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Backpack 1.44 driver and PC-speaker sound

K

KenEG

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
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Cincinnati, Ohio USA
I'm not sure if this belongs in hardware or software. I just got one of these drives from Chuck(G) and tried it on my Commodoe Colt. Works great, but then I loaded up King's Bounty and the sound wasn't working right. Investigation showed it to be caused by having backpack.sys loaded. I then remembered that my PCjr didn't play the music in KB either , just clicks, and it has a backpack drive connected. I removed backpack.sys from confit.sys and rebooted. KB now plays music. I have no idea what causes this, but wanted to share. King's Quest 4 does play music properly when set to PC speaker with the driver active, so not sure if any other software would have this issue.
 
KenEG said:
I'm not sure if this belongs in hardware or software. I just got one of these drives from Chuck(G) and tried it on my Commodoe Colt. Works great, but then I loaded up King's Bounty and the sound wasn't working right. Investigation showed it to be caused by having backpack.sys loaded. I then remembered that my PCjr didn't play the music in KB either , just clicks, and it has a backpack drive connected. I removed backpack.sys from confit.sys and rebooted. KB now plays music. I have no idea what causes this, but wanted to share. King's Quest 4 does play music properly when set to PC speaker with the driver active, so not sure if any other software would have this issue.
Click to expand...

I am glad you brought this up as I bought Chuck(G)'s other backpack drive although I havent gotten it in yet.
 
KenEG said:
I removed backpack.sys from config.sys and rebooted. KB now plays music. I have no idea what causes this
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You answered your own question: The backpack.sys driver causes this. Their own troubleshooting doc mentions it: "If the sound and video produced by your Backpack appears II choppy" or II broken-up ", you may be encountering too slow of a parallel port data throughput. For faster data throughput, make sure that your computer's parallel port provides Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) capabilities. Some EPP ports must first be activated in the computer's BIOS SETUP. More details on this topic are available in Technical Support Document # 2701."

I don't have access to technical support document # 2701, but it likely states "We don't know how to write drivers that share interrupts properly".
 
That's really odd. Back when we were selling these things with our own software, we didn't bother with interrupts. It's entirely possible to carry out all operations on this drive without any interrupts at all. We implemented DOS real-mode, Windows 16-bit DLL and Windows 95 VxD access. We stopped short of NT, as there wasn't a lot of interest at the time.
 
So are you saying there is an alternative to using backpack.sys? If so, where can I get it. Also, just to be clear, I am still very happy to have gotten this from Chuck. At worst, I have to have to edit my config.sys when I want to use it. Having a device driver that doesn't cause this problem would be great though.

Chuck(G) said:
That's really odd. Back when we were selling these things with our own software, we didn't bother with interrupts. It's entirely possible to carry out all operations on this drive without any interrupts at all. We implemented DOS real-mode, Windows 16-bit DLL and Windows 95 VxD access. We stopped short of NT, as there wasn't a lot of interest at the time.
Click to expand...
 
KenEG said:
So are you saying there is an alternative to using backpack.sys? If so, where can I get it. Also, just to be clear, I am still very happy to have gotten this from Chuck. At worst, I have to have to edit my config.sys when I want to use it. Having a device driver that doesn't cause this problem would be great though.
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Yeah Chuck(G), give us the goods!
 
You're very slow--I posted the source here at least 4 years ago--probably longer.

But see what I mean about "the web is knowledge written in loose sand?"
 
Chuck(G) said:
You're very slow--I posted the source here at least 4 years ago--probably longer.

But see what I mean about "the web is knowledge written in loose sand?"
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so your going to make me feel bad for not doing a search? You didnt hint at it in your last post!
 
Chuck(G) said:
You're very slow--I posted the source here at least 4 years ago--probably longer.

But see what I mean about "the web is knowledge written in loose sand?"
Click to expand...

To be fair, 1. VERAULT is a relatively new forum member, and 2. It's not realistic to post something as a forum attachment and expect it to be found years later. I can't find any reference to what you posted other than http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?20377-Backpack-Floppy-Drives&p=138566#post138566 and that download link doesn't work any more. (If you could repost, it would be appreciated!)

EDIT: That forum post does indeed have it, as an attachment, my bad. Is NECPACK.ZIP the file you were referring to, Chuck? It looks like it was only for the floppy-drive version of the backpack, not the CDROM.
 
Trixter said:
To be fair, 1. VERAULT is a relatively new forum member, and 2. It's not realistic to post something as a forum attachment and expect it to be found years later. I can't find any reference to what you posted other than http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?20377-Backpack-Floppy-Drives&p=138566#post138566 and that download link doesn't work any more. (If you could repost, it would be appreciated!)

EDIT: That forum post does indeed have it, as an attachment, my bad. Is NECPACK.ZIP the file you were referring to, Chuck? It looks like it was only for the floppy-drive version of the backpack, not the CDROM.
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Thanks for posting a link to the original post Trixter.
 
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Trixter said:
To be fair, 1. VERAULT is a relatively new forum member, and 2. It's not realistic to post something as a forum attachment and expect it to be found years later. I can't find any reference to what you posted other than http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?20377-Backpack-Floppy-Drives&p=138566#post138566 and that download link doesn't work any more. (If you could repost, it would be appreciated!)

EDIT: That forum post does indeed have it, as an attachment, my bad. Is NECPACK.ZIP the file you were referring to, Chuck? It looks like it was only for the floppy-drive version of the backpack, not the CDROM.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm glad you found it. I thought that was what was required as the the title of the thread seems to indicate it. If it's the CDROM driver, sorry, I don't have a clue.

Considering that I wrote the code perhaps 20 years ago, a few years, particularly with a web search doesn't seem too extreme to me.

(Hint: use Google search with SITE:VCFED.ORG--the search facility on this site is worse than useless.)

Besides, I'm old--I can be curmudgeonly if I want to. :)
 
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Yes, thanks. I will try it when I get a chance. I used the drive to install Might and Magic 1 today. That game works fine with PC. Speaker sound with the driver loaded. I have had several issues with King's Bounty so I think at least some of the blame belongs in how it is programmed.
 
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