Thanks everyone 😀. I am starting to understand how it works now.. what a major jungle in the DOS world of games 😁.
But finding the good cards is part of the fun. 😉

Yeah, the 744 Yamaha card is for my P4 wich will be a Win98 gaming rig.. Will not be running any "older" dos stuff on that one.

I have a feeling that this will make me end up with several different gaming rigs hahaha... But thats ok.. just me and my 4yrs old son alone in a big house so we got space 😁.
Really want him to get to enjoy the old classic games and systems before he gets into ps4 and stuff..

bytestorm wrote:

Yeah, the 744 Yamaha card is for my P4 wich will be a Win98 gaming rig.. Will not be running any "older" dos stuff on that one.

For pure windows, an SB audigy/live or vortex 2 card are the best choices. Positional audio and advanced DSP, along with decent quality DACs make these cards better for windows.

A yamaha 744 card can be a good choice for a combo dos/windows retro system where you want genuine OPL3 for DOS games.

bytestorm wrote:

Thanks everyone 😀. I am starting to understand how it works now.. what a major jungle in the DOS world of games 😁.
But finding the good cards is part of the fun. 😉

Have fun, and welcome to the hobby 😀

BTW, this is why I love Vogons. Every now and then a new member comes to the forum, makes an introductory post and everybody is like "nonono, there are hundreds of pages on this, we're not going to go over this again, nooooo", but a few comments later everybody goes on to explain everything in full detail. 🤣

Because we just love talking about old hardware and can't miss an opportunity. Which makes this such an awesome place. I've made the same introductory post several years ago and really grateful people didn't just tell me to google everything.

jheronimus wrote:

Have fun, and welcome to the hobby :) […]
Show full quote

bytestorm wrote:

Thanks everyone 😀. I am starting to understand how it works now.. what a major jungle in the DOS world of games 😁.
But finding the good cards is part of the fun. 😉

Have fun, and welcome to the hobby 😀

BTW, this is why I love Vogons. Every now and then a new member comes to the forum, makes an introductory post and everybody is like "nonono, there are hundreds of pages on this, we're not going to go over this again, nooooo", but a few comments later everybody goes on to explain everything in full detail. 🤣

Because we just love talking about old hardware and can't miss an opportunity. Which makes this such an awesome place. I've made the same introductory post several years ago and really grateful people didn't just tell me to google everything.

Yeah the support here has been awesome! Even thou my question probably have been answered before, I did not understand when rummagin throu all posts.
But now I feel that I have a better understanding and knows a bit more what to looks for 😀.

Big thanks to all of you 😁

I think Vogonswiki needs a table itemizing advantages and disadvantages for the leading ISA sound card contenders, including
Yamaha YMF ISA
ESS Audiodrive family representatives (1868 and 1688, perhaps)
Aztech family (AZT2316 and perhaps Covox compatible chipsets)
CS423x cards
ALS/Opti/CMI clones

The same comparison points tend to get repeated frequently.

canthearu wrote:

bytestorm wrote:

Yeah, the 744 Yamaha card is for my P4 wich will be a Win98 gaming rig.. Will not be running any "older" dos stuff on that one.

For pure windows, an SB audigy/live or vortex 2 card are the best choices. Positional audio and advanced DSP, along with decent quality DACs make these cards better for windows.

A yamaha 744 card can be a good choice for a combo dos/windows retro system where you want genuine OPL3 for DOS games.

Be aware though that the SB Live! & Audigy series don't play ball with Via 686A/B southbridges (Creative used proprietary Intel extensions over the minimal PCI spec that Via implemented) used in many boards around the turn of the millennium with Via and AMD chipsets.

gdjacobs wrote:

I think Vogonswiki needs a table itemizing advantages and disadvantages for the leading ISA sound card contenders, including Yam […]
Show full quote

I think Vogonswiki needs a table itemizing advantages and disadvantages for the leading ISA sound card contenders, including
Yamaha YMF ISA
ESS Audiodrive family representatives (1868 and 1688, perhaps)
Aztech family (AZT2316 and perhaps Covox compatible chipsets)
CS423x cards
ALS/Opti/CMI clones

The same comparison points tend to get repeated frequently.

Makes a lot of sense, if only at the chip level. Creative should be included too.

Categories would be things like:
- PnP yes/no
- real OPL3 included yes/no - and if no, what is used for FM
- which SB standards supported (SB, SB 2.0, SBPro, SBPro 2.0, SB16)
- TSR needed for basic SB compatibility yes/no
- level of MIDI support (UART, MPU-401, other)
- MIDI bugs
- Other known bugs

Simply grab a Soundblaster with real OPL and you're fine.

The "Full Experience" hardly depends on the Games you play.
And it may differ from Game to Game.
So there is no ideal setup at all.

The IBM PC and combatibles are highly configurable.
You should take what tastes for you.

Feel free to goto youtube and hear examples of different soundcards.
Some are minimally different. One might think there is a religious cult around them..

dionb wrote:

Makes a lot of sense, if only at the chip level. Creative should be included too. […]
Show full quote

gdjacobs wrote:

I think Vogonswiki needs a table itemizing advantages and disadvantages for the leading ISA sound card contenders, including Yam […]
Show full quote

I think Vogonswiki needs a table itemizing advantages and disadvantages for the leading ISA sound card contenders, including
Yamaha YMF ISA
ESS Audiodrive family representatives (1868 and 1688, perhaps)
Aztech family (AZT2316 and perhaps Covox compatible chipsets)
CS423x cards
ALS/Opti/CMI clones

The same comparison points tend to get repeated frequently.

Makes a lot of sense, if only at the chip level. Creative should be included too.

Categories would be things like:
- PnP yes/no
- real OPL3 included yes/no - and if no, what is used for FM

Probably just a general column called FM synthesis. A CS4237 card would be "Integrated, CrystalFM". A PAS would be "Discrete, Dual OPL2". There's lots of resources (such as the OPL3 comparison thread) which can be referenced specifically for this so readers can hear the differences. FM technology might even be worth it's own wiki entry.

dionb wrote:

- which SB standards supported (SB, SB 2.0, SBPro, SBPro 2.0, SB16) - TSR needed for basic SB compatibility yes/no - level of MI […]
Show full quote

- which SB standards supported (SB, SB 2.0, SBPro, SBPro 2.0, SB16)
- TSR needed for basic SB compatibility yes/no
- level of MIDI support (UART, MPU-401, other)
- MIDI bugs
- Other known bugs

Yup, essentially. A lot of it could be brought in (and referenced) from Gerwin's file.

Yeah would be awesome with some explanations and example clips so that n00bs like me can get a grip of the terminology used and how big difference the "correct" card really does... I mean I played monkey island 1 with pc speaker as a kid ffS 🙁 hahaha

jheronimus, of course, I said that question is about (full intended) too big theme and it is impossible to give a short answer. I didn't say "nooooo", don't lie please!
And I gave a first answer at the same moment and it was pretty good unlike your super expensive SB Pro and hard MPU for ~3-5 games which won't work properly with SoftMPU and/or EMM386/QEMM/JEMM.

HardMPU isn't that expensive, as these things go.