Reply 100 of 127, by dr.zeissler
Very interesting...at some point a real pci-soundcard does not make a (positive) difference to a "codec" on the motherboard !
I am a big fan of the ESS-SOLO1 PCI Soundcard, under plain Dos it does not require EMM386, SBpro emulation works very good, FM sound really good, only some soundengines do not work (doom, hexen, heretic, duke3d etc.) DukeNukem2 has no issues, even samples are played... this is due to a PII/III/IV system with chipsets 810e/815e/845, when it comes to 845gv/865/915 the situation changes.
845gv still good in plain dos, but win98 the vxd-driver does not install "dos-sound emulation", the wdm-driver leads to a bluescreen. Only the integrated winme-wdm driver do work, BUT they do not support legacy dos-emulation and have no midi-option to get a dreamblaster s2 on the ess to work.
At that point I changed to to soundmax-onboard-codec of the mainbaord. These drivers do not install legacy-sb-emultion too, but the win98se "sbpro" emulation works very well. exact the problematic games with the ess-solo do work fine with the onboard-codec and win98se's sb-pro emulation. Currently I am checking out what is the best option for the midi-music beside the MS-GM-Softsynth.
It seems that some programs do find the "codec" in plain dos, but because there is no "mixer" the sound is muted. Does anyone have an idea how to change the mixersettings for the codec while not having windows-loaded.
Thx
Doc
Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines