Subj : Play audio from a serial port
To   : Spectre
From : AKAcastor
Date : Sat May 25 2024 23:05:10

 S> I have a sneaking suspicion and I haven't checked, that Wolf3d might have
 S> supported Parallel DAC.  I also think there was a pretty small window where
 S> they became useful. Where there was enough spare horsepower too drive it
 S> while still doing something "useful" and before SB 
 S> clones arrived in force. I
 S> seem to remember having a resistor ladder version for a bit... and the DAC
 S> version I stuck in the Apple II. Would've been late 386 DX40 era I guess.

Wolf3D did indeed support Disney Sound Source.  It looks like there's a driver to allow a Covox Speech Thing to work with Wolf3D also (though it's not supported by Wolf3D otherwise).

I found the below at:
http://dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturers/covox.php

Interestingly, despite the fact that the Disney Sound Source is similar to the Covox Speech Thing, Wolfenstein 3D only works with the Disney Sound Source - it does not work with the Covox Speech Thing, Voice Master, or Sound Master. This is explained thanks to one of my contributors, Stefan Goehler. He writes:

"It's not really compatible to Covox, it's just the same principle - meaning to send samples to the parallel port. But it works
differently!

1. It only switches on when the software tells it to (there's no physical switch)
2. It can ONLY do 7 kHz
3. It doesn't need such extreme timing as a classic Covox, as it has its own 16-sample FIFO buffer.

So that explains why Wolfenstein won't work with a DSS - it can't detect nor enable the DSS. That's also why no Covox-designed game will play audio on it (no SW-enabling of the thing), also DSS-designed games that just ignore the state of the DSS may not work as well, as they may have been designed to work with the FIFO in mind and don't generate an interrupt every sample, but push a few samples at a given time - to fill the playback buffer again. As the timing would be off in such a case, such games, if they were designed for the DSS, will sound poorly on the Covox."     Stefan Goehler, May 2023


Chris/akacastor


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 * Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

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