The 128 is imho a terrible card to start out with, regardless of the platform, but in socket 3 even moreso (where I'd only recommend pci for video and an ide card). Pci implementation is often less then ideal compatibility wise on 486 boards.

The problem with later PCI hardware often is that the drivers often require a Pentium cpu for one thing or another, as obviously manufacturers didn't expect their hardware to end up in end of life boxes that could barely run any software that would use their product. The successful installation of many "late" pci video cards in systems like this for instance is directly dependent on the ability to find a driver that works reliably without a pentium CPU. Otherwise all sorts of issues are common/ to be expected.

I have only once attempted to run a PCI sound card on my 486's - an es1371, which is for the most part the same as your 128, with less gimpy (pre-creative) drivers. I was - not successful, at all.

I would recommend you abandon that pursuit, I can't recall ever reading about one of those cards being used successfully in such a system. Isa cards based on ESS1868 or even creative Vibra16 are still cheap and plentiful, will work guaranteed without you pulling your hair out, and even though not having "genuine" opl3 will still sound loads better then the 128's software emulated FM (which is honestly one of the worst).

If you MUST keep attempting to get the 128 going (yeah I know how that works 😀 try to find the very oldest driver package you can. Also, it may be helpful to try and turn off pci features in bios like bursting or bus master, as often these dont work well on 486 hardware (or in some combinations anyway)

Definitely check the hardware requirements listed on the retail boxes or in the user manuals. Guessing very few, if any, PCI sound cards will work on a 486 system.

Aureal Vortex and Yamaha YMF7xx are both out of the question as required specs show at least Pentium class CPU required.

Sooooo... If you have an Intel Pentium Overdrive CPU on a 486 board it might work.

I now have something to test this evening.

Gimme a list of cards to test and I will see what I can find out. You name it and I probably have it.

Well, I abandoned the whole PCI sound card idea and got myself an ES1868 ISA sound card instead. And just when I thought that I fixed all problems my bad luck strikes again: INVERTED palette in games when using the sound card. I tried searching for a solution on this problem and there are at least 3 threads here about the same issue and in all of them there is actually no solution. So VLB graphics card and ISA sound card don't play well. Some members mentioned in the treads something about timings, the ALE signal overlap etc and another suggested loading UNIVBE before starting the game. I am searching for a solution and if I find one I will post here. I have the cirrus logic card utilities, univbe and some other tools.

Have someone faced this problem before and how it was resolved?

I faced this and shared here previously. No fix other than the workaround of using a PCI video card instead of the VLB one. I think this is a chipset bug honestly.

What about a pallet snoop option in the BIOS?

It doesn't make a lot of sense that there would be an issue using a VLB video card along-side an ISA sound card. A non-fixable bug like that should have been caught easily before the motherboard passed QA.

Edit: What brand BIOS is that board using? AMI and AWARD were the most common.

It is possible that somebody flashed a BIOS meant for a different revision of the board.

I have tried that on a 486 board that could come with either depending on the revision and there can be definite differences in how things behave if you are using a BIOS meant for a different revision of the board.

Anything from no-POST to just weird things happening.

I have tried palette snoop option in BIOS but has no effect, the option is refering to PCI graphics card and not VLB. I have one more sound card to test later. I also suspect a BIOS incompatibility or a bug and I think it is the original one for this board (its AWARD 4.51). I recently got an PicoGUS so I can also try this instead although I really like to stay period correct in this builf.

I’ve encountered the inverted colors issue (and many others, such as loud popping sounds in games) with certain hardware combos that also included SD to IDE / CF to IDE adapters. So, if you are using one of these adapters, try replacing it with a different model or going with a good ol’ HDD instead.

Tested with Quantum Fireball 1.7GB HDD but it's the same. I will investigate further today trying any combination I can think of and report. Also, there was an old post somewhere mentioning this problem using EDO RAM sticks instead of FPM and I think I have EDO DRAMS installed.

VladoT wrote on 2025-03-19, 07:41:

Tested with Quantum Fireball 1.7GB HDD but it's the same. I will investigate further today trying any combination I can think of and report. Also, there was an old post somewhere mentioning this problem using EDO RAM sticks instead of FPM and I think I have EDO DRAMS installed.

Oh, if you're using EDO, then this is definitely a problem for most 486 boards.

Update: I just tried FPM RAM instead of EDO. No change. I tried original Sound Blaster Pro and the ESS1688F. No change. I replaced the IDE controller with another VLB IDE controller. No change. I dont' have another VLB VGA card to test except this Cirrus Logic GD5429. I tried adding and additional 1MB of video RAM to make it 2MB. No change. I loaded the newest firmware for the Cirrus Logic V1.41. No change. I tried PicoGUS both in SB mode and in GUS mode. In SB mode there was no change.
But in GUS mode all games that run on VESA mode (including 320x200 VESA mode) have this problem however games using regular VGA mode (320x200) work OK. Interesting.
That means that the original DOOM and DOOM2 work OK, Pinbal Dreams and PD2 etc. However, Duke Nukem 3D and Blood were not.
This is how it looks like:

This is strange.

Please post config.sys and autoexec.bat contents.

For the sake of testing config.sys contains only himem.sys end emm386.exe, nothing else. I tested both with emm386 enabled and disabled. No change. Autoexec.bat loaded only esscfg.exe when using ESS sound card or pgusinit.exe when using PicoGus.
I suspect this may be infact a BIOS bug and not a chipset bug because both VLB/PCI motherboards I have tested had a different chipsets but the same BIOS (Award V4.50)

Conclusion: I gave up and installed PCI video card (S3 Virge upgraded with 4MB VRAM). It is slightly faster than overclocked Cirrus Logic (VLB running at 40MHz bus and DRAM clock set at 85MHz). So, the palette problem is gone with the PCI card. This machine unfortunately will stay this way but infact it's still quite nice system for DOS gaming. Even manages to get great framerates on VESA 640x480 mode in Duke Nukem 3D and Blood.

Bah, my guess right now is that something is using overlapping memory addresses. Looking at where everything is mapped via msd would probably be helpful.

Since you only had himem loading, my guess is that it was taking part of the address space that the video card was using.