Raine + DOS = bad sound

[theelf]

Hi! greetings, i was a user in old forum with same nick

 

 

I have a Celeron 366mhz PC, DOS 7+, AWE64, 128mb ram, TNT2 m64

 

 

 

Raine 0.51.0 works great, fast, great sound, but new version, 0.63.4 is slow, and the sound glitches a lot

 

 

 

I check same games, like CPS1 Final Fight, or CPS2 SFA, with same results, this games work good in 0.51.0 and slow in 0.63.4

 

 

I really want to use new verion, because have neogeo in raine is amazing... no more mame in command line

 

 

Any ideas what the problem can be?

 

 

Thanks!

[Tux]

The slow part is probably related to the sound too, disabling sound would probably make it fast again.

Sorry to hear that but I can't do anything about it, I compiled this version just for the very few who can still use a dos version, but I can't test it with my normal hardware.

There is an old unused pc in a corner, but it's still a 1 GHz, so it might even be too fast to experience this problem, but anyway it's in a corner and it would really not be easy to test a recent raine on this...

You know hardware is less and less expensive ? You can even buy ultra mini computers on a board nowdays for less than 100$, I'd say it's time for you th leave this computer you use behind...

[theelf]

Hi! nice to see you again, and thanks for answering my question

 

Do you say the problem is sound in new raine, can I ask, what did you change from 0.51.0 to 0.63.4 in sound area? too much to revert?

 

I understand dos version dont worth the effort, for just a few users we use

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

PD:

 

Sadly, over 366mhz is not good in DOS, too many games start to fail, P2/Celeron 333/366mhz is the top, over this mhz, problems came (even so my case is BabyAT, motherboard for P3 1ghz+ in babyAT will be very expensive)

 

Is not about money, even if i get a core i7 for free... how I will play DOS games? only emulation..like Dosbox... for the real thing is a must at least one ISA for sound card, plus disable L1 cache is not working very well in new CPU in DOS anymore...

 

and of course, a new PC is boring like hell... no real DOS?? too boring

Edited August 3, 2015 by theelf

[Tux]

hehe, give dosbox a try, some games can actually be played better with dosbox than on our original old hardware because it emulates general midi, and very few people had this in the old dos days !

Ok maybe not everything runs, but probably almost everything, and a big part of this is running better in dosbox !

 

And what do you miss so much about dos ? Not the command line I hope, it was quite retarded in fact (with 4dos it was better, but still... !).

I don't remember clearly what changed between 0.51 and 0.63 for sound, I would have to check but either the lib used for sound changed, or some old hacks were applied for the sound in the old allegro lib used in 0.51 and were lost and became incompatible with the more recent one used in 0.63. So it would be hard to fix !

[theelf]

Hi!

 

Im a big fan of emulation, for me is same to play in emulator or console, but about computers, is not the same. A CPS1, neogeo or megadrive, there was built (almost) just for play games, instead a computer

 

 

There is a lot of things that are lost in emulation, configurations, hardware (+hardware problems), operating system, etc.. you know....

 

 

Oh yes, of course i miss the command line... and Norton Commander, and Xtree Gold, and win3x.. and desqviewX.... and BeOS, OS/2, QNX, and... etc etc all the old days x86 things... (and amiga, and amstrad... and.. jeje)

 

 

About General Midi, of course I have the real thing connected to the Celeron PC a SC-88ST and a MT-32, plus a AWE64 and a GUS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, back to Raine, thanks for answer, if one day you find the probem in DOS build, here a happy guy to test!! jaja

 

 

For now i will keep 0.51 for CPS1 & CPS2 and mame for neogeo, but believe me, using raine for all, will be the best jeje, i really love the GUI

 

 

Thanks for all

Edited August 3, 2015 by theelf

[Tux]

lol ! Try linux one day, at least you'll discover a serious command line, even though you can do without it nowdays... after using this for a while you wonder how you could do without it for all this time !

 

I had a gus too in the old days, it finished burnt after a hardware problem... I can't say I am a big fan of hardware problems actually !

 

Well I did a quick test of how things run in emulation :

with dosbox I have serious speed issues and the sound works only in 0.28, it seems to freeze for 0.51 and 0.63.

With dosemu it works fine, sound is ok in 0.28 and 0.63, no sound in 0.51 !

 

So you see for me all is ok !

 

Plus I'd have a serious problem to be able to rebuild this I need a dos compiler, and I don't have any right now, and it's always very long to build... when it works which is not always the case !

At least I was able to see that both 0.51 and 0.63 use the same allegro lib, so if there is a difference in the sound output it means some hacks were applied in the 0.51 one but not on the 0.63, and I have absolutely no idea where these hacks could be now !

(I still have an allegro-4.2.2 for dos here in the archives, but I guess it's the one used for 0.63, no hacks to see anywhere... !).

Oh well if one day I can build a dos compiler again and you are still around to make some tests, I'll try something, but it's not soon apparently, sorry !

