Win3x.Org

I have a few potential Windows 3.1 applications and drivers.
  http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/
  http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/index.htm
Big Monstro suggested that I place some of them at win3x.org, and Vorro offered ftp space.

However, because I only use English, the files may be of little use speakers of other languages.
If any industrious polyglot is interested and if any of the projects are worthwhile, I will work on the task.

Any opinions or suggestions would be appreciated.

18th May

Hello watlers_world and thank you for the files

watlers_world wrote:

Big Monstro suggested that I place some of them at win3x.org, and Vorro offered ftp space.
However, because I only use English, the files may be of little use speakers of other languages.

Most of your pieces of software are actually drivers, so the language is not a critical point. The aim is operating devices and nothing else.

watlers_world wrote:

Windows 3.1x Sound
Creative AudioPCI ens1371/1373 driver test Version 16

Excellent! I've a Creative Sound Blaster PCI 128 (based on the en1371/1373 chip). I'll soon test it.

26th June

Like I previously wrote to the author, his sound driver works!

However, there is a significant flaw: although it's OK for Windows sounds, we can hear "clicking noise" while playing sounds on Winplay3.

watlers_world confirmed me it's a driver-related problem. Since the latter still works, he has eventually uploaded it on the Vorro's FTP

  http://nwserveur.no-ip.org/upload/dev/delphi16/Blstdrvh.zip

Best regards,
Big Monstro

I am sorry to have released a driver that worked so poorly.
Perhaps I can mitigate the problem.

I have updated the driver and released the new version.
"Creative AudioPCI ens1371/1373 driver Version O"
http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/index.htm

I hope that this version works better.

Hello,

Thanks to your driver, I finally managed to get sound working on Windows 3.11 using a PCI card.

However, using this driver at the same time as the drivers for my 3COM ethernet card (which is integrated to my motherboard actually) causes my system to freeze at boot.
I'm forced to chose between having network and sound. Can't have both at the same time.

Do you have any idea of why this is happening and how to get around this ?

Hello Who,

Probably an IRQ conflict. Check the IRQ attribution of your PCI sound card and your onboard Ethernet card. Both shouldn't use the same IRQ if you want to use them at the same time.

Best regards,
Big Monstro

Re,

Problem is that my BIOS is not complete enough to allow such operations.

There's a "Reset configuration Data : force the bios to perform again the resource allocation for all PnP and PCI devices on next boot" setting, I've tried it but it didn't solve the problem.

Does your motherboard have several PCI slots?

It's possible that only the currently used PCI slot shares the same IRQ than the onboard Ethernet card.

Yes, there are 3 PCI slots. I will try different ones.

Who , I am sorry if I have caused any problems.
Please describe all in greater detail. (computer, PCI cards,etc...)

Is it a fancy booting network card? (905c?)
If so, disable Network Boot from the Computers BIOS and from the 3com cards bios.


Big Monstro, I don't think I enabled the IRQ for the ens137x cards.
If you know how to get a nice high speed hardware interrupt for the driver, please let me know.

Hello watlers_world,

IRQ conflict is a reasonable hypothesis: virtually all devices have an IRQ (Interrupt ReQuest) to talk with the central processor unit. When a given device (such as a printer or a sound card) calls the CPU to treat some instructions, it requests and interrupts it for a moment. When two components share the same IRQ (possibly the sound and network cards on the Who's computer), the CPU cannot identify which device calls, causing unexpected results. For example, the early ISA sound cards use the IRQ 7 by default, just like the LPT ports. Therefore, it was impossible to listen music and print a document at the same time. Later, sound cards move to the IRQ 5 by default. I know there exist devices that don't have an allocated IRQ today (graphic cards on some computers), and the IRQ management have changed since Windows 2000. From DOS to Windows 9x era, IRQ conflict was a recurrent issue. Alongside Windows XP, virtually all systems - even monoprocessor ones - support APIC (with much more IRQs available than PIC: 200+ instead of sixteen).

watlers_world wrote:

Big Monstro, I don't think I enabled the IRQ for the ens137x cards.

Do you mean the sound card (with your driver loaded) simply cannot request the CPU? Only the CPU can talk to the sound card and not the opposite?

Windows 3.1 requires the protected mode for memory allocation, so, why Who wouldn't able to use both sound and network at the same time?

Best regards,
Big Monstro