Do you use a PC/PCI alias SBLINK cable? (for your 3rd card and perhaps 4th card)

The SBIO and SBIRQ are going to have to be set in DS.INI.

That being said, you may have to play around with the DMA and IRQ settings in BIOS to get it to work properly

May also have to switch the PCI slot that the card is in.

Disruptor wrote on 2022-02-05, 22:05:

Do you use a PC/PCI alias SBLINK cable? (for your 3rd card and perhaps 4th card)

Nope, I don't have one, and although I've come accross a few topics where it was mentioned, I'm not quite sure what it is and how to use it.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-02-05, 23:14:

The SBIO and SBIRQ are going to have to be set in DS.INI.

That being said, you may have to play around with the DMA and IRQ settings in BIOS to get it to work properly

May also have to switch the PCI slot that the card is in.

Not sure how I missed setting those in DS.INI , going to try that. --> update: set the configuration in DS.INI, alas to the same result.
BIOS settings are all on PCI/ISA PnP at the moment, not sure what to change here. The other option being Legacy ISA and the YMF is a PCI card.
Different PCI slots where used.

Somehow I missed this thread: Using Yamaha the YMF744 under DOS without legacy/ISA addressing where you talk about problems with PCI bridge on certain mainboards. I'll dive into this as well.

Thanks for thinking along!

octopus wrote on 2022-02-06, 06:19:

Somehow I missed this thread: Using Yamaha the YMF744 under DOS without legacy/ISA addressing where you talk about problems with PCI bridge on certain mainboards. I'll dive into this as well.

Southbridge chipset is a VIA VT82C586, so that might be to old to get Soundblaster emulation working..

octopus wrote on 2022-02-06, 06:19:

Disruptor wrote on 2022-02-05, 22:05:

Do you use a PC/PCI alias SBLINK cable? (for your 3rd card and perhaps 4th card)

Nope, I don't have one, and although I've come accross a few topics where it was mentioned, I'm not quite sure what it is and how to use it.

Thanks for thinking along!

It's a 5 wire cable with a 3x2 connector. One of the middle pins is free (key).
It may help with the Sound Blaster compatiblity if the DOS based Diagnose/Configuration program fails.

Could try the Unisound drivers with the ALS120 card.

Hate to even mention this - but I assume you had your speakers plugged into the correct jack when testing. (I have made this mistake before)

Your Diamond Edge 3D might be worth something. Looks like they're rare, asking price of $$$ on ebay. Not surprising, as nvidia's first historical 3d card.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-06, 07:41:

Could try the Unisound drivers with the ALS120 card.

Hate to even mention this - but I assume you had your speakers plugged into the correct jack when testing. (I have made this mistake before)

Your Diamond Edge 3D might be worth something. Looks like they're rare, asking price of $$$ on ebay. Not surprising, as nvidia's first historical 3d card.

I didn't know about Unisound, thanks for the info! Tried it out, ALS120 is detected. Again, no sound from speakers.
And yes, I checked plugging it in the right port 😀

The Diamond Edge is indeed a bit of a special thing, I have the extension card with 2 ports for the Sega Saturn controlers. I'm keeping it around for when I run into one of those controlers.
The card itself works, but is inteded for W9X, in Dos it uses some kind of emulation that eats up a lot of ram. Haven't tried it in Dos 6.22 now that I think of it, only in Dos mode in W95 / W98.
Perhaps something for the afternoon...

Disruptor wrote on 2022-02-06, 07:29:

It's a 5 wire cable with a 3x2 connector. One of the middle pins is free (key).
It may help with the Sound Blaster compatiblity if the DOS based Diagnose/Configuration program fails.

Sounds useable, are there any requirements on the card or mainboard, such as connectors or slots?

octopus wrote on 2022-02-06, 12:33:

Sounds useable, are there any requirements on the card or mainboard, such as connectors or slots?

Just connectors on both card and mainboard.

Unisound seconded. Even if you don't end up using it to initialize your PNP sound cards it's a great troubleshooting tool to ensure your manufacturer PNP init tool is working properly or if you have a hardware error.

Maybe check the als100 jumpers.

Disruptor wrote on 2022-02-06, 18:42:

octopus wrote on 2022-02-06, 12:33:

Sounds useable, are there any requirements on the card or mainboard, such as connectors or slots?

Just connectors on both card and mainboard.

You say 'just', but I have a feeling I might be unlucky 😁
What type of connectors would that be? Cause I'm afraid there aren't that mucht connectors on my main..

Further update: I realized my Win98 machine is an Aptica 2170, which is also running on a socket 7, but it's 4 years newer then my FIC mainboard.
So I figured, maybe the older FIC and Intel boards are unable to produce soundblaster compatibility (as far as I've understood the PCI CT4810 sort of emulates the ISA soundblaster over PCI), but perhaps the newer board from the Aptiva can work it out. Forgive me for not writing down the model and type of the mainboard, I didn't have a lot of time.
Anyway, this is what I tried and where it brought me:

BIOS:
Disabled PnP OS, disabled all PCI slots except one, disabled onboard sound chip. Not much options to configure IRQ's or Legacy ISA, and the BIOS is in French. Beautiful language, but I don't speak it so well. Google translate helped me, apart from the fact that most BIOSes have more or less the same interface chapters.

OS: I installed DOS 6.22.

