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From: tjw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (TJ Wood WA3VQJ)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Sound Blaster Registers
Message-ID: <28112@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 13 Aug 90 21:51:50 GMT
References: <1990Aug7.153600.10175@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Reply-To: tjw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Terry J. Wood)
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services
Lines: 57

In article <1990Aug7.153600.10175@IRO.UMontreal.CA> fasciano@degusse.UUCP (Massimo Fasciano) writes:
>Hi everybody,
>
>  The soundblaster manual gives the adresses of all of the
>  card's I/O ports but does not explain exactly how to use
>  them...

I saw the sound blaster hardware in an electronics store (here in Pgh)
for $299 about 2 weeks ago and it looked so neat that I had to buy one.

Now the salesman insisted that it had a text to speech chip on it but
from what I can see it simply has a DA and an AD (along with the
MIDI/JOYSTICK port).  Anyway, I've wanted to fool around with a DA since
my PDP-11 days.

So I get this thing home and start playing with it.  I used the canned
programs and got the thing operational.  (I suppose that the guy who
wrote the programs is the one I'm hearing.  He's obviously not from
Pittsburgh, with that far east accent! ;-)

Anyway, after digitizing some BAGPIPE music from a CD player,  I wanted
to program this board myself.   (At 13,000 Hz the music sounded OK, but
hey, all that squealing isn't probably in the original recording.  But
with bagpipes how can you tell!?! ;-)

So I look at the program loadable driver described in the back of the
manual and I finally conclude that it REALLY is just what they say it is:
program loadable.  It's instructions that have to be copied into memory
(at any segment, starting at displacement zero).  Well, this turned out
to be, for me, easier said than done.  Whenever I link my "driver area"
(created by MS Assembler) in with my MS C main program, it's never at
displacement zero of the segment.  It's always at displacement "A" or
"E".  At zero is some code (I assume from MS C).  I finally took the
hacker's approach and just overwrote the instructions.  I'm playing the
game of "overlaying" the driver with the original code, but I'm doing
it myself.

I got the driver working, but I'm not real happy with the solution.  I'd
much rather have a driver that was relocatable.  (I pulled a
disassembler off the net, but I don't have the time now to do all the
symbol substition).  I'll probably keep working with it in my "spare"
time.

However, if anyone out there in net land would like a copy of the code
I now have, I'll be happy to send it.  Beware: I don't write MS C or
MS Assembly code for a living, just for fun.  All of this is a learning
experience for me!

Also, if anyone else wrote a program for this board, I'd love to see it,
too.  Anyone buy the "Programmer's Toolkit" that they sell for $100?

Terry J. Wood
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