Reply 20 of 24, by ux-3
- Rank
- Oldbie
Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-21, 20:34:If you have slots available, there is nothing wrong with installing multiple sound cards. Even a pair of sound cards can cover a lot of ground a single one cannot.
I am thinking about this for a while now, as the DMA clicking bug eliminated most of my sound blasters as options for older games.
But clicking bug aside, this system is really too old for much of the real 16 bit audio stuff. So your suggestion above to give up 16bit does make perfect sense to me.
As you may have read, I am currently searching through my Sound Blaster Pro compatibles to find a best solution. But even this reduced profile is not easy to accomplish:
SBpro compatibility, low noise, OPL or close, working wavetable connector.
Current situation favors ESS. Also, the Yamaha gives a loud initialization noise when digital effects are turned on. ESS doesn't.
If the situation remains as it is, the Terratec Gold 16/32 (ESS1868F) gets the job, along with the NEC XR385.
Some technical stuff was moved to another thread:
I am not sure if my problems with the ESS and Yamaha are not related to my ISA-IO controller. Speeding up the ISA bus to 13 MHz cures the ESS.
I am going to run some tests on a much faster PC with the same CF and audio cards.
(Tests on K6-2 show no stutter with ESS. However, now both cards give garbled sound at the start of speach but not for sound effects. The onboard ESS SOLO-1 was disabled for this. If I use the SOLO-1 instead, it runs trouble free.)
Edit: I think I found the reason for the ESS video stutter. I added +10 to files and buffers in autoexec.bat and it seems they are gone, even when bus is at 8 MHz.
Edit2: Ultimately, it is connected to video bios shadow. If I turn it off, the stutter is gone. The buffer increase moves the buffer from himem to low mem.
As this isn't really build related, I opened a different topic about it.
Retro PC warning: The things you own end up owning you.