James-F wrote:

we want to disable port 388 on the SB16 with the CQM chip which is easy with full PnP SB16 cards (Vibra).

Wheter it is easy depends on the motherboard PnP BIOS (settings). Vibra cards based on 2501 and 2502 chips have shown that they can fully enable themselves at boot, without using the diagnose tool or anything.

stamasd wrote:

My go-to SB card is now CT1740

Well, it's a good card but also very noisy from what I've read and completely non-PnP.
Maybe it's the analog potentiometer at the output that makes it noisy?

gerwin wrote:

Wheter it is easy depends on the motherboard PnP BIOS (settings). Vibra cards based on 2501 and 2502 chips have shown that they can fully enable themselves at boot, without using the diagnose tool or anything.

If they have an OPL3 on board it's not a problem then, I can mute the YMF289 on the YMF719.
But the Vibra card I have ordered is the CT2890 with a CT2504, I'll test if it is initializes at boot.

To my knowledge there are 3 types of SB16 interfaces:
1. Non PnP like the CT1740.
2. Semi PnP with Base I/O, MPU-401 and Joystick (gameport) jumpered, CT2230.
3. Full PnP like the Vibras or the CT2950, everything can be turned off using the CTCU & CTCM utilities.

The semi and full PnP will initialize with the diagnose.exe tool or with the CTCU and CTCM tools, or automatically at boot according to gerwin.
If the SB16 has the less desirable CQM FM chip, it better not be semi of non PnP because there will be no way to disable it and use the other cards OPL.
So this method is best with full PnP cards like the SB16/AWE32/AWE64.

Funny this should come up, I was just messing about with getting 2 SB's going. I got it working, but I'm not exactly sure how...

My 'dream card' for this system would have been a non-pnp AWE32, but they cost a bit more than I'm willing to spend. I ended up finding an SB32 CT3930, which is non-pnp and has a real OPL3. The OPL3 was just a nice bonus, I'm using a separate PC with a USB MIDI adapter for music, as per Phil's video.

The hanging note bug soon reared its ugly head. Doom II was near unplayable with music, a non phantom note would hang after less than 5 minutes. There was also the issue of Build games stuttering unless I lowered the sample rate.

It was clear that I needed a 2 card setup, and having to load CTCM was a non starter for me (precious lower memory!). I dug up a semi-pnp SB16 value, don't remember the model number. I set the base address to 240 (to not conflict) and the midi address to 330 via jumpers.

As for the SB32, I jumpered it to IRQ7, base 220, midi 300, DMA 1, 5. Autoexec has:

1SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6

How exactly does this work? I'm assuming the semi-pnp SB16 just defaults to IRQ5. Is the BLASTER line all that is necessary to address the SB16's mpu-401?

If this is the kind of semi-PnP SB16 Vibras that initialize from boot (read gerwin's post) without having to run diagnose.exe to set the IRQ+DMA then your are all set.
On most semi-PnP SB16 you need to run diagnose.exe to set the IRQ and DMA, no memory affected it just initialize the hardware, same with full-PNP cards with CTCU+CTCM, no memory affected.
Make sure there is no conflict anywhere and point the game to port 330 on the alright MPU-401.

I believe the SB16 Value you got for the MPU-401 suffers the same problem as your SB32.

Nice. Looks like the CT1730 has a clean DSP version. Let us know how quiet it is.

gdjacobs wrote:

Nice. Looks like the CT1730 has a clean DSP version. Let us know how quiet it is.

It doesn't make my ears bleed.

OTOH my ears are not those of a refined audiophile. The card is in the special category which I call "good enough for me" 😀

James-F wrote:

SB16 Vibras that initialize from boot (read gerwin's post)

Here is the topic where we observed this behaviour:
Re: Acer Magic S30 ISA sound card - what's with this thing?

James-F wrote:

CkRtech wrote:

I must refute the idea that the SB16 was still even a thing by the end of the 90s.

We are talking ISA cards here, in their natural habitat... DOS.

The quote was regarding late 90s and early 2000s and the SB16 still ruling strong - an era that saw the deprecation and end of ISA. SB16 was irrelevant by that point.

Anyway - a retro machine today that can be pulled from any era and is intended for DOS can make use of PCI sound cards to some degree if the platform used has them available. If you are over a 486 and have PCI available and still have legacy ISA available (Pentium/P2/early P3, Super socket 7, etc), you could consider PCI sound cards with DOS compatibility for clarity of your digital sound and use the pnp nature to control resources and disable certain features as mentioned in this thread for pnp on earlier ISA cards. The ISA slot can handle a SBPro for OPL3 needs, and the MIDI interface from the PCI card could potentially squash hanging note bugs.

I do not recall having hanging note bugs in DOS games at the time I used the MX300 with Wave Blaster. What pushed me to put the AWE64 Gold back in the system was actually issues with initializing the audio hardware in Sierra games running at Pentium II speed with a PCI sound card. Perhaps slowing the computer down a bit at the time would have helped, but that wasn't a route I really considered - just as replacing audblast.drv wasn't really something I tried at the time. Running a DOS machine today with newer, late 90s hardware and slowing it down to appropriate speeds might take care of those isolated issues.

And then on the subject of combining sound cards - be they a PCI/ISA combo or 100% ISA, it would probably be a good idea to develop a test bench of games that are iffy when it comes to sound just to see how robust the setup/switching/compatibility is for thinking outside the box. Jill of the Jungle might be one candidate for the equation.

