Pretty sure it won't work unless it was designed this way. Some VGA cards have jumpers to select 8 or 16 bit operation.

This should work without any problems, but you are limited to lower DMA channels, lower IRQ channels, and can not use IDE/CD-ROM and 16-bit audio. As long as the driver doesn't check for those things to work (or the card uses jumpers anyway), yes, it can be done.

Ethernet cards and VGA cards are different, as they always use the full width of the bus. Many can be configured to use 8-bit only, which is required for them to work in an 8-bit slot.

Most 16-bit sound cards can work in 8-bit slots as long as they aren't cards that require 16-bit DMA; that means most SB Pro compatible cards will work in 8-bit slots EXCEPT you won't be able to use the IDE controllers and wavetable/MPU-401 which are connected to the mainboard through the 16-bit ISA bus. So yeah, just plug in an ES688 16-bit card into an 8-bit slot, configure the jumpers and enjoy.

MPU-401/wavetable should work, too. It doesn't rely on 16-bit. Dedicated MPU-401 cards were all 8-bit as well.

appiah4 wrote:

Most 16-bit sound cards can work in 8-bit slots as long as they aren't cards that require 16-bit DMA; that means most SB Pro compatible cards will work in 8-bit slots EXCEPT you won't be able to use the IDE controllers and wavetable/MPU-401 which are connected to the mainboard through the 16-bit ISA bus. So yeah, just plug in an ES688 16-bit card into an 8-bit slot, configure the jumpers and enjoy.

cool! Thanks! I was looking at ESS cards... 1869F cards I think? Also some HP Aztech cards (quite a few on ebay at the moment, not very expensive)

appiah4 wrote:

wavetable/MPU-401 which are connected to the mainboard through the 16-bit ISA bus.

Wavetable/MPU-401 should work fine in 8-bit, the original MPU-401 was an 8-bit card, doesn't use DMA, and only IRQs of 7 and lower.

Scali wrote:

Wavetable/MPU-401 should work fine in 8-bit, the original MPU-401 was an 8-bit card, doesn't use DMA, and only IRQs of 7 and lower.

I stand corrected.

Hamby wrote:

cool! Thanks! I was looking at ESS cards... 1869F cards I think? Also some HP Aztech cards (quite a few on ebay at the moment, not very expensive)

ES1869F is an ISA PnP card, I do not know if the PnP functionality requires 16-bit ISA Bus. I believe its PnP functions are also integrated to the chip so you can't really trace from the 8 or 16 bit connection to the PnP controller to double check. Going for non-PnP cards like the ES688 is a better idea. I don't recall off hand if ES1688 is PnP or not, but I know ES18xx are PnP.

Not that PnP cards won't necessarily not work, in a likely and best case scenario they will initialize regardless, but you might not be able to change their settings.

YMF71x based sound cards will work in 8bit slot, you will lose DMA0, IRQ10 and 11 but rest will work.

Tiido wrote:

YMF71x based sound cards will work in 8bit slot, you will lose DMA0, IRQ10 and 11 but rest will work. […]
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YMF71x based sound cards will work in 8bit slot, you will lose DMA0, IRQ10 and 11 but rest will work.

Hello.
What motherboard is that?!?!
And what did you add to it (daughterboards)?

Tiido wrote:

YMF71x based sound cards will work in 8bit slot, you will lose DMA0, IRQ10 and 11 but rest will work.

Horror.jpg

Hold on, calling my wife to look at this so she can never call my desk a mess again.

Hahahaha, that pic is nothing, there's "worse" every once in a while 😜

tpowell.ca wrote:

Hello.
What motherboard is that?!?!
And what did you add to it (daughterboards)?

It is a heavily modified MSI MS-6368. It started as a sort of a no-cost media center project, with goal to make it fully passive and fit in 4cm height but it has stagnated and now it is my torture and testing board due to compactness and relative power. I have overridden CPU voltage IDs to lower voltage to substatially reduce heat. CPU used is a Tualeron 1200. The little yellow board is one of those cheap VGA to TV boards that litter ebay and HDD is replaced by a cheap SD to IDE bridge.

Some progress is seen by taking this link and appending 1...28 to it (before the .jpg part of course) :
http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/NewMusicPlayer.jpg
(or you can remove the file part and go to the filedump directly and see whooooooole lot more stuff 🤣)

Tiido wrote:

http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/NewMusicPlayer.jpg

Really like that wooden speaker box of yours. 😁 Reminds me of my dad's.
He once had two 3-way speakers with ribbon-tweeters (hope that's the right English term).