#SOUND BLASTER AWE32

[lebrickster]

2022 Year-in review but 6 days early

2022… that was certainly a year.

Truthfully, life has been a blur for me for a good while, so specific memories of 2022 are scattered and distant for me. Regardless, I wanted to go ahead and write up this post, about what I recall doing this year, and what I'm "proud" of. I have nothing better to do this day, and wanted to do something, so why not this?

The start of 2022 is not one I remember too well, but I do recall around early in the year, we finally started working on getting me my State ID, and Debit Card. Without these, I was more or less stuck at home, not able to get a job, or do online purchases without Gift Cards. Now that I had these, I was able to go job hunting, and in early August of the year, I landed a job, which I still maintain, now. The job has been filled with a lot of ups and downs, but overall, I'm grateful to have what I do as my first job, and not another job which would probably be rougher, and pay less. The freedom to finally buy things for myself, and to be able to help the family out with rent, has been nice, as I feel less like a useless nobody who does nothing but waste space, and bother people.

On the note of rent, after a long time of talking and planning, my brother's friend has finally moved into our house, taking the room my sister once had as her own. This friend didn't have the best of lives growing up, and long since wanted to get away from his miserable living conditions. Truthfully, I'm not sure if we're better or worse than his previous living arrangements, since he minds his own business, and doesn't talk to us much, aside from my brother, or asking one of us questions, but still, I hope he's at least a bit happier here, than where he was at, before. Hopefully he'll soon have a job and be able to help with paying the rent, too, but, only time shall tell when exactly what happens, I suppose.

One of the sad things that I learned of this year, is my father finally going to the doctors, only to find out he has some kind of gunk in his lungs. We believe it's to be asbestos, from his time at the Navy, which was recently further evidenced by this briefcase he's kept, where letters from his time during the Navy, warned of asbestos being in stuff like the water. Appointments will be coming soon to properly confirm what is going on. It's rather unfortunate, since I had been well aware of my father not doing as well, coughing a lot more, and having to leave work only. But one bright side to this is if it's found that being in the Navy is responsible for his current well-being, he can get disability funds, and retire from work, meaning he can rest easy during his final days, get medication to make himself to a better spot, and possibly even give us more money than we're currently making. I'm hoping that is able to go through in the end, but if it's not able to, I'll still be there for my Dad, and support him, regardless.

To go back to myself, well… I have a Yamaha PSR-E403, now, I guess? This musical keyboard is the same model that Club Penguin composer, Chris Hendricks, used in his earlier original compositions. It has a sound set that I am fond of, and wanted to own for myself. Above all else, I'm hoping I can use this keyboard to finally learn music, which is something I feel somewhat obligated to learn. Due to my status as project leader for the Church of Kondo, many assumed I was already a musician, when I wasn't. I'm hoping with this keyboard, I'll finally be able to learn music, and live up to some of what folk seem to expect out of me. Not that my friends have any issue with me not being a musician, but still…

Though on the note of that, to talk about something, I'd say my general confidence, and self view of myself has elevated, for the most part. There are still some doubts on my end, but overall, I feel less bad for being who I am. There's nothing wrong with having what may seem like unimpressive interests, or stuff like that, and to put myself down for not living up to high standards that none of my friends expect me to live up to, is just stupid. My friends have assured me time and time again that they're fine with me for who I am, and that I'm not a burden. It's helped me a lot, especially for feeling more comfortable with an interest of mine that I was afraid of for a long while, but have grown to accept it, since I have friends who are fine with it, and don't see me as weird for it.

