As a fellow owner of the SB128, any sound card is better than that trash.

Craptastic software EAX and the worst sounding FM synth in existence are two major reasons to ditch it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-05-12, 20:19:

As a fellow owner of the SB128, any sound card is better than that trash.

Craptastic software EAX and the worst sounding FM synth in existence are two major reasons to ditch it.

Indeed, the emulation is a JOKE... 🤣. At first I thought it was broken, but it is just BAD.

Anyways, that generic Vortex 2 should be as good as a "normal" branded Vortex 2 or should I be worried?

I don't have any personal experience with Aureal 2 cards, so someone else will have to chime in on that. All I'm saying is, pretty much any other PCI sound card will give you a better experience in DOS games than a SB128.

I can vouch for a Yamaha YMF 724 or a 744 card, but only if your motherboard supports either DDMA or SB-Link.Without one of those, DOS game compatibility is kinda hit and miss on those 7x4 cards.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-05-12, 20:43:

I don't have any personal experience with Aureal 2 cards, so someone else will have to chime in on that. All I'm saying is, pretty much any other PCI sound card will give you a better experience in DOS games than a SB128.

I can vouch for a Yamaha YMF 724 or a 744 card, but only if your motherboard supports either DDMA or SB-Link.Without one of those, DOS game compatibility is kinda hit and miss on those 7x4 cards.

My MB is an Asus A7V133 (VIA KT133A (VT8363A) / VT82C686B) paired with an Atlhon XP, and as far as I know is DDMA compatible.

Well that Aureal card looks really, really shady - but as already mentioned, it's hardly likely to be worse than the SB128, and possibly quite a bit better. Unless it's expensive I'd go for it.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-12, 21:37:

Well that Aureal card looks really, really shady - but as already mentioned, it's hardly likely to be worse than the SB128, and possibly quite a bit better. Unless it's expensive I'd go for it.

Indeed. I can find some Sound Blasters Live, Audigy 1 and 2 pretty easily around here also, but at twice the cost (or more) of that shady Vortex 2.

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-12, 21:44:

dionb wrote on 2020-05-12, 21:37:

Well that Aureal card looks really, really shady - but as already mentioned, it's hardly likely to be worse than the SB128, and possibly quite a bit better. Unless it's expensive I'd go for it.

Indeed. I can find some Sound Blasters Live, Audigy 1 and 2 pretty easily around here also, but at twice the cost (or more) of that shady Vortex 2.

Where's "here"? In my part of the woods (NL) anything Aureal tends to command a premium over SBLives, which you can hardly give away...

In any event, none of the above are ideal for DOS, but as a Windows card SBLive/Audigy is probably superior. Given you have a motherboard with DDMA, the ESS Solo would be the best choice for a PCI card under DOS - it 'just works' without TSR, just initialize in config.sys and you're good to go. Yamaha cards might also use DDMA, but never tried that myself. They will give you better sound quality, in any case, although ESS Solo is pretty good too, better by far than the Creative PCI offerings or indeed Aureal.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-12, 21:55:

Where's "here"? In my part of the woods (NL) anything Aureal tends to command a premium over SBLives, which you can hardly give away...

In any event, none of the above are ideal for DOS, but as a Windows card SBLive/Audigy is probably superior. Given you have a motherboard with DDMA, the ESS Solo would be the best choice for a PCI card under DOS - it 'just works' without TSR, just initialize in config.sys and you're good to go. Yamaha cards might also use DDMA, but never tried that myself. They will give you better sound quality, in any case, although ESS Solo is pretty good too, better by far than the Creative PCI offerings or indeed Aureal.

I'm from Brazil...

To be honest, I actually have two "retro" systems. System 2 has an ISA slot, and I also happen to have two sound blaster ISA cards. A SB16 PNP (CT2950, which is installed currently in it) and a Sound Blaster Pro 2.
The problem is that this system is much slower for W98/XP, the SB16 feels a little buggy in some newer W98 games (using default W98 driver), and to top it off the system freezes once in a while during game isntall or loading windows (I'm not sure whats going on, i would need to troubleshoot to find the culprit).

So, the point is the Atlhon XP system is running rock solid, and i do prefer to have only one system connected due to space/cabling constraints.
I could hunt down a Tualatin for the System 2 to at least close the gap, but the prices are pretty high. Upgrading the PCI sound card on the System 1 would be much cheaper and easier.

