Hi. I'm interested in using this card with my HP thin client, but in worried about compatibility. I've had a lot of trouble getting any of my Yamaha PCI cards to behave with this system.

My YMF724 breaks the keyboard, both USB and PS/2. It just stops working, and there is a screeching sound that comes from the onboard audio when the system is powered on. The YMF744 doesn't break the keyboard and doesn't have the screeching sound, but the BIOS doesn't assign it an IRQ and so it can't work in either DOS or Windows.

I'm not sure what the issue is with these cards and this particular platform. I've had mixed luck with some other cards but most of them work, such as the ESS Solo-1.

Are you familiar at all with these problems or why they might be occuring?

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-05-28, 06:17:

Are you familiar at all with these problems or why they might be occuring?

Hi! Not really. But thinking that our sound controllers will be behind another PCI-PCI bridge, so the actual behavior may be different from the one you've experienced.

Hello everyone!

We have great news: both parts of Fortex function just as planned, and their digital interconnection (S/PDIF Out from AU8830 going into S/PDIF In of YMF744) works great too!

However now we have an urgent need for a good coding guy who would be willing to help us out. The matter is that YMF744's S/PDIF Out is functional in Windows, and also in the MS-DOS Mode (when you "exit" from Windows into MS-DOS without actually rebooting the PC). But when you reboot, it gets disabled, and there is no way to activate it except starting Windows. This problem was already mentioned before (Re: Yamaha XG with S/PDIF out ?), and no solution has been found if I'm not mistaken. So, we need someone who could find the needed YMF744 register, identify its needed value, and write a DOS utility to restore it after reboot. A patched version of SETUPDS would also be just fine, but a separate utility seems a bit more elegant to me. Maybe Linux drivers could be useful, I know that Linux driver for YMF744 exists as a part of the ALSA, and also the OSS (Open Sound System):
http://opensound.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgro … /drv/oss_ymf7xx

If we find a kind person to help us, it will define the further development of the hardware design - then we'll be able to make the "upper" expansion board based on S/PDIF DAC, with superior quality (if compared to the AC97 codec). And if we don't, we'll have to revert to the basic simple approach, taking the Line-Out from the STAC9707T.

Rayer on this board is probably someone you want to speak too. I thought he wrote a tool for pure Dos SPDIF for the YMF cards. I think I remember reading the registers were found in a thread on here.

Potentially relevant link regarding the above

Pure DOS gaming system with 100% digital audio output

Guys, you two are absolutely awesome, thank you so much! If you ever decide to buy a Fortex once it is released, both of you are entitled to a 10% discount off retail price, for your valuable contribution. Just please don't hesitate to remind!

You're very welcome, and thank you! 😀 (tbh, Bancho's tip made it easy for me to find - but am very happy to have helped in any way)

Progress is great! Continuing best wishes for this awesome project.

Wow what a project. Really liking this.

Well done hard1k for getting this far. I am very keen to learn more.
To remake a card is one thing but to fuse two together is another...

Very nice. Following.

was getting a little impatient, so I tried the real thing. SQ2500 + Labway 744
I did digital out on vortex to digital in on XG

Initial impressions are IRQ and resource nightmare, but its doable on Asus p4p800se reserving IRQ 5 and 7 in the BIOS helped. I assign SB emulation for the vortex on IRQ5 and Sb emulation for the XG on IRQ 7.

Only thing I tested so far was Tyrian 2000. I used Vortex for SB emulation and XG for midi and the game tested good and ran fine like that. No crash. This game does not run of XG without SB link and either crashes or doesn't work with either driver set, however the MIDI works with VXDs.

Hello everyone,

I guess you thought that Fortex was on hold but not yet!
We've been sorting out some minor bugs, and just ordered a new prototype:

So far we are stuck with only one major issue - when we choose YMF744's external MIDI in the Win9x multimedia applet and try playing anything (i.e. sending any MIDI command), the player stops responding. We need this function for the wavetable header, and haven't come even close to understand the cause of this behaviour, it just hangs no matter if daughterboard is there or not, or if the AU8830 part is enabled or disabled:

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tp_u_SCRDVZ0 … iew?usp=sharing

We've tested the same thing on a regular YMF744 card, no issues at all, working as intended.
So far our two hypotheses are:
1. We've got somewhat faulty YMF744 chips - will be tested on the next prototype by soldering a tested chip from a working donor card.
2. YMF744 MIDI controller/driver does not like sitting behind a PCI-PCI bridge - we need some help from the community to test a regular YMF744 board on any period correct server/workstation motherboard that has a secondary PCI bus derived from an Intel/TI/DEC PCI-PCI bridge chip. For example, an Intel L440GX+ will do perfectly. Anyone willing to help out there?

hard1k wrote on 2023-04-23, 14:52:

2. YMF744 MIDI controller/driver does not like sitting behind a PCI-PCI bridge - we need some help from the community to test a regular YMF744 board on any period correct server/workstation motherboard that has a secondary PCI bus derived from an Intel/TI/DEC PCI-PCI bridge chip. For example, an Intel L440GX+ will do perfectly. Anyone willing to help out there?

I just bought an L440GX+ off eBay and I've got a YMF744 sound card to test with. I'll give it a try when the motherboard arrives.

Great, thank you very much!

What other chipsets besides the l440gx?

I don't believe that's the case actually, but what we're trying to achieve is to discard any malfunction of YMF744 behind a PCI-PCI bridge. So the chipset doesn't really matter.

The Intel L440GX+ board is just a convenient example of one that has such a PCI-PCI bridge, I assume?

Exactly.

Very interested to see what the results are. I'd also suspect that DDMA won't work through a PCI bridge. PC/PCI aka SBLink probably still will?

We'll find that out soon, I guess!

I'm pretty sure that my msi 865 p4 motherboard has a pic-bridge. I'll see if I can dig it out.