What else is there… Well, I finally got a Fat PS2. Modded with a SATA adapter, and Noctua fan mod. Though in the process, the Disc drive seems to no longer work… I reckon a ribbon got disconnected, or torn, but I've been too afraid to open up the console again to check, since I did both mods kinda blind, which resulted in a lot of frustration, and confusion. I really should have just waited on my brother…

Though on a less frustrating note is my Windows 98 machine and N64! For the Windows 98 machine, I've been able to get a Sound Blaster AWE32 (CT3980) to replace the old Sound Blaster 16, and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI to replace the old Voodoo 2/ATI Mach 64 combo I was using, which has boosted the sound capabilities of the machine, and got rid of the crashing issues I was having with the Voodoo 2 I had. I also upgraded the hard drive to use an SD2IDE adapter, and the floppy drive to use a GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator. For the N64, I got it out of storage, and got a good condition old controller for it (Blue), an Everdrive 64 X7, expansion pack, FRAM Modded Memory Card, and No Batter Modded Rumble Pack. I haven't had too much motivation or time to play it for the time being, but I've overall enjoyed my time with it, so far. (That analog stick is weird as hell, though. Hadn't used one in years, so it's still taking some getting used to, to use the N64 stick)

I can't think of much else to type, in terms of significant events from this year. There is one more big upgrade I hope to do before year end, but I'll post about that later. For now, I guess I'll move onto what I hope to achieve in the coming year.

For the new year, I'm hoping to generally just be a less annoying person to talk with? Not in the conventional sense, since most folk generally enjoy talking with me, but more so in the sense of… I need to chill out, and stop worrying so much. After I send messages, whether it be the same day, or a few days later, I get worried often that what I said was weird, offensive, or other things like that, when it most often isn't. For this coming year, I'm going to try hard to avoid these kinds of worry messages that just clog up DMs, and perhaps come off as annoying. I can trust my friends, so there's no real need for me to continue sending such messages, when I already have been told/know they have no issue with anything I say, or talk about.

On a similar note, I'm also going to just further embrace myself for who I am, and question myself, less. Some specific friends this year have helped me come to terms with who I am with something specific, and it's made me feel a lot more comfortable in myself, making me realize there's nothing wrong with what it is I like. Plus, having friends who have the same interest also helps in making feel less alien, and weird.

The coming year, I'll probably look for another job, too. While this current one works, it would be nice to have a higher pay rate, and one that has more… stable staff, I suppose. Dealing with people quitting all of the time, or not showing up, isn't really ideal, in the slightest, and just adds on a lot of stress.

Well, I think that might actually be all I have to say here. I wrote about way more than I expected, and it's reminded me that perhaps my life isn't as dull and boring as I figured it was, especially if there's this much to cover. I look forward to 2023, and hope it to be a better year than this one. Here's to hoping it is, and that the Mario Movie is ok, at the very least!

[retrocgads]

USA 1997

[juney-blues]

wait im confused abt your retro game music post. maybe i just dont understand what a sound font is

soundfont is a bespoke file forma- hang on i'm too lazy let me just get wikipedia up

"SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology that uses sample-based synthesis to play MIDI files. It was first used on the Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card for its General MIDI support."

^ while pretty much every computer and game console from the 70s - mid 90s made use of sequenced music, not all sequenced music is midi! midi is (remembers i'm lazy) go read the wikipedia page for midi and notice how the NES, SNES, Gameboy, and Sega Megadrive, and all those other things don't use it (atleast not natively i'm sure somewhere at some point midi was used in the composition of SOME pieces but fgdjghdfghf anyway hopefully you can see the difference between taking some samples of NES sounds and slapping those onto any old midi file, and actually writing music for the hardware)

[not-radioshack]

Writeup: The Great(?) OpenGL Wrapper Race

Somehow, I always find myself gravitating back to the S3 ViRGE/DX.

This time around, rather than placing total focus on the ViRGE itself, we'll be taking a look at some OpenGL wrappers!

This writeup will be updated along the way as more videos release.

