MikeRoz,
Try an Aureal Vortex2 based board if you can find one. The FM synth won't be that good, but it has a wavetable header so it was a perfect card for a Roland or Yamaha daughterboard. Tie Fighter never sounded better, and you don't get the hanging note issue like with a SB16 + DB combo.

I actually want to avoid wavetable synth like the plague.

You can try one of those C-Media 87x8 based cards. They are cheap and you can find them everywhere. I don't like them much, but they have decent compatibility. Supposedly SB16 compatible too. Had no way to test that, as 5 years ago when had one of those I did not had a SB16; and right now I don't have a C-Media based card and have only a SB16 Vibra.

EDIT: ALS4000 based cards are SB16 compatible.

MikeRoz wrote:

Okay, so back to PCI sound cards... […]
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Okay, so back to PCI sound cards...

The Solo-1 has pretty much been a disaster. First of all, the ESS DOS configuration utility rarely works. When it does work, it insists on setting the chip up for PC/PCI DMA emulation. Since my motherboard doesn't have the sideband pins, that's rather useless.

So I did some reading (translator required) and used a DOS utility with the ability to manipulate PCI device registers to manually kick the card into DOS compatibility mode. DDMA is not supported by the 815 as far as I can tell, and I have no PC/PCI pins - thus, TDMA was my only option.

TDMA with the DMA policy bits set to 001 finally made digital sound work in Tie Figher's sound card setup program. Unfortunately, the sound was too fast. The pitch wasn't distorted, so the only thing I can figure is that it started playing the second half of the sound far too soon. Interestingly, this was the only working digital sound implementation that would break if the IRQ was changed in the Tie Fighter setup program.

TDMA with the DMA policy bits set to 1xx (last two bits can be anything) improved things somewhat. There was still an audible pop as the second half of the sound file started being played, and it just seemed the slightest bit off. Running the game and watching the first cutscene in this mode made it sound like the characters were talking over themselves ever so slightly. Also, the digital sound would be garbled whenever FM music was being played over a sound effect. Interestingly, digital sound would still play if the IRQ in the setup program was changed to something other than the IRQ being emulated by the card.

The sound problem could be fixed by changing the card from a SBPro to a SB2.0 in the Tie Fighter setup program. Unfortunately, this also made the game mono. Makes me wonder if stereo is somehow the problem.

Music and digital sound could be made to get along by changing the music device to Adlib (default device for the SB2.0 anyway).

The only good news is that, when it worked, I could not tell the chip's OPL3 clone apart from the real thing (at least, the emulated one in DosBox; the real thing is too far from memory).

I'm willing to bet that a lot of the problems I'm having stem from the fact that I'm using an OEM Gateway board with little to no BIOS configuration options. So while the 815 may work fine with these cards for most people, I'm kind of out of luck. Or my card could just be garbage. Sounds fine in Windows 98 though.

I'm going to look into finding an ISA motherboard I can put my old SB16 into. Hope it still works.

Sorry to hear that. I agree fully about the sound of the thing: It sounded the way I remember my SBpro.

Regarding your problems: I never had any problems with the Win98se drivers. Sound worked instantly. No matter if it was onboard Solo1 or pci sound card. However, I never tried your game or used the 815 with it.

Did you intall DOS drivers through WIN98?

5 years ago I had an 815 based full size ATX mobo. Used a 4 channels PCI C-Media 8738 soundcard instead of onboard SigmaTel AC 97 codec, worked well in DOS, and AFAIR, even Tie Fighter runned ok.

Okay, so I figured out a few things about the card.

First off, the card DOES work flawlessly - sometimes. Every few reboots or so, the sound will stutter under DOS. A cold boot usually fixes it. I was testing the card with my headphones, and when the second channel of a stereo sample came in I would hear an audible pop. I incorrectly assumed this was part of the stuttering problem - it was actually the gain on the card overwhelming the drivers on the headphones. The sound is fine on proper speakers - when it works.

Unfortunately, I just got a hold of a gameport joystick. It doesn't work. Works fine on my ISA SB16 though, so it's not the stick. Oh that I could use the ISA card with my faster PIII system.

As to whether I installed the drivers for DOS from Windows 98, no, I didn't. The drivers I found for the 1938 don't furnish DOS drivers. I downloaded them seprately from somebody on these forums. They're useless anyway; I had to do some detective work with the PCI device registers and the chip's datasheet. The DOS drivers I downloaded try to initialize the card for PC/PCI DMA, which is useless for me since I don't have the necessary pins on my motherboard.

WOW.

I just looked at the card. The gameport IS NOT ELECTRICALLY CONNECTED. There's a gameport on the backplate, but there is no connection between it and the PCB.

It's missing a bunch of caps and resistors in that general area, too, so it's not something a simple solder job could fix either.

You got screwed...