James-F wrote:

If this is the kind of semi-PnP SB16 Vibras that initialize from boot (read gerwin's post) without having to run diagnose.exe to […]
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If this is the kind of semi-PnP SB16 Vibras that initialize from boot (read gerwin's post) without having to run diagnose.exe to set the IRQ+DMA then your are all set.
On most semi-PnP SB16 you need to run diagnose.exe to set the IRQ and DMA, no memory affected it just initialize the hardware, same with full-PNP cards with CTCU+CTCM, no memory affected.
Make sure there is no conflict anywhere and point the game to port 330 on the alright MPU-401.

I believe the SB16 Value you got for the MPU-401 suffers the same problem as your SB32.

How does DIAGNOSE.EXE /S know which card to initialize? From the BLASTER variable?

They both do have the hanging note bug, but it only occurs when running digital audio and midi on the same card, two soundblasters with or without the bug will behave fine.

As noted previously, I don't run twin Creative cards, but DIAGNOSE /S does obey the BLASTER variable in my experience.

A fully DOS compatible MPU-401 mounted on a PCI interface may be really worth trying not so much because PCI is superior for audio, but because the ISA slots could very quickly become populated when mounting Goldfinch and GUS cards for ultimate versatility.

I did a quick and dirty curiosity test while putting together my retro rig. I installed both the AWE64 Value and YMF719 card. SB AWE64 config utilities threw a fit.

I didn't really had the time to think through the problem when I did it. Like I said, quick and dirty curiosity test.

I backed it out by removing the YMF card and restoring the old autoexc.bat, config.sys, and system.ini file.

Pairing two ISA cards doesn't fall under the "quick and dirty" category no matter how you look at it.
If you want assistance in accomplishing this not so quick and dirty task, I am wiling to help.

James-F wrote:

Pairing two ISA cards doesn't fall under the "quick and dirty" category no matter how you look at it.
If you want assistance in accomplishing this not so quick and dirty task, I am wiling to help.

Thanks, I appreciate the offer. At the time, I was just interested in putting it together and getting it to run. Curiosity got the best of me, and I threw both cards in to see what would happen. I knew I wouldn't have the time to troubleshoot it correctly. I can see why now 2 PnP cards would make it much harder to configure 2 cards of the same type.

Update:
I got the AWE64 and SB16 (CT2230) working together without conflict.

AWE64
A220
I5
D1
H5
P300

SB16
A240
I7
D1
P330

This way, all digital audio goes through AWE64. SB16 is only used as MPU401 interface for my SC-55. However, I can't use the OPL3 on the SB16 because games set to A220 for digital audio (Sound Blaster) would also send FM music to the AWE64.

So far, I can set the AUTOEXEC.BAT and SYSTEM.INI to force MIDI OUT to 330, but every time I reboot, the settings go back to 300. I can see DIAGNOSE.EXE /S /W=C:\WINDOWS is causing this from the output as I boot up and run through AUTOEXEC.BAT, but once I REM'd it out, it still does it!

I'm on DOS 6.22 and WfW 3.11. Using Media Player, if I set the MIDI Out to 330, it plays through the SB16's MPU401 to my SC-55, but it keeps setting it back to 300, which is the MPU401 on my AWE64.

I can manually switch back to the MPU401 on the AWE64, but I would have to keep moving the plug back and forth. I don't want that. I'd like to use the SB16 as the dedicated MPU401 interface since it is a much noisier card than the AWE64, and I like the option to use the AWE64 Wavetable.

I do miss the OPL3 of the SB16 though...

Sorry, rambling - short version: How do I keep the AWE64 PnP drivers from changing the autoexec.bat and system.ini files (short of making them read-only)?

GuyTechie wrote:

Sorry, rambling - short version: How do I keep the AWE64 PnP drivers from changing the autoexec.bat and system.ini files (short of making them read-only)?

read-only ctpnp.cfg after it is set how you like it.

James-F wrote:

GuyTechie wrote:

Sorry, rambling - short version: How do I keep the AWE64 PnP drivers from changing the autoexec.bat and system.ini files (short of making them read-only)?

read-only ctpnp.cfg after it is set how you like it.

Thanks, I'm going to give it a shot.

PS: Is it possible for both the AWE32 and SB16 share the same 330 address for the MPU interface? I don't care if playback through MIDI OUT will go out on both sound card's MPU401 interface. In fact, that would be neat!

I don't think so.
Mixing addresses on 388 Adlib is one thing, but MPU on 330 is a whole different story.

Shared MPU I/O == Crashy Crashy

James-F wrote:

GuyTechie wrote:

Sorry, rambling - short version: How do I keep the AWE64 PnP drivers from changing the autoexec.bat and system.ini files (short of making them read-only)?

read-only ctpnp.cfg after it is set how you like it.

Making CTPNP.CFG read only still changes my autoexec.bat and system.ini files.

I've decided to necropost here instead of creating new topic since my question is closely related.
I'm doing the same thing - Pairing SB16 with YMF card. However, my SB16 sports a proper opl3 chip (I can't quite remember the exact model number but it's something 29xx) so the only thing I want from my YMF is the proper MPU401 port - nothing more. No opl synth, no SB compatibility. Is it possible to disable entirely all the features except MPU401 so they won't occupy any system resources nor interfere with the SB16? I see that there are no options for such a thing in the yamaha config utility. Are there any hidden commands or some such?