Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-24, 16:19:

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Installed the DOS/Win3.1 Drivers by running the setup.exe in the directory "P16II-1" extracted from the zip by the same name in the Vogons Aztec zip

The resulting installed config utility can not find the sound card, but the "fmtest.exe 220 " command in the same directory does work ? i.e it makes music.

IRQ 5 is reserved in BIOS.

Have been trying to get this working for a while and honestly am about to give up again.. I seem to remember this took hours to get working the last time I had it even half working but I cant remeber how I got it working.

Are you working under native DOS or Windows?

And exactly which Aztech card is it? Best way to look that up is to check the FCC-ID. It contains something like "MMSN824" or similar. That 824 is the card ID. Check here for the marketing names for cards: https://ilovepa.ws/2017/06/08/aztech-sound-cards/

Get your environment (native DOS) and an exact ID of your card sorted and this should be easy. It only gets complicated if you need to start guessing.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-24, 16:28:

Are you working under native DOS or Windows? […]
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Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-24, 16:19:

[...] […]
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[...]

Installed the DOS/Win3.1 Drivers by running the setup.exe in the directory "P16II-1" extracted from the zip by the same name in the Vogons Aztec zip

The resulting installed config utility can not find the sound card, but the "fmtest.exe 220 " command in the same directory does work ? i.e it makes music.

IRQ 5 is reserved in BIOS.

Have been trying to get this working for a while and honestly am about to give up again.. I seem to remember this took hours to get working the last time I had it even half working but I cant remeber how I got it working.

Are you working under native DOS or Windows?

And exactly which Aztech card is it? Best way to look that up is to check the FCC-ID. It contains something like "MMSN824" or similar. That 824 is the card ID. Check here for the marketing names for cards: https://ilovepa.ws/2017/06/08/aztech-sound-cards/

Get your environment (native DOS) and an exact ID of your card sorted and this should be easy. It only gets complicated if you need to start guessing.

I installed the drivers via Windows because that is the only way to do so with them, the setup.exe needs Windows. But then I reboot to a pure dos boot disk to try the config.exe, it errors out with card not found no matter what I do.

My card is a FCC ID: I38-SN96103, which is a "Multimedia Pro 16 IIB-3D" apparently ?

If I have got the drivers wrong where would I find the correct ones ? have looked and all I can find are dodgy/broken links and the drivers for this card do not seem to be in the vogons archive.

Found the drivers here: ftp://retronn.de/driver/Aztech/sg/MMP16/

For the card with FCC ID: I38-SN96103, which is a Aztech Multimedia Pro 16 IIB-3D.

Installed with the .exe and all seems well at least in Windows..

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-24, 16:37:

[...]

I installed the drivers via Windows because that is the only way to do so with them, the setup.exe needs Windows. But then I reboot to a pure dos boot disk to try the config.exe, it errors out with card not found no matter what I do.

Setup.exe does Windows, but Install.exe is for DOS.

My card is a FCC ID: I38-SN96103, which is a "Multimedia Pro 16 IIB-3D" apparently ?

If I have got the drivers wrong where would I find the correct ones ? have looked and all I can find are dodgy/broken links and the drivers for this card do not seem to be in the vogons archive.

That sounds like the correct file. Note that you don't need drivers for DOS, all you need is that config util. Once again, running in something other than real-mode DOS might be causing the detection problem. There are files in the collection on Vogonsdrivers that should also work - but they look exactly the same. Download the Aztech_ISA_cards.zip file, unzip, look in P16II. Inside are some more .ZIP files, P16IIB might also work (basically same card, just different FCC ID)

Failing that, see if you can discover what resources the card is currently using. Demofm works, so AdLib is fine. Try running some very simple DOS game and check IRQ and DMA settings. 5 and 1 respectively are the most common anyway. If using them plays sound, great. If not, try other combinations until you find out what does. Then proceed as if you had set those values yourself. Once again, the card doesn't need drivers or even init at boot time in DOS. So long as there are no conflicts on its resources, it just works with no further action (just add SET BLASTER= to Autoexec.bat for games that 'autodetect')

dionb wrote on 2020-05-24, 17:56:

Setup.exe does Windows, but Install.exe is for DOS. […]
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Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-24, 16:37:

[...]

