YMF724 offers decent SBPro compatibility for DOS games and has a genuine OPL3 core for FM synthesis, if you ever want to fall back on that. Digital sound effects will play fine on it, but the DOS drivers can sometimes be a bit flaky, depending on your motherboard.

You should be able to hook up the SC-55 to it using the gameport, but under Windows, you'll have change the output to external MIDI in the driver options, since the YMF724 comes with on-board wavetable synthesis. For more details, take a look at Phil's review of the YMF744 which is a very similar card.

alright i'll give one of those a shot then. thanks for the info.

In pure DOS, do PCI sound cards need a driver/TSR if you only want to use the game port's MPU401, no digital audio?

FSOD wrote on 2020-02-16, 22:39:

If I use the VXD drivers the digital sounds fine but I don't get any midi information going to the sound canvas.

Maybe it's just a matter of picking the MPU401 in the Windows midi mapper settings?

Exactly which motherboard do you have? PC/PCI (SBLink) might be an option, in which case a YMF7xx card would be perfect as they almost all support it.

I wouldn't bother with a YMF724 or similar if you connect an SC-55 anyway. I'd recommend an ESS Solo-1. These will work fine and have full DOS support (provided the mainboard supports DDMA or has SB-Link).

But the Yamaha Card has superior FM Sound over ESS 😉

Technically not. ESFM is much more powerful than OPL3. But he's aiming for MIDI anyway. 😉

derSammler wrote on 2020-02-17, 13:48:

I'd recommend an ESS Solo-1. These will work fine and have full DOS support (provided the mainboard supports DDMA or has SB-Link).

YMF7x4 cards use DDMA and have SB-Link as well. If none of those are available, the DOS driver falls back to a TSR.

However, the Solo-1 might have slightly better SBPro compatibility. Back when I still used my YMF724, a couple of games refused to run under the Win98 DOS prompt, but most of them worked fine in pure DOS.

does any one know why blood causes my whole computer to freeze when testing digital sound with a YMF744. It runs Doom perfectly so this seems pretty weird to me.

edit: nvm I got it working in DOS fine but my line in seems to be muted in DOS. My SC-55 is getting the data and I can hear the music fine if I plug my headphones directly into the SC-55. SBMIXER says line in is unmuted as well. Theres no way I didnt plug the output of the sc-55 into the line in either because it works fine in windows.

edit 2: nvm im an idiot. theres a setup program called SETUPDS that I didnt look through hard enough. Under Volume there are settings you can change and it had LINE and CD muted.

So the YMF744 is kinda ok but has some popping/crackling in duke 3D and Blood I can't seem to get rid of. So this thing might be a bust. I guess i'll keep my eyes open for a ESS Solo-1. The only one on ebay is a clone apparently. It's $50 and im kinda tired of gambling on old pc hardware.

The YMF 7x4 cards have some issues with games based on the Build engine (Duke3D, Shadow Warrior etc). This is due to the Yamaha TSR program.

If your motherboard supports DDMA or SB-Link, use one of those modes instead and compatibility should improve. Otherwise, you can try running the games using the DOS32 extender but that doesn't always solve the problem.

I have to look into that. I'm not really all that familiar with those modes. Its just some dell dimension 4100. Not even sure what the motherboard it is. Ill see if I cant try ddma/sblink or even dos32 extender.

edit: motherboard is a intel easton d815eea

edit2: doesnt seem like I have ddma/sblink on this board. https://imgur.com/QQUth8X the only thing that caught my attention was a creative labs es1373 digital controller but I doubt that's going to help any.

So I just ended up installing the sb live and the YMF744. It's simple enough in DOS because I load the drivers manually. I just disable the YMF744 in the device manager cause I have no use for it in windows with the sb live installed. At least this way I can play games that sound bearable with the YMF744 and my sc-55. Games like blood I just use the sb live and go with CD music. I already use an rca switch hooked up to my stereo for all my old consoles and just plugged both my sound cards into it. Works pretty good. Not exactly ideal but I can live with that for now.