This is a brilliant project and now comes the exciting bit - people get to play with them!

I love how the ASIC brazenly declares itself to be PCI despite being on an ISA card

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-06-28, 20:42:

I love how the ASIC brazenly declares itself to be PCI despite being on an ISA card

I wonder what that stands for in this case .

Congratulations keropi and marmes. Amazing card, I can't recommend it highly enough.

The pcmidi addon is a different purchase, or is it included in the 90 eur initial cost? (Availability issues notwithstanding)

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-06-28, 20:42:

I love how the ASIC brazenly declares itself to be PCI despite being on an ISA card

🤣 yeah
My guess is that these chips were meant for motherboard integration and everyone back then would like their SoundPRO chip to be of the PCI variety , makes for good marketing as having CMI8330 printed on them does not say much to potential customers

mihai wrote on 2022-06-28, 22:31:

The pcmidi addon is a different purchase, or is it included in the 90 eur initial cost? (Availability issues notwithstanding)

Nope, 90e is the shipped price for the soundcard alone

keropi wrote on 2022-06-29, 05:14:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-06-28, 20:42:

I love how the ASIC brazenly declares itself to be PCI despite being on an ISA card

🤣 yeah
My guess is that these chips were meant for motherboard integration and everyone back then would like their SoundPRO chip to be of the PCI variety , makes for good marketing as having CMI8330 printed on them does not say much to potential customers

The fact that back then (as now for us retro fans) ISA audio was actually better in most ways makes that even more ironic.

I really do wonder about PC Chips relabeling in general. I can understand they want to obfuscate stuff when being less than honest about what they are selling (fake cache), or when they are imitating a more expensive part ("TXPro" chipsets), or using unlicensed clones (eg LS-212 for fake OPL3), but they also did it when there was absolutely no point in terms of marketing, licensing or plain fraud. It wasn't just these sound chips, they even relabeled the BIOS EEPROMs. When did anyone ever base a purchasing decision for a motherboard on the exact make and model of BIOS EEPROM? Even the most bona-fide brands tended to have an AMI/Award sticker covering that info. It's almost as if they were so used to never being honest they just continued faking it even when there was no reason at all.

Aside the cache scams I think that some big head at pc-chips just wanted for them to appear different and unique: this would also explain the white ISA slots, the "gold" psu connectors and weird colors in general.
Order a large quantity and factories have no issues using non-standard colors or print your markings on some chip...
but you have to admin dionb - soundpro looks better than CMI8330 🤣 🤣 🤣

Could it be that the IC producers wanted to have nothing to do with PCChips, ie. not tarnish their own name by supplying chips to a shit motherboard? Take VIA for example, they take a lot of flak for being a bad chipset producer when most of the fault was due to shit-grade board partners who flooded the market with out of spec budger boards..

keropi wrote on 2022-06-29, 10:31:

[...]

but you have to admin dionb - soundpro looks better than CMI8330 🤣 🤣 🤣

Of course, why do you think I specifically want a card with the Soundpro-labeled chip? 😜

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-29, 10:56:

Could it be that the IC producers wanted to have nothing to do with PCChips, ie. not tarnish their own name by supplying chips to a shit motherboard? Take VIA for example, they take a lot of flak for being a bad chipset producer when most of the fault was due to shit-grade board partners who flooded the market with out of spec budger boards..

Not so convinced. A lot of the issues were specifically pinned on Via after issues which were (also) seen on high-profile big-brand boards. Think MVP3 driver hell and AGP power problems on FIC PA-2013, and 686B vs SBLive issues on Asus and Abit flagship ApolloPro133A and KT133 boards.

Dubious boards with Via were dubious, but no one could be sure it wasn't just flaky board design.

Ironically of course the AGP power issue on PA-2013 weren't chipset related and the "Via SB" issue was at least as much about Creative using Intel-proprietary PCI extensions as any engineering faults on Via's part. But in both cases the shit stuck with Via.

Beautiful!

It has long been a thought that this chip is full of promise.. but most implementations are high on the promise and low on the delivery, various bugs and issues, or being integrated into a flaky something else which doesn't exactly enhance the user experience. So a thoughtful remake with decent parts should make it awesome.

Had a May of misfortune and a jinxed June, so my credit card has taken a hammering, so gotta see where I am in a month or two before I order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2gsHUwhFl8

The ctrl-alt-rees video is out

heckyeah wrote on 2022-06-30, 08:20:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2gsHUwhFl8

The ctrl-alt-rees video is out

That's a very nice and thorough review.

I recently started following that channel and he has some great retro content on there.

That channel got a new subscriber, quality content!

I got mine and it's awesome, cleaner sound than any old card I've tried! A bit of a tight fit in the ISA slot, at first it wasn't detected because I hadn't jammed it in hard enough. I do hope that UniSound will eventually support it for easier card switching, though.

Hi!
Glad you received it. Somehow these boards came a little thicker from factory. Unisound supports it, but you need to use CMI mixer to disable 3d sound.

Hi, is there any known compatibility issues with any DOS game?

Schyz wrote on 2022-07-04, 00:08:

Hi, is there any known compatibility issues with any DOS game?

I have not found any so far but it is unavoidable that some game(s) will need some workaround or they will only work with specific WSS or SB settings ... It's the nature of all compatible chips that some quirks will exist.

keropi wrote on 2022-07-04, 04:08:

Schyz wrote on 2022-07-04, 00:08:

Hi, is there any known compatibility issues with any DOS game?

I have not found any so far but it is unavoidable that some game(s) will need some workaround or they will only work with specific WSS or SB settings ... It's the nature of all compatible chips that some quirks will exist.

Here are a couple of games which gave me trouble on my integrated CMI8330. Now, I can't be certain if that was due to the sound card itself or because of the PC Chips motherboard that it was on. But it might be worth investigating how these work on the MK8330:

• Stonekeep (retail CD version patched to 1.2)
• Mortal Kombat 1 (floppy version with FM synth music)
• Jagged Alliance 1
• Chaos Engine (reported by Gerwin)

Maybe someone who has the MK8330 can run a few of these and see if the aforementioned issues manifest on the standalone card.

P.S.

I also noticed that the CMI8330 card's WSS mode didn't work correctly in certain games like Space Quest V and Red Alert when WSS DMA was set to 0. Both games worked fine with WSS DMA set to 1. Again, this could be due to the PC Chips motherboard, rather than the card itself.