How well would an ISA sound card work with later windows games? I'm having trouble with my PCI sound card running doom and dark forces which are dos games. If I got an ISA card, say an AWE64, would it work well with my newer games like mech warrior 2? I would like one card that does both dos and windows games well if that's possible.
AWE64 has DirectSound support so yes, it in theory should work with anything that uses that API, which means other Windows games much much more modern than Mechwarrior 2.
The real problem are some of the flakier, cheaper or exotic ISA sound cards that may not have Directsound support ever, like some of the OPTi MSS cards before 928, and maybe some GUS or two... in that case you'd most likely get delayed or scratchy sound, and that's if you're fortunate on having any sound at all 😀
Have good experiences with the AWE64 for early games. But you will miss out on A3D and EAX which some of the early games use.
My recommendation is to go with a Vortex 2 PCI card. It has excellent DOS support.
You should go with a YMF740, YMF744 or YMF754 sound card because not only they have A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0 support but also a genuine OPL3. The drivers can be downloaded at http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/download
How about YMF719? I am in desperate need of free PCI slots and I thought I could swap Vortex 2 for YMF719 to install some cooling for my Voodoos.
I am combining AWE64 Gold with Aureal SQ2500 for greatest versatility. The only issue I have come across so far is the AWE64 causing address conflicts with my Roland LAPC-I.
System 20: PIII 600, LAPC-I, AWE64, S220, Voodoo3, SQ2500, R200, 3.1-Me
System 21: G2030 3.0, X-fi Fatal1ty, GTX 560, XP-Vista
Retro gaming (among other subjects): https://baronsfel001.wixsite.com/my-site
wrote:I am combining AWE64 Gold with Aureal SQ2500 for greatest versatility. The only issue I have come across so far is the AWE64 causing address conflicts with my Roland LAPC-I.
You can change the MPU401 resource of the AWE to 300 instead of 330. That should fix the issue.
wrote:YMF754 has genuine OPL3?
All Yamaha DS-XG sound cards have genuine OPL3.
YMF71x works fine in Windows, and doesn't even require drivers under Win2K/XP (WDM drivers are included in OS). You'll get a nice OPL3 midi driver too which rocks in Age of Empires 😀
But as Maulwurf said, you'll miss out on proprietary features like EAX/A3D. If you're after these you're better off getting a YMF74x, 75x, or Vortex2. The PCI Yamaha cards should have a "genuine" OPL3, but it probably runs at 48k or 44.1k sample rate.
wrote:You should go with a YMF740, YMF744 or YMF754 sound card because not only they have A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0 support but also a genuine OPL3. The drivers can be downloaded at http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/download
I have a YMF724 card. Do you know the official driver download page for that?
wrote:wrote:You should go with a YMF740, YMF744 or YMF754 sound card because not only they have A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0 support but also a genuine OPL3. The drivers can be downloaded at http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/download
I have a YMF724 card. Do you know the official driver download page for that?
wrote:OPL3 on my YMF718 is very nice, but one channel is damaged and sounds horrible.
Did you check that cap I told you about yet? 😉
wrote:Can i get YMF754 to work under DOS 6.22 with out Windows?
Yes, but you need to install the DOS utility under Windows first.
wrote:How well would an ISA sound card work with later windows games? I'm having trouble with my PCI sound card running doom and dark forces which are dos games. If I got an ISA card, say an AWE64, would it work well with my newer games like mech warrior 2? I would like one card that does both dos and windows games well if that's possible.
DirectX 2/3 actually come with a bunch of drivers for popular ISA sound cards. Windows 98 also has many included. And some companies did release Directsound compatible drivers themselves. So usually Directsound games will work fine on ISA sound cards.
The AWE series Directsound driver allows wavetable RAM to be used for Directsound static buffers. Static buffers let you store sound samples in the card's RAM (similar to a MIDI patch set). I don't know if many (or any) games did much with this.
You can,
For DOS emulation a YMF-724 / DS-XG sound card is best at home on a i440BX mainboard, connected to the SB-Link header with a cable.
--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul
