Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

Febuary 1999
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Installation of the AOpen AW37 Pro audio card in OS/2


By: Lynlee

Objective:

Installation of the AOpen AW37 Pro audio card WITHOUT Uninstalling the Multimedia Subsystem (MMOS2) of OS/2 Warp4/FP8. It may work as well with Warp3. If your old card is NOT a Crystal Semiconductor (CS) chip card, you will be instructed to uninstall the old sound card drivers before installing the card drivers for the CS chipset. A lot of cards do NOT come with an uninstaller. The CS sound card drivers package 'READ.ME', instructs how to uninstall the OS/2 Multimedia Subsystem. I found this unnecessary! You would have to reinstall MMOS2 from the original CD, then reapply your last fixpak to get MMOS2 back up to system level. Did you keep the FixPak archive? I didn't.

Notes:

Below, the mmpm2.ini or mmos2.ini may be referred to as 'the INI file'. The Backup of the INI file may be referred to as 'the backup'. In Warp3, the INI file refers to mmos2.ini. These files can be found in the directory X:\MMOS2 (X:\ = the drive MMOS2 is installed to).

Making it Work:

The 'mmpm2.ini' file was HUGE. It had a lot of Yamaha stuff from my previous sound card(s). When the new driver was installed, the most recent CS drivers where added to the END of many of the driver definition lines, instead of at the beginning.. For example:

Waveaudio=YMSWAVEOPL3AS01,YMSWAVEOPL3SA01,IBMWaveBusAudio01
should have been:
Waveaudio=IBMWaveBusAudio01,YMSWAVEOPL3AS01,YMSWAVEOPL3SA01

I felt it was to risky to try and hand edit all the Yamaha/OPL3 drivers out of the INI. The CS sound card uses the IBM OPL3 drivers. So, I decided to have OS/2 rebuild the INI file with a little help from me.

1) Backup 'mmpm2.ini', 'copy mmpm2.ini mmpm2.ini.bak'
2) Delete 'mmpm2.ini'
3) REM the sound card driver lines in config.sys
4) Delete the old sound card drivers. (File names are in the old sound
card driver archive. I used 'Find' to locate them on my system.)
5) Make sure 'Hardware Detection' is on
6) Shutdown, removed the new or old sound card and rebooted.

A very basic and crippled new 'mmpm2.ini' was created

7) Clean up the OS2.INI & OS2SYS.INI (It can't hurt!! I used
'UniMaint'*/Repair INI or use 'CHECKINI.EXE'**. Be sure to read and
understand all the instructions for CHECKINI before using!!)
8) Again, shutdown, installed the new sound card, and rebooted
9) Install the new CS sound drivers. Follow the instructions in the
'READ.ME', except Don't uninstall Multimedia.

More was added to the new INI file. But, it wasn't working!

In comparing the New INI and the backup INI, I found the '[Drivers]' section had a lot missing in the new INI. The '[Drivers]' section is something like a table of content for the rest of the file. In _my_ '[Drivers]' section, Digitalvideo, Speaker, Headphone, Microphone and the Filter lines were missing. Using the System Editor, copy/paste, I copied the missing lines from the backup INI to the New INI file '[Drivers]' section.

For each line in the '[Drivers]' section, there is suppose to be a corresponding section elsewhere in the INI. For example, under '[Drivers]' there is a 'Speaker=SPEAKER' line. Elsewhere in the INI there is a section with the heading '[SPEAKER]', with speaker information listed below that heading. I pasted all those missing sections back as well. IE: Headphone, Digitalvideo, Microphone, and 3 Filter sections.

I rebooted.. Voilà!! There are System sounds! All other sounds worked as expected, with the exception of 'QuickFlick' v1.04, which had to be reinstalled.

One final note.. I had removed the Netscape 2.02 PlugInPak, in preparation to uninstall the Multimedia Subsystem. If you find your sounds don't work in NetScape, you may have to Uninstall the Plugin pack and reinstall it. To do this go to the 'NetScape' folder and run the 'Installation Utility'.....

Naturally, YMMV! I'm just sharing my experience and findings.. It is YOUR decision to attempt this fix or not! It worked for me, it may not work for you. ;) I believe the worst that could happen is you would have to go ahead and do the OS/2 Multimedia Subsystem uninstall and reinstall.

(* UniMaint description & demo at: http://www.softouch.com/unimaint.html ** CheckINI is in the WPSTool freeware package at: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/system/wptool26.zip)

Lynlee says she is "just an ordinary person who believes OS/2 is the greatest OS ever made!" Like anyone who uses OS/2 is ordinary ;-) She is a part time Respiratory Therapist who has been using OS/2 since v1.3 and computers since a VIC-20 in 1975.

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