Results:
ALS120, running Unisound: card not detected. Might be BIOS settings, but the options there are limited. There is 1 ISA slot on the board, so not much else to try with this one for now.
Creative CT4810: I didn't have the driver on CD, and didn't have the time to copy them to floppy (I have a limited amount of CD's and floppy's, I know, I should get more). So I didn't try this one yet.
Yamaha: card initialized fine, I fired up setupds and started to smile: Soundblaster was no longer greyed out! Then I got a DNA error, but hey, I like the challenge 😀 I couldn't save the configuration from setupds because of the DNA error, so I configured DS.INI manually. Just the basic P220, I5, D1 . Reboot, card initialized fine, setupds gave DNA error. Oh well, lets see if we can get sound anyway.
At that moment I realized MS-DOS messed up my partition, so I first had to copy MSCDEX and OAKCDROM, and then find a game that wasn't in a zip file. That turned out to be Prince of Persia 1.
Started the game and lo and behold: there was music from the speakers and it sounded like it should!
Then I got the same system lock as soon as lvl1 started.

That's where I'm at now. Conclusion so far: the FIC and Intel boards just can't cope with the Soundblaster emulation from the PCI cards, I'm still not sure why the ALS120 won't give a peep.
The board from the Aptiva understands at least the Yamaha PCI card, however there is still a DNA issue to figure out.
Fingers crossed for the CT4810.
I'll keep you posted when I find some spare fiddling time in the coming days.

Joakim wrote on 2022-02-06, 20:25:

Maybe check the als100 jumpers.

Thanks for the input! I checked if the jumpers might point to the lineout instead of speakers, but they don't.

Are you sure that no components have been removed from the cards by a previous owner (particularly the ALS100) ? We could inspect, if you are able to provide a photograph.

I once bought an Ensonic card, and later realised somebody had used it as a donor - had taken two of the smaller chips off the card - the result was that the card only played FM (music) and could no longer output digital sound.

edit: regarding your PCI sound card : do look into the PC/PCI - DSDMA - etc issue. Potentially relevant if using older PCI sound card in newer motherboard.

octopus wrote on 2022-02-06, 20:41:

Results: Yamaha: card initialized fine, I fired up setupds and started to smile: Soundblaster was no longer greyed out! Then I g […]
Show full quote

Results:
Yamaha: card initialized fine, I fired up setupds and started to smile: Soundblaster was no longer greyed out! Then I got a DNA error, but hey, I like the challenge 😀 I couldn't save the configuration from setupds because of the DNA error, so I configured DS.INI manually. Just the basic P220, I5, D1 . Reboot, card initialized fine, setupds gave DNA error. Oh well, lets see if we can get sound anyway.
At that moment I realized MS-DOS messed up my partition, so I first had to copy MSCDEX and OAKCDROM, and then find a game that wasn't in a zip file. That turned out to be Prince of Persia 1.
Started the game and lo and behold: there was music from the speakers and it sounded like it should!
Then I got the same system lock as soon as lvl1 started.

Are you sure that you mean DNA error and not DMA error?
Well, I faced the same problem on a WaveForce soundcard.
The mentioned cable solved this issue but on some chipsets it may be possible without the PC/PCI alias SBLINK cable.

Re: Best PCI sound card to work on DOS natively

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-06, 21:24:

Are you sure that no components have been removed from the cards by a previous owner (particularly the ALS100) ? We could inspect, if you are able to provide a photograph.

I once bought an Ensonic card, and later realised somebody had used it as a donor - had taken two of the smaller chips off the card - the result was that the card only played FM (music) and could no longer output digital sound.

edit: regarding your PCI sound card : do look into the PC/PCI - DSDMA - etc issue. Potentially relevant if using older PCI sound card in newer motherboard.

I will look into that, thanks!
About the PC/PCI link: the Yamaha has one. I haven't found one on my mainboards yet.

Also, picture time.

ALS120:

CT4810:

YMF724F-V:

On we go... Just installed the CT4810 in the Aptiva.
Also noted down the model of the mainboard, just to be complete: v75m 98141-1 , the Acer V75M mainboard.

I tried two different drivers:
Ensoniq Dos Drivers for Audio PCI - because the CT4810 is more or less a rebranded ESS card.
Card not detected, driver not intialized. Shame.

Just for flavour, a little side story: I had to copy the installation files by Floppy, and the EAPCI2M.ECW file is 2.207 kB. I know Norton Commander is able to split and merge files.
However, Norton Commander isn't to fond of Windows 10. So I'm using Total Commander 10 (64 bit). What do you know?
You can split a file in Total Commander 10 and merge it in Norton Commander 5. That's 26 years in between and it just works. Talk about backwards compatibility...

Okay, on we go. Second driver was the Sound Blaster PCI Cards Dos Drivers.
Card detected, initialized, looks promissing! Let's try it out..

I tried three different games: Prince of Persia 1, Dangerous Dave (original) and Bio Menace.
The results: Prince of Persia: screen went grey, system locked up.
Dave: speaker sound
Bio Menace: a sweet sweet symphony of sound blaster effects!

No all that's left is make sense of it all...

Disruptor wrote on 2022-02-06, 22:07:

Are you sure that you mean DNA error and not DMA error? Well, I faced the same problem on a WaveForce soundcard. The mentioned c […]
Show full quote

Are you sure that you mean DNA error and not DMA error?
Well, I faced the same problem on a WaveForce soundcard.
The mentioned cable solved this issue but on some chipsets it may be possible without the PC/PCI alias SBLINK cable.

Re: Best PCI sound card to work on DOS natively

setupds tells me the DNA is not available, but to be honost with you: I'm not sure on the difference between DNA and DMA (on sound that is).

octopus wrote on 2022-02-07, 19:22:

Dave: speaker sound

Correct. Dangerous Dave does not support sound cards.

octopus wrote on 2022-02-07, 19:26:

setupds tells me the DNA is not available

Please show us a photograph of that error message.