The specs of the machines are:

System 1:
Atlhon XP @ 100x20 (2ghz)
Asus A7V133 (Via KT133A)
512mb PC133 @ 133mhz (Cas 3)
Sound Blaster PCI 128 (ES1371)
Voodoo 3 PCI 16mb
Dual boot W98 SE / XP SP3

System 2:
Pentium 3 Coppermine S370 w/ "Slocket" adapter @ 100x7,5 (750mhz)
Asus P2B-F (Intel 440bx)
512mb PC133 @ 100mhz (Cas 3)
Sound Blaster 16 PNP ISA (CT2950)
Nvidia Vanta LT 16mb AGP
Voodoo 1 PCI 4mb (Diamond Monster 3D)
Dual boot W98 SE / XP SP3

If you have two systems, you will make your life much easier to split OSs. System1 is a great late Win98 system (and pretty acceptable early XP too), system 2 is a bit over-specced for DOS, but it can do it better than sytem 1. You can underclock the CPU to 66MHz FSB (500MHz). Try DOS on system 2, maybe that will be stable. You can use the SBPro2 and SB16 at the same time, one in each ISA slot (P2B-F has two). Configure the CT1600 with A220 I7 D1 and the CT2950 with A240 I5 D0 or 3 (and H5 P330). Use the CT1600 for early titles that use FM synth and SBPro2 8b audio, use the CT2950 for later ones that do 16b audio. Then you don't need to worry about DOS-compatibility on system 1.

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-12, 21:34:

My MB is an Asus A7V133 (VIA KT133A (VT8363A) / VT82C686B) paired with an Atlhon XP, and as far as I know is DDMA compatible.

That should work fine, I have an Abit KT7A-RAID which uses the same KT133A+VT82C686B combo and the YMF724 runs great on it. You get an awesome sounding wave table for General Midi under Win98, and genuine OPL3 for FM synthesis under both Win98 and DOS. I stopped using that card a few months ago since my motherboard actually has an ISA slot, but it worked very well for me during that time.

As mentioned above, an ESS Solo-1 is even simpler to set up and possibly easier to find, though I've never used one myself. You lose out on General Midi and genuine OPL3, but its proprietary ESFM does sound pretty good to my ears.

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-12, 19:58:

Currently i have a Sound Blaster PCI 128 (ES1371 Chip) in my retro rig, and it does not have an ISA slot. […]
Show full quote

Currently i have a Sound Blaster PCI 128 (ES1371 Chip) in my retro rig, and it does not have an ISA slot.

I have found a cheap unbranded Vortex 2 card, and I would like to know if it's a worthy upgrade for the SBPCI in general, playing dos games with sb16/fm emulation (not considering the major selling point - the A3D).
The card is this:

https://imgur.com/F36b0pa

That PCB looks almost like perfboard, but as long as it works .

dionb wrote on 2020-05-12, 22:42:

If you have two systems, you will make your life much easier to split OSs. System1 is a great late Win98 system (and pretty acceptable early XP too), system 2 is a bit over-specced for DOS, but it can do it better than sytem 1. You can underclock the CPU to 66MHz FSB (500MHz). Try DOS on system 2, maybe that will be stable. You can use the SBPro2 and SB16 at the same time, one in each ISA slot (P2B-F has two). Configure the CT1600 with A220 I7 D1 and the CT2950 with A240 I5 D0 or 3 (and H5 P330). Use the CT1600 for early titles that use FM synth and SBPro2 8b audio, use the CT2950 for later ones that do 16b audio. Then you don't need to worry about DOS-compatibility on system 1.

I might give this a try, but i will have to get some kind of audio mixer to connect the three soundcards to one output (my headphones), to avoid changing plugs all the time.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-05-13, 04:27:

That should work fine, I have an Abit KT7A-RAID which uses the same KT133A+VT82C686B combo and the YMF724 runs great on it. You get an awesome sounding wave table for General Midi under Win98, and genuine OPL3 for FM synthesis under both Win98 and DOS. I stopped using that card a few months ago since my motherboard actually has an ISA slot, but it worked very well for me during that time.

As mentioned above, an ESS Solo-1 is even simpler to set up and possibly easier to find, though I've never used one myself. You lose out on General Midi and genuine OPL3, but its proprietary ESFM does sound pretty good to my ears.

