Yes, I did. Something is not right and I don't have the knowledge to pin point what it is. Gave it away to the guy who was helping me repair Toshiba.

Would this sound card be worth it: Packard Bell I38-MMSN824? What it looks like to me is the Sound Galaxy 16 Basic/Pro/Washington that supports the Covox Speech Thing, Disney Sound Source, Windows Sound System, Sound Blaster Pro 2 and Adlib compatible, MPU-401 with a WaveTable header, 3 CD drive headers (Sony, Mitsumi, and Panasonic), and EXPCON header (parallel port). Am I wrong on the specs here? The card doesn't have an amplifier (since it's a Packard Bell branded card).

bjwil1991 wrote:

Would this sound card be worth it: Packard Bell I38-MMSN824? What it looks like to me is the Sound Galaxy 16 Basic/Pro/Washington that supports the Covox Speech Thing, Disney Sound Source, Windows Sound System, Sound Blaster Pro 2 and Adlib compatible, MPU-401 with a WaveTable header, 3 CD drive headers (Sony, Mitsumi, and Panasonic), and EXPCON header (parallel port). Am I wrong on the specs here? The card doesn't have an amplifier (since it's a Packard Bell branded card).

Only the first gen cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip support Covox/DSS

The 824 is 3rd gen.

See here for a complete list:
Aztech Sound Galaxy cards

cyclone3d wrote:

Only the first gen cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip support Covox/DSS […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote:

Would this sound card be worth it: Packard Bell I38-MMSN824? What it looks like to me is the Sound Galaxy 16 Basic/Pro/Washington that supports the Covox Speech Thing, Disney Sound Source, Windows Sound System, Sound Blaster Pro 2 and Adlib compatible, MPU-401 with a WaveTable header, 3 CD drive headers (Sony, Mitsumi, and Panasonic), and EXPCON header (parallel port). Am I wrong on the specs here? The card doesn't have an amplifier (since it's a Packard Bell branded card).

Only the first gen cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip support Covox/DSS

The 824 is 3rd gen.

See here for a complete list:
Aztech Sound Galaxy cards

Arrgh. The issue with the 1st gen. cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip is the MPU-401 isn't compatible for MS-DOS, except for Windows 3.11 (95 and higher won't work with it, I believe).

bjwil1991 wrote:

Arrgh. The issue with the 1st gen. cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip is the MPU-401 isn't compatible for MS-DOS, except for Windows 3.11 (95 and higher won't work with it, I believe).

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the original Sound Blaster MIDI ports.
If you are looking for drivers for the I38-MMSN824, here you go:

jesolo wrote:

Finding drivers these days for these Multimedia Pro cards is quite difficult, since Packard Bell no longer host these on their s […]
Show full quote

Finding drivers these days for these Multimedia Pro cards is quite difficult, since Packard Bell no longer host these on their server, nor does Aztech Labs.
However, I've been able to track down various drivers over the years from other sources.

Unfortunately, in the case of this model (I38-MMSN837), I'm not entirely sure which one of the Multimedia Pro driver sets is for this card but, it should be one of these two that I've attached below. Both of these has support for the 3D surround sound function.
I'm inclined to say that the MP163D6 driver set is probably the one.

Try installing the first set first and see whether the installation program recognises the card. If not, try the other set.
If the first one works, try the other one as well, as I would like to establish which of these driver sets actually does work with this particular model number.

My card ended up having some issues but I just want to say that on my I38-MMSN834 Packard Bell AzTech 2316 that these drivers did install and work. Thanks!

Your lucky the card works, all 5 of my Aztec/Crystal/PB sound cards are fried and won’t detect.

Never had good luck with those cards.

But the MWAVE cards I have keep going

rmay635703 wrote:

Your lucky the card works, all 5 of my Aztec/Crystal/PB sound cards are fried and won’t detect.

Never had good luck with those cards.

But the MWAVE cards I have keep going

Won't detect where? Under DOS or under Windows?
You need to make sure you are using the correct driver package for your particular model.
List the model numbers of the cards that don't work.

