I really do not understand what kind of a music/sound setup you try to reach for you proposed builds. I'm not very keen on music/sound side of things, being a headphones player but still your proposal sounds too much to me.

First of all, considering 7 expansion boards in a single PC is really pushing the limits of practicallity, especially for a DOS box, considering the limited resources like IRQ. Even you can make the resources available (theoratically) there will be conflicts (be sure about it) that will cause you to lose all your hair prematurely.

The second things is, if all you are considering is graphics adapters and sound cards (as you said), what you really think that you can achive with 3 VGA and 4 sound cards in a single box?

I almost never heard more than 2 sound cards (and its mostly for using both PCI and ISA sound cards together in a DOS/W9x combo machine - and you said you will have two different boxes and not a combo) and if you don't want to use a multi monitor setup, more than one graphics adapter is also not very usefull.

"Optimised for compatibility, functionality and performance" requires simplicity, and cannot be reached in a system with all the slots needlessly populated, as far as I believe.

You already said you have Gravis Ultrasound, and many wavetable boards. Choose a better wavetable board, slap it onto the Gravis, chose a PCI VGA card of the era (4MB something - Matrox, S3 etc, all will do), maybe add a Soundblaster Pro if you have one as a second adapter for better compatibility for rather old DOS games and your DOS box is ready. Add one or two Voodoo 2's and you will have a real ass kicker.

Again, chose a good PCI sound card and an ISA one for DOS mode, slap some better wavetable boards on them, couple them together with your Voodoo 5500 and your Windows 9x box is ready too.

tayyare wrote:

I really do not understand what kind of a music/sound setup you try to reach for you proposed builds. I'm not very keen on music/sound side of things, being a headphones player but still your proposal sounds too much to me.

All this probably sounds more complicated than it seems. The idea is that the two boxes are more than the some of their parts. It's easier to consider one box as a 'daughter' box to the other box, and vice-versa.

Depending on the box being used for games, the other box can be considered an external 'daughter' box housing MIDI cards installed on ISA/ PCI slots. And these MIDI cards aren't really different from dedicated external MIDI modules in that sense.

The audio streams generated by these MIDI devices could be directed to a 'daughter' box for special effects processing. Useful for MIDI devices lacking built-in effects processing.

All these audio streams can be mixed with an external line mixer, and sent to headphones/ amps.

tayyare wrote:

First of all, considering 7 expansion boards in a single PC is really pushing the limits of practicallity, especially for a DOS box, considering the limited resources like IRQ. Even you can make the resources available (theoratically) there will be conflicts (be sure about it) that will cause you to lose all your hair prematurely.

I haven't done extensive testing, but I've installed 14 cards on both boxes - just for a dry run. And yeah, it wasn't conflict free. However, I think conflicts can be minimised with the right setup.

tayyare wrote:

The second things is, if all you are considering is graphics adapters and sound cards (as you said), what you really think that you can achive with 3 VGA and 4 sound cards in a single box?

For example:

Slot 1 = S3 for 2D

Slot 2 = Voodoo2 for 3D

Slot 3 = PCX2 for 3D

Slot 4 = Voyetra MIDI interface

Slot 5 = GUS MAX

Slot 6 = SB/ SB16

Slot 7 = ??? Audigy2

Output from VGA cards go through a VGA switch box, then onto 2 CRTs.

Output from sound cards go through external line mixer, then onto headphone/ amp.

The Audigy 2 could act as an external MIDI device for the other box, as discussed above.

tayyare wrote:

I almost never heard more than 2 sound cards (and its mostly for using both PCI and ISA sound cards together in a DOS/W9x combo machine - and you said you will have two different boxes and not a combo) and if you don't want to use a multi monitor setup, more than one graphics adapter is also not very usefull.

Yeah, I don't think this is common, but see above.

tayyare wrote:

"Optimised for compatibility, functionality and performance" requires simplicity, and cannot be reached in a system with all the slots needlessly populated, as far as I believe.

I originally started with one box - a very simple one. I still like that idea too.

tayyare wrote:

You already said you have Gravis Ultrasound, and many wavetable boards. Choose a better wavetable board, slap it onto the Gravis, chose a PCI VGA card of the era (4MB something - Matrox, S3 etc, all will do), maybe add a Soundblaster Pro if you have one as a second adapter for better compatibility for rather old DOS games and your DOS box is ready. Add one or two Voodoo 2's and you will have a real ass kicker.

Again, chose a good PCI sound card and an ISA one for DOS mode, slap some better wavetable boards on them, couple them together with your Voodoo 5500 and your Windows 9x box is ready too.

I like this setup too - two dedicated boxes for DOS and Win9x. I'm still contemplating something along those lines. However, with so many cards and slots, there are options where 2 boxes can be integrated more closely...

Need some opinions to help decide on 2 ISA slots, one in each box. I've got 4 cards short listed:

1) SB Pro 2 or compatibles (YMF719-S, Aztech variants - all with OPL3 synths)
2) SB32 CT3930 (OPL3 and EMU8K synths)
3) AWE32 CT3900 (OPL3 and EMU8K synths)
4) EWS64XL (Crystal FM and Dream 9407 synths)

It's tricky deciding 2 from this short list. I also have a PCI card that has no FM synth, but has 2 Dream 9707 synths (not 9407 synths), which could be a substitute for not using the EWS64XL. Any input appreciated.