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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

(licensed under

GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

)

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 so ...

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 i ...

devices, designed to allow

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

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 ope ...

to run on the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

NT/2000/XP/95/98/Me

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

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 designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system pl ...

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 ( parallel ...

DAC, and an

MPU 401 The MPU-401, where ''MPU'' stands for MIDI Processing Unit, is an important but now obsolete interface for connecting MIDI-equipped electronic music hardware to personal computers. It was designed by Roland Corporation, which also co-authored the ...

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

( 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. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

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 "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Win ...

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 MT3 may refer to: * Melatonin receptor 1C * Metallothionein-3 * Montana Highway 3 Montana Highway 3 (MT 3) is a highway in central Montana extending north from Billings to Great Falls. Route description At its southern end, MT 3 begi ...

) is different from the type of hardware or software device actually present on the system (e.g.

Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth A software synthesizer or softsynth is a computer program that generates digital audio, usually for music. Computer software that can create sounds or music is not new, but advances in processing speed now allow softsynths to accomplish the sam ...

.) * 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 that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the fil ...

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

Design

As opposed to

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games i ...

, 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 Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

personal computer with

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...

, 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 ei ...

) through

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

. 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: *A disclaimer for research done in an experiment or study *A Statute of limitations * Limitations (novel), ''Limitations'' (novel), a 2006 novel by Scott Turow * A technical limitation {{Disamb ...

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 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 ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, 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 Check-in is the process whereby people announce their arrival at an office, hotel, airport, hospital, port, seaport or event. Office check-in Many offices have a reception or front office area near the entrance to greet or assist visitors arrivin ...

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, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, 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