Author Topic: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS  (Read 9210 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« on: March 03, 2014, 02:48:42 pm »
Hi.

I was wondering, How does OS/2-eCS manage two sound cards on the same system?

How do you know which one has to sound?
If both are installed with a working driver, does the two make the same sound? or is it a way to configure which sound output to use?

I ask this because today almost every new mainboard comes with two sound cards (or what it looks like two sound cards).  One of the regular sound card (with ports in the front and other in the back) and other that is the HDMI sound out port.

Just for example Windows has a way to manage the output/input sound ports, which is not very practical, but has something.



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Martin Iturbide
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Marc

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Re: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2014, 03:20:15 pm »
I don't have 2 sound cards but do have an on board chip set and a sound card.  The on board chip set plays system sounds but not anything in  Firefox using Flash..    Put in an old Blaster card in and it plays both.  Only thing is I'm using the audio driver from ECS 1.0.  It's the only driver that I could get to work.

Ian Manners

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Re: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2014, 04:41:39 pm »
In the late 90's I had two sounds cards installed, think one was an AWE with the MIDI daughter card and the other was a SB16 or maybe a Vibra16 but I do know that I had to set IRQ's, addr's and IO ports differently on each card so there were no conflicts, then load drivers for both cards, each driver specifying the IRQ's, ports etc.

I cant remember what I did software wise, possibly set up what went where in the System Multimedia setup panel ?
I might have had to edit mmpm2.ini, so long ago, another world, a different life.

Quote
I ask this because today almost every new mainboard comes with two sound cards (or what it looks like two sound cards).  One of the regular sound card (with ports in the front and other in the back) and other that is the HDMI sound out port.

Just went back and reread your post :)
The above bit is 'normally' simply mixing, not two different sound cards. ie, you select were you want the outputs to go to depending on program or inputs.
I guess it comes down to the motherboard though, a manufacturer might have made an upmarket MB for a vertical market maybe.

Some audio chipsets have completely separate input paths and completely separate output paths but its all done with high speed digital multiplexing and pathways before it hits the DAC's, so you can do some fancy stuff but it all comes down to the actual mixing. I have seen some where a sound card with 4 completely separate dual channels(read chipsets) on it, that I would classify as 4 sounds cards but it uses the one driver (not OS/2 unfortunately). Other stuff, its simply easier to use an external USB connected mixer.

[edited again, my speeling is bad when I get tired]
« Last Edit: March 03, 2014, 08:06:15 pm by Ian Manners »
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Ian B Manners

Dave Yeo

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Re: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2014, 09:49:32 pm »
I also at  one time had 2 sound cards, actually a Pro Audio Spectrum which included an original Sound Blaster clone. Like Ian, I had to be careful to set different IRQs and DMA for both cards, luckily set on the driver line in config.sys and the Dos utility for testing IRQs worked.
I don't remember ever doing anything for OS/2 to use the Pro Audio part, it just worked, or in case of a faulty 486 MB, crashed when using 16 bit DMA.
What I could do is set Winos2 to use the sound blaster part so OS/2 and Winos2 could both play sounds without conflict and under DOS most games could choose one or the other or in the case of Simcity 2000 one card playing midi and the other card doing all the other sounds.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2014, 12:23:04 am »
Thanks for the replies.

Sorry, I didn't actually mean two "cards" , I actually mean two "chipsets", I just noticed I was not clear. But I understand more about it now. But I think we are missing some tool to administrate the sound cards a Windows has.... but I think we need first to have more audio drivers :)

I also want to test the test USBAudio drivers, that's why I try to figure it out how to mnage two chipsets on OS/2-eCS. But I still can not make the USB audio devices that I have to work yet.
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Dave Yeo

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Re: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2014, 08:08:29 am »

I also want to test the test USBAudio drivers, that's why I try to figure it out how to mnage two chipsets on OS/2-eCS. But I still can not make the USB audio devices that I have to work yet.

Did you look at http://trac.netlabs.org/usb/ticket/75 and http://trac.netlabs.org/usb/ticket/76?

Lars

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Re: Two Sound Cards on OS/2-eCS
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2014, 08:18:25 pm »
Thanks for the replies.

Sorry, I didn't actually mean two "cards" , I actually mean two "chipsets", I just noticed I was not clear. But I understand more about it now. But I think we are missing some tool to administrate the sound cards a Windows has.... but I think we need first to have more audio drivers :)

I also want to test the test USBAudio drivers, that's why I try to figure it out how to mnage two chipsets on OS/2-eCS. But I still can not make the USB audio devices that I have to work yet.

1) There IS a tool to administer sound cards in OS/2. You will find it as "Multimedia Configuration" in the "System Configuration" folder.

2) Multiple sound cards: this is a bit involved. When you install a sound driver, apart from other things, the MMPM2.INI file in the \MMOS2 folder will be updated. That file creates sound devices with names as Waveaudio01and associates these devices with the real device driver name like say USBAUD1$ and therefore with a real device driver.
If you had more than 1 of the very same sound card there is a logic to assign device driver names, the first one would be USBAUD1$, the next one would be USBAUD2$. Again, each device driver name is associated with a distinct device name: USBAUD1$ -> Waveaudio01, USBAUD2$-> Waveaudio02 etc.
The device names are subsequently used by applications and even the REXX MMPM API to say play a sound file on a specific sound device. For applications there exist API calls to query what devices (device names) exist in a system, an application can therefore build up a choice list to allow the user to pick a specific device.

Just to mention it: USBAUDIO.SYS has a fixed device driver device name of USBAUD1$. In short: you will only be able to load one instance of USBAUDIO.SYS.
However that is no limitation as USBAUDIO.SYS itself can handle multiple USB audio devices. However it will only ever pick the "first" (where "first" would be the one that was found first on the USB bus) USB device to play etc. as there is no selection logic in USBAUDIO.SYS to pick a specific USB audio device. If you unplug a device, USBAUDIO.SYS will pick the next available USB audio device remaining.

Lars