Reply 40 of 44, by Great Hierophant
- Rank
- l33t
Well, I am getting rid of my AWE32 anyways and getting an AWE64 Gold instead. Nothing I hate more than a full-length, extra wide card, especially when I have to gut my system to use it.
On the other hand, I am thinking about some kind of hardware workaround for this lacking OPL emulation. Why not use a true OPL chip instead?
1. ISA-based OPL
Now, most, if not all OPL2 and OPL3 chips are found on ISA cards. Systems with ISA slots aren't exactly the greatest performing DOSBox machines, but my P2B-based motherboard with a PIII @ 1GHz can run EGA games and earlier VGA games quite well (I think.)
2. Waveblaster-based OPL
Some waveblaster cards contain the OPL4 chip, which combines OPL3 with wavetable synthesis. Many PCI cards support a waveblaster interface. I wonder, however, as you must access the OPL through a midi interface, I assume the data must be sent in a different way. Can you access all the registers through the midi interface?
3. PCI-based OPL
The Yamaha YMF-xx4 chips are found on many inexpensive PCI cards, and have true OPL3 support. Why not use them, they would be very easy to access in Windows.