The setup is as follows:

Matsonic MS7102C

Windows 98SE RTM with the following patches/update: KernelEX 4.5.2, NUSB v3.3e, Windows Installer 2.0, DirectX 9.0c

Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) @ 750MHz

S3 ViRGE/DX @50MHz w/4MB EDO DRAM (using the S3 Virge "SuperUni" drivers)

256MB PC-133 SDRAM (Kingston KVR133X64C3/512) (System can only handle 256MB per DIMM)

Sound Blaster AWE32 CT2760

Some random 5GB Hitachi 2.5" HDD that I "borrowed" from a very dead laptop

Java 6 (1.6.0) build 105/Java 6u0

Wrappers to be tested:

S3Mesa - a wrapper based on the Mesa project. It's a full OpenGL implementation sitting on top of S3D and Direct3D, but from the available source code appears to be missing some functionality and is quite unstable.

AltOGL - also a wrapper based on the Mesa project, but relies solely on Direct3D. It is similarly missing some functionality, but is much more widely compatible with cards beyond the Virge thanks to its lack of reliance on S3's proprietary API.

Techland S3D - one of the many wrappers made by Techland for their Quake II engine-based "Crime Cities" game. Although it like S3's own GLQuake wrappers only implements as much of the API as is needed by the engine, it still implements far more features than S3's DX5 and DX6-based wrappers, of which are not tested in this wrapper race.

Techland D3D - like AltOGL, Techland's D3D counterpart to their S3D wrapper implements a subset of the OpenGL spec, but still enough to be compatible with a number of titles beyond Quake II engine games.

GLDirect 1.x - A very early version of GLDirect. There exists a license code for this version floating around on the internet that appears to have been used for internal testing by Shuttle, a PC manufacturer that's largely fallen out of relevance and mainly does industrial PCs nowadays.

GLDirect 3.0.0 - One of the last versions of GLDirect to support hardware acceleration on DX6-class graphics cards.

Things tested

WGLGears

ClassiCube 1.3.5 and 1.3.6

Minecraft: Indev in-20091223-1459, Alpha 1.0.4, Beta 1.7.3 (with and without Optifine), Release 1.5.2

Tux Racer

GL Excess benchmark

Half Life 1 v1.1.1.1 KingSoft NoSteam edition

Findings

GLDirect 1.01

OpenGL Version String

Vendor: SciTech Software, Inc. Renderer: GLDirect S3 Inc. ViRGE/DX/GX Version: 1.2 Mesa 3.1

Textures do not work at all in every test case besides Half Life.

ClassiCube 1.3.5 and 1.3.6 both fail to render any terrain beyond a greyish horizon and the outlines of blocks. All blocks, items, and text that are able to be rendered are pure white in color and have no textures applied.

Minecraft Indev in-20091223-1459 and Beta 1.7.3 with Optifine crash upon world-load

Minecraft Alpha 1.0.4, Beta 1.7.3, and Release 1.5.2 all crash upon launch.

Tux Racer is able to render 2D textures such as text and graphics, but flickers INTENSELY and is a seizure risk. Beyond this, however, the game will only render a solid white screen.

Half Life launches and runs, but at a terrible 4 FPS. The game lags hard enough that the tram in the opening area of the game is frozen where it is, preventing the player from accessing anything beyond the intro cutscene.

GL Excess crashes instantly.

Performance

GLGears: ~76 FPS

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: Unknown; game fails to render

Minecraft in-20091223-1459: Unknown; world crash

Minecraft Alpha 1.0.4: Unknown; crash on game launch

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3: Unknown; crash on game launch

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 w/Optifine: Unknown; world crash

Minecraft Release 1.5.2: Unknown; crash on game launch

Tux Racer: Unknown; game fails to render in a VERY seizure-inducing way

Half Life: ~4 FPS; gameplay outside of training room is broken

GL Excess: Unknown; instant crash

GLDirect 2.00

From here on, GLDirect is split between "Game" and "CAD" wrappers, denoted by either a "G" or a "C" after the version number where written in this writeup.

OpenGL Version String (2.00C)

Vendor: SciTech Software, Inc. Renderer: GLDirect S3 Inc. ViRGE/DX/GX Version: 1.2 Mesa 3.1

OpenGL Version String (2.00G)

Vendor: SciTech Software, Inc. Renderer: GLDirect Version: 1.1

GLDirect 2.00C likes to complain about insufficient color precision.

