Thanks 640K!enough! Yeah I figured changing the GOLD env variable was not bulletproof, but would hopefully still decoy some games. I didn't face many problems with my setup so far, but I may try your suggestion as it would be cleaner anyways 😀

Just to chime in, the goldlib also saves settings in eeprom - just like the original card so one can use the official driver for this no problem

Still super excited for this. Keropi and I have been communicating back and forth after my purchase since I was going to be out of town, then not out of town, so on and so forth, so hopefully the rest of this holiday season can calm down and I can get back to maintaining my vintage PC's.

Just to sanity check, since I can put the AdLib GOLD on port 398H, that means I can have this coexist with a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0, right? If so, it looks like I am going to have an incredibly musical 386 on my hands.

I assume so. I intend to put mine in my 'early' system (UMC U5S-33 based) next to SB1.0 (with CMS) and SSI-2001 replicas and a Roland MPU-401AT for good measure, and with a Covox in there somewhere (trying to make one myself, but not yet succeding). Still need to be patient for now though...

Heya! After a quick back and forth vacation to Greece, my Adlib Gold is back home, safe and sound in its case. And I am happy to report the VLB+floppies issue is definitely gone!

Thanks a ton keropi 😉

excellent! thanks for the update Boohyaka!
enjoy the "yellow dot of upgrade" 🤣 🤣 🤣

Can we expect/hope to see more of those cards being built someday if you can find the materials? I wasn't quick enough to sign up to buy one and now I'm frustrated! ☹️

kalgon wrote on 2023-05-10, 12:34:

Can we expect/hope to see more of those cards being built someday if you can find the materials? I wasn't quick enough to sign up to buy one and now I'm frustrated! ☹️

I can make some more goldlibs if I succeed in sourcing some more YMZ chips , once the orpheusII rush ends I will look into it

kalgon wrote on 2023-05-10, 12:34:

Can we expect/hope to see more of those cards being built someday if you can find the materials? I wasn't quick enough to sign up to buy one and now I'm frustrated! ☹️

The same 😀 Now when GUS is coming it remains the only thing to wish so badly.

LGR just posted a video about the GoldLib: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSc51Xa_gc4

Nice! You guys are working

keropi wrote on 2023-05-10, 12:59:

I can make some more goldlibs if I succeed in sourcing some more YMZ chips , once the orpheusII rush ends I will look into it

Oh man, that would be sweet!! Please, let me know if I can put my email on a notification or waiting list if possible. Thank you Keropi!

Same here. If you happen to find some YMZ263s, just tell me, I will immediatly buy one 😀

What a nice recreation! I really enjoyed the sound quality of this card.

On a side note I have to say the card is fully operational using SL2QC (Klamath PII downclocked to 133 MHz) without any issue on an ASUS P3B-F. I just needed to reserve card's IRQ's in the BIOS and that's it.
CPU Multiple setting in the BIOS has two options "*2.0x" and "2.0x":

Choosing the "*2.0x" option disables the L2 Cache and results the weird FSB and Multiplier of 5.5 tested in Win98SE:

And it works like a charm with GoldLib 😀

awesome ! thanks for the info a_h_adl !
enjoy the golden sound 😁 😁 😁

a_h_adl wrote on 2023-07-03, 12:58:

On a side note I have to say the card is fully operational using SL2QC (Klamath PII downclocked to 133 MHz) without any issue on an ASUS P3B-F. I just needed to reserve card's IRQ's in the BIOS and that's it.
CPU Multiple setting in the BIOS has two options "*2.0x" and "2.0x":

Do the Surround Module tests pass? Especially if you quickly enable and disable the mode? Because the Surround Module was what was stopping me from using the Adlib Gold in anything faster than a 75 MHz Pentium. While I was able to pass the Surround Module tests on a 200 MHz VIA C3, but the MIXER.EXE wouldn't work reliably until I switched to a Pentium and went down to 75 MHz.

Surround Module works flawlessly; it passes the test and works in Dune. The only quirk I noticed was the mixer menu wasn't always showing up when pressing Alt + Shift + m.

Not sure it was a memory related issue or some minor speed sensitivity problem.

a_h_adl wrote on 2023-07-04, 11:20:

Surround Module works flawlessly; it passes the test and works in Dune. The only quirk I noticed was the mixer menu wasn't always showing up when pressing Alt + Shift + m.

Not sure it was a memory related issue or some minor speed sensitivity problem.

Exactly, same symptoms I had. The TSR Mixer wouldn't reliably work until I went down to a Pentium 75, so it's the most speed sensitive thing in the Adlib Gold package.

Still not sure if the issue is caused by pure speed or there is something else in the background triggering it.

I tried to eliminate the issue by disabling the L1 cache on already disabled L2 and downclocked to 133 MHZ SL2QC, which made it too slow for dos to boot up in almost over a minute; but still the issue remained. On the other hand, I moved the card to my 486 PC running Am5x86-P75 at the same 133MHz speed and now everything including the TSR Mixer works flawlessly.

a_h_adl wrote on 2023-07-05, 00:41:

Still not sure if the issue is caused by pure speed or there is something else in the background triggering it.

I tried to eliminate the issue by disabling the L1 cache on already disabled L2 and downclocked to 133 MHZ SL2QC, which made it too slow for dos to boot up in almost over a minute; but still the issue remained. On the other hand, I moved the card to my 486 PC running Am5x86-P75 at the same 133MHz speed and now everything including the TSR Mixer works flawlessly.

Yes, same on the VIA C3, toggling L1, L2 cache, using the ACPI throttling (even 1/8) would make no difference for the Adlib Gold. The only setting that did matter was "8-bit I/O Recovery Time", but it still required a sufficiently downclocked CPU.

Haven't tried it on a 486, but if it works on a 133 MHz 486 and fails with a Pentium faster than 75 MHz, then the only thing that comes to my mind as a reason is the superscalar architecture of the Pentium kicking in.