Some further testing in MS-DOS 6.22: Both CT-VOICE.DRV and SBFMDRV.COM games/apps working - these are usually tough to get working, even on ISA SB clones. I've got a normal SBPRO directory installed with all its usual files and sub-directories, and with SET SOUND=C:\SBPRO pointing in AUTOEXEC.BAT.

The most compatible setup so far, using SETUPDS, is IRQ Mode = S-IRQ and DMA Mode = PC/PCI. Besides that, it helps that the VIA C3 CPU can be slowed down to 386/ 486 speeds easily... I think this card is going to be my main one, alongside a GUS and AWE variant.

So far have you found anything that isn't compatible with the S-IRQ + PC/PCI DMA? Or do you still need to switch its compatibility mode around?

^^ Nope, nothing so far. As far as this build is concerned, it thinks there is a SB Pro 2 installed, with better signal to noice ratio and FM quality. This is now my favourite OPL3 device, previously it was a Turtle Beach Tropez+, which also has great FM output.

There are minor variations between YMF-724 cards: WaveForce 192XG (used as reference - YMF724E) is noisier than a clone I tested - YMF724F. Amongst all these cards made by various manufacturers, there maybe a 'best' version out there...

What about MIDI options? Do any YMF7x4 boards have a true MIDI device or wavetable header? That is the only thing that weights in favour of its ISA cousin, though it is a non-issue for people using external modules.

Never seen one with a Wavetable header, nor with any other dedicated MIDI hardware on-board, though they may still exist. If you have a bunch of daughterboards, you can convert them into external MIDI boxes...

You can still use its DLS compatible XG synth in a Windows DOS session, and with S/PDIF digital out on some cards, feed FM/ PCM/ MIDI to external DSPs/ effects processors/ DAWs and whatnot. These cards behave differently in Windows regarding DOS compatibility though.

Some games to test that can cause issues with PCI cards:

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis with digital speech
Space Quest 1 VGA with digital sound effects

I would find testing without SB-Link more interesting though. Especially with later machines, e.g. Socket A or Pentium 4, I don't think SB-Link exists that much, and on such machines DOS PCI compatibility is useful. So far I swear by the Vortex 2, but haven't really tried many other cards.

And maybe expand this project to include other cards, with or without SB-Link? We could have several of us contribute, test and create a compatibility matrix or something like that. Most of use will have a Slot 1 board, so it shouldn't be hard coming up with similar enough hardware.

Just some ideas.

I now remember that the PC-PCI connector offers both Serial IRQ and DMA lines, so if you are not using S-IRQ together with the DMA options you are not fully using the PC-PCI features and, therefore, having to resort to emulation tricks, which could be the cause of the compatibility issues other members have experienced. With S-IRQ and DMA=PC/PCI this should be as compatible with games as if it were an ISA card.

The PC/PCI is only for serial IRQ; there is no DMA done through PC/PCI. DDMA (distributed DMA) is done entirely through the PCI bus, no external connector/cable.

Source:
YMF724 datasheet http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/vi … HA/YMF724F.html
PIIX4 datasheet http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/specupdate/297738.pdf

Then what is the PC/PCI option for DMA?

It crashes on an Epox MVP3. I suspekt the reason being that it has real ISA slots alongside the PC/Pci.
I have tested it with no isa cards installed, and all IRQ and DMA's set to PCI/ISA and not legacy.
Without the PC/Pci cable, it will not work at all. (cant find IRQ or DMA), and with the cable it can find in the setup util.
I have a true PCI-Only board, with PC/Pci header on it. "Intel VC820", and I need to get it going again, to test in MS-Dos.
That's my next build-project. I read somewhere on the net, that MVP3 boards tend to be incompatible with YMF724.
Doom, Duke3D, CIV1 and every other games tested crashes. That's for shure. Only thing working are the setup util test.

alexanrs wrote:

Then what is the PC/PCI option for DMA?

There is no such thing. DOS compatibility is achieved through one of 2 methods, which are separate, independent and incompatible with one another. One is PC/PCI aka SB-Link, which uses an external connector and serial IRQ. The other is distributed DMA which is done through the PCI bus. There is no overlap between them. You use either one, or the other.

stamasd wrote:

There is no such thing. DOS compatibility is achieved through one of 2 methods, which are separate, independent and incompatible. One is PC/PCI aka SB-Link, which uses an external connector and serial IRQ. The other is distributed DMA which is done through the PCI bus. There is no overlap between them. You use either one, or the other.

I mean, what does the PC/PCI option for DMA Mode in SETUPDS use if PC/PCI doesn't help with DMA?

brostenen wrote:

It crashes on an Epox MVP3. I suspekt the reason being that it has real ISA slots alongside the PC/Pci. I have tested it with no […]
Show full quote

It crashes on an Epox MVP3. I suspekt the reason being that it has real ISA slots alongside the PC/Pci.
I have tested it with no isa cards installed, and all IRQ and DMA's set to PCI/ISA and not legacy.
Without the PC/Pci cable, it will not work at all. (cant find IRQ or DMA), and with the cable it can find in the setup util.
I have a true PCI-Only board, with PC/Pci header on it. "Intel VC820", and I need to get it going again, to test in MS-Dos.
That's my next build-project. I read somewhere on the net, that MVP3 boards tend to be incompatible with YMF724.
Doom, Duke3D, CIV1 and every other games tested crashes. That's for shure. Only thing working are the setup util test.

