Might as well do an update on the build:
The sound problems are mostly solved, it seems that somehow the WSS part on the YMF-card was causing some conflict. To save some resources WSS can still be set to IRQ 5 (same as SB Pro) but the card seems to like DMA 0 for WSS playback DMA. For WSS record DMA one could set it as DMA 1. Haven't found any troubles with this setting as of now. Some games or programs don't like more than 32MB of memory. Fleet Defender is one of them, Digitized speech will get distorted otherwise. So i tried to active 16MB memory hole on BIOS effectively limiting the memory DOS can see to only 16MB so digitized speech works great again. PAS cards are great when supported natively. I got a Pro Audio Spectrum XL from kixs that behaves differently volume wise when compared to the PAS Plus, probably due to a different/newer mixer chip. The PAS XL has the slight advantage of a wavetable header that can be placed on 330h or 300h.
I had to swap the Yamaha 704C+719 card for a normal Audician 32. The reason is that the GM part will play at the same time the MT-32 will. The GM part is not impressive due to only 1MB memory only, but it's not that bad either. Tell you the truth, sounds better than the first waveblasters by Creative.
Things to do/get:
- Buy 2 male SATA to floppy berg power cables;
- Replace the CPU heatsink fan with a quieter one;
- Get a reset button cable for the system;
- Get a second round IDE cable to connect CDROM and ZIP250 ATAPI devices;
- Get an external GM device (will probably settle with one only);
- Get a Voodoo 2 to play some Glide DOS capable games;