I installed the drivers via Windows because that is the only way to do so with them, the setup.exe needs Windows. But then I reboot to a pure dos boot disk to try the config.exe, it errors out with card not found no matter what I do.

Setup.exe does Windows, but Install.exe is for DOS.

My card is a FCC ID: I38-SN96103, which is a "Multimedia Pro 16 IIB-3D" apparently ?

If I have got the drivers wrong where would I find the correct ones ? have looked and all I can find are dodgy/broken links and the drivers for this card do not seem to be in the vogons archive.

That sounds like the correct file. Note that you don't need drivers for DOS, all you need is that config util. Once again, running in something other than real-mode DOS might be causing the detection problem. There are files in the collection on Vogonsdrivers that should also work - but they look exactly the same. Download the Aztech_ISA_cards.zip file, unzip, look in P16II. Inside are some more .ZIP files, P16IIB might also work (basically same card, just different FCC ID)

Failing that, see if you can discover what resources the card is currently using. Demofm works, so AdLib is fine. Try running some very simple DOS game and check IRQ and DMA settings. 5 and 1 respectively are the most common anyway. If using them plays sound, great. If not, try other combinations until you find out what does. Then proceed as if you had set those values yourself. Once again, the card doesn't need drivers or even init at boot time in DOS. So long as there are no conflicts on its resources, it just works with no further action (just add SET BLASTER= to Autoexec.bat for games that 'autodetect')

The drivers I was trying before the ones that worked were indeed the ones from the Aztech ISA zip from Vogons, they clearly did not work however for this card.

In any case, Windows audio appears to work at least..

Hmm, in that case, approach from the opposite end: these are non-PnP cards, so whatever resources they use in Windows will be the same as in DOS. Check in Windows Device Manager what I/O address, IRQ and DMA the card uses. Then use those in DOS too.

So I got a hold of Descent 2 and DOS 3dfx patch etc,

I assume if the game .. just works then glide/dos glide, sound etc are working fine ? if there was an issue with glide then it would error out ?

What would be the fastest chip I could put in this board (Chaintech 5TTM1) btw ?

Board supports up to 4x Multi, up to 75Mhz Bus and ether 2.8 or 2.9 volts ?

IBM/Cyrix 6x86MX PR300 seems to be the fastest CPU I could use ? how much faster then the 200mhz Pentium MMX though ?

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-25, 17:20:

IBM/Cyrix 6x86MX PR300 seems to be the fastest CPU I could use ? how much faster then the 200mhz Pentium MMX though ?

Not much. It runs at 233MHz and is about par with P55C in terms of integer performance, but far slower in floating-point. So for old DOS stuff and Windows desktop, it's about equal, but fire up Quake and you lose.

Better idea: you can set 75MHz bus speed. Do so. That would run the P200MMX at 225MHz. If that works, try setting it to 3.5x75=262MHz. It's quite likely it will run stable at that speed, and that will give you a significant boost.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-25, 17:46:

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-25, 17:20:

IBM/Cyrix 6x86MX PR300 seems to be the fastest CPU I could use ? how much faster then the 200mhz Pentium MMX though ?

Not much. It runs at 233MHz and is about par with P55C in terms of integer performance, but far slower in floating-point. So for old DOS stuff and Windows desktop, it's about equal, but fire up Quake and you lose.

Better idea: you can set 75MHz bus speed. Do so. That would run the P200MMX at 225MHz. If that works, try setting it to 3.5x75=262MHz. It's quite likely it will run stable at that speed, and that will give you a significant boost.

I did try 3.5x75 but one of the PCI slots seemed to "die" after a while at that speed so I dialled back to stock settings and all is well, but I may look further into this now that at stock settings things work.

Also speaking of Slots, almost all the cards I have had or have in this system are pretty warm to the touch once the system has been on for more then a few minutes.. even sound cards and network cards. Kinda odd I think but not sure ?

