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Overlooked awesome XG Midi/FM PCI sound Card: YMF7xx???

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First post, by Mike 01Hawk

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I'm really REALLY surprised there wasn't THAT much talk about these chips on here, queststudios, or even dosgames! 😳

I was at the local computer wholesale joint over the weekend rumaging thru their old sound card bin and I happened to find myself staring at a few PCI cards with the well known XG graphic on the chips. None had header boards, but I figured.. for $3.. heck.. why not give it a try? 🤣

Here she is nestled in my new Dell GXpro
YMF724.JPG

Closeup of the flavor of my chip YMF724:
YMF724%20Closeup.jpg

I spent all this afternoon being a Google Ninja and found quite a bit of goodness for these chips, basically it's sorta the famous DB50xg + OPL3 FM synth on a chip 😁 😁 😁

What was GREAT for my application was I got BOTH General Midi and Sound Blaster support working for DOOM in Win98se!!! 😁 😁 😁 😁 WooT Happy Dance!!! 😀

Come to find out there's even a nice wiki for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF7xx

On the Wiki there's a HUGE PDF about the chip, and a link to this awesome customizer called PowerYMF that can load up extended wavetable banks 😁 http://www.yohng.com/powerymf/

And here's the site for the drivers from Yamaha themselves, I had to use the WDM drivers to get the FM Sound Effects to work in Doom:
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/u … /downloads.html

So, anyway.. I'm doing the happy happy dance, playing the Comparison Midi and it sounded decent, even the 2005 All Star file (man.. guess nothing other than Roland can make that nice applause sound?) . Anyway there's even this SWEET XG file called Gentle Love that you can get from PowerYMF, I was blown away to say the least when you could hear them make the sound of gutiar string movements (don't know the proper term for it).

Well.. I guess all can't be well though, I started to mess around with some other Midis.. and well.. playing T7G samples on this was well... for a lack of a better word... quite crappy 🙁

Oh well.. can't have everything I guess?

I did an ebay search and there were quite a few that could be had for cheap! (under $10 shipped).

I almost feel like I should go back and by the other 3 or 4 YMF7xx sound cards I saw 🤑

This place seriously had like 100 or so PCI sound cards, butt load of AWE64s, the XGs, a few Vortex2, some Lives, all kinds. And I coulda had them for $3 a pop. Hmmm... maybe I should ask the dude if I could buy the whole lot up? 😁 I started talking Roland talk with him and he was clueless 🙁 Oh well, that's another thread.

-edit Stupid question, could I get Doom Sound Effects to work with Non-WDM drivers? I've read that the WDM drivers for this card stink (I can't really tell to be truthfull in Doom, however T7G sucked.. guess that might be a XG thing instead maybe?)

Dell Optiplex Gxpro: Built solely so I could re-live my SB16 days properly with newly acquired sound pieces: MT-32, SCB-55, and DB50xg 😀

Reply 3 of 8, by Mike 01Hawk

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dvwjr,

It's the GXpro 200 w/ USB 😁

I of course turned off the USB function, updated the bios to A10. It's just a single Pentium Pro 200 (with 256k cache). Thing was a mothball 🙁 Took me a good 2 hours to clean it up.

I tried doing the slowdown keystroke, but I guess I need to be at the dos prompt cause it didn't work in either Doom or when I was in the Win98se desktop.

The onboard NIC has been flakey, so I just installed a PCI NIC, might have to try the onboard here again now that I have the A10 flash (upgraded from A6 I belive).

Another thing is flakey is I have 128x4 chips (all tested and work), however, the machine will only recognize the 128chips if they're in the first 2 slots??? It does recognize the original 32x2 chips in the last two slots.... who knows.. so right now I'm sportin 320 meg sys memory.

Guess I'll tackle all that in another thread. 😁

Dell Optiplex Gxpro: Built solely so I could re-live my SB16 days properly with newly acquired sound pieces: MT-32, SCB-55, and DB50xg 😀

Reply 4 of 8, by keropi

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actually I had a soundcard that was made by yamaha, the YAMAHA WAVEFORCE 192 XG . awesome card, superior audio quality, when later I switched to a SBLive! the difference in quality was huge!
yamaha cards are the best...

Reply 5 of 8, by valnar

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I've been thinking of buying one of these Yamaha PCI sound cards off eBay for awhile. I don't remember hearing much about them back "in the day" when Creative Labs and Aureal stole all the limelight. I use an Aureal SQ2500 now with a Roland SCD-15, and gives me 95% of what I want with significantly better MIDI (although not SBPro) sound quality compared to the SB16 used as a daughterboard host.

The famous Ultima7 web page here: http://www.it-he.org/sound.htm#ymf724 says it does not have DOS Wavetable, but everything you mention + the Wiki says it does. It's a semi-software synth though that is loaded upon bootup. So which is true? Yamaha XG MIDI in DOS or Windows?

Other than undoubtedly perfect OPL3 + MIDI, how is the SB Pro sound quality and compatibility?

Reply 6 of 8, by Anonymous Coward

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I had two of these cards around 1998 or so. The midi sounds great, but they seem to be poorly shielded or something because they pick up all kinds of popping and cracking sounds from the PCI bus. It caused me to go back to my AWE64G.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 7 of 8, by gerwin

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Valnar: The famous Ultima7 web page here: http://www.it-he.org/sound.htm#ymf724 says it does not have DOS Wavetable, but everything you mention + the Wiki says it does. It's a semi-software synth though that is loaded upon bootup. So which is true? Yamaha XG MIDI in DOS or Windows?

I have a card with an ymf-724 and can tell you: in pure DOS you won't get it to play midi files on itself, neither can you plug on a midi daughterboard. You should be able to use an external soundcanvas connected on the joystick/MPU port. It does have the OPL3 available for FM music in DOS.
In the Windows 9X Dosbox however, you can actually use its XG-Midi for game music, in addition to the OPL3.

Reply 8 of 8, by Moogle!

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I've had one of these things for awhile, and had power YMF on it. Mine pops on startup and whines on shutdown. I did like it becasue it could play The Incredible machine in Sound Blaster Mode on my PIII 1.4 Tualtine with 1GB memory, a feat many of my ISA cards can't manage.

The really neat thing about it is that it still the drivers on Yamaha's website installs the cards devices at 220, 330, ect in XP (and I think 2K). I can play Wacky Wheels with SFX and music, thouygh you can't play OPL3 stuff in the NT envirment. The Yamaha base drivers also seem to omit the OPL3 device as a MIDI synth in both XP and 2K.

http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/d … load/index.html

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