I found a ESS Solo-1 (the Chinese one from Phils video) about the same price as the cheap Vortex 2 i mentioned. The Yamaha i couldn't find any in the local market.
But this Solo-1 doesn't have the CD Audio connector, for Windows 98 it shouldn't be a problem if i use CDDA right? But what about DOS cd-audio?

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-13, 14:32:

But this Solo-1 doesn't have the CD Audio connector, for Windows 98 it shouldn't be a problem if i use CDDA right? But what about DOS cd-audio?

I think using digital audio without a cable requires WDM drivers under Win98, and those are sometimes flaky in terms of game compatibility.

As for DOS, I don't think you'll get any CD audio without the cable. However, if your CD drive has a headphone jack, you might be able to connect that to the Line In port of the ESS card.

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-13, 14:32:

[...]

I might give this a try, but i will have to get some kind of audio mixer to connect the three soundcards to one output (my headphones), to avoid changing plugs all the time.

You can also connect the line-out of one to the line-in of the second, then connect the headphones to the output of the second. You can even daisy-chain a third, in the same way, although that might get noisy.

[...]

I found a ESS Solo-1 (the Chinese one from Phils video) about the same price as the cheap Vortex 2 i mentioned. The Yamaha i couldn't find any in the local market.
But this Solo-1 doesn't have the CD Audio connector, for Windows 98 it shouldn't be a problem if i use CDDA right? But what about DOS cd-audio?

Doesn't have the connector - does it have the holes on the PCB though? If it does, you could just add the header. I added a Wavetable header to an ESS Solo-1 board, it worked fine 😀

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-05-13, 15:33:

I think using digital audio without a cable requires WDM drivers under Win98, and those are sometimes flaky in terms of game compatibility.

As for DOS, I don't think you'll get any CD audio without the cable. However, if your CD drive has a headphone jack, you might be able to connect that to the Line In port of the ESS card.

In Phils review video he's using a WDM driver as default for W98.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-13, 16:11:

You can also connect the line-out of one to the line-in of the second, then connect the headphones to the output of the second. You can even daisy-chain a third, in the same way, although that might get noisy.

Humm i forgot about that. Could be a solution, at least for the dual ISA system.

[...]
Doesn't have the connector - does it have the holes on the PCB though? If it does, you could just add the header. I added a Wavetable header to an ESS Solo-1 board, it worked fine 😀

It does have the holes from what i can see:

https://imgur.com/T2bkzFf

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-13, 16:28:

[...]

It does have the holes from what i can see:

https://imgur.com/T2bkzFf

Looks like somebody has quite a creative homebrew sound card industry going there... you can't get much more minimalist than that. If shipping wasn't so horrendous I'd order one just out of curiosity. Certainly looks like the holes & traces are there, so you could take a gamble.

Then again, if you only use the ISA system for DOS it doesn't really matter whether this one does analog audio. But you could still add it just in case & for the challenge/fun.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-13, 20:43:

Looks like somebody has quite a creative homebrew sound card industry going there... you can't get much more minimalist than that. If shipping wasn't so horrendous I'd order one just out of curiosity. Certainly looks like the holes & traces are there, so you could take a gamble.

Then again, if you only use the ISA system for DOS it doesn't really matter whether this one does analog audio. But you could still add it just in case & for the challenge/fun.

Lol... indeed.

Well, today ive spent some time troubleshooting the System 2 and got it running stable, changed some ram sticks and removed an extra PCI card that i wasnt using and apparently it works fine now.
Did a full pass in memtest86+ without errors.

Then ive installed the SB16 windows 95/98 drivers and the dos mode drivers from phils site. Well, compared to the ES1371 the fm synth in dos is NIGHT and DAY!! Lol.
I havent tried the SB Pro 2 CT1600 yet (i believe it have the Yamaha FM chip onboard right)? Should be even nicer when paired with the CT2950 like you said.

The only issue i have now is with the mouse.. Im using a wireless usb mouse (Logitech G603) and usb keyboard. The P2B-F bios doesnt have a "USB Legacy Mode" and i cant enable the mouse in DOS (tried with cutemouse driver).
I had to hunt down an old mouse i had stored (MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 USB) and used it with a USB to PS/2 adapter, then cutemouse worked. But i would like to use my other mouse which is miles better.

