From: Chuck McManis (cmcmanis_at_scndprsn.Eng.Sun.COM)
Date: Mon Jul 03 1995 - 13:54:20 EDT
The question:
>>"....3. Has anyone had any luck geting any games at all to work with IBM's
>>soundblaster DOS emulator, if so which games?
The bogus response from (Michael J. Verne) :-)
To the games question: don't count on it. "SoundBlaster
compatability" is a relative thing. While the MWave chipset is
technologically fantastic, the multimedia world does not
revolve around fantastic technology. It revolves around
Creative Labs. The best I can tell you (and what IBM will tell
you) is that what works works & what doesn't doesn't. Anything
written to talk register-level to a SB card, like Doom &
Heretic, won't work on anything but the SB & a few others, like
Sony, that have it figured out. I seem to recall some of IBM's
funky SB drivers were written for Windoze only, so DOS games
need to be run in a DOS full-screen session, but I don't
remember if it was MWave. I don't do much w/multimedia
anymore.
Its a common mistake, this should be in the FAQ.
The "C" series of think pads, 750C, 750Cs, 755C, 755Cs, ... use a
custom audio chip that is _NOT_ register compatible with the sound
blaster. IBM provides a hack (sbaudio) that trys to work by using
the "virtual" mode of the 486 to trap accesses to the sound blaster
I/O addresses and emulate those accesses in software. This hack
does _NOT_ work on DOOM and any game that uses a "DOS Extender" to
go into 32 bit mode while operating (and more and more of them do
since there are most 386 and above systems out there). IBM provides
windows drivers and they do work for windows applications.
The "CE" series 755CE, etc. Which use the Mwave chip *are* register
compatible with the sound blaster. This is one of its advertised
features. If you have the built in modem (modem connector on the
_back_ of your ThinkPad) then you have an MWave chip. You _can_
run DOOM and games like this, on this chip, because writing to
the soundblaster port addresses does the "right thing" as far
as the MWave is concerned. These machines are more expensive then
there 'C' (non-MWave) cousins.
--Chuck
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