Changing the color precision from 24-bit up to the maximum 32-bit color does absolutely nothing.

The CAD wrapper very clearly is intended for non-gaming workloads given how easily it crashes things. However, it is strange that it is labeled as a "maximum compatibility" wrapper/driver.

I am not using the SciTech GLDirect 3.0 driver beta seen in the video because it requires a card capable of higher DirectX versions than 6, which is what the S3 ViRGE supports. I may revisit this video idea with a later graphics card in a future video for more thorough testing.

Using the 2.00G wrapper, Minecraft Alpha and Beta have many visual bugs. Text is not rendered at all, for example, and the world selection screen is eerily dim compared to what it should be. Beta in particular extends this darkness to the title screen as well.

Under 2.00G, Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 with Optifine no longer has this darkness.

Under 2.00G, Minecraft Release 1.5.2... inverts the colors of the Mojang logo?

Did you know that if you fall out of the Half Life intro tram in just the right place, you get to see the multiverse?

The framerate starts to rise when this happens, as it appears that the tram after becoming unstuck will trigger the next loading screen. Unfortunately, this loading screen appears to be what seals your fate. Once the tram stops though you at least get to meet biblically-accurate Half Life rendering in a smooth double-digit framerate!

Performance (2.00C)

GLGears: 63 FPS

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: Unknown; game fails to render

Minecraft in-20091223-1459: Unknown; crash on game launch

Minecraft Alpha 1.0.4: Unknown; crash on game launch

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3: Unknown; crash on game launch

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 w/Optifine: Unknown; crash on game launch

Minecraft Release 1.5.2: Unknown; assumed crash on game launch based on previous versions' behavior

Tux Racer: Unknown; game fails to render (no longer seizure inducing at least)

Half Life: Unknown; crash on game launch

GL Excess: Unknown; instant crash

Performance (2.00G)

GLGears: 390 FPS; only a black screen was rendered.

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: 10-30 FPS range, ~12-15 FPS on average; most of the game still does not render, but text, the hotbar, hand items, and very occasional flickers of geometry do render. Seizure warning.

Minecraft in-20091223-1459: Unknown; crash on world load

Minecraft Alpha 1.0.4: Unknown; crash on world load

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3: Unknown; crash on world load

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 w/Optifine: Unknown; crash on world load

Minecraft Release 1.5.2: Unknown; crash on game launch

Tux Racer: Unknown; crash on game launch

Half Life: 4-5 FPS; game physics are almost entirely broken down and I'm pretty sure you end up phasing into a higher plane of existence along the way. Trying to enter the training room crashed the entire PC afterwards.

GL Excess: Unknown; instant crash

GLDirect 3.00

OpenGL Version String (3.00G)

Vendor: SciTech Software, Inc. Renderer: GLDirect Version: 1.1

OpenGL Version String (3.00C)

Vendor: SciTech Software, Inc. Renderer: GLDirect S3 Inc. ViRGE/DX/GX Version: 1.2 Mesa 3.1

GLDirect 3.00, both the CAD and Game versions, appears to behave identically to GLDirect 2.00 in almost all cases unless stated otherwise.

Performance (3.00G)

GLGears: 249 FPS; gears are rendered completely incorrectly

ClassiCube 1.3.5: 15-20 FPS on average; most of the game fails to render and the system hard-crashes after a few seconds.

ClassiCube 1.3.6: Insta-crash.

Minecraft: Crash on world load across all versions. Didn't bother testing Release 1.5.2.

Tux Racer: Unknown; crash on game launch

Half Life: ~4 FPS; extremely choppy audio in tutorial level.

GL Excess: Unknown; instant crash

Performance (3.00C)

GLGears: 80 FPS; Perfectly rendered

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: Unknown; renders a white screen

Minecraft: Crashes on game launch. The game may also complain about color depth here.