That´s my only gripe right now.
I´m also ordering a KVM 4 way VGA switch that also has usb and audio inputs/outputs, i would like to connect everything to it, and just switch the inputs without changing any cables.

CesarDRK wrote on 2020-05-13, 23:47:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Lol... indeed.

Well, today ive spent some time troubleshooting the System 2 and got it running stable, changed some ram sticks and removed an extra PCI card that i wasnt using and apparently it works fine now.
Did a full pass in memtest86+ without errors.

Then ive installed the SB16 windows 95/98 drivers and the dos mode drivers from phils site. Well, compared to the ES1371 the fm synth in dos is NIGHT and DAY!! Lol.
I havent tried the SB Pro 2 CT1600 yet (i believe it have the Yamaha FM chip onboard right)? Should be even nicer when paired with the CT2950 like you said.

Slightly nicer - people hate on Creative CQM, like your CT2950 has, but compared to that SB128 it's almost the same as real OPL3. Best thing is that you don't have to choose and can have both. Bigger reason (but still quite small) to use both cards: SB16 isn't totally SBPro2 compatible - the stereo on the few games that support stereo in SBPro2 mode is mixed up on an SB16. Not a show-stopper, and it is quite rare (most SBPro2 and older games just do mono), but again, you have both so might as well use them.

The only issue i have now is with the mouse.. Im using a wireless usb mouse (Logitech G603) and usb keyboard. The P2B-F bios doesnt have a "USB Legacy Mode" and i cant enable the mouse in DOS (tried with cutemouse driver).
I had to hunt down an old mouse i had stored (MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 USB) and used it with a USB to PS/2 adapter, then cutemouse worked. But i would like to use my other mouse which is miles better.

That could be a challenge without the legacy mode. The G603 doesn't support PS/2 anymore. The last Logitech mouse to do so was the MX518.

But... there are USBDOS drivers. I haven't tried them and I know of reports that they eat a lot of memory - but you could give it a go:
download/file.php?id=27967

This only works with UHCI USB controllers - but UHCI = Intel and P2B-F = Intel so you're good there.

That´s my only gripe right now.

I´m also ordering a KVM 4 way VGA switch that also has usb and audio inputs/outputs, i would like to connect everything to it, and just switch the inputs without changing any cables.

Oh oh, you're going down the rabbit hole 😜

Before you know it you will have multiple mixers, MIDI patchbays, KVM switches with serial and the works 😉

dionb wrote on 2020-05-14, 07:03:

Slightly nicer - people hate on Creative CQM, like your CT2950 has, but compared to that SB128 it's almost the same as real OPL3. Best thing is that you don't have to choose and can have both. Bigger reason (but still quite small) to use both cards: SB16 isn't totally SBPro2 compatible - the stereo on the few games that support stereo in SBPro2 mode is mixed up on an SB16. Not a show-stopper, and it is quite rare (most SBPro2 and older games just do mono), but again, you have both so might as well use them.

It´s happening !!

https://imgur.com/3RX2i6E

Just installed both, W98SE detected the pro fine after i went through "Add New Device Wizard".
Now i will try to configure both in MS-DOS mode, i´m just not sure HOW... 🤣.

I also found this crappy Audigy SE lying around.. Would it be worth it to replace the SB PCI with this one? I think i does not have DOS drivers, right?

https://imgur.com/B2k1csL

That could be a challenge without the legacy mode. The G603 doesn't support PS/2 anymore. The last Logitech mouse to do so was t […]
Show full quote

That could be a challenge without the legacy mode. The G603 doesn't support PS/2 anymore. The last Logitech mouse to do so was the MX518.
But... there are USBDOS drivers. I haven't tried them and I know of reports that they eat a lot of memory - but you could give it a go:
download/file.php?id=27967

This only works with UHCI USB controllers - but UHCI = Intel and P2B-F = Intel so you're good there.

I tried to load it, but my keyboard is also USB. So when i ran the USB driver loader (it is needed before the mouse and/or keyboard driver) i lost my keyboard and had to reboot...
I might add all commands to an batch file and try it out later.

Oh oh, you're going down the rabbit hole 😜
Before you know it you will have multiple mixers, MIDI patchbays, KVM switches with serial and the works 😉

😀