Getting DOS games to work with PCI sound cards is never trivial. It requires explicit support from the sound card drivers. I am not familiar with the PCI card in question to know if it provides such support.

Flare, you're telling very incomplete. What "music" are you mean? FM? GM? Is this pure DOS or DOS session in Windows? There is no telepathist here.

About GM. I suppose first you should check MPU IO. One IO adress in AWE's resources, another IO is shown in YMF driver's DOSBOX tab. Please consider a lot of DOS games work only with IO 300, 320, 330. Very many games won't work with IO 310, 340, 350, 360.

About FM. Try to change following: run System, Device Manager, AWE64's SB16 Properties, Resources tab and remove "Use automatic settings" checkbox. Then choose such basic configuration where FM is disabled. Save settings. Even if you reboot in DOS mode the Creative DOS utilities (CTCM, DIAGNOSE) will keep your Windows Control Panel / System AWE64 settings.

Please post your full system configuration.

Also what is the SET BLASTER= line set to?
If you are running directly from DOS, is the P variable set to what the Yamaha card is using?

I'm guessing your using the Yamaha card for the OPL3 in DOS. If so, then what is the exact purpose of using the AWE64 for sound effects?

The FM part of the Yamaha card should work no matter what as it doesn't use DMA unless you have either the SET BLASTER setting wrong or you are not setting the address in the game up correctly or if you are using an unsupported address for the games you are using as is mentioned above.

Do you have the "setupds /s" line in your autoexec.bat file in order to initialize the Yamaha card? You also need to make sure setupds /s is run before running the config/test program as it will possibly not let you change settings.

As you using the modified setupds for SIS chipsets?

cyclone3d, I didn't think that Flare may not conside these elementary truth things and therefore didn't say about them. But who knows...

Ah, sorry. I edited the first post.

I'm using DOS 6.22, not Windows.

My motherboard is an Asus P5S-B, no PC-PCI connector but does have a SiS chipset and I'm using the modified 3.16 setupds.

I didn't think the Yamaha is capable of doing voices without PC-PCI, but now that I'm using a board with ISA slots I suppose that's worth revisiting.

If not I'd like the Yamaha to handle all the music and the SB to do voices.

And sorry again, I'm not entirely certain what the difference is between FM and GM. Is FM frequency and GM MIDI?

Yes, FM - frequency modulation. GM - General MIDI. Unfortunately SETUPDS doesn't let to enable YMF's XG synth and play General MIDI in DOS via its own DSP. In pure DOS we have only FM synth.

I don't use DOS6 along time and don't remember how to optional disable FM etc on AWE PnP cards. But I'm sure it is possible. For DOS7 I do it via Windows Control Panel. For DOS6 it is necessary to do it manually in some INI (or such) files with settings list.

One more thing: sometimes DOS games are looking for FM synth strongly on that card which you choose as voice. Not ever but happens. Therefore try to set FM music on basic SB IO port of Yamaha (usually 220). I.e. music not "ADLib" but "Sound Blaster", it's a same.

At all I advise to remove YMF744 and install YMF718/719. You will get a same true OPL, full SB/SBpro compatibility. AWE64 will be a great pair for SB16 stereo voice (if a game supports) and for AWE synth (if a game supports).

Yeah, it can do PCM/voices without the PC-PCI header. While PC-PCI does make it compatible with more things, it doesn't have to be used for a lot of games.

Setupds supports DDMA mode for chipsets that support DDMA, which yours should since it is a SIS chipset.

You may need to just go into setupds and change the DMA configuration to get PCM/voices to work.

And for other chipsets that don't work well with DDMA, you can use the DSDMA TSR.. but that requires emm386 to be loaded.

I got voices working with the Yamaha. 😁

D-DMA was the answer, along with using the INTA setting in the card's configuration and manually setting the IRQ in the motherboard's BIOS and to what the game was looking for.

...so what am I going to do with the Sound Blaster?

Yay!

The AWE64 might work with some games in DOS that the Yamaha card might have trouble with. D-DMA is not flawless.

It will also be better for DOS games that have direct support for the AWE32/AWE64.

cyclone3d wrote:

Yay!

The AWE64 might work with some games in DOS that the Yamaha card might have trouble with. D-DMA is not flawless.

It will also be better for DOS games that have direct support for the AWE32/AWE64.

Good to know. Glad I have another CF card, I can use that for the games that want the Sound Blaster exclusively.

Thanks again, guys! 😄

cyclone3d wrote:

The AWE64 might work with some games in DOS that the Yamaha card might have trouble with. D-DMA is not flawless.

Do you have any examples of games that struggle with DDMA or if it's just an issue with the YMF744? I know Dune has trouble on the YMF744, but I don't think I tried it in PC/PCI mode while running the game (game works with the ALS4000 PCI so I don't think it's related to DDMA itself).