VOGONS


First post, by Lostdotfish

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I'm building a P3 Tualitin 1.4GHz system. It's designed to play Windows 9x era games with some DOS compatibility (speed will be an issue I know...).

I have in front of me 4 ISA cards and 2 PCI cards. Any thoughts on what would work best for this system?

PCI

Both cards are Audigy 2 (one is ZS) - both have the bay units

ISA

ESS AudioDrive ES1868F
Yamaha LWHA151A00
Creative AWE64 CT4500
Aztec Crystal CS4248 (with Yamaha OPL onboard)

Reply 1 of 11, by Shponglefan

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How many free slots do you have?

I would use multiple sound cards if it were my build. This would include the Audigy 2 ZS, Yamaha LWHA151A00, and AWE64.

This would cover SB/SB Pro/SB 16/AWE32 support for DOS games, plus EAX support for Windows 9x games. The Yamaha card also has genuine OPL for FM, plus a wavetable header (and bug free MPU-401 support) for General MIDI.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 2 of 11, by chinny22

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Agree if you want at least 2 cards if you can.

One of the Audigy's for windows (Not much difference between the 2 cards so whichever you prefer)

ISA for dos, which one (or more) depends on personal taste, very quick rundown of each
The AWE64 is SB16 compatible with poor OPL but supports AWE sound fonts naturally.

The other 3 all have better OPL and SBPro support and comes down to which you think sounds best

Reply 3 of 11, by sydres

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I don't have much to add other than it is common to have multiple soundcards in a retro PC to cover as many games as possible but it definitely requires more configuration work to get it right. Also get yourself a decent mixer so you can mix outputs externally if it's good you'l get less noise.

Reply 4 of 11, by Gmlb256

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As the others said, use multiple sound cards to increase compatibility. Configuring the resources would be quite challenging but not difficult.

For Windows games, any of the Audigy 2 sound cards would be enough.

For DOS, an ISA sound card would be preferable, either put the Yamaha one which has real OPL3 FM synth or the ESS AudioDrive. If the motherboard has at least 2 ISA slots, add the AWE64 as a secondary ISA sound card for EMU8K and SB16 compatibility.

Reply 5 of 11, by MadMac_5

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Since a computer like that is probably going to be playing DOS games that support General MIDI or have specific support for AWE music (ie. games from 1994 or later), I'm going to go against the popular opinion here and say that the AWE64 and Audigy are a good combo. Use the Audigy for Windows gaming with EAX effects, but disable its Sound Blaster compatibility. Then install the AWE64 with its DOS software only, and use it for DOS games. Any games that don't have native AWE support probably don't use DOS4GW or other protected modes, so they'll likely work with AWEUTIL's /em:GM or /em:GS modes. At least, that's how I did it on my 486 DX2-66 back in the day when using the AWE alone!

Reply 6 of 11, by Gmlb256

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MadMac_5 wrote on 2024-06-14, 15:54:

Then install the AWE64 with its DOS software only, and use it for DOS games. Any games that don't have native AWE support probably don't use DOS4GW or other protected modes, so they'll likely work with AWEUTIL's /em:GM or /em:GS modes.

I would be installing the Windows drivers for the AWE64 first instead as it has the AWE Control Panel utility and the MPU-401 emulation thru the EMU8K there is superior to AWEUTIL, working with protected mode games out of the box and letting you use SF2 SoundFonts.

Reply 7 of 11, by MadMac_5

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Gmlb256 wrote on 2024-06-14, 16:06:
MadMac_5 wrote on 2024-06-14, 15:54:

Then install the AWE64 with its DOS software only, and use it for DOS games. Any games that don't have native AWE support probably don't use DOS4GW or other protected modes, so they'll likely work with AWEUTIL's /em:GM or /em:GS modes.

I would be installing the Windows drivers for the AWE64 first instead as it has the AWE Control Panel utility and the MPU-401 emulation thru the EMU8K there is superior to AWEUTIL, working with protected mode games out of the box and letting you use SF2 SoundFonts.

That is a very good idea that I had forgotten about! However, if one is booting to the command line to run games directly in DOS, then you'll need the DOS software too. I know that even on a PIII-550, I've still had games run more smoothly from a pure DOS environment than from under Windows 98 SE (Descent and Descent II in high-resolution modes come to mind as specific examples).

Reply 8 of 11, by Lostdotfish

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So I've put the Audigy, AWE64 and the Yamaha LWHA151A00 (I'm a sucker for that genuine OPL synth chip...).

I did a multi-card config a few years back on my Socket 7 system but can't remember much about the process... I also think I was running Win98 on top of DOS 6.22...

Anyway, any recommendations for a couple of games that I can use to test out the various compatibility with when I get the drivers and environment all set up properly?

Reply 9 of 11, by chinny22

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Warcraft 2 is my default test game as it lets you test sound from within setup, Duke3d is another (and I'm sure plenty more exist)
Really whatever games that are in your library are the important ones. Duke Nukem 2 for example can be tricky (ADPCM issue) but if you don't play that game then who cares!?

Reply 10 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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1) Audigy 2zs ( PCI )
2) Sound Blaster Live 5.1 ( PCI )
3) AWE64 ( ISA )
4) Terratec DMX 6 Fire
5) Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

These cards come with allot of great software and music and sound effects editing programs.

Last edited by Intel486dx33 on 2024-06-18, 18:35. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 11 of 11, by Shponglefan

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Lostdotfish wrote on 2024-06-16, 17:29:

So I've put the Audigy, AWE64 and the Yamaha LWHA151A00 (I'm a sucker for that genuine OPL synth chip...).

I did a multi-card config a few years back on my Socket 7 system but can't remember much about the process... I also think I was running Win98 on top of DOS 6.22...

Anyway, any recommendations for a couple of games that I can use to test out the various compatibility with when I get the drivers and environment all set up properly?

As chinny22 suggests, the best games to test are the ones you will be playing.

For DOS, my usual tests include Arkanoid 2, Crusader: No Remorse, Doom, Duke 3D, Sam n Max, Space Quest 3, Terminal Velocity, among others. My full test suite of DOS games is around 50 to 60 titles.

For Win 9x, I would test out games that utilize EAX effects such as SimCity 3000, Thief, etc.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards