According to https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/, the Rage II + DVD is - although not the best when it comes to overall DOS compatibility - still a tad more compatible it seems than the Mystique. I have no personal experience with the Rage2+ but when looking at these test results, you should at least give it a chance / test it yourselves in the games that are most important to you.

Regarding the ESS6xx and ESS1xxx cards... They enjoy a good reputation for a reason as most of the times their set-up is hasslefree and they offer superb SoundBlaster emulation (and actually working SoundBlaster Pro emulation with correct stereo-behaviour). So I think you should give this card a chance, as well.

I am sure there will be a multitude of input of other users having recently worked/fiddled around with these cards.

Better get an S3 card for DOS gaming, they are cheap and plenty!
The compatibility matrix jaZz_KCS posted is a great guide to find a suitable card for your needs 😀

About the mpu side now, well you are using a pentium mmx system so I would suggest to give softmpu a chance: *START HERE* SoftMPU 1.91 - Software Intelligent MPU-401 Emulator
you certainly won't miss any cpu-power , try that and then decide if you really want a hardware solution for your system. All you need is a gameport->midi cable.

keropi wrote:

Better get an S3 card for DOS gaming, they are cheap and plenty! The compatibility matrix jaZz_KCS posted is a great guide to f […]
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Better get an S3 card for DOS gaming, they are cheap and plenty!
The compatibility matrix jaZz_KCS posted is a great guide to find a suitable card for your needs 😀

About the mpu side now, well you are using a pentium mmx system so I would suggest to give softmpu a chance: *START HERE* SoftMPU 1.91 - Software Intelligent MPU-401 Emulator
you certainly won't miss any cpu-power , try that and then decide if you really want a hardware solution for your system. All you need is a gameport->midi cable.

Thanks Keropi. I'll see how Softmpu works out. Are you still producing the MQ mpu 401 clones if I go that route?

yep , new cards will be produced after summer time

you might also want to use a slowdown utility on that mmx system - I use ICACHE all the time to disable/enable L1 cache on the fly in order to get ~386DX speeds, really handy and you can get it from here: http://ustr.sancaleve.com/files/download.shtml
and don't forget UMBPCI to get those UMB blocks going under dos/xms: https://www.uwe-sieber.de/umbpci_e.html