Nice setup and great rundown.

I wonder if this would be useful?

MIDIto r12 (Midi and FM redirection, Mixer locking, Sound Blaster fixes)

Pierre32 wrote on 2023-07-13, 00:37:

Nice setup and great rundown.

I wonder if this would be useful?

MIDIto r12 (Midi and FM redirection, Mixer locking, Sound Blaster fixes)

Thank you! That does look like it might do the trick. I'll give that a go and see how it works. 😁

Added a mixer today and did some more testing.

With everything plugged in I ran into an unexpected issue with the Game Blaster. With the CMS driver activated, it also outputs to the ATC card. This makes sense since they are both on address 220h, but results in garbled output on the ATC. Easy solution was to just deactivate the ATC using UNISOUND before using the Game Blaster.

Also tested out MIDITO. It worked fine redirecting MIDI output from 330h to 300h, enabling me to use the DreamBlaster with games not otherwise allowing custom port settings. Tested it with a handful of Sierra games, Dark Sun and X-Wing. Worked fine in each game.

Speaking of X-Wing, for some reason I started getting problems with digital audio. Initially there was no digital sound output. Following a reboot it now locks up when it tries to play digital audio. It was working yesterday, so I have no idea what changed to cause this issue. Tried removing the Game Blaster in case of a conflict, but that didn't resolve the issue. This will need more troubleshooting.

Finally tested Sam 'n Max on another system and confirmed that the default digital and music volumes are what they are. I think this is a game that benefits with music via a separate audio source so it can be externally mixed and attenuated.

After a lot of troubleshooting I finally got X-Wing working!

It turned out the problem was the Adlib Gold. Up until now I hadn't bothered to install the Adlib Gold software, since I didn't think I really needed to. Games work just fine without it. But I guess not configuring the card was resulting in some sort of conflict. Running the Gold setup program, I set it to IRQ 7 (default) and the DMA to 3. After doing this X-Wing started working perfectly with both MIDI and digital sound.

Did some further testing with Warlords II. Unfortunately that game does not work if sound is set to the Adlib Gold (but music works fine). Setting sound to Sound Blaster Pro worked instead.

Also tested The Lost Vikings. Didn't realize this game had an enhanced soundtrack for the Adlib Gold, so that was a pleasant surprise.

oh how I missed this thread!
awesome system!!! I also plan "soon-ish" 🤣 to make a 386DX build with a Goldlib for FM duty so this info will come handy
also had no idea about Lost Vikings , very nice to know this!!!

keropi wrote on 2023-07-15, 05:01:

oh how I missed this thread!
awesome system!!! I also plan "soon-ish" 🤣 to make a 386DX build with a Goldlib for FM duty so this info will come handy
also had no idea about Lost Vikings , very nice to know this!!!

Thanks keropi! It's been a fun build so far!

When you start your own 386 build, would love to see how you configure it. 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-14, 23:51:

After a lot of troubleshooting I finally got X-Wing working!

On which card?

The floppy version of X-Wing (from GOG) is one of the very few games which I couldn't get to work on my own Yamaha YMF719E-S. The game crashes when digitized speech is played during the intro.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-15, 14:31:

On which card?

The floppy version of X-Wing (from GOG) is one of the very few games which I couldn't get to work on my own Yamaha YMF719E-S. The game crashes when digitized speech is played during the intro.

On the Atrend ATC-6631 (Yamaha YMF719E-S).

I think the original issue may have been a DMA conflict with the Adlib Gold. Setting the Gold to DMA 3 and the Atrend to DMA 1 seems to have fixed that issue. Haven't had any problems with digital audio in X-Wing since.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-15, 14:42:

On the Atrend ATC-6631 (Yamaha YMF719E-S).

I think the original issue may have been a DMA conflict with the Adlib Gold. Setting the Gold to DMA 3 and the Atrend to DMA 1 seems to have fixed that issue. Haven't had any problems with digital audio in X-Wing since.

Interesting. Could be something platform specific on my end then. I'm using a Pentium MMX system, and I did try slowing it down to 386 levels, but it didn't help. Surprisingly, that same floppy version of X-Wing works fine on an AWE64 in that same machine.

