First post, by rwkaye
Hi
I have been setting up old computers recently for a number of different applications. You guys have been the most helpful resource I have found on old hardware - thank you!
What I want to do is to fill an old PC with ISA sound cards (at least 2, and 3 or 4 if possible) and use it as a synthesiser for music. This seemed a good use for old gear. I am programming the OPL3 chip directly (and I this works fine) using the IO ports directly. I only need the OPL3 chip and the mixer on the soundcards. My experiments show that in principle this should be possible, at least with some cards.
I am working under linux because this seems much much easier than the alternatives. I'm using isapnptools to configure ISA PnP.
After trying a number of cards, the sound/price I liked best was from a MED3700 card (by expertcolor or dataexpert, I guess its the same). This is a OPL3-SA3 using the YMF719E-S yamaha chip. I have two of these cards, but I can't get them to both work in the same computer. (Though two or three different cards in the computer are fine.) Is this possible under the ISA PnP spec?
Under ISA PnP, both cards identify themselves as "YHM0800" with serial ID
0f ff ff ff ff 00 08 a8 65
(I'm using pnpdump) and there doesn't seem to be anything else I can see. pnpdump reports only one of these cards when there are two. Does this mean that the ISA PnP system will never be able to distinguish them? If so that would be very disappointing.... But I hoped that someone might know a workaround...
I am fairly technically minded. If it is possible, e.g. with a patch to isapnptools or a small hardware mod I am probably up for that.
thanks!
Richard