First post, by Ozzuneoj
- Rank
- l33t
I've seen a few posts about this card around here over the years but very little information, recordings or other notes about them. It might be helpful if we compile any known links, files or other information about these cards here. I'll start off with pictures of my card. I got this one in a scrap lot, which is why it is missing the rear bracket. Surprisingly I also found driver disks being sold online around the same time, so I grabbed those too.
Here is a Google Drive link to the contents of these disks.
If someone could have this uploaded to Vogons drivers that might be helpful. I did notice that the installers are a bit picky about the location and the environment in which they are installed, so you may need to copy them to a specific directory to get them to work properly. For example, I think the contents of the installation disk need to be extracted at the root of the drive.
So far, the installation media appears to "work" but I have yet to get the card working. The system I have it installed in is probably just too new or fast for the card (it is a Pentium 2 450Mhz). The problem I have is that the DOS driver installs but whenever it attempts to test the card it says it is not physically installed in the system, even though all of the other parts of the installation appear to work. The Windows driver also attempts to load but it says it cannot find any of the card's components at any of the interrupts specified.
I can totally rule out system speed by testing this in the 386sx I just finished putting together. I will report back here once I've tested this.
In the mean time, if anyone has any useful ARIA related links, threads, files, repositories, FTPs, articles or anecdotes, please post them here! A list of games\applications that natively support the ARIA's proprietary MIDI functionality would be most helpful too.
The Sierra Semiconductor ARIA16 is a pretty odd soundcard chipset that evidently requires a lot of direct software support and isn't universally compatible with MPU-401 MIDI or FM (OPL2\3) music. I guess even SoundBlaster digital playback requires some extra software. In this way it reminds me of the Gravis Ultrasound. Once I can get mine working I hope to learn more about it and whether it is worth using in a retro PC or if it is better left as a neat collectors item in a box somewhere. 😀
Interesting things I've noted about this particular card:
*It has sockets for more memory, where as some versions just have empty solder points.
*There are absolutely NO jumpers or DIP switches on this, which is very different from the rarer Diamond Sonic Pro Aria16 card.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.