Almost any PCI card will do better digital sound than an awe64. Usually you would be doing it the other way round - PCI card for FX and ISA card for OPL.

kolderman wrote on 2020-10-29, 05:32:

Almost any PCI card will do better digital sound than an awe64. Usually you would be doing it the other way round - PCI card for FX and ISA card for OPL.

Why? Wouldn't the SB16 support of the AWE64 in DOS be better than almost any PCI sound card, not to mention games that directly support the AWE32 or AWE64?

Now if the motherboard has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header, then you could get pretty perfect DOS support with the Yamaha card.. minus the wavetable since that doesn't work in pure DOS.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-29, 05:37:

kolderman wrote on 2020-10-29, 05:32:

Almost any PCI card will do better digital sound than an awe64. Usually you would be doing it the other way round - PCI card for FX and ISA card for OPL.

Why? Wouldn't the SB16 support of the AWE64 in DOS be better than almost any PCI sound card, not to mention games that directly support the AWE32 or AWE64?

Now if the motherboard has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header, then you could get pretty perfect DOS support with the Yamaha card.. minus the wavetable since that doesn't work in pure DOS.

Compatibility mostly. I have tried many pci cards before and more often than not I get music in dos but not digital audio. Probably a dma thing. No pc-pci header as far as I know on the motherboard.

Yes, it's possible to have both cards active at the same time, as long as they are configured to use different resources. I do that with this rig.

Under Win98, it's pretty easy to set up the resources of both cards through Device Manager and ensure that they don't conflict with each other. In pure DOS, it's a bit harder but it can be done as well.

Main thing is. Is there software that allows me to disable the FM emulation in awe64 in dos.

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-29, 06:26:

Main thing is. Is there software that allows me to disable the FM emulation in awe64 in dos.

Right. I was questioning the reply to your OP. The way you want to do it sounds like the best way to me.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-29, 05:37:

kolderman wrote on 2020-10-29, 05:32:

Almost any PCI card will do better digital sound than an awe64. Usually you would be doing it the other way round - PCI card for FX and ISA card for OPL.

Why? Wouldn't the SB16 support of the AWE64 in DOS be better than almost any PCI sound card, not to mention games that directly support the AWE32 or AWE64?

Now if the motherboard has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header, then you could get pretty perfect DOS support with the Yamaha card.. minus the wavetable since that doesn't work in pure DOS.

The awe64 is noisy, has limited spdif support, no eax, and native support is for music usually not SFX, and noone really cares about sb16 support. Probably better getting a ymf719 and be done with it.

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-29, 06:26:

Main thing is. Is there software that allows me to disable the FM emulation in awe64 in dos.

Under Win9x, this is easily done through Device Manager by choosing "Basic Configuration 004" or some other value. If you then use Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode, the AWE64 will inherit those settings and FM synth will remain disabled.

I think this is also possible under pure DOS 6.22 using CTCM/CTCU and similarly choosing "Basic Configuration 004" but I didn't test that extensively. I have that rig currently in storage due to house renovation, so I can't check directly.

I just thought about a second option I have. I could use 2 isa cards as well. I could use awe64 for 16bit digital sound and then put older CT1600 for OPL. First I will probably just try to disable the fm emulation in awe64 and then I can try both of the options and see if there is any difference in compatibility between using pci card or isa card for opl3.

Edit: It would be kind of waste to use 2 of the few isa sound cards I have in same system though...

The Yamaha PCI card will have way cleaner output for the OPL3 than pretty much any ISA card and it should work with everything.

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-29, 06:26:

Main thing is. Is there software that allows me to disable the FM emulation in awe64 in dos.

If I remember correctly if you don't place

1aweutil /s

in autoexec.bat, you will not hear FM music from AWE32/64

Thanks. Is it going to cause any issues that both sound cards have joystick ports?

I have now win98se installed.
I have ctcm, diagnose /s and mixerset /p /q in autoexec.bat. No aweutil. All sound and music in dos games is coming from the awe64 card.
What do I need to do exactly to get music out of the pci card with yamaha chip instead?

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-29, 23:58:

I have now win98se installed.
I have ctcm, diagnose /s and mixerset /p /q in autoexec.bat. No aweutil. All sound and music in dos games is coming from the awe64 card.
What do I need to do exactly to get music out of the pci card with yamaha chip instead?

