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AZT2320-based Sound 16C SRS not working correctly on non-Packard Bell hardware

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First post, by bimole

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Hi,

I'm following up my investigations into the Wavestream SoftSynth, the sounds that rocked my youth... For those who want a history I refer you to this post : Hearing for this mighty Packard Bell GM softsynth!

I want to install the Packard Bell Sound 16C SRS sound card (with AZTECH AZT2320 chip) in another system, in this case a Super Socket 7 platform.
Here is a photo of the sound card:
1730486275575.jpg

FYI, on my old Packard Bell PC, the machine in which the sound card was originally installed, Wavestream SoftSynth works without a problem in these 3 cases:
- With an original Packard Bell ‘MASTER CD’ restoration
- With an installation of Win95 OSR2.5 vanilla and using the MASTER CD drivers
- With an installation of Win98 SE vanilla and using the MASTER CD drivers (even if Windows automatically installs WDM drivers, it is possible to force the VXD drivers from the MASTER CD afterwards).

This is a Pentium MMX 266 with 64MB EDO RAM, an Intel 430VX chipset and an S3 Trio 64/V+ video controller integrated into the motherboard.

On the SS7 platform, I can't get the Wavestream SoftSynth to work with the Packard Bell Sound 16C SRS sound card.
The system is as follows:
- ASUS P5A rev 1.04
- AMD K6-2 450MHz
- 128MB SDRAM
- HDD SATA partionned 10GB for the system and 20GB for the data, with IDE/SATA gateway

I tried the following configurations:
- Restoration with the MASTER CD (it is possible to trick the installation program and restore on any machine...)
- With an installation of Win95 OSR2.5 vanilla and using the MASTER CD drivers, with FIX95CPU patch for processors that are too fast
- With an installation of Win95 OSR2.5 vanilla and using the MASTER CD drivers, reconfiguring the processor to 166MHz and 66MHz FSB.
- With a Win98 SE vanilla installation and using the MASTER CD drivers.

None of these configurations work: MIDI sounds don't work (error ‘MMSYSTEM002 / device out of range’ when I want to play a .mid file), Windows sounds are completely broken (clicks, white noise...). The only solution: disabling Wavestream SoftSynth in the Device Manager. In this case, the FM synth works and so do the Windows sounds.

I should point out that Wavestream SoftSynth works with another sound card compatible with this SS7 system (HP Riptide with Rockwell RACC010 sound chip). I should also add that I encountered the same problem on an Intel 440BX platform with a Pentium II.
So I'm leaning towards incompatibility of the Sound 16C SRS sound card with non-Packard Bell hardware. It's not an OS problem either, since on the Packard Bell machine the Wavestream SoftSynth works on Win95 and Win98.
Is it possible that Packard Bell has locked out the use of the sound card with its very conventional hardware?

I enclose below the drivers from the MASTER CD if anyone here has the skills and kindness to examine them to find a possible cause.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cWBIRpXTczr- … ?usp=drive_link

Your help is very appreciated!

Cheers,
JB

Reply 1 of 3, by dionb

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You didn't attach the photo. I stronly doubt that the card is incompatible with non-PB hardware. PB systems tended to use Intel OEM motherboards (about as standard as you can get) in this period and my experience is that they work fine in other systems. I have a PB 'Rocky 2.5" (Aztech FCC: MMSN855), a Rockwell modem and AZT2320 combo card in my main late DOS system for bug-free MPU-401, SBPro2.0, OPL3 and WSS and it works fine.

.wdm drivers are automatically installed in Win98SE, which was good enough for me. Never tried messing around with .vxd drivers. I suspect that the problems you are having are not hardware-related but specific to those .vxd drivers.

Reply 2 of 3, by bimole

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Hi,

Thanks for your reply. The Rocky soundcard seems to be compatible with the WaveStream synthesizer referring to the readme file in the wstream directory (see here in this iso : https://archive.org/details/audio-wizard)
I would be surprised if it works with your hardware. FYI among the soundcards referenced in this readme file, only a Crystal CS4236b and the HP Riptide worked successfully with WaveStream on my super socket 7 platform. Thus, it proves that WaveStream can work on a non-pentium system.
I was unable to make it work with the ES1868F and my AZT2320-based Packard Bell soundcard (should be very close to the Rocky one) on SS7. Early after setup launch, it tells that I don't have a compatible soundcard for WaveStream 😬

Extremely confusing isn't it?

Reply 3 of 3, by bertrammatrix

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I have a NOS waverider card with the same Aztech chip (but an onboard wavetable). The only time I have managed to install this card in a truly plug-and-play manor was under win98se on an LS486e board, where it worked beautifully with zero issues (except for it freezing dxdiag). Other then that one instance- TERRIBLE hardware compatibility.

Some of my 486 boards wouldn't post with it at all. Those that did often did weird stuff while detecting it, or didn't detect it / or part of it/ correctly. My PI and P3(bx440) had less issues installing/detecting it, however pops, clicks, freezing etc were all problems I couldn't get rid of.

If I remember, on the occasions it did work it was usually after I did a bunch of slot swapping, as if it was super picky in which one it was, even though I was able to reliably run other cards in ANY slot on the same system

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