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First post, by Kamerat

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Today I tried out my YMF744 card on my Windows 98SE PCIe rig with the Intel P965 chipset and the first thing I wanted to try out was MS-DOS compatibility. I was suprised that it worked out very well and worked with most games a threw at it. Much better compatibility than my Vortex AU8820. Usually Intel chipsets newer than the 800 series is a big no with DOS gaming and digitized sound.

I reserved IRQ5 in the BIOS.

Remember to use the VGA output of your graphic card for best DOS compatibility, using DVI screwed up graphics in some games and made the mouse not work in others.

Setup:
Asus P5B-Deluxe
Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.52GHz
Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX
512MB DDR2
MS-DOS 7.10

Games that worked:
Carmageddon
Death Rally
Descent
Doom
Duke Nukem 3D
Epic Pinball
Gods
Grand Theft Auto
One Must Fall
Pinball Fantasies
Screamer (Works in low res. mode using the DOS/32A extender.)
Sim City 2000
Slipstream 5000
Space Quest IV (CPU cache disabled for this one.)
Speed Haste
Transport Tycoon
Warcraft II
Wolfenstein 3D

Games that failed:
Jazz Jackrabbit ("Loader error (0025)", the game fails even when selecting no sound as long as DSDMA.EXE is loaded.)

Last edited by Kamerat on 2016-07-20, 17:02. Edited 6 times in total.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 1 of 122, by PhilsComputerLab

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Excellent! Many will find this useful.

When you say YMF744 card, what card is it exactly?

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Reply 4 of 122, by Kamerat

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Excellent! Many will find this useful.

When you say YMF744 card, what card is it exactly?

It's an Xwave Typhoon "sandwich" card.

Stretch wrote:

Does the BIOS allowing you to reserve IRQ 5? Mine doesn't maybe that's why DSDMA causes my computer to reboot.

Yes, I reserved IRQ 5 in the BIOS. If I don't, DSDMA doesn't load automatically and when I tried to load it manually Doom locked the computer during startup.

stamasd wrote:

What is DSDMA?

It's a TSR that emualtes legacy DMA somehow. I don't know how it actually works. It needs EMM386 loaded.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 5 of 122, by Kamerat

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Tried another P965 board with succsess, the Asus P5B. Also reserved IRQ5 in the BIOS.

First I installed the YMF744 in PCI slot 3. With 4GB of RAM SETUPDS refused to load complaning about too little free memory.
Then I reduced the RAM to 1GB and SETUPDS loaded, but DSDMA didn't load. Loading DSDMA manually caused a reboot.
I reduced the RAM further to 512MB but still I had to load DSDMA manually, but no reboot this time. Games didn't work off course.
So I moved the YMF744 to PCI slot 1. SETUPDS then caused a stack overflow on load.
I entred the BIOS and disabled all onboard devices except for the ICH SATA and USB controller and then both SETUPDS loaded without failure and DSDMA loaded automatically.
Now games were working. 😀

Edit: The YMF744 now also works in PCI slot 2 and 3.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 6 of 122, by Kamerat

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Tried some more PCIe systems with the YMF744: Asus P5B-V (G965), Dell Optiplex GX620 (945G), HP Compaq dc7600 (945G) and Dell Optiplex 740 (Quadro NVS 210S/nForce 430).
Got all working in DOS.

If DSDMA doesn't load automatically you should try change the line FIRSTTRY=0 to FIRSTTRY=1 in DS.INI so SETUPDS.EXE can reconfigure.
If DSDMA still doesn't load automatically you can try using YMFIRQ.EXE and enter the same IRQ as the PCI IRQ of your YMF and then run DSDMA.EXE (this worked for me on the dc7600).

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 7 of 122, by Kamerat

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Found out how to use 1GB of RAM and more with the YMF. I used JEMMEX with the "MAXEXT=" switch to reduce available extended memory and "NOVME" or games using DOS extenders wouldn't run.

So I decided to test out the YMF744 on my main rig with the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard (Intel X58 chipset), Core i7-920 and 24GB of RAM and it worked too. 🤣 Think I played Death Rally for an hour or so. Transport Tycoon wouldn't run on this setup crashing the system on load, looks like it uses another DOS extender the usual DOS/4GW.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 8 of 122, by Kamerat

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Today I tried out the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (nForce4 Ultra) with success.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 10 of 122, by Kamerat

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j^aws wrote:

^^ Are you using DSDMA? I think I tried this on an Nforce 3 board a while ago, but no sound. I didn't try many games though.

Yes. If it doesn't work at first then try to change FIRSTTRY= to 1 in DS.INI and rerun LOADTSR.BAT so that it reconfigure your INTAIRQ= (think this is the PCI IRQ of the card). DSDMA.EXE should load automatically after SETUPDS.EXE when using LOADTSR.BAT if it's configured right in DS.INI. Keep your installed RAM to 512 or less if you don't want to mess around with JEMMEX.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 12 of 122, by Kamerat

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j^aws wrote:

Thanks for the tip. I'll try that out when I'm next testing a newish board. Have you tried this on anything newer than an X58?

No, doesn't have any newer chipsets.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 13 of 122, by stamasd

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Those Yamaha sound cards don't cease to amaze me. Too bad PCI slots are going the way of the ISA (and Dodo) on modern hardware.

