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Source: (rwklein@mensys.nl)
Moderator: Trevor Smith (trevor@haligonian.com)
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A few weeks ago I send out a message explaining how John Gow is
working on a generic WIN-OS/2 driver which will bring sound in
WIN-OS/2 via almost any audio source. The only thing that is needed
is a PDD (Physical Device Driver). If you have sound in native OS/2,
you can hear your system sounds in OS/2 for instance, this driver
will work (the change is at least very, very big). You can already
download a version that brings wave in and wave out to OS/2. Midi
support is also coming, however, there is a delay. 

(For more info about how the driver works, go to the site, links are
listed below).

The driver which you can now download works via DART. For wave
support this is quite nice. But for MIDI in WIN-OS/2 sessions this is
not a good solution. There are big timing problems on some sound
cards, which gives very bad results (notes are not played at the
right time!). Also MIDI IN is not supported by DART.

Quite a few people are asking, "why make this device driver?" Well to
start with, your old 16 bit Windows 3.1 applications can now be heard
under OS/2! Second, when WIN-OS/2 support is working (which will now
take some time!), an effort will be made to get SoundBlaster 16
emulation going in OS/2 DOS sessions. This way your old DOS games can
keep running, but with sound! 

But why this delay? John is writing a device driver which will
deliver the data to the sound driver directly, speeding things up a
lot! To get MIDI support going, RTMIDI will be used. This means that
the old driver base is rewritten and this takes some time.

For cards that don't support RTMIDI there is problem. In a beta that
John only has MIDI via DART is included. This may be included in the
driver to solve this problem. Its not a solution that will work in
every case but it's better than nothing. It is however not certain
that this option will be included.

John is very busy and for this reason we can't mention any dates. But
in about 4 weeks we hope to begin a closed beta test of this new
driver. It will included WAVE in and WAVE out. MIDI support is not
certain, that may take some more time.

For more info, and the version that supports wave in wave out, look
on:

  http://home.wxs.nl/~rwklein 

or

  http://www.mensys.nl/rwklein/ 

You can also find a link where you can subscribe to the mailing list
of this device driver.
 
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