Tux Racer: Unknown; renders a white screen

Half Life: Unknown; renders a white screen and then crashes on game launch

GL Excess: Unknown; instant crash

Techland S3D

We've now moved on from GLDirect! From here on out, each wrapper is instead a discrete opengl32.dll file that must be dropped into the folder of whatever program you'd like to run it with.

OpenGL Version String

Vendor: Techland Renderer: S3 Virge 3093KB texmem KNI Version: 1.1 beta 6

Right off the bat, things appear to be taking a turn for the interesting as GLGears fails to render anything.

Performance

GLGears: 60 FPS, but only because a black screen is rendered.

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: Crashes on game launch but renders a solid blue screen.

Minecraft in-20091223-1459: We load into a world! Have fun trying to play it though. Rendering is very flickery and broken. It may be possible that there's an issue of some kind with z-buffering. 12-15 fps if that matters at all in this case.

Minecraft Alpha 1.0.4: Crashes on game launch.

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3: Renders an inverted vignette that slowly grows darker.

Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 w/Optifine: Crashes on world load.

Minecraft Release 1.5.2: Rendered the title screen with many errors for a brief moment before turning to a black screen and crashing.

Tux Racer: Unknown; renders mostly a white screen. The game does respond to user inputs, and the rendered scene changes based on those inputs, but no textures or complex objects are ever rendered. Instead, you only get the white "floor" plane, a solid blue skybox, and translucent boxes where text, objects, and particles should've been.

Half Life: Crash on game launch; absolutely RAVAGES the title screen in ways I thought only the Alliance AT3D could.

GL Excess: Actually loads! But renders only solid black or white screens after the initial loading screen.

Techland D3D

Two more wrappers left after this one! This wrapper and the Techland S3D wrapper that came before it were both created by Techland originally for their "Crime Cities" game, which, being an OpenGL title during an era where support was spotty at best across the dozens of vendors that existed at the time, necessitated the creation of a set of OpenGL wrappers that could translate calls to other APIs.

Anyway, I originally thought that there wasn't going to be much that'd be interesting about this wrapper based on how Minecraft (didn't) work, but I was quickly proven wrong in the things I tested afterwards!

Vendor: Techland Renderer: Direct3D (display, Primary Display Driver) KNI Version: 1.1 beta 6

Performance

GLGears: ~290 FPS, but only because a black screen is rendered.

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: 2-5 FPS. Runs with z-buffering issues. Faster than software rendering, but not by much (SW rendering was roughly 1-3 FPS)

Minecraft: Renders only a black screen and (usually) crashes.

Tux Racer: Unknown; renders a mostly-white screen. However, shading works well enough that you can just barely distinguish what is what.

Half Life: Crash on game loading after the title screen; absolutely RAVAGES the title screen in ways I thought only the Alliance AT3D could.

GL Excess: Actually runs! Performance is alright in some parts but generally remains low. Also, it erroneously uses the exact same texture for every single rendered object.

S3Mesa/AltOGL

So, it turns out that there may or may not be some level of bugginess involved with S3Mesa and AltOGL on my current testing setup. Whereas both wrappers were (somewhat) stable and able to load into both Minecraft and Half Life with relatively little trouble in previous experiments with AltOGL/S3Mesa and the Virge, this time around it doesn't appear to be working as expected. There may be something that got screwed up thanks to having installed and used multiple different versions of GLDirect prior to using S3Mesa and AltOGL.

The best-case scenario would have been to start off with a fresh install of Windows 98 with every test run with a different wrapper, but in this case I didn't do that. As a result, the findings for S3Mesa and AltOGL here should be considered with a grain of salt.

Vendor: Brian Paul Renderer: Mesa S3GL V0.1 Version: 1.1 Mesa 2.6

Vendor: Brian Paul Renderer: altD3D Version: 1.2 Mesa 3.0

Performance - AltOGL

GLGears: 125 fps

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: crash + system lockup

Minecraft in-20091223-1459: crashes on world load (normally it's much more stable according to previous videos. See here for reference: Indev on S3 ViRGE using AltOGL

Minecraft: Aside from Beta 1.7.3 with Optifine which crashes on world load, all versions of the game crash instantly.

