Use Tiido's YMF drivers instead, they are *cheffs kiss* perfect.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-04-30, 16:34:

Use Tiido's YMF drivers instead, they are *cheffs kiss* perfect.

Thank you - that was a great suggestion. For future reference, the tool is called SETYMF.EXE and can be found here: http://www.tmeeco.eu/TKAYBSC/

In my case, I had to run it with /FORCEPNP for it to work, but then I could initialize the card flawlessly, and I could flash the EEPROM so that in the future that isn't necessary anymore. That comes with some warnings, but to be honest, the card is utterly broken with the original drivers, so I'm pretty fed up with it anyway. Didn't break anything though.

However, with SETYMF, I'm running into the same issues as with UNISOUND, namely that the SB mixer is broken, Wave is extremely loud and no matter what I set it to, it's either full blast and way too loud in comparison to the rest or off - seems binary. Same happens when I use the SBP-SET.EXE from the Creative Labs SB Pro software suite (just to verify). WSS sound control works fine.
In contrast, Line-In is extremely quiet even when set to max, so using that to feed in sound from an external MIDI device is pretty much infeasible.

For games without their own mixer settings (like Indy4 Fate of Atlantis), it means they are useless with MT32 music, since either the music is inaudible or the speech blasts your ears off.
Games with their own mixer settings (like TIE Fighter) do work, but it's quite annoying to fiddle around until it sounds halfway balanced.

As I said before, with the original drivers / init tool (SETUPSA.EXE), it's completely borken - TIE Fighter has extremely distorted sound and Indy4 just reboots the machine on startup. It's extremely weird. I never thought this was possible, I mean there's no actual driver involved, just a sound card initizialization, and despite that, it behaves so differently depending on which tool initialized it.
That being said, SETUPSA.EXE does seem to be able to set the mixer better at least, but I can't say for sure because the output in the games is so broken with it.

In summary, I think this particular sound card is faulty - maybe there's some inherent flaw with the hardware. Unless maybe someone still has an idea? Otherwise I'll try my luck with another (non-Yamaha) card.

That sure does sound broken - the mixer is a bit wonky on the YMF71x cards with SETUPSA (Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix) but from memory SETYMF.EXE initialises the mixer with reasonable levels by default.

My only thought is that there are different versions of SETUPSA around I think - perhaps yours needs a version specific to that card. I assume you've had a hunt around for a copy of the original driver disk for it? If not maybe worth a shot.

It sounds like your card actually has some physical problems. Line-in problem is most likely due to bad capacitors, but SB volume control issue shouldn't be due to bad caps and there maybe something more going on...

That's a bummer, but thanks!
Just out of curiosity: Is the issue with Jazz Jackrabbit known with these cards or is that also a "specialty" of the one that I got? I can't Jazz Jackrabbit get to output non-distorted sound at all, with SETUPSA, UNISOUND or SETYMF, and no matter which Sound Blaster option I choose. It's blatantly obviously in the intro already, the sound is just garbage - not just slightly distorted or something but rather distorted so that it's hard to hear what it's supposed to sound like. Works fine with the other sound cards I have (SB 16 CT2950, TerraTec Base1, ALS100).
My understanding is that Epic Pinball uses the same sound system, but that does work.

I have not had any issues whatsoever with Jazz on any of my hardware with YMF71x cards, so there definitely seems something fishy going on with yours...

I apologize for necroing this thread, but I have the same problem BraveToaster describes: master volume is super loud, I have it set to -22 just for it to not blow my ears/speaker.
Mine is a SM718 Rev 2.00 with a YAMAHA YMF719E-S chip.

Have you jumpered the card to bypass the speaker amplifier ?

There aren't any jumpers on the card, unless you mean if I have modified the card?
That would also be a negative.

http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/YamahaCards/SM71 … .00%20front.JPG

So your card doesn't have TEA2025 chip and the jumpers just right of it (JP1+2) ?

I apologize, I must be blind, yes the JP1 JP2 pins are both jumpered in the 1-2 position. Is that the position to activate the amplifier? Is the position 2-3 to bring the output to line-level?

Yeah, they need to be at 2-3 for line output, for connection to powered speakers or some other device. 1-2 is for passive speakers as was normal many years ago. This will fix the way too loud aspect and also dramatically reduce hissing too.

Thank you, now it’s almost perfect.
Where is the UI to enable/control the IDE interface? SETUPSA exposed 4 hardware address/irq combinations but I can’t find anything on your configurator.

Oh never mind, I just read your readme where you mention your card is hardwired for 170,15.

SETYMF has no YMF71x native IDE support, and IDE will be left whatever way a PnP BIOS set it to. IDE conf of my own YMF71x card uses a custom IDE interface and it only shows the options when my own YMF card is detected. (my card has custom IDE so it can be booted from on any computer not just ones with PnP BIOS).

Thanks for your drivers. I'll try another CD-ROM driver since my motherboard is too old for PNP and VIDECDD does not detect the other IDE Base Addresses.

P.S. What do the other volume sliders do, like FM+MPU40 or SBMIXER DAC? I moved them and there was no change in volume.

Cheers!

There's a special driver on the original driver CD that will initialize the card's IDE interface in CONFIG.SYS so that you can have IDE available for the CD driver that is loaded later in CONFIG.SYS.

You can get it here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/9X4EVER/GOODIES/Yamaha/OPL3-SA/CD/DOS/

First one changes music volume, other sound effects, for most games. "Does nothing" mean that sound tests in SETYMF always play at same volume, or games play at same volume ? Many games overwrite the mixer values so your own preferences are often trashed.

Thanks for the info on the CD driver.
I meant that your configurator tests (the ones I specified) do not cause any change to the output volume.

Ok, that is strange. And at the same time, SETUPSA work fine ? What chip is on the card ?