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#1
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Curious environment variable
If I open a command prompt, and type SET to show the
environment, one of the strings is BLASTER=I5,M220,D3,H7 or somesuch stuff. It looks like Sound Blaster settings. If I open msconfig, and look in environment tab, there is no sign of a BLASTER string! All the strings shown by SET appear somewhere, except for this BLASTER string. I've searched inside every file on the hard disk, and the only occurrence of BLASTER is in the regisrty recording that I've searched for it! Does anyone have any idea where it comes from? Just curious. Thanks, BarryG |
#2
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Curious environment variable
The BLASTER string you are seeing was used in DOS and not used by Win Me and
is I think set by the drivers for your sound card each time the system boots. -- Mike Maltby MS-MVP BarryG wrote: If I open a command prompt, and type SET to show the environment, one of the strings is BLASTER=I5,M220,D3,H7 or somesuch stuff. It looks like Sound Blaster settings. If I open msconfig, and look in environment tab, there is no sign of a BLASTER string! All the strings shown by SET appear somewhere, except for this BLASTER string. I've searched inside every file on the hard disk, and the only occurrence of BLASTER is in the regisrty recording that I've searched for it! Does anyone have any idea where it comes from? |
#3
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Curious environment variable
Mike,
The funny thing is, I was using an on-board sound card until last week, then I disabled it and inserted a genuine Sound Blaster, and blow me down if the same BLASTER environment string isn't still there! If I add a BLASTER variable with different values using the environment tab in msconfig, then the string reported with SET is the string I add. If I then remove it again, back comes the "default" string. Curiously though, grepping every file on the hard disk only shows BLASTER to be present in the registry as a recent search string. I would expect it to be inside the file that is placing it there as well, but it doesn't show. One of life's little mysteries I suppose. Thanks for your response, BarryG -----Original Message----- The BLASTER string you are seeing was used in DOS and not used by Win Me and is I think set by the drivers for your sound card each time the system boots. -- Mike Maltby MS-MVP BarryG wrote: If I open a command prompt, and type SET to show the environment, one of the strings is BLASTER=I5,M220,D3,H7 or somesuch stuff. It looks like Sound Blaster settings. If I open msconfig, and look in environment tab, there is no sign of a BLASTER string! All the strings shown by SET appear somewhere, except for this BLASTER string. I've searched inside every file on the hard disk, and the only occurrence of BLASTER is in the regisrty recording that I've searched for it! Does anyone have any idea where it comes from? . |
#4
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Curious environment variable
Barry,
You won't find that string in the drivers as the purpose of the variable is I think to let DOS programs, primarily games, know where the SB card is located and the addresses it is using. As a result I think the drivers for the card set the current values and also write them to autoexec.bat each time the system boots. Since these are not required other than in real mode I suspect Win Me's regenv32.exe ignores this entry in autoexec.bat when transferring any changes to autoexec.bat to the registry each time the system shuts down. The sound blaster variable contains four and sometimes five parts: SET BLASTER=A??? I? D? T? (the order can, I think, vary) Where I? is the IRQ address of the card, usually 5 but sometimes 7 D? is the DMA channel and T? is the type of card involved. I think values here can range from 1 to 4 or 5. A??, and seemingly in your case M???, is the base I/O port number. Usually, this is 220. Addendum. I've just been checking on Win Me running in a virtual machine where the sound card is an emulated SB16. As in your case autoexec.bat contains no BLASTER entry nor the registry nor does cmdinit.bat which is run each time you open a command prompt. This reinforces my impression that the BLASTER value is created by the SB16/Creative drivers on boot up. In my case the value is as follows: BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330 Similarly I've just checked on a real box running Win Me which has an Ensoniq/Creative PC128 and again the BLASTER value is added by the drivers when the system boots. I'm not currently in a position to check but seem to recall that on another box here with an SBLive! and Win Me using VXD drivers rather than WDM drivers, that if I disable the DOS emulation mode I no longer see the BLASTER entry. -- Mike Maltby MS-MVP BarryG wrote: Mike, The funny thing is, I was using an on-board sound card until last week, then I disabled it and inserted a genuine Sound Blaster, and blow me down if the same BLASTER environment string isn't still there! If I add a BLASTER variable with different values using the environment tab in msconfig, then the string reported with SET is the string I add. If I then remove it again, back comes the "default" string. Curiously though, grepping every file on the hard disk only shows BLASTER to be present in the registry as a recent search string. I would expect it to be inside the file that is placing it there as well, but it doesn't show. One of life's little mysteries I suppose. |
