Reviving a dead thread here, I bought this card today. I have the drivers on the original 5.25" floppies but no floppy drive right now. I need to figure out how to get them off those disks (I'll see if I can force my CBM 1571 drive to the task, I'll research the topic, I think there's C128 app called "big blue disk" that reads IBM disks but I only have a C64).

I also have the manual which I can scan. It's an interesting card, I bought it because it has COVOX emulation built-in and a stereo OPL2 mode as well. I'm not sure if it's SB PRO compatible, I haven't seen any mention of SB PRO in it.

EDIT: I found the drivers here: http://driverzone.com/drivers/mediasonic/ - the files in the archive match the manual. I'll get them mirrored on the vogons driver site.

Stefan_L wrote:

Does anyone have the DOS drivers for Sound Commander fx? Or just info about the card in general? My Google attempts just end up […]
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Does anyone have the DOS drivers for Sound Commander fx? Or just info about the card in general?
My Google attempts just end up with the ebay auction i bought the card from or WIN 3.11 drivers.. and several fake DOS drivers 😒

Although the WIN 3.11 drivers had an DOS program that tests the card and it initalize the dual OPL2 FM sound but it unforunatly also makes the PCM sound to only play on right channel.
Could i use the SBPRO drivers maybe to get SBPRO compatiblility? And then exactly what do i need to add in the autoexec bat and config.sys? Now i only have the "set blaster" with values that i set with jumpers on the card... also with "T"value set to 2 wich i think means SBPRO... or?

mico wrote:

EDIT: I found the drivers here: http://driverzone.com/drivers/mediasonic/ - the files in the archive match the manual. I'll get them mirrored on the vogons driver site.

I spoke too soon, these are not the sound commander FX drivers. Some programs worked but the archive content does not exactly match the manual.

I found this description of the mediasonic product line. It says "Sound Blaster compatible" but list features that are found on the SB PRO. I'm still not sure that it is SB PRO compatible.

Media Music 1 .0 […]
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Media Music 1 .0

$ 79.00

Media Music 2.0

$ 99.00

Sound

Commander 1 .5

$ 109.00

Sound

Commander 2.0

$ 129.00

Sound

Commander fx

$ 139.00

Sound

Commander M

$ 179.00

MediaSonic

Media Music is an Ad Lib com-
patible sound board, which is
to say it has 1 1-voice, 2-op FM
synthesis. Version 2.0 of the
package includes additional
software, including an FM song
player, FM Hook for Windows
(which attaches sound effects
to various Windows events),
and Karaoke software.

Sound Commander adds
a digital-voice channel to Me-
dia Music 2.0, compatible with
Co vox's Speech Thhig, but does
not include digital audio input.

Version 2.0 adds Monologue, a
speech-synthesis program.

Sound Commander fx is
an enhanced Sound Blaster
compatible board, and includes
8-bit stereo sampling and play-
back at up to 44.1 kHz. Also
included are MIDI connectors,
speakers, and Karaoke soft-
ware. For an extra $29, you can
add an infrared remote control
receiver.

Sound Commander M is
an MPC-compatible sound
board, with all the features of
the Sound Commander fx plus
the 6-way analog mixer re-
quired by the MPC standard.

This reminds me that I have a Sound Commander of my own. I usually see people refer to it as Sound Commander ex:

Yet I see no mention of it in the list that mico posted. Was it known under a different name? I assume it's just an 8-bit AdLib clone without SB capabilities, so it probably doesn't really need drivers?

jheronimus wrote:

Yet I see no mention of it in the list that mico posted. Was it known under a different name? I assume it's just an 8-bit AdLib clone without SB capabilities, so it probably doesn't really need drivers?

I found drivers for it. Try them out and let us know.

I scanned the manual, here are the more useful pages. I'll submit the full scan to vogonsdrivers.com

The layout of the card showing where to find the jumper blocks (approximately, the DMA jumpers are near the midi port).

The jumpers control the following settings:

This page however fails to mention the purpose of S2, much later in the manual it's purpose is revealed. It controls the base port address 220h vs 240h. It seems that the manual has an error and the base address is 240h if S2 is ON and 220h if S2 is OFF. I've had success using port 240h in my BLASTER line with some games, but not using 220h however my S2 jumper is ON.

The address layout is presented on the same page and continues on the next page. I am hoping that there is an error in it, because it indicates that both the LEFT and RIGHT OPL2 chips share write addresses giving an incompatible layout with SB PRO 1.0 and also makes the Stereo OPL2 feature pretty useless (in my opinion).

So far I believe this card is a SB 2.0 clone with some extended capabilities and Stereo FM / Dual OPL2, and covox emulation. I have had a hard time getting software to recognize it. I have not had any success detecting it as SB PRO yet.

I haven't tried Covox support with it yet.

By far the most ridiculous feature on this card is the "Remote Control" serial port built-in the MIDI port. It does not support gamepads and instead has a serial port that uses IRQ5, IRQ14/IRQ15. When set on IRQ14, I can't boot my system at all because that IRQ is used by my primary hard drive controller. I am hoping I can free up all IRQs by not setting a jumper on that block.

Here is the full manual:

I possess a Sound Commander FX as well.

Mine only has 1x OPL2 chip, and 1x Y3014B companion chip. So out of the box, the Sound Commander FX I have is SB compatible.
I'm guessing that to have SBPro1.0 or 2.0 compatibility (or at least stereo output of some sort), chips need to be added.

So for this problem :

Stefan_L wrote:

initalize the dual OPL2 FM sound but it unforunatly also makes the PCM sound to only play on right channel.

tell me Stefan_L does your card have 2x FM chips?

PC

Beegle wrote:

I possess a Sound Commander FX as well. […]
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I possess a Sound Commander FX as well.

Mine only has 1x OPL2 chip, and 1x Y3014B companion chip. So out of the box, the Sound Commander FX I have is SB compatible.
I'm guessing that to have SBPro1.0 or 2.0 compatibility (or at least stereo output of some sort), chips need to be added.

So for this problem :

Stefan_L wrote:

initalize the dual OPL2 FM sound but it unforunatly also makes the PCM sound to only play on right channel.

tell me Stefan_L does your card have 2x FM chips?

Of course that sounds like the issue for Stefan_L. I added a second OPL2 and Y3014B that I ordered from utsource.net, I need to run them through some tests to figure out if they are fake but they seem to work. I haven't had much luck with the initialization software that I found on the net (I get an error or the system hangs), however, the utility programs (PCORGAN, etc.) work in stereo mode.

The Dual OPL2 address layout looks compatible with the PAS layout so I am going to try to force some games that support Stereo FM on the PAS to run on this card. I'll update this thread with results when I have them.

My latest finding is that the DSP version is reported as 1.05 which maps to an early 8-bit SB, not a SB Pro. It does not seem to support Auto-Init DMA.

My S2 jumper seems to do nothing, I took it off and I still am stuck on 240h, there must be an issue with the jumper (oxidized?).

I managed to play SQ1VGA with the PAS driver and it worked. However, I'm not sure the sound was stereo. Music came out of both sides but they both sounded similar to my ears.