Snes9x DOS Frequently Asked Questions
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Contents:
   Why doesn't sound work ?                                  15
   Why does snes9x complain "no DPMI"?                       57
   How can I safely speed up Snes9x?                         70
   It's still not fast enough!                               84
   When I play [some game] I can't see my character!         95
   How do I fix staticy sounding games?                     105
   Where can I find games for snes9x?                       118


Question:
   Why doesn't sound work ?

Answer:
   Enable APU emulation by adding "-S" to the command line (case sensitive!).
   If it crashes for some reason, try a different playback rate, for example
   "-r 2".

   Sound still isn't working?

   Did you set your "BLASTER" variable correct ?
   (You can check if the variable is set by typing "SET" at the command line)
   Please type this at the command line:

   SET BLASTER=A??? I? D? H? T?

   Where:
   A??? should be replaced with the address of your soundcard (Common: A220)
   I?   should be replaced with the interrupt of your soundcard (Common: I5
        or I7)
   D?   should be replaced with the Low-DMA of your soundcard (Common: D1)
   H?   should be replaced with the High-DMA of your soundcard (Common: D5)
   T?   is the version/type of your soundblaster/compatible, please check
        your documentation for this setting and if still unknown set it to T1

   Some sound cards (including the Sound Blaster 16, and better) require a
   software utility to configure the card with it's DMA, Interrupt, and 16bit
   DMA channels.  For Creative Labs cards, this is typically called
   diagnose.exe or sb???set.exe.  Creative Labs PnP cards also require
   CTPNP.EXE to be loaded, in order to set up the PnP aspect of the card.

   Sound STILL isn't working ???

   Please check if your soundcard is 100% Soundblaster Compatible and
   if all the drivers are loaded correctly also check if you experience any
   problems with DOS games when you select the 100% Soundblaster compatible
   driver. If you experience problems with DOS games then please contact
   your supplier for more details !

   Some sound cards that claim to be 100% SoundBlaster compatible aren't.
   If so, there's absolutely nothing we or you can do.

Question:
   Why does snes9x complain "no DPMI - Get csdpmi*b.zip", and then quit
   when I run snes9x under DOS mode?

Answer:
   Snes9x was compiled in DJGPP, and it needs a DPMI stack to run.  Windows
   95 automatically provides DPMI services to DOS-based programs.  However,
   to run under dos, another program, cwsdpmi.exe, is needed to provide
   these services.  This error will occur if this file is missing, or
   corrupt.  Snes9x MUST be able to find this file or it cannot run.  The
   file can be placed in a number of places.  It can be in snes9x's
   directory, the current directory, or somewhere in the PATH.

Question:
   How can I safely speed up Snes9x?

Answer:
   There are a number of ways to speed up Snes9x.  One of the easiest is to
   turn off joystick support if you're not using it.  Joystick polling
   takes a long time, and is very slow.  Another method is to use a faster
   video mode.  The default video mode (-m 0) is very slow, and not
   recommended.  Other modes, such as -m 2 or -m 3 are much faster.  Even
   the VESA modes -m 4, and higher will provide better performance.  -m 1 is
   not recommended because a great deal of the screen will be cut off.  You
   can also override the auto frame rate and specify your own frame rate
   instead by specifying -f [number of frames to skip].

Question:
   It's still not fast enough!

Answer:
   If it's still not fast enough, and you've followed all the suggestions
   in the previous question, you can try to specify -h [percentage] to try
   to speed things up.  However, this can cause some games to lose
   control over their own execution and crash.  Other games can actually run
   more slowly.  Another option is the -O flag that turns off the
   line-by-line graphics engine, and can speed up things dramatically.

Question:
   When I play [some game] I can't see my character!  Help!

Answer:
   Snes9x doesn't currently support screen addition/subtraction, so at times,
   the characters in the games may drop down too many layers, and become
   hidden.  You have two options.  You can press 8 to reverse the way the
   layers are drawn, or you can press 1-4 to disable a single BG layer.  This
   will hopefully be corrected in a later release.

Question:
   Why do the Square games have such static filled music when using the
   -stereo switch?

Answer:
   Square used some very complex volume manipulations to add extra depth
   to the music, however this usually just causes static in snes9x.  It can
   be fixed slightly by increasing the frequency to 44.1Khz (-r 7).  These
   manipulations would be far too slow to emulate, so they are ignored.
   Higher sampling rates increase the buffer update frequency, so the
   negative effects on sound quality the techniques incur in snes9x are
   minimized.

Question:
   Where can I find games for snes9x?

Answer:
   There are freeware snes demos and games available at:

   ftp://ftp.futureone.com/users/damftp/consoles/SNES/
   http://evil.ml.org/~grits

   Do not ask us for commercial games, we do not know where to get them,
   cannot give them to you, and will, most likely, not respond to such
   e-mail.  It it illegal for me to give you games, and is also quite
   annoying.  The less time I have to put up with silly messages, the longer
   I have to work on snes9x.  Remember that.