#5
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Curious environment variable
Mike,
Thanks for the info. The BLASTER string being loaded by the driver at bootup seems reasonable. The SB PCI 128 card I'm using now loads WDM drivers, as did the onboard Realtek sound chip I was using. It looks like the BLASTER string is one one of those things that happens "behind your back". It doesn't affect anything here, I'm just curious to under what really happens in the internals of my machine. Thanks again. BarryG -----Original Message----- Barry, You won't find that string in the drivers as the purpose of the variable is I think to let DOS programs, primarily games, know where the SB card is located and the addresses it is using. As a result I think the drivers for the card set the current values and also write them to autoexec.bat each time the system boots. Since these are not required other than in real mode I suspect Win Me's regenv32.exe ignores this entry in autoexec.bat when transferring any changes to autoexec.bat to the registry each time the system shuts down. The sound blaster variable contains four and sometimes five parts: SET BLASTER=A??? I? D? T? (the order can, I think, vary) Where I? is the IRQ address of the card, usually 5 but sometimes 7 D? is the DMA channel and T? is the type of card involved. I think values here can range from 1 to 4 or 5. A??, and seemingly in your case M???, is the base I/O port number. Usually, this is 220. Addendum. I've just been checking on Win Me running in a virtual machine where the sound card is an emulated SB16. As in your case autoexec.bat contains no BLASTER entry nor the registry nor does cmdinit.bat which is run each time you open a command prompt. This reinforces my impression that the BLASTER value is created by the SB16/Creative drivers on boot up. In my case the value is as follows: BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330 Similarly I've just checked on a real box running Win Me which has an Ensoniq/Creative PC128 and again the BLASTER value is added by the drivers when the system boots. I'm not currently in a position to check but seem to recall that on another box here with an SBLive! and Win Me using VXD drivers rather than WDM drivers, that if I disable the DOS emulation mode I no longer see the BLASTER entry. -- Mike Maltby MS-MVP BarryG wrote: Mike, The funny thing is, I was using an on-board sound card until last week, then I disabled it and inserted a genuine Sound Blaster, and blow me down if the same BLASTER environment string isn't still there! If I add a BLASTER variable with different values using the environment tab in msconfig, then the string reported with SET is the string I add. If I then remove it again, back comes the "default" string. Curiously though, grepping every file on the hard disk only shows BLASTER to be present in the registry as a recent search string. I would expect it to be inside the file that is placing it there as well, but it doesn't show. One of life's little mysteries I suppose. . |
#6
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Curious environment variable
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 22:39:57 GMT,"BarryG"
penned this whopper in microsoft.public.windowsme.general Mike, Thanks for the info. The BLASTER string being loaded by the driver at bootup seems reasonable. The SB PCI 128 card I'm using now loads WDM drivers, as did the onboard Realtek sound chip I was using. It looks like the BLASTER string is one one of those things that happens "behind your back". It doesn't affect anything here, I'm just curious to under what really happens in the internals of my machine. Thanks again. BarryG -----Original Message----- Barry, You won't find that string in the drivers as the purpose of the variable is I think to let DOS programs, primarily games, know where the SB card is located and the addresses it is using. As a result I think the drivers for the card set the current values and also write them to autoexec.bat each time the system boots. Since these are not required other than in real mode I suspect Win Me's regenv32.exe ignores this entry in autoexec.bat when transferring any changes to autoexec.bat to the registry each time the system shuts down. The sound blaster variable contains four and sometimes five parts: SET BLASTER=A??? I? D? T? (the order can, I think, vary) Where I? is the IRQ address of the card, usually 5 but sometimes 7 D? is the DMA channel and T? is the type of card involved. I think values here can range from 1 to 4 or 5. A??, and seemingly in your case M???, is the base I/O port number. Usually, this is 220. Addendum. I've just been checking on Win Me running in a virtual machine where the sound card is an emulated SB16. As in your case