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I used to play this Prince of Persia (1989) in Pentinum III computer. But audio of Prince of Persia (1989) produce in CPU rather than audio speakers. Why?

K L Wilson
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    Do you wan't to ask why the sound wasn't produced on a sound card? My guess is that sound-blaster (one of the first widely used sound cards) apparently was released the same year, so they didn't find it worth the time. – UncleBod Jun 09 '22 at 07:36
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    The game supports a variety of sound cards. Either it is not configured properly or the game does not support your sound card. Which sound card you have? – Justme Jun 09 '22 at 07:44
  • @Justme The sound card which muted my Windows 98 OS. I don't know proper name. – K L Wilson Jun 09 '22 at 07:45
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    Your Windows 98 may not provide a supported virtualized sound device for a DOS session the game runs in. Please don't run DOS games under Windows. – Justme Jun 09 '22 at 08:17
  • Prince is Persia is DOS Game? I thought it was assembly language game. – K L Wilson Jun 09 '22 at 08:49
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    Being a game intended to run under a certain OS and the programming language the game is written in are two completely different contexts. – Justme Jun 09 '22 at 08:54

1 Answers1

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This happens presumably because your Prince of Persia installation was configured to produce audio using the PC speaker, not a sound card. In later versions, the setup tool (SETUP.EXE) can be used to choose the appropriate sound device:

Screenshot of Prince of Persia’s setup tool, with “Standard PC Internal Speaker” selected

In earlier versions, the sound device is supposed to be auto-detected, but this can fail, and the default then is the PC speaker. The sound device can be specified as an argument to PRINCE.EXE (stdsnd, adlib, covox, gblast, ibmg, sblast, or tandy).

In most desktop computers, this would produce sound using a buzzer in the PC case (if it has one!) rather than any loudspeakers or headphones connected to the PC’s audio output.

See Why did the IBM PC need a sound card? for context.

(Some desktop PCs would re-route PC speaker audio through the sound card, but that was apparently not the case in your computer. The majority of laptops use the same audio-producing hardware for both PC speaker and whatever sound card they have, so this doesn’t happen there.)

Stephen Kitt
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