That motherboard should have AC97 integrated audio, which is probably what the legacy audio refers to. Do you now or did you ever have a Sound Blaster installed in a slot? the Sound Blaster setting probably doesn't do anything unless you do.

I see, so AC97 is regarded as legacy. OK. Inside Windows 98, I can test audio using dxdiag.exe, so AC97 is a Windows / DirectX type of audio? And in that BIOS screenshot, "Sound Blaster" must be something else - like the old Creative ISA cards.

When you ask about SB's in a slot, are you asking generally? I have SB ISA cards, yes. Not installed in this mobo at the moment, but I've got some around.

retro games 100 wrote:

I see, so AC97 is regarded as legacy. OK. Inside Windows 98, I can test audio using dxdiag.exe, so AC97 is a Windows / DirectX type of audio? And in that BIOS screenshot, "Sound Blaster" must be something else - like the old Creative ISA cards.

When you ask about SB's in a slot, are you asking generally? I have SB ISA cards, yes. Not installed in this mobo at the moment, but I've got some around.

OK I found this with a little more information.

http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/epox/EP-8KTA3+Pro.htm

it looks like it has both AC97 AND Sound Blaster Pro on board. It says that Sound Blaster is for DOS compatibility with older games, so it may only work with DOS and Windows uses AC97, or there may be times when you want to switch one off to use the resources for something else or to resolve conflicts so they give you that option in the BIOS. I'm just throwing out guesses here. You'll probably have to do some testing to see what the settings do.

If I run the mobo in pure DOS mode, I can get SB sound effects to work in Doom. (I've got no actual real ISA SB in the ISA slot.) In order to get the SB sound effects to work, I need to run a driver for it, and it's called viaudio.com. I run it at the DOS prompt. It sits in memory, and takes up 1K.

The weird thing is that this driver seems to want to install the FM music part on IRQ 10, which happens to coincide with the Windows legacy audio IRQ of 10. An IRQ of 10 is no good in pure DOS. The sound effects IRQ is 5, which is OK. If I select SB for Doom's music, I hear silence. If I could tell the DOS driver to use IRQ 5 for music, then that would work I reckon.

sliderider wrote:

OK I found this with a little more information. […]
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retro games 100 wrote:

I see, so AC97 is regarded as legacy. OK. Inside Windows 98, I can test audio using dxdiag.exe, so AC97 is a Windows / DirectX type of audio? And in that BIOS screenshot, "Sound Blaster" must be something else - like the old Creative ISA cards.

When you ask about SB's in a slot, are you asking generally? I have SB ISA cards, yes. Not installed in this mobo at the moment, but I've got some around.

OK I found this with a little more information.

http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/epox/EP-8KTA3+Pro.htm

it looks like it has both AC97 AND Sound Blaster Pro on board. It says that Sound Blaster is for DOS compatibility with older games, so it may only work with DOS and Windows uses AC97, or there may be times when you want to switch one off to use the resources for something else or to resolve conflicts so they give you that option in the BIOS. I'm just throwing out guesses here. You'll probably have to do some testing to see what the settings do.

The SB Pro is not just emulated?
I'll go check if I happen by any chance, no matter how remote and unprobable if by any way, one of those boards somehow magically made it to my pile of boards and see if I can find something that looks like a Soundblaster chip

Edit:Apparently it was close, got the EP-8KTA3 (without the "+") but I didn't see any Soundblaster chip on it.
I did notice another S-A board have a Creative CT5880 chip on it, which appears to be a PCI-128 chip

The big problem is I don't believe Epox is around anymore so whatever resources they had on their website would no longer be available unless some crazy luddite has it archived somewhere. I can't seem to locate even a copy of a manual from searching.

I had a quick flick through the manual, and couldn't really see anything technical about the sound. It's on DriverGuide if you search for 8kta3pro. It's quite large at 9meg.

http://images26.fotosik.pl/48/b8fc75cf04dca7e8.jpg

Here's the biggest, clearest photo I could find and I can't see any chips on there marked Creative or Sound Blaster, unless they are using a Sound Blaster clone or they integrated a Sound Blaster on another chip. The big chip with the ugly black heatsink on it is unknown to me because I can't find a picture without it where it's clearly visible what is written on the top. I can only surmise that the AC97 is either SB Pro compatible on it's own or they integrated an AC97 and SB Pro together on one chip, but that wouldn't explain why you can turn one or the other off unless it is switchable and you can only have one on at a time.

The big chip with the heatsink is the northbridge 😉

Tetrium wrote:

The big chip with the heatsink is the northbridge 😉

Ok that makes sense because most of the other pictures I've seen have a fan instead of a heatsink on it.

And it looks like the audio on this board is SB Pro compatible. Maybe you just need a different DOS driver installed?

There is not an actual SB chip on that board, it's just the standard software emulation that comes with most/all AC'97 setups. Most AC'97 chip specs list similar compatibility, but it usually doesn't work very well.

The sound chip is a VIA VT1611A, it's left of the audio/gameport connector in the photo.

It is indeed AC97 and SB Pro compatible. I haven't tested it much (my own EP-8KTA3+ Pro has come down with the plague), but from what I remember it was pretty good.

About the options in the BIOS: The first one switches the whole sound chip on/off, while the only second en/disables the SB Pro emulation.

The small chip near the gameport is usually a PCI sound codec. I can see a VIA logo faintly. I am sure that is all the sound hardware on the mainboard. So it has a legacy audio block that is Sound Blaster and MPU-401 compatible. I Don't see any hint on SBPro compatibility. Looking at the drivers I can see that the FM music is emulated in software. Also it refers to PCI audio. Which makes me suspect that the legacy audio has no true ISA interface.

Edit: did not see 5U3's post before I wrote this.

I see, thanks for the info. So the clone chip on the mobo does SB Pro sound effects @ IRQ 5, either in pure DOS, or inside a "Windows-based dos box". If you want SB FM music, you can only do this in a "Windows-based dos box", and then it's only emulated. That's OK, because -

* One hardware configuration option could be to have the mobo do the SB Pro sound effects (in pure DOS for example), and then you can choose what music card goes in to the single ISA slot, eg an SCC-1.

* Another option could be to use a SB clone card (eg an ESS AudioDrive) with a wavetable daughterboard, for both sound effects and music. No hanging note problems with that solution.

* Another option could be to use the mobo's gameport, and send the MIDI music information to an external synth box. I'll have to test this with games such as Police Quest 3, and Wing Commander, because I believe the music in those 2 games will not function correctly, if the MIDI interface is not Roland MPU401 compatible.

Try some of the Legend games. Like Gateway or Timequest.

I'm 99.9% certain that these will not work in MT-32 mode.

Please can you explain what this means? Do you mean that I run one of these games, and inside its sound and music set up area, I select MT-32. And then I attach a real MT-32 box to the end of the MIDI cable, and then test the game, and you're saying that it won't work correctly? Is that right? Thanks.

Yes!

OK thanks a lot. Actually, I got momentarily confused by something. I don't think I need the mobo's MIDI gameport to act intelligently, when sending MIDI music data to an external synthesizer box. This mobo is going to be used for fast DOS games, and so I won't need a Roland MT-32 or CM-32L connected to it, because games that support these units tend to be "older and slower", and I can use another mobo/system for that.

Instead, I was going to connect a General Midi external synthesizer box to the mobo's gameport. Would that work? I mean, can you envisage any technical problems with that hardware configuration? I can't foresee any hanging note problems, and I don't think there are any known problems with sending MIDI data to a GM external box. Thanks.

GM should be fine!