Pete's QBASIC Site

I am programming with QuickBasic 4.5 on 1.8 ghz Pentium 4 running Windows 2000 Pro. I have downloaded several .WAV file players that were authored in the early 1990s. The programs look for an ENVIRON$ variable called "BLASTER", which is not found.

Help! I need a .WAV player. Thank you.

You wont find any that works on all, or even most, or even some modern computers..

BLASTER is a variable for soundblaster compatible soundcards, back from the 16bit era.
Extremely few modern soundcards come with 16bit drivers, and if they do, they're rarely 100% blaster compatible.

For sound, high resolution, networking, etc, you could check out freebasic.net

If you have a sound blaster compatible sound card, you need to know the base i/o address, the IRQ number, and the DMA channel number that the card is configured to use.
For format of the BLASTER environment variable is BLASTER=A(base address) I(IRQ) D(DMA channel)
Here is an example shell command.

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1

If you are not sure if your card is compatible or you can find your settings, try finding a DOS game with a setup program that autodetects the sound blaster (the setup program used by any DOS version of DOOM will work). Boot from a DOS boot disk (you can create one using the windows disk formating program) and run the setup program.

When I was running some newer equipment using DOS, I had a sound card that loaded every variable I needed on boot (with AUTOEXEC.BAT). It set my sound blaster variables, came with a DOS mixer, and advanced support for DOS games using a BLASTER device. I think this is the card I was using:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 56&CatId=0

I used a couple of DOS WAV player, and one CD player. The CD player worked well, and about half of the WAV players. Sorry, I can't remember the names. Also, Wolfenstein 3D worked great