Tux Racer: Freezes on main menu

Half Life: Instacrash

GL Excess: Instacrash

Performance - S3Mesa

GLGears: i forgor to run it 💀

ClassiCube 1.3.5/1.3.6: no crash but everything is rendered in solid white rather than with textures. performance is likely in the single digits.

Minecraft in-20091223-1459: crashes on world load (normally it's much more stable according to previous videos. See here for reference: Indev on S3 ViRGE using S3Mesa

Minecraft: Aside from Beta 1.7.3 with Optifine which crashes on world load, all versions of the game crash instantly.

Tux Racer: Renders just about everything except for the game terrain and player character. Performance seems to just barely reach double-digits.

Half Life: Instacrash; textures missing on main menu (similarly to Minecraft indev, this is an unexpected result as the game normally is able to play.)

GL Excess: Instacrash

Misc Notes

Running HWinfo32 crashes the system regardless of if KernelEX is enabled or not.

GLDirect 5 refuses to do anything other than software rendering due to the lack of higher DirectX support by the Virge.

GLDirect 3 can "run", but crashes the entire system after a few seconds in Classicube using the "game" wrapper.

GLDirect 3, unlike 5, has no license code available for free use.

I didn't have the opportunity to record during the time GLDirect 3's trial was active, and it expired already so to avoid having to reinstall everything to get a new trial (I've already tried to roll back the system calendar), I will instead be using GLDirect 2, which I have in fact found a license code for.

GLDirect 2 has a fourth option for OpenGL acceleration beyond the CAD/Game DirectX hardware acceleration and the CPU software acceleration, which is a DX8-based wrapper that appears to have later debuted fully in GLDirect 3.x and up. I think it's safe to assume that the CAD/Game DX6-based wrappers were then deprecated and received no further development after GLDirect 2.x given the pivot to a newer DirectX API.

There are a number of other wrappers available for the S3 ViRGE, and even an OpenGL MCD for Windows 2000. However, I'm sticking with the five that were listed here as they implement enough of the OpenGL spec to be (more) widely compatible with a number of games. The S3Quake wrapper, for example, implements only enough of the spec to run GLQuake, and I have never gotten it to even launch any other titles.

I really, sincerely didn't expect MC Beta 1.7.3 to launch at all even with Optifine, given how from prior testing I found that the game would instantly crash on anything higher than Classi--nevermind, it just crashed on world-load. (S3Mesa, AltOGL, TechlandD3D, TechlandS3D, GLDirect 1.x)

Non-Optifine Beta 1.7.3 crashes before even hitting the Mojang splash screen. (S3Mesa, AltOGL, TechlandD3D, GLDirect 1.x)

Non-Optifine Beta 1.7.3 gets into a world! All text is missing though as are the blocks. Performance is expectedly horrendous. (TechlandS3D)

Making batch files to handle version-switching instead of doing it by hand is nice.

Alongside the system setup for testing apparently no longer being ideal for using S3Mesa and AltOGL, comparison against some test runs done on an Athlon XP 1.1GHz system also reveal that the Virge performs far better with a faster CPU like the aforementioned Athlon XP than the 750MHz Pentium that this series of experiments is built upon. This experiment as a result may be eventually redone in the future using that faster CPU.

[tom2tec]

dosmid ~ 16-bit MIDI DOS Player

DOSMid is a real mode (16-bit) midi player for DOS. DOSMid supports a variety of MIDI synthesizers, and has very low hardware requirements. Features: MPU-401 OPL2 / OPL3 Native SoundBlaster AWE32 / AWE64 support Sound Blaster MIDI out port RS-232 synthesizers Gravis UltraSound sourceforge.net/projects/dosmid

[darth-azrael]

Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP

[never-obsolete]

Creative Sound Blaster AWE32

[delmondo]

yeah so i know i uploaded this like twice (though, with a different soundfont) on my old account, but here is what The Ruins would sound like if undertale was made for 486 PCs equipped with a Sound Blaster AWE32. vgmusic hasn’t accepted this MIDI yet those freaking morons.