I wonder is DSDMA would work through a PCIe/PCI bridge. Might just get one of those adapters from ebay to give it a try.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 14 of 122, by Kamerat

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stamasd wrote:

Those Yamaha sound cards don't cease to amaze me. Too bad PCI slots are going the way of the ISA (and Dodo) on modern hardware.

I wonder is DSDMA would work through a PCIe/PCI bridge. Might just get one of those adapters from ebay to give it a try.

Keep us updated if you do and if anyone has success with YMF PCI and newer chipsets please let me know.

BTW: Also tried the YMF744 in a virtual machine using VMware ESXi and PCI passthrough. No go for this setup, but it worked in Windows 98SE for Windows programs only.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 15 of 122, by Kamerat

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Kamerat wrote:

Games that failed:
Jazz Jackrabbit ("Loader error (0025)", the game fails even when selecting no sound as long as DSDMA.EXE is loaded.)

It actually works running it from Windows 98SE on my Asus P5B-Deluxe (P965).

I also posted this in another thread, but I made a spreadsheet where I list different combinations of PCI soundcards tested on some chipsets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cvhr6 … dit?usp=sharing

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 16 of 122, by Pabloz

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Im trying to understand how this is even possible. Those motheboards don´t have any win98 drivers.

Does win98 still run fine without drivers?
I know you will have IDE HDD and IDE Floppy drive. forget about sound because you have the yamaha, forget about usb and network , But what about chipset drivers?
chipset drivers are not required for installing a VGA pci-e card on win98 ?

i can´t find a P5B motheboard here, but i was able to find one that might work:

MSI P6N SLI Platinum (Chipset • NVIDIA® nForce 650i SLI ). I checked the bios manual and it does have IRQ Resource Setup , to make irq5 reserved.

other motherboard i liked was a

Asrock 4coredual-sata2 (it has pci-e and also has AGP 8x slot), which would be awesome for compatibility. but i read the manual and it has VIA® PT880 Pro/PT880 Ultra Chipsets. And in the manual i could not find the IRQ resource setup, so that makes me think that i might not be able to make it reserved, crappy shortened bios.

Reply 17 of 122, by cyclone3d

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What version of SETUPDS is being used? Is it a modified one?

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 18 of 122, by Kamerat

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Pabloz wrote:
Im trying to understand how this is even possible. Those motheboards don´t have any win98 drivers. […]
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Im trying to understand how this is even possible. Those motheboards don´t have any win98 drivers.

Does win98 still run fine without drivers?
I know you will have IDE HDD and IDE Floppy drive. forget about sound because you have the yamaha, forget about usb and network , But what about chipset drivers?
chipset drivers are not required for installing a VGA pci-e card on win98 ?

I didn't use any chipset drivers when running Windows 98SE on the Asus P5B-Deluxe. USB should work but you might only get USB 1.1 speeds. I do think some PCIe network chipsets got Windows 98SE drivers but I don't remember which. Here you got a thread where I list PCIe devices I got working under Windows 98SE.

Pabloz wrote:
i can´t find a P5B motheboard here, but i was able to find one that might work: […]
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i can´t find a P5B motheboard here, but i was able to find one that might work:

MSI P6N SLI Platinum (Chipset • NVIDIA® nForce 650i SLI ). I checked the bios manual and it does have IRQ Resource Setup , to make irq5 reserved.

other motherboard i liked was a

Asrock 4coredual-sata2 (it has pci-e and also has AGP 8x slot), which would be awesome for compatibility. but i read the manual and it has VIA® PT880 Pro/PT880 Ultra Chipsets. And in the manual i could not find the IRQ resource setup, so that makes me think that i might not be able to make it reserved, crappy shortened bios.

I would stay away from any NVIDIA based motherboards when dealing with Windows 98. I think a VIA or SiS based one would be a much better choice. Also another P965 board should work. Are you planning any DOS gaming on this rig?

cyclone3d wrote:

What version of SETUPDS is being used? Is it a modified one?

No, it's an unmodified one from the driver package downloaded directly from Yamaha.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 19 of 122, by Pabloz

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Kamerat wrote:
Pabloz wrote:
i can´t find a P5B motheboard here, but i was able to find one that might work: […]
Show full quote

i can´t find a P5B motheboard here, but i was able to find one that might work:

MSI P6N SLI Platinum (Chipset • NVIDIA® nForce 650i SLI ). I checked the bios manual and it does have IRQ Resource Setup , to make irq5 reserved.

other motherboard i liked was a

Asrock 4coredual-sata2 (it has pci-e and also has AGP 8x slot), which would be awesome for compatibility. but i read the manual and it has VIA® PT880 Pro/PT880 Ultra Chipsets. And in the manual i could not find the IRQ resource setup, so that makes me think that i might not be able to make it reserved, crappy shortened bios.

I would stay away from any NVIDIA based motherboards when dealing with Windows 98. I think a VIA or SiS based one would be a much better choice. Also another P965 board should work. Are you planning any DOS gaming on this rig?

true, im trying to build a 775 for retro gig with a yamaha pro soundcard PCI
but my main problem is how open the BIOS is of setting up everything to make it work, for example the asrock one with via chipset is very limited, and i could not find IRQ reservation on the manual

the intel P965 was not very common here, most of the stuff has nvidia chipset, i found someone selling an asus P5KPL/EPU, Intel G31 /ICH7 chipset, but you are limited on what settings the bios let you enable or disable. Its kind of complicated because the manuals not always show you all the settings possible.