Basilisk II Atari

[stephen_usher]

There is sound. However, everything is a Simple Beep when I try the different sounds in the control panel. Some of them produce a different volume of beep of varying volume of beep but they're all beep. No quacks, bongs or droplets.

[agranlund]

There is sound. However, everything is a Simple Beep when I try the different sounds in the control panel. Some of them produce a different volume of beep of varying volume of beep but they're all beep. No quacks, bongs or droplets.

I have the same on one of my 7.5 installations but not on any of the other ones so I took it for a borked install and used another one instead. Figured it maybe had messed up or missing system sound files (sound from applications are fine, it’s just the system ones that aren’t working on that disk image)
I usually just copy the system folder rather than doing a proper install since its faster and thought perhaps that had caused issues.

Is that with the 7.5 image from my website?
I lost track of which image is which here :lol:

[stephen_usher]

Yes, it's your image.

The game sounds are fine.

[agranlund]

Yes, it's your image.

The game sounds are fine.

Cool, cheers :)

I downloaded the image again and yep, it's that image that is broken.
The system sounds are on the disk and they do play correctly when double-clicked in the Finder, but the Sound program in the control panel doesn't appear to find them. Those sound files are in "Macintosh/System Folder/System/".
I must have messed something up when cutting stuff to make that smaller disk image.. I'll make a new one, thanks for pointing it out :)

[stephen_usher]

Sound doesn't seem to work under System 7.0 though I can't test it properly using the disk tools floppy image.

[agranlund]

@stephen_usher

Ah, now I see. The disk image is fine actually.
The system sounds are fine when using the LCIII rom.
I then tried again with the IISI rom, using the same disk image and then the control panel is not able to play those sounds (even though MacOS itself can when double-clicking the sound files).

Not sure why this is.

I doubt it, but could the rom used when installing the OS in the first place have anything to do with it? In case the installer does different things depending on that? Though I'd imagine it would just check the "gestalt id" which is being patched to 5, or 14, regardless. hmmn..

I do recommend using the LCIII rom over IISI unless you really don't want to spend that extra 512Kb ram for it.
Guess I should probably change the default basilisk.inf to that too.

I also checked a 7.0.1 install and just like you pointed out, there isn't any sound. Something to investigate for sure.
Didn't get sound in 8.x either, but that installation is a bit hacked to make it run on an unsupported 68030 anyway. Don't know if a proper install and a 68040/60 makes a difference for sound.

[stephen_usher]

It's important to use a disk image installed on the target machine. As part of the last part of the install the installer "optimises" the System file, which targets the drivers for the ROM and hardware.

It's well known that the sound sub-system changes massively between releases. e.g. sound only worked on Spectre GCR for System 6.0.5 -> 6.0.7 and stopped working in 6.0.8 as it changed totally in that patch release.

[stephen_usher]

I've just tested with the LCIII ROM and the integer performance is nearly 4x higher than with the IIsi ROM. I'm wondering if the LCII ROM would give the same benefit but with half the ROM size.

[agranlund]

It's important to use a disk image installed on the target machine. As part of the last part of the install the installer "optimises" the System file, which targets the drivers for the ROM and hardware.

That's really good to know, thanks!
I'm a complete noob when it comes to pre-OSX Macs.

So it turns out sound does not work for 7.0/7.1 on the PC version of BasiliskII either.
A quick check in the forums revealed that it can be made to work by installing QuickTime to upgrade the sound system.
So I installed QuickTime 2.5 over 7.0.1 and that does indeed make sound work on PC Basilisk.

It didn't seem to help for the Atari port though so that's something to investigate.
And I guess same for trying to get OS8 sound working. Turns out my hacked OS8 installation makes sound in the PC version emulating a 68030.
And all those other random sound related issues I'm having that the PC version doesn't :D

I'll get there in the end I'm sure. For now, I'm at least still somewhat happy it makes sound at all in 7.5 and especially that DMA sound appears to be working :)

Thanks for your help and input!

[DoG]

Speaking of which... how much would one have to bribe you for a new version with the audio jack pointing to the back of the machine instead of out left :)

That was actually one of the previous versions I did. Most Atari's got the MIDI port next to the cartridge port so that version got scratched since you couldn't fit the connectors properly (MIDI and 3,5 jack from MV16 at the same time). I don't have one of the early models of ST so I never thought about it.

I probably have some board left of that MV16 version. Do you want just an empty PCB? I don't think I have any components left to solder one up. I might have one already finished, since I did some testing with it, but I'm not sure. But I won't have access to all that anyway until earliest Easter weekend.