Might be worth a try to run it with my OPL3SA.INI.

Thanks gerwin. Seems to be toast though. I've now got an Audician 32 which works great, although I need to make an offset bracket to mount the DB...

The YMF-718 seems to work quite well for this MPU-only application.

SB16 (Non-PnP): Base 220h, FM 388h, IRQ 5, DMA 1 & 5, Game Port 200h -207h, MPU disabled
YMF: Base 240h, FM 388h, IRQ 9 (SB/WSS/MPU), DMA 0 (SB/WSS), MPU 330h, Game Port disabled

Not sure if this would work with a PnP SB16. The BIOS seems to reserve IRQ 11 for the YMF, even though I specifed IRQs 5 & 9 as being reserved for ISA. With a PnP SB16 the BIOS may reserve further strange IRQs.

I had to make autoexec.bat read-only as SETUPSA /S automatically overwrites the SET BLASTER line.

SETUPSA /S (Init YMF, sets BLASTER env)
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 T6
DIAGNOSE /S (Init SB16)
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6

In Win98 things get a little more messy. I just disabled the YMF gameport device and manually specified the settings above for SB16 and YMF. The BLASTER env variable is incorrect in a command prompt window - seems that the YMF driver is setting it.

Nearly all of the YMF inputs can be muted. I'm not yet clear whether muting the FM output will also kill DB output.

bjt wrote:

Not sure if this would work with a PnP SB16. The BIOS seems to reserve IRQ 11 for the YMF, even though I specifed IRQs 5 & 9 as being reserved for ISA. With a PnP SB16 the BIOS may reserve further strange IRQs.

The BIOS setting is there to reserve IRQs for legacy (non-PNP) ISA cards only. It is a way to tell the BIOS not to use an IRQ for PCI or ISAPnP cards, because it is already occupied by a non-PnP card.
So in your case it makes sense to reserve only IRQ 5 and DMAs 1/5, because these are taken by the SB16. If you reserve IRQ9 as well, it will never get used by anything unless you force it, because the BIOS thinks there is another legacy device sitting on it.

The BIOS setting is there to reserve IRQs for legacy (non-PNP) ISA cards only. It is a way to tell the BIOS not to use an IRQ for PCI or ISAPnP cards, because it is already occupied by a non-PnP card.

Unfortunately, if I don't reserve IRQ 9, the BIOS gives it to either USB or the video card. PnP sucks!

Hopefully the parts for the wavetable adapter will arrive today and I can get on with it. The case doesn't have a good place to mount the XR385 so instead of using a ribbon cable, I'm planning to build a rigid adapter and mount it on the YMF card.

Took a little while, but I got the XR385 working with the YMF card.

I'm sure there's an easier way to build a rigid adapter like this (IDC ribbon connectors with lugs to secure them to a backplate?) I didn't want to make any permanent changes to either card.

Running the YMF as an MPU interface only works fine, although FM volume controls both FM and wavetable. The XR385 output is much louder than the FM. It doesn't seem to be possible to disable FM completely, so I'll have to mute the YMF card when I'm playing a game that uses FM, otherwise I get both cards playing at once and some strange phasing effects.

I'm pretty excited to finally get this machine finished for now. Have a load of different games to try with the XR385 😀

Out of curiosity, why do you use the SB16 together with the YMF? The Yamaha card should have a genuine OPL3 circuit integrated into it's main chip, so it should sound just the same.

Really only for compatibility reasons... the YMF is only SB Pro compatible (8-bit). Whether this actually makes any difference is another question 😀

I received a replacement for the first, faulty YMF card yesterday. It's a SB16 CT2940 with a Yamaha OPL-L chip. This card has the Vibra Pro ASIC and apparently is pretty good noise-wise.

The Vibra 16S is good too, but it has this issue where after playing wave or FM audio (not sure which), a very quiet but constant high-pitched noise plays in the background. I think this is the same issue others have noticed with the CT2800.

The CT2940 is a PnP card but installation was fairly painless, once I realised that CTPNP.CFG could be manually edited. For Windows, I had to manually set the MPU address to 300.

So the final config is as follows:

SB16 CT2940: 220h IRQ 5 DMA 1 & 5, FM 388h, MPU 300h, Game 200h, IDE disabled
YMF718: 240h IRQ 9 DMA 0, MPU 330h, FM 388h, Game disabled

Here's a pic of both cards together. I have a short cable running from the line out of the YMF card to the line in of the SB16.

So old games which don't allow you to set the IRQs etc simply run on the SB16 I guess?

I guess if they use the BLASTER env variable, or look for a Sound Blaster at the standard 220h address, they'll work on the SB16. Otherwise, who knows 😀

The Eizo monitor has started crapping out, unfortunately. Reading around, the flyback transformer often goes on these. Right now it'll last about half an hour from cold until it starts spontaneously turning itself off, with a yellow blinking status light.

It's a shame as it's just about the right size for 320x200 games (16" visible) and the shadow mask gives a nice soft effect. A new flyback is going to be more than the monitor's worth, even if I were to fit it myself.

I do have another CRT - a 19" Diamondtron. Feels a bit big for DOS games but I guess I can get used to it 😀

Also, got hold of an MT32 as the XR385's MT32 mode was pretty naff! Came without a power supply but I'm using an old printer PSU rated 9V/1A, seems fine. Just waiting for some 6.3mm jack to phono adaptors but all looks good hooked up to the YMF card's gameport.

@ bjt

That monitor may just have bad solder connections.

Yeah, quite possibly. I'm too scared of HV electronics to start poking around. It's gone to monitor heaven now 🙁