It could be the that the implementation of PC/PCI is different in Intel chipsets compared to SS7 ones. The 440BX has a native ISA bus as well (and many boards based on that chipset do have the slots), and the OP did not run into these issues you are having.
I had trouble with a Crystal PCI card with DOS DDMA drivers that caused it to randomly freeze during startup, so this could be the flakiness of non-Intel chipsets showing.

alexanrs wrote:

I mean, what does the PC/PCI option for DMA Mode in SETUPDS use if PC/PCI doesn't help with DMA?

I don't know. Maybe it's there to confuse people? 😀

tom4DOS did some PCI soundcard tests:

YMF-744 Hoontech SoundTrack Digital XG
i430TX (Triton2), AMD K6-2 400, 128 MB RAM
S3 Virge DX (4MB), MS-DOS 6.2
No PC/PCI, SB-Link

PCI ISA routing: "#INTA"
"ISA" & "S-IRQ" didn't work ("Can not detect Interrupt at ...")

Silverball: crash at start.
Day of the Tentacle: no Sfx
Zone66: SoundBlaster not automatically recognized, start game with zone66 /s
Crystal Dreams 2: no Sfx

source:
http://www.w53ulr54c.homepage.t-online.de/
http://www.dosforum.de/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=67 … start=15#p27730

I had problems to, with my YMF-724E-V, in "Day of the Tentacle".
Music & speech don't work together.
K6-III+ Tyan S1590, PCI ISA routing: "#INTA", (No PC/PCI, SB-Link)

philscomputerlab wrote:

Some games to test that can cause issues with PCI cards:
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis with digital speech
Space Quest 1 VGA with digital sound effects

Thanks for the suggestions. Both those games were tested and worked fine.

"Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis with digital speech" was the trickiest. I got used to running the VIA C3 without any caches enabled, and the game would lock-up after a few minutes. With both caches enabled or instruction cache disabled, the game worked fine. I manually chose "Atalantis s220/5/500", where the last parameter was buffer size, IIRC. BTW, the non-talkie version of the game worked with both FM and effects with all caches disabled.

philscomputerlab wrote:

I would find testing without SB-Link more interesting though. Especially with later machines, e.g. Socket A or Pentium 4, I don't think SB-Link exists that much, and on such machines DOS PCI compatibility is useful. So far I swear by the Vortex 2, but haven't really tried many other cards.

And maybe expand this project to include other cards, with or without SB-Link? We could have several of us contribute, test and create a compatibility matrix or something like that. Most of use will have a Slot 1 board, so it shouldn't be hard coming up with similar enough hardware.

I also have interests in non-SBLink compatibility in those types of builds. I did some preliminary tests without SBLink, and my top 3 compatible chipsets were: Yamaha YMF-7xx, ESS Solo-1 (ES1938S) and Vortex 2. The least appealing was the Vortex 2; it just sounded bad in DOS for FM and wasn't that compatible. The ESS Solo-1 was the most compatible and sounded good. The YMF-7xx sounded the best and was in the middle-ground for compatibilty.

I may do a matrix in the future for all SB-Link cards (I have a few chipsets), but my OP link has a nice round-up already with incompatible games. I could also consider a round-up of non-SBLink PCI cards, too. But for the scope of this thread, I wanted to focus on what I consider the most compatible and best sounding card, and find out the games/ demos that aren't compatible with it.

brostenen wrote:

It crashes on an Epox MVP3. I suspekt the reason being that it has real ISA slots alongside the PC/Pci. I have tested it with no […]
Show full quote

It crashes on an Epox MVP3. I suspekt the reason being that it has real ISA slots alongside the PC/Pci.
I have tested it with no isa cards installed, and all IRQ and DMA's set to PCI/ISA and not legacy.
Without the PC/Pci cable, it will not work at all. (cant find IRQ or DMA), and with the cable it can find in the setup util.
I have a true PCI-Only board, with PC/Pci header on it. "Intel VC820", and I need to get it going again, to test in MS-Dos.
That's my next build-project. I read somewhere on the net, that MVP3 boards tend to be incompatible with YMF724.
Doom, Duke3D, CIV1 and every other games tested crashes. That's for shure. Only thing working are the setup util test.

Do you have a screen print of your SETUPDS settings? What IRQ and DMA Modes are you using?

A while ago, I tested two MVP3 boards, one EPOX SS7 and one QDI S370, and they worked really well with the SBLink connector, but that was with DOS 7.1. I'll pencil in some tests for these boards at some point in the future.

alexanrs wrote:

I now remember that the PC-PCI connector offers both Serial IRQ and DMA lines, so if you are not using S-IRQ together with the DMA options you are not fully using the PC-PCI features and, therefore, having to resort to emulation tricks, which could be the cause of the compatibility issues other members have experienced. With S-IRQ and DMA=PC/PCI this should be as compatible with games as if it were an ISA card.

I'm inclined to agree with this, though I'm not clear on the definition of PC/PCI in all the literature that I've read. From my understanding, SB-Link seems to be a superset of PC/PCI and S-IRQ...

stamasd wrote:

I don't know. Maybe it's there to confuse people? 😀

It is kinda confusing. Here's what I've gathered:

When setting up the card in DOS, the SETUPDS config tool has these options:

Three IRQ Modes: ISA, S-IRQ, INTA#
Two DMA Modes: PC/PCI, D-DMA

When the physical SBLink cable is connected, all options are available, but S-IRQ and PC/PCI selctions are the most compatible. When the SBLink cable is removed, both these modes cease to work. And INTA# with D-DMA is left, and significantly less compatible. So, there are two distinct DMA modes which affect compatibility, and this is linked to the physical connection with the SBLink connector. (BTW, I could never get IRQ Mode with "ISA" working.)

Here is the pinout of the connector: Re: PC/PCI or SB-LINK cable. How to make?

You can see the relevant S-IRQ pin (Serial IRQ), and the other two PC/PCI pins (PC/PCI Grant and Request Sideband Signals).

And in the YMF724F datasheet you linked to earlier:

You can see the communication between the YMF724 (DS-1) and the Southbridge (PIIX4E): Namely the SERIRQ# (S-IRQ) and PCREQ#, PCGNT# (PC/PCI Grant and Request Sideband Signals). These lines clearly by-pass the PCI bus and look like they are carried by the physical SBLink connection.

And importantly, the datasheet mentions: "DS-1 supports PC/PCI and D-DMA protocols to emulate the DMA of SB Pro on the PCI." So, clearly there are *two* distinct DMA modes: PC/PCI and D-DMA.

falloutboy wrote:

tom4DOS did some PCI soundcard tests:
...

Thanks for the info - I'll try to test those games as well.

j^aws wrote:

Do you have a screen print of your SETUPDS settings? What IRQ and DMA Modes are you using?

Nope. Sorry. I did erase all YMF724 software on this machine, as I was only testing.
Normally it is running CT2910 and GUS-ACE.
I will however test this on my 820-Chipset board. (Intel VC820)

As far as I remember, I started by assigning the IRQ's and DMA's to PC/ISA and not Legacy ISA.
Then setting PCI-Slot3 to IRQ5 and installed the card into Slot3.
For the msdos setup tool. I can not really remember what I did.

^^ No probs - let us know how you get on with that Intel board.

Regarding compatibility, revisited Duke Nukem II again as mentioned in the OP, and swapped out the YMF724 for a Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT2600). This cards sound effects were better; explosions were deeper.

When I checked the sound settings, the games setup had 3 options chosen: Adlib, Sounblaster and Music. When I swapped the YMF back, I continued hearing sound effects of doors exploding and so forth, however, the sounds were mixed from both the Adlib and SB. If the Adlib option is removed, so that only SB is left in the games sound setup, then there are missing sounds from explosions from doors and so on.

Looking at the YMF724 datasheet, these are the DSP Commands that are unsupported by the SB Pro engine:

116h 8bit to 2bit ADPCM single-cycle DMA mode digitized sound output
217h 8bit to 2bit ADPCM single-cycle DMA mode digitized sound output with ref. byte
31Fh 8bit to 2bit ADPCM auto-init DMA mode digitized sound output with ref. byte
476h 8bit to 3bit ADPCM single-cycle DAM mode digitized sound output
577h 8bit to 3bit ADPCM single-cycle DMA mode digitized sound output with ref. byte
67Fh 8bit to 3bit ADPCM auto-init DMA mode digitized sound output with ref. byte

So, anyone know any games/ demos/ apps that would make use of the aforementioned commands?

The SB-Link on the Intel VC820, does not work in MS-Dos-6.22
I suspect that most of this technology is only working when Win9X is running.
Installing Win98SE now, to test with and without SB-Link cable.

brostenen wrote:

The SB-Link on the Intel VC820, does not work in MS-Dos-6.22
I suspect that most of this technology is only working when Win9X is running.
Installing Win98SE now, to test with and without SB-Link cable.

Installing in DOS should be very straightforward. I've got pure DOS 6.22 and nothing else installed. Things get more complicated when installing Win9x.

Here is the pure DOS install directory:

Just place it in your root directory, e.g. C:\

(Run SETUPDS first, then SETUPDS /S afterwords to initialise in DOS.)

Have you changed relevant IRQs and DMAs in your BIOS to Legacy? E.g. IRQ 5/7 and DMA 1 should be set to Legacy - that's what I'm using for S-IRQ/ PC-PCI.

Also ensure you have disabled all unnecessary ports and IRQs in your BIOS. E.g. Serial/ Parallel/ USBs etc...

Finally, ensure you have all your SET BLASTER lines in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

EDIT: Tidied up.