solid build. not super expensive but super compatible. I played through FFVII on a similar rig and it was better than playstation. A yamaha XG also sounds proper in FVII talking the real card not the soft synth.
Really neat build, excellent component selection and great use of various utils to cater to various eras. This build pretty well covers everything that I need 3 different machines to do 😁
Cheers guys!
I completely forgot that XG music in FF7 is also supported on a hardware level. I'll test that out with my YMF724 card when I get back to the game.
Nice build. I have something fairly similar, P2 266 (waiting on a 400mhz to arrive in the post), v3 3000, awe64 value & ymf744.
I am using an early asus p2b revision after trying a lucky star 440bx mobo which has sb link (my p2b does not). I had major problems getting the lucky star working with a ymf724 (simply would not recognise sblink in setupds) and a slew of other stability issues.
It's my "kinda fast dos glide pc with a few midi options and sb16/real opl3 support" pc. Built it for Tomb raider, Screamer 2, Descent 1 and more I've yet to discover. I definitely gotta try final fantasy for the XG music even tho im not really into the genre. Are you aware of any other games that use XG? Cheers
foil_fresh wrote on 2021-01-12, 15:30:Nice build. I have something fairly similar, P2 266 (waiting on a 400mhz to arrive in the post), v3 3000, awe64 value & ymf744.
Cheers! Does your Yamaha card have SPDIF out by any chance? Mine doesn't, and that's my only pet peeve with it.
I definitely gotta try final fantasy for the XG music even tho im not really into the genre.
Just fired it up for a test and it sounds really nice. For comparison purposes, I'm attaching the same clip from Sephiroth's theme recorded on my YMF724 using the XG MIDI option. No vocals that way of course, but the instruments sound a bit cleaner to me than with the AWE64 soundfont.
Are you aware of any other games that use XG? Cheers
Some late-era DOS games which use the Miles Sound System have it as a setup option. I just tried it with Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and it works great. That said, Heroes 2 also has CD audio music which is my preferred way to play it.
Good info about the Miles Sound System. I've got a YMF744 card in my PIII Win98 build, but I haven't really explored the topic of explicit XG support in games. Something to look into:
https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/sound-en … es-sound-system
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-01-12, 18:27:Cheers! Does your Yamaha card have SPDIF out by any chance?
No spdif unfortunately but it has barely any noise on the line out so I am not too bothered. I wonder if a solder modded spdif is possible using one of those asus spdif brackets?
Pierre32 wrote on 2021-01-12, 20:46:Good info about the Miles Sound System. I've got a YMF744 card in my PIII Win98 build, but I haven't really explored the topic of explicit XG support in games. Something to look into:
https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/sound-en … es-sound-system
Awesome, I will have a dig into a few games 😀
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-09, 18:23:chinny22 wrote on 2020-07-09, 15:13:Looks like a well thought out build, I'd almost call it "don't believe the marketing hype" build as the parts are not top shelf but the reality is they are pretty damn good.
Heh yeah, I had a Chantech 6BTM and a Slot 1 Celeron 333 back in '99 along with some craptastic Trident Blade 3D card. And I still played the hell out of Quake 2 on that rig. This build is a bit more powerful, while still mostly period correct and it wouldn't have been overly expensive back then.
How was the Chaintech 6BTM for you btw?
Somehow I overread this bit but I definitely remember having worked with these boards a lot actually.
These boards, when I first came into contact with them, were virtually unknown to me up to that time but these proved to basically be a joy to work with. I ended up building several rigs around these boards. Only disadvantage I could notice (apart from perhaps some very particular quirks I'm probably not remembering right now) is that not all of these boards supported Coppermine, but most of the ones we had seemed to.
Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-10, 14:47:How was the Chaintech 6BTM for you btw?
I used that board with a Celeron 333 from early 1999 to late 2001. Still regret selling that computer. I distinctly remember the 6BTM being rock solid and not making a fuss even when I overclocked that poor Celly to slightly above 400 MHz by raising the FSB to some weird value. It wasn't the fastest performer, but its stability was remarkable. No crashes, ever.
At some point I addd another stick of RAM for a total of 128 MB and replaced the Trident Blade with a Nvidia TNT2. With those upgrades, the system ran games like Unreal Tournament '99 and Diablo 2 reasonably well.
Only first 6BTM's did not support Coppermines officially (actually they all worked with them if you used slotket with vcore jumpers, just set it to 1.8v), most of them work with Tualatins too.
I am building a retro rig for my friend with 6BTA (same as 6BTM but with onboard audio), Tualatin Celeron SL68P 1.2GHz @ 1.6GHz using generic modified slocket (because he just had it laying around, net speed will be around the same as 1.4 Ghz PIII-S), Ti4400, 1GB RAM etc. Dual boot with WinMe/2K.
Many 3Dfx and Pentium III-S stuff.
My amibay FS thread: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?88030-Man ... -370-dual)
Looks like I'll be replacing my generic Yamaha YMF724F-V with a Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo (YMF744B-V) which I just got today.
The Fortissimo has higher quality components including the SigmaTel STAC9708 codec, which seems to be one of the best as per this guide. More importantly, it has Digital Out (via TOSLINK) which allows me to record pristine quality audio from DOS and Win9x games. Here are some samples:
Those were recorded by connecting the Fortissimo to a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium using a TOSLINK optical cable. This time, I used Creative's tool instead of Audacity as the former allows bit-matched recording from digital sources.