I have an Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro (non-16) that won't get detected as the ISA video card in my one system took over the IRQ and Address space, so I will install it in another system and see what happens (had to do some repairs on the card itself) and the drivers are correct. I have an Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro 16 that's in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus that works out of the blue and using the drivers and software the card came with when I bought it new back in the summertime from eBay.

jesolo wrote:

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote:

Arrgh. The issue with the 1st gen. cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip is the MPU-401 isn't compatible for MS-DOS, except for Windows 3.11 (95 and higher won't work with it, I believe).

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the original Sound Blaster MIDI ports.
If you are looking for drivers for the I38-MMSN824, here you go:

VY212.RAR

I just acquired exactly this card, so thanks for posting these drivers. However I do have a few questions:
1 It seems it's best to just let Windows 98 use the built-in Washington 16 drivers, being that this driver set only contains 3.1/95 drivers?
2 There's a tool to switch the card between sbpro and wss mode. When would one need to use this tool, it seems my card is in sbpro mode yet it works fine for Windows audio? Is this only relevant for DOS games?
3 The config tool adds a reference to eeprom.sys to config.sys and azcal.exe to AutoExec.bat, any idea what these do? Removing them doesn't seem to impact anything...
4 The main issue I have with this card is audio in Doom. Duke3D and Quake work fine. Doom has no digital audio in Windows (adlib and mpu301 work fine). In Dos, I need to start Doom twice for sound to work. If I start Duke3D and then Doom, Doom's audio is again broken until I start it twice. Any idea what might be causing this?

For issue 4, I've tried slowing down the PC, various settings in the config tool, playing with BIOS settings (but my PC is very limited in these) nothing helps. I did notice that I need to slow down the PC for demofm.exe not to output garbage.

Oetker wrote:

I just acquired exactly this card, so thanks for posting these drivers. However I do have a few questions: 1 It seems it's best […]
Show full quote

jesolo wrote:

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the original Sound Blaster MIDI ports.
If you are looking for drivers for the I38-MMSN824, here you go:

The attachment VY212.RAR is no longer available

I just acquired exactly this card, so thanks for posting these drivers. However I do have a few questions:
1 It seems it's best to just let Windows 98 use the built-in Washington 16 drivers, being that this driver set only contains 3.1/95 drivers?
2 There's a tool to switch the card between sbpro and wss mode. When would one need to use this tool, it seems my card is in sbpro mode yet it works fine for Windows audio? Is this only relevant for DOS games?
3 The config tool adds a reference to eeprom.sys to config.sys and azcal.exe to AutoExec.bat, any idea what these do? Removing them doesn't seem to impact anything...
4 The main issue I have with this card is audio in Doom. Duke3D and Quake work fine. Doom has no digital audio in Windows (adlib and mpu301 work fine). In Dos, I need to start Doom twice for sound to work. If I start Duke3D and then Doom, Doom's audio is again broken until I start it twice. Any idea what might be causing this?

For issue 4, I've tried slowing down the PC, various settings in the config tool, playing with BIOS settings (but my PC is very limited in these) nothing helps. I did notice that I need to slow down the PC for demofm.exe not to output garbage.

1. Yes, it should work fine. It should be similar than the attached list that was made available around the time Windows 95 was released.
2. You only switch between the two modes under a real DOS environment. Sound Blaster Pro supports a maximum sampling rate of 22.5 kHz in 8-bit stereo, whereas Windows Sound System supports a maximum sampling rate of 48 kHz in 16-bit stereo. For software that supported a higher sampling rate, this was useful but, most DOS games from that era (1993 to 1995) did not. Under Windows, "Sound Blaster compatibility" becomes irrelevant, since Windows uses its own driver. Therefore, so long as the hardware has an appropriate Windows driver, then your software should be able to "talk" to it. You are then purely limited by what the hardware's capabilities are. All Sound Galaxy sound cards (with the exception of your very first cards, like the BX, NX & NX Pro range) were full 16-bit 44.1 KHz stereo sound cards under Windows.
3. The EEPROM.SYS device driver is to "recall" the settings of the sound card stored in EEPROM (volume, etc.). I can't seem to recall now what AZCAL.EXE does but, I've also removed it from my setup files for those cards that it came with.
4. I presume that you are in SBPRO mode and not in WSS mode? What sound card are you selecting in the game's setup menu? Your DMA channel must be 1. Is your SET BLASTER environment variable properly defined in your Autoexec.bat file? Make sure you select the same DMA & IRQ settings as what your sound card is configured as. If IRQ 5 doesn't work, try IRQ 7.

