Hi all. Wonder if someone out there can identify this sound card?
There's no sticker or manufacturer markings on the card. Just SR-S163-C. It has 2 Yamaha chips on it YMF719-S and YMF704C-S.
What drivers would i need to download for this card and any tips on setting it up on a Windows98 machine?
Thanks Guys
Hi, You're lucky! I've found some drivers for you..
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/download/
The drivers for your card are the last ones down on the site (OPL3-SAx Drivers for YMF701, 711, 715, 718, 719)..
It even has drivers for Win3.x and OS/2! ^^
Btw, while searching for your driver I stumpled upon this thread at msfn.org:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/107001-compat … ith-windows-9x/
Maybe it is also fun to read for you.
Best Regards,
Jo22
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
This is also a wavetable card since the left big chip is actually the Yamaha OPL4 ... so you have true OPL3/4 capabilities and great SB compatibility, a nice combo!
Wow, thanks, you're right! I din't notice. By "OPL4" I thought of YMF278B.
Didn't know it also has two sisters, YMF704 (OPL4-ML) and YMF721 (OPL4-ML2).
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
Question is, what's required to initialize this version of OPL4? My understanding is that the hardware does not support MPU-401 interface to the wavetable block without a TSR (as I don't see any micro to provide the UART).
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
you need to load OPL4DRV.COM , then the wavetable synth becomes available as an UART MPU-401 device... I have no idea if the driver uses emulation or just enables the synth - these yamaha ICs are highly integrated and it wouldn't surprise me if they also included the necessary glue logic in the die
The YMF704 is much more highly integrated, so it may support MPU-401 in hardware.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
an excellent ymf719 card that makes me want it crazy!
i've seen many ymf715/718/719 cards in my life, but none with such fine build quality!
I wished it had sample RAM, just like the Audio Trix Pro.
Then it would be the perfect card for MOD4WIN! 😁
Btw, Stojke created a cool little thread about OPL4 a while ago! ^^
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
Thanks for the info guys. Im going to try it out on my Celeron 466 tonight if I get time. Will try and get it up and running.
I thought it looked a curious card when I spotted it. Glad I won it. I have some YMF724 pci cards but this is my first Yamaha ISA card.
So, how good are these cards for general MIDI? I often hear people really like YMF7xx cards on vogons and vogonswiki, but I could never figure out why.
Also, this reminds me: are these two cards good for anything? I've had them for a while, but couldn't identify them:
This one is a YMF-715-S
And this one is a YMF-718-S
Holy shit, guys. I've just tried the YMF-718S on my P-166 system with the drivers posted above. Looks like it has soft-synth. My only general midi devices until now were AWE32/SB32/AWE64.
I've only tried it on Doom e1m1 and Duke Nukem 3D title screen, but I defininetly like the way the samples sound on e1m1 as compared to the AWE. Also, it has no issues with Duke Nukem (AWE series sometimes produced garbled sound in this game).
It's not in the same league as the YouTube recordings from SC-55 and MU-80, but it's SO much better than AWE. I've been thinking about getting one of those MIDI modules, but I don't think I can justify spending 100-150 bucks on them now.
The only drawback I've noticed so far is that the music can stutter a bit, since soft synth relies on the CPU. But the only instance I've noticed it is in Duke Nukem 3D main menu screen upon loading a new map.
And all this time I've had it just laying around, thinking it's a cheap SB clone. Just wow...
^ yeah OPL4 is quite nice... try it under DOS were soft-synth is not available, it won't disappoint you in GM games.
Maybe you also get the same OPL4 control panel as me, you can toy with it for fun: Re: My ongoing 386DX/40 build
edit:
scratch that, had a second look at your cards, there is no OPL4 synth, I got confused 😵
still they are nice SB compatible cards!
wrote:^ yeah OPL4 is quite nice... try it under DOS were soft-synth is not available, it won't disappoint you in GM games. […]
^ yeah OPL4 is quite nice... try it under DOS were soft-synth is not available, it won't disappoint you in GM games.
Maybe you also get the same OPL4 control panel as me, you can toy with it for fun: Re: My ongoing 386DX/40 build
edit:
scratch that, had a second look at your cards, there is no OPL4 synth, I got confused 😵
still they are nice SB compatible cards!
As far as I understand, for GM under DOS I would need a card like OP has, right? With a separate XG chip? Would it sound similar to soft-synth?
yeah it needs the separate chip with the huge "General Midi" on it...
OPL-4 sounds like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPYBwLioV5I (there is also a vid on yt with various Doom E1M1 recordings but the OPL-4 one is just wrong, it seems the machine used to record it had some issues or something)
Plugged the card into my k6-2 500 machine and it's shows up as a s163 Sonata card. Need to install windows on this machine so will try and set it all up over the coming week.
Hi, there! Sorry for me posting again - I know very little about OPL4 internals yet, but I've just come across a beautiful OPL4 song for the MSX platform :
Twilight Hearth - 1995 Wolf/CS - MSX - OPL4
Quite impressive what this chip is capable of when properly programmed (and has external SRAM)!
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
Wow the card in the OP looks awesome.
Just has that premium late-ISA card feel (meaning its probably not a noisy mess), and the MIDI logo on the OPL4 chip is sweet.
I've never seen one of those before.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.
Well i got the sound card installed. Windows detected it straight away and installed drivers but i updated them to the latest ones off Yamaha's website.
I was having a few issues setting it up in dos. When you restart in dos mode from Win98 your greeted with a control panel to setup irq's etc. I was getting Conflict errors with WSS I/O. Configured the card in Windows and then through the Dos setup and it works great now.
I found that initially i was getting no sound effects and only music, but that was because i was using 330 for midi. I realised i needed to select 220 to get both midi and sound fx. I assume it maps the midi though the OPL3 chip?
Either way it sounds really great. I want to get some sound clips but i'm not sure the best way to go about it?
