Author Topic: Warp with 2 sound cards?  (Read 10453 times)

Fahrvenugen

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Warp with 2 sound cards?
« on: June 02, 2019, 06:49:39 am »
Hi,

I remember back in the Warp 3 days I had at one point managed to find a way to get Warp to recognize and be able to use 2 sound cards at the same time, each able to do different things - either playing different audio out each card, or having one doing a record the other a playback, or both recording different things at the same time.

Does anyone know if this is still possible with current drivers?  I know that MMOS2 is still pretty much the same as it was in the Warp 3 days so I imagine it can still  handle it, but drivers -  particularly UniAud and some of the CMI and SBLive drivers don't seem to be able to handle this, at least I have not had much luck.

Anyone know if this is still possible?

Lars

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2019, 10:28:24 am »
If an app or a REXX script does not explicitly specify a specific audio device then the default device is used. USB 10.227 now comes with an applet that hooks itself into the Multimedia Setup Objekt and that allows easy default device selection ( regardless if USB or not).
But if you want to select a specific device then the app needs some logic to query the available devices and to select from those. OS/2 provides the necessary API but an app has to use it.
For a REXX script, you need to open a specific device,see the REXX mm helpfile on how to do that and what schema the audio device names follow.
Yes it should still be possible.

Wim Brul

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2019, 12:34:28 pm »
From experience I know that pm123-1_39.exe and PlayRec.exe allow you to select the audio device to be used for their playback.

Wim
« Last Edit: June 02, 2019, 03:17:53 pm by Wim Brul »

Fahrvenugen

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2019, 07:19:10 pm »
Thanks for the replies, I'll have to try again.

Lars, I did recently install your USB drivers, but had not paid close attention to the applet for changing the default.  I'll have a look at that, it may be partly what I need.

I'll also have to try out PlayRec, it looks like it may do what I want. 

Thanks!

Lars

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #4 on: June 03, 2019, 10:42:13 am »
I just tried the REXX interface: even though it claims to be able to specifically select a WAVE device in the form "Waveaudio01", "Waveaudio02", etc. that will not work. Instead it will effectively use the device that is specified as the "default" device via MMPM2.INI.

I guess that is due to a longstanding bug in Warp 4 and beyond where it is necessary to not only set the default WAVE but also the associated default AMPMIX device to have any sound for a specific audio device (in short: you have to set these as a pair).

But the REXX interface does not allow to specifically select an AMPMIX device.
Therefore, once you set the default AMPMIX device via MMPM2.INI, you are effectively also selecting the WAVE device.

My applet cannot work around this twisted design. It can also not be held responsible. The design is just broken.


Lars

Fahrvenugen

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2019, 09:53:12 pm »
Lars,

With the current state of MMOS2, the fact that IBM essentially abandoned it around the time of Warp 3, I am not surprised that there are bugs.  I certainly would not put any fault in your driver or applet, in fact I applaud your efforts - I'm really impressed with how well your USB audio driver works.

The sad part - there was a time when MMOS2 was near the top of the game - I can recall when the only system that had better multimedia capabilities was the Amiga.  Unfortunately today it can be a challenge just to get a sound card to work.  But I can't say that I'm all that surprised.

Anyways, thanks for your efforts.  I still have an old Warp 3 machine here, it isn't the one that I had from way back when with 2 audio cards, but I might just see if I can get the Warp 3 box I do have going with 2 cards to see if it works the way I remember.  I do recall that when I did have 2 cards working it was on an old machine with all ISA ports (it took quite a bit of fiddling with the jumpers and IRQ's to get it to work... that's how I recall it was an ISA based machine).  Unfortunately I don't remember specific details of any configurations that might have been needed.  1996 was a long time ago!

Cheers!


Dave Yeo

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #6 on: June 06, 2019, 01:34:46 am »
I had a ProAudioSpectrum (PAS) card, which basically had 2 cards, the native one and a sound blaster clone. Easy to set up as it used soft switches in config.sys but IIRC, mostly what i did was use the PAS part for OS/2 and the sound blaster for WinOS2. DOS could handle both, as simcity2000 took advantage of both.
I've still got the last ISA based machine I had, should see if it still runs.

Lars

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #7 on: June 06, 2019, 09:05:16 am »
Lars,

With the current state of MMOS2, the fact that IBM essentially abandoned it around the time of Warp 3, I am not surprised that there are bugs.  I certainly would not put any fault in your driver or applet, in fact I applaud your efforts - I'm really impressed with how well your USB audio driver works.

The sad part - there was a time when MMOS2 was near the top of the game - I can recall when the only system that had better multimedia capabilities was the Amiga.  Unfortunately today it can be a challenge just to get a sound card to work.  But I can't say that I'm all that surprised.


Do you know the [Filters] sections in MMPM2.INI ? If you are a programmer or if you have any idea of how to USE these filters via the MCI interface API functions, I'd be more than glad if you would let me know. What I tried to achieve is to use these filters to convert ADPCM encoded WAV files to PCM WAV files (which is what the IMAADPCM and MSADPCM filter drivers most likely do) but I have no clue of how to "tie" a filter to the WAVE device so that filtering will actually take place. I planned to use that in the USBWAV DLL to make it completely transparent for users to open and play any WAV file, regardless of its internal compression type. I have managed to do that for u-law and a-law compressed WAVE files but I have not "wrapped" these as filters and am calling the registered CODEC procs directly (the a-law and u-law CODECS are also contained in USBWAV.DLL).

Unfortunately, that "filtering" stuff is not documented at all in the MMOS2 programming spec but the Toolkit header files clearly show that a filter is much like a device (it has an MCI DEVICE TYPE just analogous to a WAVE device). It's just not explained anywhere of how you open a filter "device" and "tie" it to a WAVE device.

When I look at the Windows API of what is left of the MCI API (yes, it still exists in Windows even if it is marked as deprecated ...) then I can see that they have removed tons of awkward to use MCI functions like, for example, the connector stuff that nobody ever really understood of how it is to be used. And of course, they also removed that "filter" stuff ...

Lars
« Last Edit: June 06, 2019, 09:06:54 am by Lars »

Andi B.

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #8 on: June 06, 2019, 09:51:05 am »
A few years ago I asked Timur Tabi some questions regarding OS/2 and multimedia. Although he don't use OS/2 since a very long time he answered politely and in detail. Maybe he still answers specific questions if you ask directly. I think he's the most knowledgeable guy in this field.

Lars

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #9 on: June 06, 2019, 09:55:17 am »
Do you know any email address ?

Fahrvenugen

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Re: Warp with 2 sound cards?
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2019, 05:44:45 pm »
Lars,

Unfortunately I don't have much programming experience with MMOS2, but I agree that Timur is probably the most knowledgeable.  Most of what he did when he worked for IBM was centered around MMOS2

He's got an email on his website:

http://timur.tabi.org/timur/