Hey there,
I've been a big fan of your work, game-wise and utility wise.
Recently I've been trying to play MP3s and WAVs through the PC speaker. Unfortunately it does not seem to be working in WinXP. I tried installing your 2 programs (KPC and MP3PC) and they don't seem to work.I checked and I had no option in the mixer settings for PC Speaker output. I installed DOSBox 0.62 and got a "You need a Pentium to run this." error message for KPC but I did manage to get MP3PC working. But DOSBox emulates sound and outputs it through your normal speakers. So I am asking, is there any way of getting these programs working under DOS? Do I need some special Windows XP PC-Speaker drivers? I downloaded one but it doesn't seem to be working!
Thanks in advance,
Dan
Awesoken at
I've been trying to play MP3s and WAVs through the PC speaker. Unfortunately it does not seem to be working in WinXP.
MP3PC and KPC are made to run only in pure DOS mode. Both programs use direct register writes and Windows doesn't like that. MP3PC uses an interrupt handler (IRQ0) as a very high-speed timer for playing samples. I've never gotten MP3PC to work under any version of Windows. KPC uses polling instead - it uses the RDTSC instruction for accurate timing. RDTSC is only supported on Pentium processors and a few rare 486-generation CPUs. That's why you get that error message. KPC will work under Windows 95/98/ME, but I haven't tried it recently. I've never gotten digitized PC speaker output (other than your typical single-tone beeps) working under Windows NT/2K/XP.
is there any way of getting these programs working under DOS?
Yes, they all work under DOS - but only in pure DOS mode. You could try booting into "Safe Mode, Command Prompt Only", but I'm not sure even if Windows XP supports true DOS mode any more.
TX at
Awesoken said
You could try booting into "Safe Mode, Command Prompt Only", but I'm not sure even if Windows XP supports true DOS mode any more.
It doesn't. XP is entirely 32 bit and contains no DOS code as it's a descendant of Windows NT rather than Windows 9x. The command prompt only safe mode option is just like a normal safe mode session, except that the shell is set to cmd.exe rather than explorer.exe.
w00t at
Ah OK. I got the KPC program to work on a Windows ME machine in my bedroom (old, spare computer, 900MHz, onboard GFX card!). On my XP machine I didn't get "Need a Pentium" message, and that is an AMD Athlon 3200+ XP. It just didn't produce sound. I think I might need a generic PC-Speaker driver. I haven't been able to find an XP-compatible one yet.