Upgrade time. I have replaced the hard drive in this build with a Kingston 120GB SSD + SATA to IDE adapter.
It works great, with DMA enabled in Device Manager and all that. I didn't do this for speed though, more so for the silent operation that an SSD provides. Also, these things are dirt cheap nowadays, so why not. I have formatted the SSD on a modern machine to align the partition properly. It should be noted that I'm only using 32GB of the drive, leaving the rest as unformatted free space in order to minimize wear and tear. Probably overkill, but I don't realistically need more than 32GB on this rig. About once per month, I let the system idle in the BIOS overnight as per these instruction in order to let the SSD's on-board garbage collection do its thing. No issues so far.
Additionally, the Hitachi CD drive was starting to have issues with reading discs, so I replaced it with an MSI 16x DVD-ROM. Drive noise is no longer a concern thanks to Nero CD/DVD speed (under Windows) and CDBeQuiet! under pure DOS. Both of these utilities can be used to slow down the drive to 4x speed which eliminates any noise that it produces while reading CDs.
Also, my Roland SC-155 is currently hooked up to this system (using the Fortissimo for MPU-401). Not sure if it will stay there for good, but it's working quite well so far.
The MPU-401 on the Fortissimo is completely bug-free, no hanging notes, stuttering, ticking and whatnot. Music wise, this system now covers quite a few things: from OPL3, CQM, AWE32, soundfonts to Roland Sound Canvas and even Yamaha XG. Here are some recordings from the SC-155:
Finally, I have edited the first post in this thread to reflect the latest upgrades. Extremely happy with this system right now. It's a nice, quiet machine for playing DOS and early-mid Win9x games. And for the more demanding titles, I have my AthlonXP rig which packs a lot more punch.
I made some XG recordings on the Fortissimo using the Yamaha XGstudio and YStation32 applications together with their accompanying .MID files. These can be found on various YMF7x4 driver CDs, including this one. Once again, Digital Out (via TOSLINK) was used for making the recordings:
For reference, the default soundbank that comes with the 1040 VxD drivers was used, and all the boxes on the Synthesizer tab have been ticked, including SONDIUS-XG. The midi files used were: Md30xg.mid (Fairy Tale XG), Ind31xg.mid (Industrial 50 XG), Tec30xg.mid (Technocrat XG) and Wiene.mid (Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald). The last track was taken from the SondiusXG folder, so I'm assuming it does make use of that functionality.
And here's the latest addition to this build: a new old stock CH Flightstick. The seller said it came from a closed down computer store.
Heh, I don't think I have used a proper joystick (e.g. not a gamepad) since the '90s. Tested it out in Terminal Velocity, Descent, Privateer 2 as well as Tyrian and it worked perfectly. I didn't experience any issues in games that used the SC-155 for General MIDI music and the joystick at the same time, so I guess that's a testament to the quality of the gameport to MIDI cable.
Looking forward to replaying some flight and space sims with this!
I have replaced the Mercury PSU with an LC Power LC6550 (550W). I love these LC Power PSUs and now have three of them. They are reliable, quiet and still supply -5V in case some old sound card needs that.
Additionally, I've cleaned the CPU fan and applied some electric motor grease to it, which made it less noisy as well. Thanks to the new PSU, the refreshed CPU fan and the SSD, this rig is now almost completely silent. Just the way I like it.
Me and my brother both used one of those (at least I believe it was the exact same model) in our PCs in ca 2004. Both failed before the PCs became obsolete. They may be fine for low power systems like yours but I wouldn't trust them with anything irreplaceable. They were cheap, of relatively simple construction and the power rating is certainly way off.
Not trying to be a dick or talk shit about your gear. Just a honest caution.
Doornkaat wrote on 2021-08-24, 15:43:Me and my brother both used one of those (at least I believe it was the exact same model) in our PCs in ca 2004. Both failed before the PCs became obsolete. They may be fine for low power systems like yours but I wouldn't trust them with anything irreplaceable. They were cheap, of relatively simple construction and the power rating is certainly way off.
Not trying to be a dick or talk shit about your gear. Just a honest caution.
No worries, I know these LC Power PSUs aren't in the same class as Corsair or Chieftec from that time.
I wouldn't let them near something that actually required 550W, that's for sure. But, as you say, they do seem to be a decent fit for the kind of hardware that I'm currently using them on.
I just noticed something interesting about the YMF744 card. Its SPDIF IN (digital CD audio) and SPDIF OUT (optical out) obviously work fine under Win9x. They also function properly if you use Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode. However, if you boot straight into DOS (not loading Windows at all) then both SPDIF IN and OUT won't work.
I'm guessing some part of the Windows drivers initializes SPDIF on this card and it remains turned on until the computer is reset. Not sure if there's a way to perform this initialization in pure DOS though.
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-12, 20:15:I just noticed something interesting about the YMF744 card. Its SPDIF IN (digital CD audio) and SPDIF OUT (optical out) obviously work fine under Win9x. They also function properly if you use Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode. However, if you boot straight into DOS (not loading Windows at all) then both SPDIF IN and OUT won't work.
I'm guessing some part of the Windows drivers initializes SPDIF on this card and it remains turned on until the computer is reset. Not sure if there's a way to perform this initialization in pure DOS though.
Rayer wrote a utility for that .
Look here Re: Pure DOS gaming system with 100% digital audio output