Re: AWE64 tinkering

You can edit CTPNP.CFG and move Port2 to 398h instead of 388h. Usually 398h isn't used by anything. At least not by every system i built. I found out that deleting Port2 line actually does the work too and CQM won't play.

Then you will need to also initialize the Yamaha card with this command in autoexec.bat
(wherever you Yamaha card stuff is)\SETUPDS /S

After it is initialized, you can run setupds to configure the card and also adjust volume levels, etc.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-30, 01:21:

Re: AWE64 tinkering […]
Show full quote

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-29, 23:58:

I have now win98se installed.
I have ctcm, diagnose /s and mixerset /p /q in autoexec.bat. No aweutil. All sound and music in dos games is coming from the awe64 card.
What do I need to do exactly to get music out of the pci card with yamaha chip instead?

Re: AWE64 tinkering

You can edit CTPNP.CFG and move Port2 to 398h instead of 388h. Usually 398h isn't used by anything. At least not by every system i built. I found out that deleting Port2 line actually does the work too and CQM won't play.

Then you will need to also initialize the Yamaha card with this command in autoexec.bat
(wherever you Yamaha card stuff is)\SETUPDS /S

After it is initialized, you can run setupds to configure the card and also adjust volume levels, etc.

After installing the yamaha dos driver and running setupds in autoexec.bat I started getting music from the yamaha card but the awe64 stopped working completely. I think it might be because both of them want to use base address 220h. I tried running CTCU but that won't run under win98se dos. I would prefer being able to make the yamaha card use some other address than 220h but I don't know how to do that. Almost all options in setupds menu are grayed out.

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-30, 07:22:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-30, 01:21:

Re: AWE64 tinkering […]
Show full quote

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-29, 23:58:

I have now win98se installed.
I have ctcm, diagnose /s and mixerset /p /q in autoexec.bat. No aweutil. All sound and music in dos games is coming from the awe64 card.
What do I need to do exactly to get music out of the pci card with yamaha chip instead?

Re: AWE64 tinkering

You can edit CTPNP.CFG and move Port2 to 398h instead of 388h. Usually 398h isn't used by anything. At least not by every system i built. I found out that deleting Port2 line actually does the work too and CQM won't play.

Then you will need to also initialize the Yamaha card with this command in autoexec.bat
(wherever you Yamaha card stuff is)\SETUPDS /S

After it is initialized, you can run setupds to configure the card and also adjust volume levels, etc.

After installing the yamaha dos driver and running setupds in autoexec.bat I started getting music from the yamaha card but the awe64 stopped working completely. I think it might be because both of them want to use base address 220h. I tried running CTCU but that won't run under win98se dos. I would prefer being able to make the yamaha card use some other address than 220h but I don't know how to do that. Almost all options in setupds menu are grayed out.

cyclone3d may have an patched version of the setupds driver initialization program for your motherboard chipset which should allow you to change various settings within the configuration menu.
although i could never get the adlib I/O address to change but only SB I/O and interrupt setttings when configured to ISA or S-IRQ/PC-PCI mode.

It would be nice to be able to just disable the SB side of things with the yamaha card and just keep it as adlib, but I can't figure out how

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-30, 20:58:

It would be nice to be able to just disable the SB side of things with the yamaha card and just keep it as adlib, but I can't figure out how

In setupds there should be a "Legacy Audio Enable" option in one of the menus. Pretty sure if you turn that off, it will just disable the digital audio and leave the FM enabled but not 100% sure as I haven't messed with it in a while.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-30, 21:50:

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-30, 20:58:

It would be nice to be able to just disable the SB side of things with the yamaha card and just keep it as adlib, but I can't figure out how

In setupds there should be a "Legacy Audio Enable" option in one of the menus. Pretty sure if you turn that off, it will just disable the digital audio and leave the FM enabled but not 100% sure as I haven't messed with it in a while.

I managed to make it work. I found setupds.exe version that allowed me to change the sb base address 220h and there was option to set that base address "disabled". Now the yamaha card plays fm and awe64 digital sounds.
Only problem I had when I just tested was that the yamaha card volume was very quiet compared to awe64 sound effects. Basically if I increased volume of my headphones enough to be able to hear music at normal level the sound effect were so loud that I was afraid it would break my headphones (and my ears).