I tried the Win95 drivers and that helps! So the issue only occurs with the built-in WDM drivers.

Also, do you know what the 'reserved' device the AZT2320 requires does?

Yep, I have tested the new version, on my Pentium it now configures both cards properly.

The only issue left for me and the ESS1869 cards is that they do not configure on my slower XT or 286 systems.

The thing is, on the XT, ESSCFG crashes, so it might be using some non-8086 instructions. However, on the 286, ESSCFG works perfectly for my ESS1869 cards, so ESSCFG must be doing something that UNISOUND isn't.

Is there anything I can do to help you track down this bug so we can use the 1869 cards on XT and 286 class computers?

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-21, 05:56:

I tried the Win95 drivers and that helps! So the issue only occurs with the built-in WDM drivers.

Also, do you know what the 'reserved' device the AZT2320 requires does?

Great. You got it solved then.
I have no idea about a 'reserved' device. It is not present in my card... I guess it is not important.

canthearu wrote on 2020-04-21, 11:22:

The only issue left for me and the ESS1869 cards is that they do not configure on my slower XT or 286 systems.

I fixed the problem with ES1869 cards in slow systems using an alternative init method. I updated the tool in the main post (v0.68d) as I think it is stable now. Check it and let me know.

Now ES1869 card inits and works well. Only one little 'issue': In very slow systems you can not use /R switch with an ES1869, it will show zero values and card will stop working and you'll have to run Unisound again to re-init.

I am getting pretty good results with v0.68d.

On my 286, it seems to work on all my ESS1869 cards.

On my XT, it also works with ESS1869 Card 1 and 2, but not card 3. Not perfect, but not bad for an XT (ESSCFG doesn't work on my XT at all, so I can't test it to see if it was a hardware incompatibility or not)

Other cards that work on XT

OPTi 82C925 - Super Sound 32 with wavetable - Doesn't work with Prince of Persia properly, seems to be a problem with compatibility with this card, not the XT system.
Sound Blaster 16 non-pnp CT2260 (soft irq/dma setup) - Works fine
Sound Blaster 16 full PNP CT2940 - Works fine
Crystal CX4237 - Acer Magic MP32 ISA card with Modem - Works fine
Crystal CX4236B - MP-4236PW generic ISA card - Works fine (this is the one JazeFox fixed)
Yamaha YMF719E-S - ATC-6631 generic ISA card - Works fine
Yamaha YMF719E-S - Another generic card - Works fine

So lots and lots of cards that will work just fine on an XT.

One feature request, instead of only grabbing the settings to configure the sound card with from the BLASTER environment variable, consider letting us set the settings up via command line or config file.

This is so that one can use
INSTALL=UNISOUND.EXE

in our config.sys batch files, set up the IDE interface, then load CD-ROM drivers within CONFIG.SYS

canthearu wrote on 2020-04-22, 13:51:

Other cards that work on XT […]
Show full quote

Other cards that work on XT

OPTi 82C925 - Super Sound 32 with wavetable - Doesn't work with Prince of Persia properly, seems to be a problem with compatibility with this card, not the XT system.
Sound Blaster 16 non-pnp CT2260 (soft irq/dma setup) - Works fine
Sound Blaster 16 full PNP CT2940 - Works fine
Crystal CX4237 - Acer Magic MP32 ISA card with Modem - Works fine
Crystal CX4236B - MP-4236PW generic ISA card - Works fine (this is the one JazeFox fixed)
Yamaha YMF719E-S - ATC-6631 generic ISA card - Works fine
Yamaha YMF719E-S - Another generic card - Works fine

So lots and lots of cards that will work just fine on an XT.

Thank you for testing! Should be useful for other users using XT machines as well.

canthearu wrote on 2020-04-22, 14:05:

One feature request, instead of only grabbing the settings to configure the sound card with from the BLASTER environment variabl […]
Show full quote

One feature request, instead of only grabbing the settings to configure the sound card with from the BLASTER environment variable, consider letting us set the settings up via command line or config file.

This is so that one can use
INSTALL=UNISOUND.EXE

in our config.sys batch files, set up the IDE interface, then load CD-ROM drivers within CONFIG.SYS

I want to keep the tool's usage as it is at this point. It also would add unneeded size overhead.

The only benefit would be what you said about CD-ROM, but in fact it is not, because, as I said to other user here in another thread, you can load the CD driver after Unisound using a device driver loader like DEVLOAD (https://www.hiren.info/downloads/dos-files), and it works very well, I tested it across multiple cards and systems. You have to activate the IDE using the Cxxx parameter in BLASTER environment var (IDE port base address).

Usage example (using PnP SB16):

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6 C168
UNISOUND.COM
DEVLOAD VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:MSCD001
MSCDEX /D:MSCD001

I would use SHSUCDX instead of MSCDEX for less memory footprint, but it's a matter of what you like more.
That's it.

Wow terrific project! A must have. Will try later thank you!