 

EDIT : I have made some speed tests too with dosemu. In 0.51 it can't make any sound, when using vesa 2.0 linear modes and bublbobl I get about 3000 fps during the intro.

With 0.63 I have sound which slows things down to about 1500-1700 fps, when disabling sound in 0.63 I also get a little more than 3000 fps !

At least you used the vesa linear modes didn't you ? (although I am not sure it changes a lot of things for 320x240 mode, in this one the whole video ram is probably mapped in 1 time, no fancy access involved).

So again, everything seems fine from here !

Edited August 3, 2015 by Tux

[theelf]

Hi! thanks again for fast and great reply!


What version are you using? 0.51.0 have sound, 0.51.8 dont have sound, this build was never working with sound in any of my DOS computers (5x86, Pentium 1 and P2)

0.51.0 is the last one that for my in DOS with sound


About the problem, after many test, i think I found where the problem is. Simple... 0.63 is much slower than 0.51, and my celeron cant do 60fps When fps drop from 60, the sound get crackling and never stop, even if fps get 60 again

In 0.51 I always have fullspeed (60fps) even with big CPS2 games, in 0.63 even games like Final Fight are not fullspeed (54-60fps)



I test different thing, i build a Pentium 100, 64mb ram, S3 Virge, and test 0.51, and Street fighter Alpha. I know this P1 will not do 60fps, but i wanna test if 0.51 do same problem of 0.63, but no, even if is slow, sound get correct...


My conclusion, is that 0.51 even if some framedrop or slowdown (in case no autoframeskip), the sound is correct, and 0.63, beside being slower than 0.51, have a problem in sound, that if slowdown or framedrop, the sound get bad


Maybe the sound buffer in 0.63 is too small?¿



About your question, yes, i can do vesa 1,2 and 3 with the riva TNT, even custom modes, like 304x224 60hz for neogeo, or 384x224 for CPS1, but no, i dont see any improvement from VGA to any vesa modes in 320x240 or less



Sorry my bad english, i hope you can understand what i wanna explain

Edited August 4, 2015 by theelf

[Tux]

Ok, I have rebuilt a gcc for dos thanks to this : https://github.com/andrewwutw/build-djgpp

It didn't work out of the box, it required some editing but it seems to work.

Now the bad news is that I get a crash when running bublbobl with an optimized build, and not with a debug build, which means this gcc has problems with optimizations ! (or maybe it's because dosemu doesn't like pentium3 stuff... hopefully !).

By the way which beast were you talking about, because raine is now optimized by default for pentium3, maybe I should revert to pentium for the dos version then ?

 

Anyway it was easier to rebuild than what I thought, I hope you'll be around here for testing soon !

 

EDIT : ok, it was indeed the pentium3 optimizations, so I made a build for pentium instead, it's uploaded you can find it in the download section :

http://raine.1emulation.com/download/latest.html

Test this on your hardware compared to 0.51.0, and if it's still slower then test without sound (to know if it's because of the sound or if it's because of something else).

Compared to the last dos binary well it's updated to the very last git version, and the allegro lib used has a few hacks added, for me there is no difference from these hacks but maybe you'll see more effect on your side...

Good testing !

(also it uses gcc-4.9.2 which is incredibly recent for a dos build !).

Edited August 4, 2015 by Tux

[theelf]

Tux, im so sorry the delay, real life work, i was traveling

I just came home 20 min ago, and now im in front of the Celeron jeje (i was in the airplane thinking in raine jaja)

Ok, i have 0.51.0 and 0.64 in the celeron, i tested both version

0.64 still slower, and the sound is bad, sorry

 

 

I tested final fight

 

In 0.51 using vesa3, i get solid 60fps with sound or without sound
In 0.64 using vesa3, with sound 55-60fps, without sound 60fps

 

The sound slowdown a lot in 0.64, but not in 0.51 ?¿ I tested in 0.64 11khz, 22khz, 44khz, same result

Any more testings? i dont know if is possible to do a benchmark in raine, or something like this

 

Greetings

Edited August 7, 2015 by theelf

[Tux]

Try the rdtsc display to know what eats your cpu time (press F11 3 times), and report which are the highest numbers...

[theelf]

Ok, Final Fight, exactly same place

 

 

 

In 0.51

 

 

Misc: 0%
CPU:11-14%
Sound: 12-16%
Draw: 22-28%
Blit: 14-16%
PAL: 25-33%
Free: 0%

 

 

 

In 0.64

 

 

Misc: 0%
CPU:9-14%
Sound: 10-14%
Draw: 18-25%
Blit: 14-16%
PAL: 22-27%
Free: 0%

 

I get even better numbers in 0.64 !!! ?¿¿??

 

but believe me, the sound in 0.64 have a lot of distortion, in 0.51 is very clean

 

 

Thanks for all, and sorry for trouble, whatever other test you need, im here

Edited August 7, 2015 by theelf