[longautomation]

Free simcity 2000 download full game exe

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SimCity 2000™ Special Edition © 1995 Electronic Arts Inc.

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The configuration lists Pro AudioSpectrum 16 or Sound Blaster Pro 2 as music devices, but groups them to their main device when listing sound devices.Now you can design any city you can imagine and SimCity 2000 will bring it, and its resident Sims, to life. In the SC2000 file, these banks are labeled GM.OPL and GM.AD, suggesting that they are banks for the different variants of cards that use the SB set of XMI files, namely the Adlib and Sound Blaster (which primarily use OPL synthesis) variants. There are also two instrument bank files in an unknown format for use with a different output.

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Tracks that begin with 5 correspond to the code WB, and are exclusively for the Creative Wave Blaster sample-based synthesis add-on for Sound Blaster 16 and Sound Blaster AWE32 cards.ĭefault Sys-Ex data is used and included in the rip for MT-32 output. Tracks that begin with 3 correspond to the code MT, and are for the Roland MT32/LAPC-1. Tracks that begin with 2 correspond to the code SB, and are used for several different FM synthesis cards (see below). These are the only tracks that come in Windows installs, in the MIDI file format. Here you can build just the city and society you want. Here's a freeload of SimCity 2000, the second game in the SimCity game series, one of the world's most popular game series.

#FREE SIMCITY 2000 DOWNLOAD FULL GAME EXE FOR FREE#

Tracks that begin with 1 correspond to the 2-letter code GM, for general MIDI. Download Sim City 2000 safely and for free here, which is the successor to the ground breaking city simulation game SimCity. Sound card configuration options go under the section, and the set of XMI files to play back is set as a 2-letter code in the MUSICFILES field of the section. When the user selects a sound card for music playback in INSTALL.EXE, the program makes several edits to SC2000.CFG. There are 19 tracks per set numbered 0-18 (the Roland output is missing track 17 which appears to be used for sound effects). There are four soundtracks with the same music for four different sound cards, each has a numeric prefix 1, 2, 3, and 5 (4 doesn't exist, possibly indicating a sound card that was scrapped during development). The XMI music files were ripped from the SC2000.DAT file, which contains the majority of the game's data. The view has also switched to an isometric display which gives you a better look at your city and allows you to rotate the view. You can start a city all the way back in 1900 with only a few technologies available, and then, as time progresses, new technologies are invented until you reach the future where futuristic technologies like fusion power plants become available. In addition to all the features of the first game, SimCity 2000 introduces an entire water system, mountains, and the progression of technologies. The game also acts as a fun toy where you can cause disasters to see how your city reacts to fires, hurricanes, riots, plane crashes, even alien attacks! You also have to worry about the city's budget and not build so fast or so reckless that you end up going bankrupt. As your city grows, you will have various problems to deal with including traffic, crime, pollution, and civil unrest. You control the primary aspects of planning out the city including where residential, commercial, and industrial zones will be, where the police and fire departments will be built, power plants, parks, roads, railways, airports, and more. SimCity 2000 is a strategy game based on urban planning and sequel to SimCity (DOS).

#FREE SIMCITY 2000 DOWNLOAD FULL GAME EXE SERIES#

For other games in the series see SimCity.

[notreblogs]

I ripped some songs from Magic Carpet 2 : The Netherworlds, recorded straight from my Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card on my good old Pentium MMX Windows 98 computer; because I was missing those sweet background tunes from my vgm playlist and nobody had ripped them apparently.

This game uses a special soundfont which is exclusive to AWE32 sound cards so it cannot be emulated on DOSBox right now (I think).