.

jesolo wrote:

[*]I presume that you are in SBPRO mode and not in WSS mode? What sound card are you selecting in the game's setup menu? Your DMA channel must be 1. Is your SET BLASTER environment variable properly defined in your Autoexec.bat file? Make sure you select the same DMA & IRQ settings as what your sound card is configured as. If IRQ 5 doesn't work, try IRQ 7.[/list].

Yes I'm in sbpro mode, and the BLASTER environment variable matches what I've set in config.exe and Doom's setup matches this as well. I'll try setting the card to IRQ 7 and setting that in Doom as well. Really the strange thing is that starting the game twice fixes audio, at least in Dos.

Edit: Irq 7 has the same issue.

jesolo wrote on 2018-01-18, 21:16:

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote:

Arrgh. The issue with the 1st gen. cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip is the MPU-401 isn't compatible for MS-DOS, except for Windows 3.11 (95 and higher won't work with it, I believe).

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the original Sound Blaster MIDI ports.
If you are looking for drivers for the I38-MMSN824, here you go:
VY212.RAR

I've got this card.
But I'm bit confused... Does it have general midi and if so how do you configure it in dos environment?

Kekkula wrote on 2023-02-02, 18:20:

jesolo wrote on 2018-01-18, 21:16:

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote:

Arrgh. The issue with the 1st gen. cards with the AZTSSPT0592-U01 chip is the MPU-401 isn't compatible for MS-DOS, except for Windows 3.11 (95 and higher won't work with it, I believe).

Actually, the MIDI port on these 1st generation cards aren't MPU-401 compatible at all. They are, however, compatible with the original Sound Blaster MIDI ports.
If you are looking for drivers for the I38-MMSN824, here you go:
VY212.RAR

I've got this card.
But I'm bit confused... Does it have general midi and if so how do you configure it in dos environment?

I think you're confusing General MIDI (which is a standard for interpreting MIDI messages) with what manufacturers from those days referred to as "wavetable synthesis".
Also, the MPU-401 MIDI interface is just an interface (designed by Roland) that allowed musicians from the 1980's to connect their synthesiser keyboards or MIDI equipment (like a Roland MT-32) to a computer.

To answer your question:.

No, this sound card does not have wavetable synthesis.
It does, however, have a UART mode MPU-401 MIDI interface as well as a Wave Blaster connector. The latter allowed a user to connect a "wavetable" MIDI daughter board which would contain sampled sounds and would therefore allow a user to play back MIDI music with much better sound quality (compared to FM synthesis).

The sound card does have the Yamaha OPL-3 FM synthesis chip which makes it Adlib compatible. This was used by most games to play back music (at a much cheaper cost) but, the sound quality is not comparable to wavetable synthesis. Under Windows, with the appropriate MIDI mapper driver, you can play back MIDI files using the Yamaha OPL-3 chip.

Thanks for your reply.
I just wondered because dosdays site listed similar looking card as Washington 16 and logos above the card included general midi logo.
Waverider cards have wavetable synthesis if I understood correctly.
This card has one of the best fm sound quality of all the isa sound cards I own... And I have quite a few.

Kekkula wrote on 2023-02-02, 20:31:

Thanks for your reply. I just wondered because dosdays site listed similar looking card as Washington 16 and logos above the car […]
Show full quote

Thanks for your reply.
I just wondered because dosdays site listed similar looking card as Washington 16 and logos above the card included general midi logo.
Waverider cards have wavetable synthesis if I understood correctly.
This card has one of the best fm sound quality of all the isa sound cards I own... And I have quite a few.

The MMSN-826 Waverider card was basically identical to this plus an ICS synth chip and sample ROM for GM. Not SC55-level great, but very acceptable and better than all the QSR1000 (and indeed later Samsung-based Aztech) sound cards with Wavetable

This is 3rd gen Aztech, with real OPL3 (or 1:1 clone on some cards), very low self-noise and pretty neutral filters, so yes, FM (and DA) will sound excellent.