valnar wrote:

A nice touch is the Yamaha vs Roland daughterboards.

Intriguing. Which one do you think sounds better when playing DOS MIDI games like X-Com, Quest for Glory, or Strike Commander? I only have Yamaha DB50XG, but never own the Roland SCD-15. Does the Roland sound better, or the other way around?

I've only played X-Com, but I don't have it any more. In general, the samples on the Roland sound better, but I'm sure there are titles where the reverse may be true.

-Robert

valnar wrote:

I've only played X-Com, but I don't have it any more. In general, the samples on the Roland sound better,

I see. 🙁

In which instruments the Roland's advantage is noticeable by significant margin, though? How about drums?

valnar wrote:

but I'm sure there are titles where the reverse may be true.

I wonder whether there are many of such games..

The reason why most games will sound better on the Roland is because about every game was composed on a Roland SC-55 (which is the module of the SCD-15). So on the Yamaha, balance might be a bit off sometimes, because the songs weren't composed for it. Nonetheless, I like it very much and XG-mode is where it really shines.

One of the rare instances that the Yamaha really sounds cooler (atleast in my opinion) is Descent, it really got a much more techno sound to it than the Roland. But for about every other game, I'd use my SC-55 instead.

Lennart wrote:

One of the rare instances that the Yamaha really sounds cooler (atleast in my opinion) is Descent,

Ah, Descent. Yes, I still remember how the intro plays with my DB50XG. In fact, I think I still remember recording it into .WAV.

Lennart wrote:

it really got a much more techno sound to it than the Roland.

Yup. Techno sounds (bass, drums, etc) are excellent in Yamaha XG. Descent is an example.

I wonder though; in which area the Roland is better? Orchestral instruments? Or maybe piano?

in which area the Roland is better? Orchestral instruments? Or maybe piano?

Pfff, difficult question. I guess I like Roland's ordinary drum kit better, because it's very all-round, sounds quite good with any music style. So are the other sounds from Roland, they're very all-round actually. The DB50-XG has some instruments more suited for particular styles, like special jazz saxophones. If games would utilize XG-mode then I think that the DB50-XG would sound better than the SC in GS-mode. But since games only use GM, the SC will probably sound better because all the GM instruments on it are very nicely balanced, whereas the DB50-XG has some instruments more adapted to particular music styles. Hope I'm being clear enough. 🙄

I need sound support in Windows 3.1 which the Aureal doesn't provide. I'd like to play "Lode Runner The Legend Returns" on one of these PC's.

So I want to tackle getting both the Aureal SQ2500 and a ISA SoundBlaster 16 working on the same PC. Ideally, SB16 for DOS, then the Aureal SQ2500 for Windows98 games. I'll put my Roland SCD-15 daughterboard on the SB16 so it works in DOS too. But can it then still work in Win98?

Can anyone give me some tips on how to achieve this? Here are the needs in a nutshell.

* SB16 and Roland SCD-15 MPU-401 capability in DOS.
* SB16 and Roland SCD-15 MPU-401 capability in Windows 3.1.
* Roland SCD-15 from that SB16 in Windows 98
* Aureal SQ2500 for sound in Windows 98

Without IRQ's stomping on each other is this possible? I already know I wouldn't load the SQ2500 SBPro support. Anything else that makes it fly better?

Robert

I use the SB16 and SQ2500 combination in my retro PC without a problem. Since you have the SB16, if you don't use the legacy portion of the SQ2500, then you should be just fine in Windows. In DOS or Win 3.1, just make sure the drivers are not loaded in the autoexec.bat or config.sys.

OK, I'll give that a shot. Thanks.

I have a related question but I'll start another thread for other interested parties.

Robert

I decided I might be willing to sell one of these old PC's, midi boards and all.

I haven't been on Vogons in ages. Are we allowed to do that here?

valnar wrote:

I haven't been on Vogons in ages. Are we allowed to do that here?

Nope! Hence the sticky: VOGONS is no marketplace!

List it on www.vintage-computer.com, www.amibay.com, www.cpu-world.com, www.oldcomputers.net, www.ebay.com, www.dosforum.de, www.classiccomputing.org, whatever. 😀

One on Fleabay....

valnar wrote:

One on Fleabay....

Which one? and has it been sold?

What software do you use for the the P2T thermal probe?
Only yesterday I picked up some generic 2 pin probes with the idea for a bit of a play this weekend

Asus P2B v1.02 is as I understand it the first retail version of the P2B released at the launch of i440BX in April 1998.

A fun thing with this early revision of this motherboard is that most of them (not sure if it's all of them) support the correct PCI divider at 133 MHz. A reviewer discovered this when he could not get a PII 350 to run stable at 112 MHz FSB because of his SCSI card but when he accidentally jumpered the motherboard for 133 MHz FSB, a setting not even silkscreened on his motherboard the computer ran flawlessly at 466 MHz. When this caught on Asus started to silkscreen the 133/33 setting on the motherboards with the correct clock generator. Later revisions used other clock generators and most P2B motherboards did not support the correct PCI divider at 133 MHz up until v1.10 or something like that. No i440BX motherboard supports the 1/2 AGP divider sadly.

I don't have one of those fancy Power Leap slotkets with built in VRM so the V-Core is set to 1.8V with the jumpers on my MSI slotket as the Asus P2B v1.02 do not support anything lower. "Luckily" my motherboard undervolts 0.05V with all CPUs and my pinmodded Tualatin P3-S seems to handle the somewhat high voltage.