Trying to get Sound in VMWare to run - help appriciated

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

During the last three years I assembled two Retro-PC:

1.) AMD DX2/80MHz CPU, 64 MB RAM, 420MB HDD - running OS/2 Warp 3 (a perfect clone of my first PC 1995)
2.) IBM 6x86 MX 300MHz CPU; ASUS TX97-E Board, ESS1868 Sound, 2GB HDD, 256MB RAM, Matrox G450 PCI 32MB Graphic - the perfect combination for OS/2 Warp 4

Regarding modern hardware I am going to move from Bare Metal inside a VM.

VMWare PRO is my choice, I do like it (for some reason I can not really explain) more than Virtualbox.

I wrote some years ago about my experience with OS/2 and ArcaOS inside VMware Pro, wich have been really almost perfect! Since someone wrote a mouse "addition" for VMware.

The ONLY hardware I am missing is Sound. I was not able to get it to work.

You can read about my attempts in this forum here: https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1378.msg13125.html#msg13125
 
You can read my question in the VMWare Forum in 2017 here: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/No-Soundblaster-in-VM-Ware-Workstation-12/td-p/918140

You can read my Experience with the Mousesupport (= Additions) here (German): https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?t=3083

No luck so far.

I do not open a Arca Bug tracker ticket because my Subscription ended already and I am not going to prolongue it and because it is a problem not only for ArcaOS but also eCS and OS/2.

Help is appriciated!

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Sigurd.

I'm looking forward on this thread to document and see the experience of the OS/2 Guest on a VMWare Workstation Pro host.

As my personal experience VMWare Pro was awesome, but in some point in history VMWare removed OS/2 support producing some kind of outrage on the community. VirtualBox showed up and I prefered an open platform.

I have linked you experience with VMWare 12 Player, just in case.

For what I see VMWare Workstation Pro is on version 16.2.4 and I have some interest to give it a little ride.

Regards

[Sean Casey]

Using Lars' USB drivers with CM6553 USB audio on VMware Workstation Pro.   Works well.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I didn't get far with VMware Workstation Pro 16.0.2 on Windows 10 host.  I run the VM and when I boot with ISO I don't even get to the first menu.

Regards

[Sean Casey]

Hi,

I'm on Linux and have never had issues with ArcaOS installations, so  I'm not sure what the source of your problem might be.   Have a look at your ArcaOS 5.0.7.vmx file and compare to the following default installation configuration that was generated by my VMware New Virtual Machine Wizard:

.encoding = "UTF-8"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "19"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
hpet0.present = "TRUE"
nvram = "ArcaOS 5.0.7.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
powerType.powerOn = "soft"
powerType.suspend = "soft"
powerType.reset = "soft"
displayName = "ArcaOS 5.0.7"
guestOS = "ecomstation2"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"
sound.autoDetect = "TRUE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "4096"
ide0:0.fileName = "ArcaOS 5.0.7.vmdk"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.fileName = "/Temp/ArcaOS-5.0.7.iso"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
extendedConfigFile = "ArcaOS 5.0.7.vmxf"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Sean

Thanks for the info. Mine is mostly the same but it add at after - floppy0.present = "FALSE"

numa.autosize.cookie = "10012"
numa.autosize.vcpu.maxPerVirtualNode = "1"
uuid.bios = "56 4d e8 a7 38 a5 39 ef-ad b0 d3 c1 54 5a f2 f8"
uuid.location = "56 4d e8 a7 38 a5 39 ef-ad b0 d3 c1 54 5a f2 f8"
ide0:0.redo = ""
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "19"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "32"
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "16777216"
vmotion.checkpointSVGAPrimarySize = "16777216"
vmotion.svga.mobMaxSize = "16777216"
vmotion.svga.graphicsMemoryKB = "16384"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:5a:f2:f8"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
vmci0.id = "1415246584"
monitor.phys_bits_used = "45"
cleanShutdown = "TRUE"
softPowerOff = "FALSE"

I tried to remove this, but it is the same behaviour. 

Regards

[jailbird]

Hi

I didn't get far with VMware Workstation Pro 16.0.2 on Windows 10 host.  I run the VM and when I boot with ISO I don't even get to the first menu.

Regards

It used to work for me in VMware Fusion, but lately after an update, I have the exact same issue also in Fusion. At one point in time it did work, it just took it a while for the menu to finally come up.

Unrelated to sound, but off of the top of my head, the issues I had with VMware and ArcaOS:

- If you use DOS=HIGH,UMB, you have to exclude some memory ranges or DOS & Win-OS/2 won't work, similar to DOS under VMware, as VMware puts some of itself in that memory area
- SATA CD-ROM support works, but using SATA for the HDD causes the an error trying to partition the disk. In the old days I would floppy load the LSI-MPT SCSI driver, but now the easiest solution it to use NVMe, as luckily VMware will happily boot from NVMe while still configured to use BIOS and not UEFI (VirtualBox & Parallels both seem to only be able to boot from NVMe while using UEFI).

[Sean Casey]

I haven't had any issues with v.16 on two of my Linux machines with multiple AOS installs over the past 2.5 years, so maybe the issue is only on the Windows platform.   If it's a memory addressing issue, try the install with 256MB assigned to the VM.   If available, create your VM on Linux for use on Windows?