autoexec.bat contains no BLASTER entry nor the registry nor does cmdinit.bat which is run each time you open a command prompt. This reinforces my impression that the BLASTER value is created by the SB16/Creative drivers on boot up. In my case the value is as follows: BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330 Similarly I've just checked on a real box running Win Me which has an Ensoniq/Creative PC128 and again the BLASTER value is added by the drivers when the system boots. I'm not currently in a position to check but seem to recall that on another box here with an SBLive! and Win Me using VXD drivers rather than WDM drivers, that if I disable the DOS emulation mode I no longer see the BLASTER entry. -- Mike Maltby MS-MVP BarryG wrote: Mike, The funny thing is, I was using an on-board sound card until last week, then I disabled it and inserted a genuine Sound Blaster, and blow me down if the same BLASTER environment string isn't still there! If I add a BLASTER variable with different values using the environment tab in msconfig, then the string reported with SET is the string I add. If I then remove it again, back comes the "default" string. Curiously though, grepping every file on the hard disk only shows BLASTER to be present in the registry as a recent search string. I would expect it to be inside the file that is placing it there as well, but it doesn't show. One of life's little mysteries I suppose. . Yes, the soundblaster variables are merely for backward compatibility with 98 and 95 systems, they are ignored by ME, except in DOS gaming modes I think. (could be wrong there) -- "Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor." Horace (65 - 8 BC); Roman poet. Mike |
#7
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Curious environment variable
Alot of things can happen "behind your back" some good some bad mostly
of no import. SB16 was the standard that *all* the soundcard mfr's used to use (and still do, afaik)... if you're using the WDM drivers then my guess would be that the "Devldr16" Creative driver is doing those settings, totally oblivious to the fact that WinME doesn't have RealMode DOS. Rick BarryG wrote: Mike, Thanks for the info. The BLASTER string being loaded by the driver at bootup seems reasonable. The SB PCI 128 card I'm using now loads WDM drivers, as did the onboard Realtek sound chip I was using. It looks like the BLASTER string is one one of those things that happens "behind your back". It doesn't affect anything here, I'm just curious to under what really happens in the internals of my machine. Thanks again. BarryG -----Original Message----- Barry, You won't find that string in the drivers as the purpose of the variable is I think to let DOS programs, primarily games, know where the SB card is located and the addresses it is using. As a result I think the drivers for the card set the current values and also write them to autoexec.bat each time the system boots. Since these are not required other than in real mode I suspect Win Me's regenv32.exe ignores this entry in autoexec.bat when transferring any changes to autoexec.bat to the registry each time the system shuts down. The sound blaster variable contains four and sometimes five parts: SET BLASTER=A??? I? D? T? (the order can, I think, vary) Where I? is the IRQ address of the card, usually 5 but sometimes 7 D? is the DMA channel and T? is the type of card involved. I think values here can range from 1 to 4 or 5. A??, and seemingly in your case M???, is the base I/O port number. Usually, this is 220. Addendum. I've just been checking on Win Me running in a virtual machine where the sound card is an emulated SB16. As in your case autoexec.bat contains no BLASTER entry nor the registry nor does cmdinit.bat which is run each time you open a command prompt. This reinforces my impression that the BLASTER value is created by the SB16/Creative drivers on boot up. In my case the value is as follows: BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330 Similarly I've just checked on a real box running Win Me which has an Ensoniq/Creative PC128 and again the BLASTER value is added by the drivers when the system boots. I'm not currently in a position to check but seem to recall that on another box here with an SBLive! and Win Me using VXD drivers rather than WDM drivers, that if I disable the DOS emulation mode I no longer see the BLASTER entry. -- Mike Maltby MS-MVP BarryG wrote: Mike, The funny thing is, I was using an on-board sound card until last week, then I disabled it and inserted a genuine Sound Blaster, and blow me down if the same BLASTER environment string isn't still there! If I add a BLASTER variable with different values using the environment tab in msconfig, then the string reported with SET is the string I add. If I then remove it again, back comes the "default" string. Curiously though, grepping every file on the hard disk only shows BLASTER to be present in the registry as a recent search string. I would expect it to be inside the file that is placing it there as well, but it doesn't show. One of life's little mysteries I suppose. . |
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