report during boot? - I use this line in config.sys to Pause boot and read (some) driver output:-

DEVICE=H:\OS2\BOOT\PauseIt.sys

To check uniaud output I would add the above line just after the DEVICE=H:\MMOS2\UNIAUD16.SYS /V /C line.

The file \OS2\BOOT\PauseIt.sys does not exist so boot stops with a complaint about a missing file and a "Press Enter to continue..." which allows plenty of time to note down driver output.

If the driver seems to identify the hardware and load fine then you need to check the mixer settings are OK. Use the following command in a command window open in \MMOS2:-

unimix -list > unimixer.txt

Open unimixer.txt, with a text editor, and check if playback switches and volume are set correctly; if not try to turn on switches/set volume levels.


I seem to recall the SB CT4740 card is an older card, Soundblaster 512?, and have vague memories of an older driver that *may* work if uniaud will not. A quick hunt through  http://www.os2usr.org/os2sound.html  suggests this is what I am thinking of http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/system/drivers/sound/sbliveos2-081b.zip


Hope something above helps

Pete

While I know people like the SB live driver for different reasons. Please do not recommend it to people anymore for 2 reasons.

1. As far as I know the version shipped with eCS has a fix to supports IRQ higher then 15.

2. On some systems if you have more then 2 GB RAM the driver will fail to load. This last issue has never been fixed.

I did understand last year from David Azarewicz his Warpstock 2014 presentation that Arca Noae was working on updating UNIAUD. But its a big job (the presentation is somewhere on youtube).

But so far UNIAUD is the best thing to use we have on OS/2 eCS. As the current builds also fix a lot of audio buffer issue's.

Roderick Klein
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Roderick Klein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2015, 07:42:18 am »
Hey Pete! Good to hear from you once again, How ya been?. Boot stops when trying to load the driver and gives " Error detected while resetting the Sound Blaster 16" and won't load the driver. This was the common error on the older ISA machines when loading with a already used IRQ or DMA parameter. I've tried different IRQ's & DMA's with no luck. A working PCI driver for this card would not need these entries in the SB16D2.sys driver as this is a PNP card. I'm pretty sure this Uniad driver is for ISA cards. I've also played with the installing a SBLive card with the same results, however eCS does Identify the SBLive card correctly. I'm not familiar with the sbliveos2-081b driver you mentioned and I will give that a shot tomorrow.
  The "kicker" is Virtual Box (in its present working OS/2 releases) requires a 16 bit SoundBlaster  Audio card. I suspect sound probably has never worked  in Virtual Box in a PCI motherboard but only in the older ISA MB's. I wish someone could verify this as I'm only guessing, with the hope that it can be made to work with a PCI SoundBlaster card & Driver.

Thanks much for the response, and if the driver works, I'll let you know.

klipp

Hello Klipp,

You wrote: "I'm pretty sure this Uniad driver is for ISA cards." While the Alsa code on Linux contains (or possibly contained code) to support ISA cards. The UNIAUD driver (which is based on Linux Alsa source) on OS/2 is only for PCI cards.

I am trying to under what you are trying to get working Klipp. You want to run Virtualbox OS/2 builds ? What OS do you want to run UNDER Virtualbox for OS/2 ?

The Virtualbox for OS/2 builds are not tied to ISA specific sound cards. If so I would eat my shoe :-)

Regards,

Roderick Klein
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R.M. Klippstein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2015, 02:48:06 am »
Hey Pete! I tried that driver you told me about and when I un-zipped it, it had a SB16 bit driver included in the package and it included the option of turning off the PnP option. Hopes were high, but when I tried it, it too failed. ---- thanks for the effort though. Looks like I'm "beating a dead horse".

Thanks again   klipp
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Greggory Shaw

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2015, 03:54:31 am »
Hey Pete! I tried that driver you told me about and when I un-zipped it, it had a SB16 bit driver included in the package and it included the option of turning off the PnP option. Hopes were high, but when I tried it, it too failed. ---- thanks for the effort though. Looks like I'm "beating a dead horse".

Thanks again   klipp
.

If anybody has ever got sound working with OS/2 - eCS (on a PCI Motherboard) as a host and working sound on any guest OS please enlighten me!

Thanks for taking the time to read this,  klipp

I had a SB Live (CT4780) working - they're a couple bucks on ebay. I'm doing a lot of testing for a new article, I could test out the CT4780 with VirtualPC 5.1 for you if you really plan on buying one. ~ Greggory

Don't forget that audio is disable in VirtualPC 5.x by default too, look in docs for the /switch to turn sound on. So, if you onboard audio works with Uniaud, then it should work in VPC. Guess I've been lucky, because I never had problems with sound in VPC 5.xx


Have you tired:

ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/uniaud114RC7.ZIP

or

ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/uniaud114RC6.zip
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/uniaud114RC4.zip

It took a while it get my CT4780 working.

and

For SB 16 too (maybe for only ISA ?):

http://www.russharvey.bc.ca/os2/awe64os2.html
« Last Edit: May 13, 2015, 04:54:28 am by Greggory Shaw »

Roderick Klein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2015, 01:17:55 pm »
Hey Pete! I tried that driver you told me about and when I un-zipped it, it had a SB16 bit driver included in the package and it included the option of turning off the PnP option. Hopes were high, but when I tried it, it too failed. ---- thanks for the effort though. Looks like I'm "beating a dead horse".

