VDMSound was an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

(licensed under

GPLv2 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was th ...

)

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

of legacy

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

devices, designed to allow

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

s and other applications written for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

to run on the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

NT/2000/XP/95/98/Me

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s. Its author is Vlad Romascanu.

Features

VDMSound emulates

Adlib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...

and

Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology, Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto stan ...

cards (standard, pro and 16),

parallel port In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers ( personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once (paralle ...

DAC, and an MPU 401

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

( UART-mode) interface. It also provides

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Also known as the control column, it is the principal control devic ...

support. The official VDMSound builds runs on Windows NT/2000/XP. A Windows 95/98/ME port was contributed by Chris Chua.

Sound recording

VDMSound allows the recording of all captured sound and music to

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...

and MID files.

User mappings

VDMSound allows the user to provide custom mappings for MIDI instruments as well as for joystick buttons and axes. * MIDI mappings are particularly useful when the type of MIDI device supported by a game (e.g. MT-32) is different from the type of hardware or software device actually present on the system (e.g.

Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth The lineup is a series of General MIDI (GM) based pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound modules and sound cards, primarily intended for computer music usage, created by Japanese manufacturer Roland Corporation. Some models include a serial or USB ...

.) * Joystick mappings are needed principally for DOS-based

flight simulation A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they rea ...

applications, when matching yokes, throttles and pedals to the simulator's expected configuration.

Graphical user interface

As of version 2.1.0 beta, VDMSound also includes a Wizard graphical user interface (integrated as a Windows

shell extension File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...

), accessible by right-clicking on any MS-DOS executable.

Design

As opposed to

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

, which emulates an entire

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

personal computer with

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, VDMSound emulates only the sound hardware. All other aspects of DOS emulation are managed natively by the Windows operating system's 16-bit subsystem (

NTVDM Virtual DOS machines (VDM) refer to a technology that allows running 16-bit/32-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows programs when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware. Overview Virtual DOS machines can operate e ...

) through

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

. This results in reduced system load (and thus games will run faster than under DOSBox on the same hardware specifications), at the expense of reduced compatibility (see

limitations Limitation may refer to: * Limitation Act, a list of legislation in Malaysia and the United Kingdom * A statute of limitations * ''Limitations'' (novel), a 2006 novel by Scott Turow * A disclaimer for research done in an experiment or study See ...

below.)

Limitations

The Windows operating system's 16-bit subsystem is lacking in several areas which directly or indirectly affect VDMSound emulation: * Incomplete DPMI support in Windows NT/2000/XP results in a number of games not starting or crashing randomly when they communicate with the emulated sound card * Improper interrupt emulation in Windows NT/2000 (but not XP) results in some games hanging when they communicate with the emulated sound card (requiring patching via CLI2NOP.) * Improper

PIC PIC or pic may refer to: Places * Penbay International Circuit, or PIC, a motor track circuit in Pingtung County, Taiwan * Pic River, in Ontario, Canada * Picayune (Amtrak station) (Amtrak station code PIC), Mississippi, United States * Pic, a ...

emulation in Windows results in games not being able to use normal (or intelligent) mode, limiting VDMSound's MPU-401 emulation support to UART-mode only. DOSBox does not rely on the Windows 16-bit subsystem and is thus not subject to these limitations.

History

VDMSound started as a private project in 1998, in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, its motivating purpose being that of capturing in-game MIDI music through software while taking advantage of Windows NT's 16-bit subsystem virtualization. It became open-source and moved to SourceForge after a full rewrite in the early spring of 2001. It was discontinued in early 2004 (last checkin occurred on 2004-02-14), when additional improvements in emulation were no longer possible due to

in the Windows 16-bit subsystem. The sound emulation code from VDMSound has since been integrated into DOSBox.Is the latest version of VDMSound 2.1.0?
/ref> VDMSound was not compatible with

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, making the project obsolete. The current version, 2.1.0 beta, will remain the final version.

References

External links

* * {{cite web, url=https://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=51, title=Forums about VDMSound, website=vogons.org, accessdate=2022-07-10 Windows emulation software