BTW, someone else reported the same problem here.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-15, 14:51:

Interesting. Could be something platform specific on my end then. I'm using a Pentium MMX system, and I did try slowing it down to 386 levels, but it didn't help. Surprisingly, that same floppy version of X-Wing works fine on an AWE64 in that same machine.

BTW, someone else reported the same problem here.

I should note that the lockup issue I was having was not unique to the YMF719 card.

Before tracing the problem a conflict with the Adlib Gold, I tried five other sound cards in place of the YMF719: Sound Blaster 1.5 (CT1320C), Sound Blaster Pro (CT1680), a generic ES1688F card, Terratec ProFiMedia Gold (ES1868F), and an Orpheus (with both UNISOUND and ORPHINIT drivers).

The Sound Blaster 1.5, ES1688F, and Orpheus all had the same issue as the YMF719 card; lock up when attempting to play digital audio. With the Sound Blaster Pro and Terratec cards, the game would just freeze right from the start (black screen).

I also tried having no digital audio card at all in the system. In those instances, if picking either the Roland + Sound Blaster or General MIDI + Sound Blaster options, I would get no sound or music at all. But if I put the YMF719 card back in the system and disabled it with UNISOUND, I would get music, but no digital audio.

Now that I have everything more or less working, it's time... to add another sound card!

I'd been wanting to try the venerable Gravis UltraSound in this setup. I realized I didn't need the 25-pin serial and game ports, so removing that bracket freed up another slot. After another round of ISA slot juggling, I managed to get everything physically installed including the UltraSound.

Getting it working was another story.

Starting with the default UltraSound address of 240h, I tried running the setup program. It detected the UltraSound, but testing every IRQ port and DMA channel resulted in failure. I tried forcing it by ignoring the error messages, but that just resulted in complete system failure.

After removing the Adlib Gold the UltraSound setup worked and I was able to get it installed and working. However, putting the Adlib Gold back resulted in the UltraSound failing to initialize.

After a bunch more troubleshooting, I tried switching the address on the UltraSound to 210h. This resulted in the setup program claiming it couldn't detect the UltraSound, even though the subsequent scan showed it finding it at address 210h. Instead I configured settings manually in the AUTOEXEC.BAT with IRQ 7 and DMA 5. I further switched the Adlib Gold to IRQ 3 after disabling COM2 on the I/O controller card.

After all of that, the UltraSound seems to be working fine.

Games tested included Epic Pinball, Black Thorne, and Simon the Sorcerer 2. The latter two games worked with both digital audio and wavetable output on the GUS. However, Black Thorne's frame rate became stuttery when using the GUS wavetable for music. Using General MIDI there was no problem.

I also tried Star Control 2, but unfortunately with the ULTRAMID driver loaded there wasn't enough conventional memory to run the game.

I still can't get digital audio to work with the Adlib Gold. I tried both Warlords 2 and Simon the Sorcerer 2. In both cases, it just locks up when trying to play the audio. It's exactly the same symptom I had previously with X-Wing and the YMF719E-S. I suspect it's probably a DMA issue, but I don't really want to try to reconfigure it further. Digital audio is more important on the YMF719E-S card anyway.

Did more testing today. Confirmed that Adlib Gold digital audio does work, but games require the DMA channel set to 1. Unfortunately this conflicts with Sound Blaster supported games that also expect the DMA channel set to 1 (e.g. X-Wing).

Short of running the Adlib Gold setup program every time I want to use digital audio with the Gold, I don't see an easy way to have simultaneous Sound Blaster and Adlib Gold support.

In the mean time, I also tested adding a Disney Sound Source via the parallel port. It works. It's not a very practical sound option, but fits with the increasingly janky nature of this build.

The AdLib Gold probably grabs resources from the machine via its EEPROM configuration right after boot.

It would be nice if the clone card had the ability to only grab resources via a dos utility only, that would make it easy to choose between an SB card or AdLib Gold. Would have been nice if the clone card would have the 16bit ISA connector for access to DMA 0, like the unreleased Gold 2000 was supposed to have, and maybe high IRQ’s too.

A trio of cards like a Sound Blaster compatible, AdLib Gold and the original dual OPL2 Pro Audio Spectrum might be just impossible unless changing the Gold for another port or patching the MVSOUND.SYS driver but all that brings its own can of worms.

