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All Express Book 8088 OPL3 Sound How to?

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First post, by droid_mike

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Hello, everyone. I just got one of those Book 8088's version 2 on sale at AliExpress, and I love it. I spent the extra few bucks to get the OPL3 Sound card, but I have no idea how to get it working. Some of the built-in utilities recognize the card as existing, but I don't know how to get it to play in ordinary dos programs. The autoexec.bat and config.sys files make no mention of a driver and there is no "set blaster" type of variable. As a result, any games I run using ad-lib or Sound blaster effects don't seem to work. Prince of Persia seems to work, but I'm not sure if it's just using PC speaker sound w/ high quality samples vs. midi.

Forgive me if I put this in the wrong place. I know there is a sound forum, but I'll be book 8088 posts seem to be in this forum. Please let me know if I need to move it over to the sound forum. Thank you for all your help!

Reply 2 of 5, by droid_mike

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n0p wrote on 2023-12-08, 09:39:

Hi. It should just work if a program supports it.
Try Super Solvers Adventure for example.

Ok, but how does an it know? I don't know how ad-lib was originally set up, but for sound blaster, there was a driver that had to be loaded in config.sys and system variables set up in autoexec.bat. I don:t see any of these anywhere, nor any sign of a driver anywhere on the included CF card.

Reply 3 of 5, by Bondi

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droid_mike wrote on 2023-12-08, 18:30:
n0p wrote on 2023-12-08, 09:39:

Hi. It should just work if a program supports it.
Try Super Solvers Adventure for example.

Ok, but how does an it know? I don't know how ad-lib was originally set up, but for sound blaster, there was a driver that had to be loaded in config.sys and system variables set up in autoexec.bat. I don:t see any of these anywhere, nor any sign of a driver anywhere on the included CF card.

Adlib doesn't reqire any drivers. It's set by deault to port 388 (on hardware level) and games/software that support Adlib just know that.
All you need is to select it in sound setup program of the game.

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
archive.org: PCMCIA software, manuals, drivers

Reply 4 of 5, by droid_mike

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Bondi wrote on 2023-12-08, 19:27:

Adlib doesn't reqire any drivers. It's set by deault to port 388 (on hardware level) and games/software that support Adlib just know that.
All you need is to select it in sound setup program of the game.

Ok, thanks! That is very helpful, as I am only familiar with Sound Blaster. I wonder why I couldn't get Railroad Tycoon adlib working, though... Hmm... Will have to tinker, but now I know what I'm dealing with. Thank you again!

Are there any built-in or other apps to be able to test the adlib card?

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