I love this game and I love my AWE64. Wish they could make a remake of this, or a sequel. Not an “inspired-by” fangame, I want an actual game that plays just like this not just an adaptation aaaaaaaaa i m a g i n e   i t 

[zerohour1974]

Day 10 :  I always wanted a Gravis Ultrasound Max card

Hello ladies and gentleman, welcome to Day 10 of the ongoing daily blog challenge throughout January.  Now here is something I always wanted but never could afford and never probably will as they go for silly money on Ebay.

Now I admit I owned quite a nice PC which sadly was thrown out by my father due to the box it was in got nibbled by a mouse.  The machine inside was fine but he took it to the tip anyway much to my annoyance when I found out.

The machine in question while not any speed demon of a machine was a Socket 7 AMD K6-2 266Mhz machine, it had a HP 2x Speed SCSI CD Writer which was connected to an Adaptec SCSI card.  I believe it had 2GB of RAM (don’t quote me on that), it was missing a hard drive at the time as it was the one thing I was about to replace.

However the most criminal things that were disposed of was it had Two genuine 3DFX Voodoo II cards linked in SLI Mode connected to a ATI Radeon 9600 video card.  Plus the machine contained a Soundblaster Live! AWE32 sound card.

So the only thing missing was a hard drive when this machine went the journey.  To say I wasn’t impressed was an understatement.  

Anyway as tragic as that was its time to get back on topic.

Yes I had a Soundblaster AWE 32 sound card but if you were a musician of that time the card everyone wanted was the Gravis Ultrasound.

It had better wave table sound.  It could take up to 1MB of sample memory.  It was the card choice of musicians if the press surrounding it was to believed.

I’m sure many would argue that the premium sound cards were the ones coming out from Turtle Beach at the time but it was highly contested.

Most mod music writers recommended them, most of the main Demoscene recommended the GUS over Sound Blaster if you wanted to hear a better sound then it was the one you should get.

Now I remember seeing it for sale and the Gravis was never cheap compared to the Soundblaster...  A decent SB card would set you back about fifty quid or more.

The Gravis was never below one hundred and I would like to say probably more at its peak.  I think the Gravis Max was about 179

I remember that one of the Gravis Ultrasound demos was written by Triton.  Who were of course the men behind the FastTracker II software so if they believed in the card it must have some value.

Using the Crystal Semiconductors CS4231 codec and its sample memory made it the ultimate mod music card.

You always want to try it just to see how the other half lived.  Was it significantly better than Soundblaster I very much doubt it.

Sure if you run DOSBox you can set up so it emulates the Gravis but as a man who has tried it and the Soundblaster both versions are rough to say the least so whatever it produces is probably inferior to what was actually produced by the cards.

I don’t even own a machine that I could run a Gravis Ultrasound card on but its one of those things I would just liked to have tried just so I can say I have.

[retrocgads]

USA 1996

[lodowy]

HP Vectra XU 5/133

High-eng Hewlett Packard workstation from mid-nineties. Standard equipped with Pentium processor on mainboard allowing adding second CPU unit, SCSI interface and ECC RAM. Price was about $5000 when new, and as retro computing is growing it now reaches again that amount on auctions.

Modifications on this unit include fitting two 133MHz passive cooled Pentium processors and 128MB of RAM. Used unit came with Matrox Millenium II PCI graphics card with memory expansion card (to 4MB) and high profile HP 3.5′’ SCSI-2 hard drive - 1GB capacity. Image below shows also impressive power supply.

To somehow accommodate the machine for more modern environment, it was also equipped with USB PCI expansion board. Pinnacle of the machine is maybe it’s enormous size soundcard - Sound Blaster AWE32 with added 2MB RAM.

[banditloaf]

My, my, what a big sound card you have! This early model AWE32 is to connect the 3DO Blaster's proprietary drive to. See the connectors at the end? They're for the different CD-ROM standards of the era, Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi. (Taken with Instagram)

[retrocgads]

USA 1996

[retrocgads]

USA 1996