Re: audio partly dies

On 11/08/07 04:53 pm, Peter Brown wrote:
Hi tholen

tholen@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I just had a recurrence of an interesting problem, and I'm wondering
if anybody out there has any bright ideas on how to recover without
rebooting.

The symptom is that certain applications that involve audio stop
working. There are apparently multiple ways to trigger this situation.
One that is known to do the deed repeatedly is the TRACKCPY command
line utility supplied with RSJ. That is, if I reboot, verify that
audio is working, and then run TRACKCPY, the audio stops working after
that, and it happens every time I use TRACKCPY. What is odd is that
PMTRKCPY (essentially CD View) doesn't trigger the problem. I had
reported the problem to RSJ long ago, but they couldn't reproduce it
on their system.

Yesterday my audio died again, but I haven't used TRACKCPY in ages,
so something else triggered the problem this time. Unfortunately,
there are very few clues as to what the problem is. CoolEdit (a
Windows 3.1 application) still produces audio. And z! can still
play MP3s. But the REXX script PLAY returns:

108 +++ InitRC = mciRxInit();
REX0043: Error 43 running W:\MMOS2\PLAY.CMD, line 108: Routine not found

(Marty's version of PLAY does the same thing, except on line 163.)

on the first invocation, and if I try it a second time from the same
command prompt, a SYS3175 window pops up, and when I dismiss the
popup, the windowed command prompt also goes away. My audio editing
software simply exits silently. If you invoke it without a filename
on the command line, the first thing it is supposed to do is ask for
the name of the audio file you wish to edit, but it doesn't even get
that far, so I know that it's not a matter of encountering some call
to the MMIO subsystem; rather, it must involve the loading of the EXE
and I presume some DLL referenced by the EXE.

I had multiple instances of my audio editing software already loaded
when the audio died, but if I invoke any of the functions that are
supposed to play an audio clip, they do nothing, but the program
remains alive.

If I go into OS/2 System --> System Setup --> Sound
none of those sounds work.

If I use CD View and try to use it to play a WAV file, I get a SYS3175
popup. Dismiss the popup and the CD View window also goes away.

Meanwhile, mplayer can play a .wmv file and the audio works fine.

But if I go into Programs --> Multimedia --> Movies
and double-click on MACAW.AVI, nothing happens. Ditto for the
Digital Video application, which is what MACAW.AVI presumably
tries to invoke.

Games like Solitaire still work, but if I go into
Options --> Settings --> Sounds
I get the message
"Sounds are only available when MMPM/2 is installed!
On this system, MMPM could not be detected."

So this is really a puzzling situation. Some audio applications
still work. Others can detect the problem and still work other
than the sound, while others won't even load. I know that
rebooting will restore audio, but I've got a number cruncher
running in the background (and it isn't the problem, because I've
been running that number cruncher in the background for months
while using audio applications without ill effects).

Any ideas?




Not sure about getting sound from the old OS/2 supplied games like Solitaire - on my eCS1.2R with sound working well with anything else I have never get sound from those games. I think that is an eCS1.2R specific problem though...

I also get a similar problem except sounds always work with the built in games after a reboot. Warp v4 with lots of fixes.

When I encounter a sound dropout - which can be cased by playing 1 of the OS/2 supplied games - I try to "restart" sound by running the PMUniMix mixer. Sometimes this is successful, sometimes not and sound is gone until a reboot.

I think the PMUniMix fix which I also use just fixes a problem where the volume has set itself to zero of so.
I also get DART totally dying with crashes in things like Z! and a SDL game I play printing lots of messages basically about not being able to open *.wav though the game then runs fine though silently.
Really MMOS2 is old and broken and needs replacing though I doubt that will ever happen.


Regards

Pete

Dave
.

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