Triton - Crystal Dream.txt

Triton "Crystal Dreams" (1992) DOS demo
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=463]

How to configure DOSBox to run this demo:
-----------------------------------------

machine=vgaonly (you might consider machine=svga_et4000 for kicks)
cycles=10000 or higher
memsize=1 (demo does not appear to use extended memory)
goldplay=true (demo uses Goldplay-style hacked Sound Blaster support)
linewise=true (or else you will get flickering on the bottom of the screen)


"Crystal Dream" and the horrifying reason it's Sound Blaster output
doesn't work with DOSBox by Jonathan Campbell
-------------------------------------------------------------------

It was bad enough writing the Goldplay hack for early DOS demos.
The idea of telling the DSP one length (65536) while telling the
DMA controller another length (1) and then using the timer interrupt
to write to the byte at the sample rate was bad enough. But those
demos at least handled the Sound Blaster as intended regardless
including the IRQ.

When I tested the hack against various DOS demos I was intrigued to
discover that Crystal Dream also used the technique, but I was also
confused as to why the demo seemed to have difficulty responding to
the IRQ to keep the sound going---when you started the demo with
Sound Blaster output the audio would run for about 1 second, and
then stop. I assumed it had to do with faulty PIC emulation at the
time, after all, DOSBox's debug code reported the demo writing some
strange ICW3 and ICW4 values. I chased that around for a while, then
gave up and moved on.

Today (as of writing this) I had tried the demo again, this time using
the debugger to try and examine what IRQ the demo had hooked to see
if it was detecting the Sound Blaster IRQ properly. What I found instead
is that while the demo hooks IRQ 0 (timer) and IRQ 1 (keyboard), it
does NOT hook any IRQ for the Sound Blaster. In fact, it appears to
complete ignore the IRQ entirely! Instead, it has code in the timer
interrupt (which is running at the sample rate of audio!) to check
the DSP write status port (hard-coded to 0x22C apparently!) and
maintain a counter based on whether or not the DSP is busy. If the
DSP is not busy, it counts down and then after a delay writes
DSP command 0x14 (length 0xFFFF). It does this repeatedly, despite the
fact that command 0x14 is already in effect! The demo (at about 10-20
times a second) is constantly restarting a 1-second block of DSP
playback by interrupting the DSP playback it just started! All that
just to hack around the fact that it's not really paying attention
to the Sound Blaster IRQ!

It makes me wonder how this technique apparently managed to work as
well as it did on both Creative hardware and on a clone Sound Blaster
(Gallant SC-6000) that I owned back in the day!

Now while that works on real hardware (apparently), it does not work
with DOSBox, because (at the time of writing this but before fixing
DSP emulation) DOSBox emulated the DSP's busy bit by incrementing
a counter on read and returning 0xFF if bit 3 was set, rather than
using actual writes to the DSP and time to emulate busy/not busy.
This is "good enough" for most DOS games that only loop until not
busy, but if you're "Crystal Dream" polling port 0x22C on every
timer interrupt, this blind toggling only serves to confuse it's
hacked DSP playback mode. Specifically, DOSBox's blind toggling
every 8 reads causes the demo's countdown timer to reset. Because
the counter is never allowed to count down properly, the demo never
gets to the stage of issuing another DSP command 0x14 to keep audio
playback going, and eventually, the 1-second long DSP block stops
and audio goes silent.

TODO: Since the demo is not acknowledging the IRQ the standard way
      (by reading the proper I/O port), would audio also stop and
      halt on Sound Blaster 16 hardware?

      This posting on Pouet seems to provide a hint:

      "Nice demo with common effects of its time. The soundblaster sound worked only with my old sb pro, today I have to use my even older DAC :-))"