Is there a good reliable Windows based stress test and/or diagnostic suite available that will work on this kind of set up ?

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-25, 18:13:

[...]

I did try 3.5x75 but one of the PCI slots seemed to "die" after a while at that speed so I dialled back to stock settings and all is well, but I may look further into this now that at stock settings things work.

The slot or the card?37.5MHz PCI is out of spec, but usually not a big problem. If you have trouble it will generally be HDD (SCSI, IDE) related. What card was it?

Also speaking of Slots, almost all the cards I have had or have in this system are pretty warm to the touch once the system has been on for more then a few minutes.. even sound cards and network cards. Kinda odd I think but not sure ?

Sounds like you need (a lot) more airflow in the case.

Is there a good reliable Windows based stress test and/or diagnostic suite available that will work on this kind of set up ?

Low-level hardware diagnostics (i.e. "why is this stuff so hot?"), not really, those old cards didn't have environmental sensors. As for stress test, SuperPI is a traditional CPU burn-in test. Doesn't do much for the rest of the system though. Memtest86+ (not a DOS/Windows app but an OS of its own you should boot into) is thorough with RAM - let it run at least 8h to be sure. For video, X-Vesa has video memory tests, but that's DOS-based, not Windows.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-25, 19:47:

The slot or the card?37.5MHz PCI is out of spec, but usually not a big problem. If you have trouble it will generally be HDD (SC […]
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Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-25, 18:13:

[...]

I did try 3.5x75 but one of the PCI slots seemed to "die" after a while at that speed so I dialled back to stock settings and all is well, but I may look further into this now that at stock settings things work.

The slot or the card?37.5MHz PCI is out of spec, but usually not a big problem. If you have trouble it will generally be HDD (SCSI, IDE) related. What card was it?

Also speaking of Slots, almost all the cards I have had or have in this system are pretty warm to the touch once the system has been on for more then a few minutes.. even sound cards and network cards. Kinda odd I think but not sure ?

Sounds like you need (a lot) more airflow in the case.

Is there a good reliable Windows based stress test and/or diagnostic suite available that will work on this kind of set up ?

Low-level hardware diagnostics (i.e. "why is this stuff so hot?"), not really, those old cards didn't have environmental sensors. As for stress test, SuperPI is a traditional CPU burn-in test. Doesn't do much for the rest of the system though. Memtest86+ (not a DOS/Windows app but an OS of its own you should boot into) is thorough with RAM - let it run at least 8h to be sure. For video, X-Vesa has video memory tests, but that's DOS-based, not Windows.

I am running the Socket 7 system caseless right now, but will be putting it in a cheap CIT thing, has a 80/92mm rear fan tho and a space for 2 fans(also 80/92mm i think) above the PCI slot area on the case side panel)

Xs1nX wrote on 2020-05-25, 19:54:

[...]

I am running the Socket 7 system caseless right now, but will be putting it in a cheap CIT thing, has a 80/92mm rear fan tho and a space for 2 fans(also 80/92mm i think) above the PCI slot area on the case side panel)

In fact, a good case build can provide better airflow than caseless. Most important part is to suck out as much as possible at the back above the board, and to have clear intakes at the lower front. That creates a wind tunnel over your components.

So put this thing in a case and no motherboard fan headers is proving to be an issue, tried to use molex to fan adaptors but the connectors on them are dodgy even by Molex standards.

I do have an old optical drive bay fan controller somewhere here from when they were a thing so I think I will use that instead, it also has some temp sensors which may be useful.

On the subject of Molex can I just say I hate this connector so much, its horrible and cheap and nasty.

Got this build into a cheap as hell very small CIT case, with whatever fans I had that I thought would work best from The Box Of Fans.

The Scythe bay controller was something I bought for my main system 10+ years ago but never used, was still in box. These controllers had limited use once motherboards had multiple case fan headers and decent bios fan control.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/PhVTrNJ8hZ9ivDYH7
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zCf7XwgXTVHdsUVT6

Also that SD Card to IDE adaptor and the Gotek are amazing things for dealing with "Old computer stuff", makes things so much easier in terms of dealing with storage.