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First a bit of context: by 'PC-Speakers' I do not mean standard 3.5mm jack based stereo speakers. What I am reffering to is the 4-pin 255 frequency speaker connected directly to the motherboard.
Now a bit of information about the current set up, and my goal: after many years of using DOSBox I grew tired of it and decided I wanted to go back to genuine DOS. So I dug through my collection of spare and old hardware and frankensteined together a retro tower. The tower in question is using a 3.0GHz Pentium D CPU, with 512MB RAM and an on-board GPU with VGA support up to 1440x900 and 64MB of VRAM. External drive is a USB1.1 floppy diskette drive (3.5").
Now I installed a copy of FreeDOS on this machine rather than MS-DOS or PC-DOS because of the Extended Memory Support, however once I had finished configuring everything I realized I had neglected one very important piece of hardware: a soundcard. Seeing as I don't have money to buy one at the moment and I don't have one laying around I am stuck using the PC-Speaker for sound effects in games and with no music.
So here's my question: given that the MoBo in question has it's PC-Speaker directly soldered on rather than via a wired connection, would it be possible (assuming that there was a four pin connecter available on the MoBo) to install a second PC-Speaker? More importantly if this could be done, would it be possible to use both PC-Speakers at once within games, and other software, to either allow for a higher number of mixed sound FX at once, or to use one to provide basic sound FX and the other to play low-quality MIDI sample based music in place of regular in-game tracks?
TL;DR: could one hypothetically use two internal PC-Speakers as a low-quality replacement for a stereo-capable soundcard when playing games in DOS?
P.S.: Please do not suggest DOSBox, DOSEMU or any other DOS Emulator, I have no desire to use these things. Thanks!
Alison E.E.
Posted 2016-09-20T19:39:33.980
Reputation: 137
2short answer: no. long answer: no – Ipor Sircer – 2016-09-20T19:43:26.437
I read "retro" and imagine 486 at most – and BOOM! 3.0GHz Pentium D CPU with 512MB RAM. :) – Kamil Maciorowski – 2016-09-20T19:46:38.190
I guess if a motherboard had soldered on speaker along with four pin connector, then the two would be electrically connected. – Kamil Maciorowski – 2016-09-20T19:51:13.800
IporSircer: No explanation as to why? Disregarding then. KamilMaciorowski: Indeed it's odd to think about but at this point the early-to-mid Pentium series CPUs have been around long enough that I personally consider them to be retro, admittedly it's no m68k or 286-486, but the D series is nearly 12 years old after all. As far as the RAM goes, we do live in a day and age where GPUs on their own have up to 24GB of VRAM so... :P Anyway, you make a good point, I'll try playing DOOM with VirtualSoundBlaster enabled and if I'm lucky it will be an inherent result of the configuration. – Alison E.E. – 2016-09-20T20:35:42.170
Speakers have impedance, most "PC sound systems" have a plug to an amp and that amp handle the impedance matching etc. A hardwired speaker to the motherboard is going to have the motherboard handle amplification etc and this is going to be a simple budget circuit designed for a specific type of speaker. If you wire up more than one, you change the impedance. As far as "is this good or bad", that depends. RE: stereo. "NO" you will only ever get mono over n-speakers. – Yorik – 2016-09-20T21:45:15.577