All this is why I prefer semi PnP or PnP cards that don’t hog resources before they are turned on. The YMF cards are mostly excellent for this.

carlostex wrote on 2023-07-17, 19:25:

The AdLib Gold probably grabs resources from the machine via its EEPROM configuration right after boot. […]
Show full quote

The AdLib Gold probably grabs resources from the machine via its EEPROM configuration right after boot.

It would be nice if the clone card had the ability to only grab resources via a dos utility only, that would make it easy to choose between an SB card or AdLib Gold. Would have been nice if the clone card would have the 16bit ISA connector for access to DMA 0, like the unreleased Gold 2000 was supposed to have, and maybe high IRQ’s too.

A trio of cards like a Sound Blaster compatible, AdLib Gold and the original dual OPL2 Pro Audio Spectrum might be just impossible unless changing the Gold for another port or patching the MVSOUND.SYS driver but all that brings its own can of worms.

All this is why I prefer semi PnP or PnP cards that don’t hog resources before they are turned on. The YMF cards are mostly excellent for this.

Yeah, competition for hardware resources is a challenge with these non-PnP cards. It doesn't help that older games don't necessarily allow switching of hardware audio settings.

For now I've elected to just remove the IRQ and DMA settings altogether for the Adlib Gold. It still seems to function for FM playback, which is really the whole point of using it.

Did further testing today and swapped out a sound card.

First, tested the UltraSound on various addresses to determine what would work and what wouldn't. It turns only 210h and 250h seem viable. Switched its settings address 250h, IRQ 11, and DMA 5.

Second, decided to try swapping the Game Blaster for a TexElec SAAYM card. Since the latter not only has SAA1099P chips for CMS support, but also a Yamaha YM2151, I thought it would be neat to have even more audio options.

A quick test with SBVGM and some games, and it seems to be working just fine. I did assign it to 220h, same as the Atrend ATC-6631 (YMF719E-S) and added a DOS menu to disable that card on bootup, should I want to use the SAAYM instead.

After more testing it appears the system is not happy with my new UltraSound settings.

In playing Epic Pinball, while audio seemed fine at first, it would then start dropping samples and eventually lock up on a black screen. In addition, an I/O card parity interrupt error popped up a few times after UltraSound initialization.

I switched the UltraSound back to address 210h and IRQ 7, and that seems to have resolved the issue.

Meanwhile, discovered another issue with X-Wing and MIDITO. Running MIDITO on a clean boot and then launching X-Wing results in no sound or music. The game would still work, just no audio.

After closing X-Wing and relaunching it, music and audio would play with the correct MIDI port forwarding.

I don't recall having this issue previously although it's also possible I never tested that specific scenario. I'm going to keep tinkering to see if I can figure out what is causing that.

Suggested config:

Yamaha YMF: A220 I5 D1
AdLib Gold: A388 I3 D3
CMS: A210h
GUS: A260 I7 D7

The CMS suggestion comes from something I did a while ago, project to patch CMS games into port 210h. Or you can use MIDIto.

CMS/Game Blaster game patching and setting a new standard!

carlostex wrote on 2023-07-23, 05:54:

Suggested config: […]
Show full quote

Suggested config:

Yamaha YMF: A220 I5 D1
AdLib Gold: A388 I3 D3
CMS: A210h
GUS: A260 I7 D7

The CMS suggestion comes from something I did a while ago, project to patch CMS games into port 210h. Or you can use MIDIto.

CMS/Game Blaster game patching and setting a new standard!

Thanks for the suggestions. 😀

Funny enough I had thought I'd previously tried a260 with the GUS, but it didn't work. Turns out the source I was relying on for that information had the wrong description for address 260.

I just re-tested it and it does work. So now I'll keep it at 260 7 7 7 7, and see how that performs.

In regards to the Adlib Gold, I did have the DMA set to 3, but unfortunately nothing I tried could use it. All the games I tested expect DMA 1. And there was no option to change it in those games settings.

For CMS, currently my solution is a batch file to just disable the YMF719 card.

As I continue to find more esoteric audio devices for this machine, I tried out a Casiotone CT-460 keyboard.

Known for being supported in a handful of Sierra adventure games, it is also supported by the Horror Soft game, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark.

Probably the least practical way to enjoy game audio, it's fascinating to me that Casio keyboards were supported by games at all.

(On a side note, I find it funny how the setup program refers to General MIDI as "generic" MIDI. 😁 )