Tips for the Labtec 1040 USB Speakers Under OS/2

by Jüri Ivask

In principle, it works like any sound card.



Instead of inserting the card into computer slot, you connect the speakers to the computer USB port. So the USB port is instead of slot and the DAC converter and other electronics in the left Labtec-1040 speaker serves as electronics you find on the sound card. In the right speaker there is a amplifier and sound controls and headphone output (you can also use the speakers as ordinary speakers with your sound card).

Instead of your sound card drivers, you use the usbaudio.sys driver. To get the MMOS2 subsystem to use the usbaudio.sys driver you should write according stuff to the MMPM2.INI file. This is done by installing the usbaudio.exe package from IBM OS2 Device Driver web site. The install program installs the driver, writes according statement into config.sys, creates objects (Digital Audio, MIDI, Compact Disk) in Multimedia folder and writes the following lines in the drivers section of MMPM2.INI file:

Waveaudio=SWHTWAVEUSB01 Sequencer=IBMSEQPAS1601 Ampmix=IBMAMPMIXPAS1601

And also according sections for all of them. Now after next reboot, you should be able to hear the system sounds, but... The driver works only partially:

Applications like WarpAMP, Z, QU/2 Player, PM123 (DART??) are working OK.

Also RealPlayer8 with Odin if down sampled to 8bit.

CD player is working if digital transfer is enabled.

>From *.wav files in your mmos2 only the system sounds are working OK (C:\mmos2\sounds\desktop\*.wav). Files in c:\mmos2\sounds (like applause.wav) are not working. The difference seems to be that the system sounds are 16bit signed ones and those in c:\mmos2\sounds are 8bit unsigned. It seems that only the signed ones are playing. You can convert these 8bit unsigned files to signed ones with an application like 525_v211 found in Hobbes.

MIDI is not working. However, it should be possible to play MIDI files by installing the TimidityMCD package.

Digital Video (macaw.avi) is not working, probably due to the sound format included in the video.

Updated driver in Device Driver Fix Pak 2 brakes even that partial functionality (at least in my IBM PC300GL). So if you have installed the refreshed xr_d002 (which services the MMOS2 folder) you have to back out the usbaudio.sys driver.

As I currently do not have access to Software Choice, I have not tested the refreshed usbaudio.exe package from there.