This is great!! What an amazing tool, very useful for us that constantly switch cards from one system to another. Will test with various cards and report back. Gonna take some time though, as I'm packing everything because I'm moving.

Just out of curiosity, why did you select DMA 1/1 as default values for SB, when the more common 1/5 is the de-facto standard (and default) of those cards?

Just saw a message from Phil to give this project some love 😉
Great idea and nice work.

Just like to drop some thanks and support for this, Been trying it out with a few cards, works great with Aztech PnP cards (2320)
Very handy tool 😀

Just want to thank you for this! I tried it with my Tweener PC with SB AWE 64 Gold and it works! I'll use this tool for the rest of my retro systems too.

I quoted your tool in my PC setup: https://github.com/yeokm1/retro-configs/tree/ … ster/tweener-pc

is there a provision to NOT assign an I/O port to the CQM on an AWE card?

Thanks to everyone for your feedback!

Now regarding last questions:

Am386DX-40 wrote on 2020-04-29, 16:13:

Just out of curiosity, why did you select DMA 1/1 as default values for SB, when the more common 1/5 is the de-facto standard (and default) of those cards?

Well, it was a personal decision, but i kept it at release time because, altough I guess everyone is using BLASTER environment variable to configure the card with Unisound, if someone don't set it, the DMA 1/1 as default is the most compatible setting. Some 386/486 chipsets for example ( crappy OPTi chipsets I tested) don't work well, or don't work at all with SB high DMAs, and some progs like Impulse Tracker, Cubic Player, or some games, lock up or hang the computer, but they work well with HDMA set to a low DMA value (mostly for Creative cards). Also cards like CT4170 (ViBRA 16XV chip) or ALS100+/ALS120 don't accept High DMA values, but they can do 16 bit using low DMA and some tricks.

yeokm1 wrote on 2020-05-05, 13:59:

Just want to thank you for this! I tried it with my Tweener PC with SB AWE 64 Gold and it works! I'll use this tool for the rest of my retro systems too.

Great!
I see in your picture that you're using an invalid parameter (/CN1), it's not an issue, because the tool ignores it, but it's not correct. If you wanted to select a card number, this is not needed if you have only 1 PnP card installed in your system, and if you have more than 1, the 1st card don't require a parameter to be set. The 2nd and the following PnP cards would require /C2 , /C3 .... (without 'N').

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-05-05, 14:14:

is there a provision to NOT assign an I/O port to the CQM on an AWE card?

Yes! It can be done, so I take note, to add this to the next version. It can be very useful if you have a real OPL card plugged together with an AWE+CQM card or an OPL-less SB16+CQM card. (Or a new project card...? 😉)

JazeFox wrote on 2020-05-05, 14:49:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-05-05, 14:14:

is there a provision to NOT assign an I/O port to the CQM on an AWE card?

Yes! It can be done, so I take note, to add this to the next version. It can be very useful if you have a real OPL card plugged together with an AWE+CQM card or an OPL-less SB16+CQM card. (Or a new project card...? 😉)

Absolutely awesome! It will make this tool the most recommended one for our project (in signature)! We've been looking for such an elegant solution of this issue since the very start of it 😀

JazeFox wrote on 2020-05-05, 14:49:

Great!
I see in your picture that you're using an invalid parameter (/CN1), it's not an issue, because the tool ignores it, but it's not correct. If you wanted to select a card number, this is not needed if you have only 1 PnP card installed in your system, and if you have more than 1, the 1st card don't require a parameter to be set. The 2nd and the following PnP cards would require /C2 , /C3 .... (without 'N').

Thanks for pointing it out! Must have been been a typo, will correct it!

Tool updated to v0.70b

Changelog:

• Added FM/OPL Base address as user-configurable. Default value = 388.
  F0 to disable (not all cards allow to disable or change this port!). Accepted values: 388, 398, 3A8, 0. This option is useful, for example, to disable or remap CQM synth in SB cards if you use together with other card with a genuine OPL chip tied to 388, or useful for the future "AWE64 Legacy" project, wich will mount a genuine OPL chip.
  Note that only a few games (like Dynblaster, I tried a lot of games and only found the issue with Dynablaster) will try to use FM synth on SB ports 2x0, and it will output FM sound (in SB with CQM for example) anyway. In that rare cases, set FM volume to zero to avoid it.
• Added new user-configurable mixer volume values: Wave/DAC, FM/Synth, Line-in. The new values are set with new command-line arguments: /VW /VF /VL . Defaults: Master:85% , Wave/DAC: 80% , FM/Synth: 80%, Line-in: 50%

The download link is updated at the end of the first post as usual:
UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

Thank you, Sir! 😀

One small request - could you please also add the command line parameter to set the CD In volume? We're using it to feed the WaveBlaster 26-pin audio out. It would be also useful to play games that store their soundtracks in CD Red Book audio.

Used it on my Philips PCA750AF YM719E-S based card today, worked a treat! I will definitely add it to my collection of handy DOS utilities.