First post, by sxtheone
Good day, Everyone,
Read a lot in these forums about the Cyrix MediaGX CPU. I bought one and to my surprise, the sound is unusable in pure DOS. The MIDI sounds OK, no problems there, but the sounds, speech, everything that's not midi is sped up to like 10x - 100x speed. I have no user manual for the motherboard and couldn't even find the brand of it. All I know is this:
- it was advertised on ebay as MM ATX G1 BOARD GXm-CX5530A Cyrix MediaGX (Geode) MMX-S 266 MHz for DOS Win95 98 (link to ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/256612431505)
- on the POST screen, I see this at the bottom: 01/20/2003-GXm-Cx5530A-2A434H0AC-00
- on Windows98 - after installing the drivers the seller sent me - the sound is fine. If I try to start a DOS game from the Windows command line, the sound is sped up, just like in pure DOS
- Windows98 reports the sound driver as Xpress Sound (like what was reported on other topics on this site, and they had the DOS sound working well)
- found the multiplier info on the board, tried every multiplier and the sound stayed as it was
- looks like the CPU uses ~33MHz and a multiplier. I was able to boot it with 300Mhz but set it back to 266 for now
- installed an SB16 DOS driver, and able to set the volume and other things but the sound is sped up in the SB16 setup software as well. The volume is way too loud byt the way, so the volume setting is very welcome
I'm out of ideas. Lot of jumpers on the motherboard has no explanation so I don't knoow what they are doing. Any idea is welcome. Based on other Cyrix MediaGX motherboards, should I search for some jumper to set up something? Should I install some software to slow down the sound speed? Does anyone have a user manual for this strange motherboard? 😀 ANY ides is welcome, really. It was a long time ago when I last dealt with DOS and forgot most of that knowledge.
Setting up the sound would be really important because if I have to buy a sound card for the only PCI slot this board has, I won't be able to get a good VGA. By the way, I saw PCI risers that also provide 2 PCI ports. Would that be an option? Also, is it possible to get one cheap? What I found on ebay was overpriced to say the least.