Sound Blaster 16 Synth not working?

[MarchHare]

I've been trying to figure this out for some time. Apparently some SB16 sound works, but other SB16 doesn't. Specifically, the synth does not seem to be implemented. I will use DOS programs as a good example, as I tend to know what they should sound like. For instance, Doom is able to run, and I can hear sound effects, but not the music.

So I'm attaching some basic code. This code was originally written in basic, but given the nature of what it did, I was able to convert it to a c function that was compiled and run with a bootloader stub. I tested this on a boot disk in a real machine, and it worked. (The sound way a kind of growl-ly purr that rose, then got quieter, sounds kind of like a vroom, but with a square wave). So this code is OS independent, you just have to call it from a bootloader stub and it should work.

When I use it on Virtualbox, it doesn't make any sound, nor does the basic version of it. In fact, the basic version also checks for a sound blaster and can't find one on Virtualbox. So I'm not sure what's going on, but I suspect the synth portion still needs to be implemented?

If someone could point me at some code that does something similar for Intel HDA, I'd love to see it, because I wouldn't mind learning how to program for that one instead.

[pentagonik]

Right, synth (OPL-3) at the moment is not supported by our emulation, and we don't know when (or if) we will add this eventually.

If you want to have a look at the source code, it available here.

Contributions are welcome!