Thanks again   klipp
.

If anybody has ever got sound working with OS/2 - eCS (on a PCI Motherboard) as a host and working sound on any guest OS please enlighten me!

Thanks for taking the time to read this,  klipp

I had a SB Live (CT4780) working - they're a couple bucks on ebay. I'm doing a lot of testing for a new article, I could test out the CT4780 with VirtualPC 5.1 for you if you really plan on buying one. ~ Greggory

Don't forget that audio is disable in VirtualPC 5.x by default too, look in docs for the /switch to turn sound on. So, if you onboard audio works with Uniaud, then it should work in VPC. Guess I've been lucky, because I never had problems with sound in VPC 5.xx


Have you tired:

ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/uniaud114RC7.ZIP

or

ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/uniaud114RC6.zip
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/uniaud114RC4.zip

It took a while it get my CT4780 working.

and

For SB 16 too (maybe for only ISA ?):

http://www.russharvey.bc.ca/os2/awe64os2.html

Greggory I would suggest not to recommend to people to use these old UNIAUD drivers 2008/2009. I know over the years some extremely serious issue's have been fixed in UNAIUDo. Down to hangs that can occur duo to bugs in dealing with audio buffers and other fixes that are related to ACPI etc.

From what I recall it would almost make more sense to maybe request Netlabs to delete these old drivers. Some of the hangs you can see on a system, might be very hard for an end user to trace to UNIAUD.


Roderick Klein
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R.M. Klippstein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #8 on: May 13, 2015, 05:58:05 pm »
Hi Greggory, Thanks VERY much for you're response. You provided some very useful information and it also looks like you can prove that VPC is capable of producing useable sound in Guests running under a eCS host. I would really appreciate it if you could E-Mail me at rklipp@megared.net.mx and I will fill you in on my particular situation. I'm working on this now in conjunction with my efforts to compile a newer version of VirtualBox for OS/2 - eCS.which you can view at os2-ecs-mexico.com/VBbox/2 Access.

Thanks  klipp
« Last Edit: May 13, 2015, 06:05:40 pm by R.M. Klippstein »

Pete

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2015, 12:46:18 am »
Hi klipp

It is definitely possible to have sound for guests in VPC for OS/2 - and you do not need a soundblaster to do it. I have had success with every onboard and PCI soundcard I've tried; it does not matter what the physical hardware is as long as it works OK - usually with uniaud - as VPC provides a *virtual SB16 soundcard" for Windows guests.

I have in my VPC root directory a file called sound.txt, I think I picked it up in an internet forum or newsgroup, which contains:-

Virtual PC for OS/2 by default disables sound for guest systems. This is done to prevent problems such as distorted sound, system traps, lockups, etc. due to buggy OS/2 sound drivers. For most sound drivers, it is recommended to not turn on sound support. The worst results can be experienced with the drivers from Crystal (ISA and PCI) - usually system traps. In case you have a sound driver that can handle small buffers and high interrupt rates well (e.g. Soundblaster Live! or UNIAUD from IBM), you can try to enable sound support.

To enable sound in VPC/2 guests type:

CD VIRTUALPC
VPCSETUP /TWEAKVPC
check "Enable Sound in virtual machines"

On the next restart of VPC, your guest should have sound (of course, you still have to install a SB16 sound driver in your guest... or in case of Win9x/2K/XP, let the autodetection find the virtual SB16 card and install the driver...)
voila!

[ 16 October 2002, 00:14: Message edited by: Oliver Stein ]

--------------------
Mfg/Regards,
Oliver Stein
InnoTek GmbH
ostein@innotek.de


Obviously the line "CD VIRTUALPC" would need to be changed to fit your system.


Hope the above is of help

Pete


R.M. Klippstein

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2015, 01:20:12 am »
Pete, You were reading my mind! I've been trying to figure out what Greggory meant when he stated "look in the Docs for the switch to turn sound on" -- then you're post showed up, and there was the answer! I knew nothing about having to turn on sound, now it makes sense.  THANK YOU VERY MUCH!  Mybe this horse isn't dead afterall. My thinking is that once I can make sound work with VPC, possibly I'll be able to make it work when compiling VirtualBox versions also.

Thanks again   klipp

Greggory Shaw

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Re: SoundBlaster SB4740 Driver (SB 4740)
« Reply #11 on: May 15, 2015, 06:32:11 am »

Greggory I would suggest not to recommend to people to use these old UNIAUD drivers 2008/2009. I know over the years some extremely serious issue's have been fixed in UNAIUDo. Down to hangs that can occur duo to bugs in dealing with audio buffers and other fixes that are related to ACPI etc.

From what I recall it would almost make more sense to maybe request Netlabs to delete these old drivers. Some of the hangs you can see on a system, might be very hard for an end user to trace to UNIAUD.


Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE


Sound good - good points !

Greggory