That's a very nice system!

Can you check on the WSS compatibility of that sound card with Sierra games such as Space Quest V and King's Quest VI? There are some reports that the WSS compatibility OPTi cards which use the Crystal CS4231 chip isn't quite as good as on those which use the Analog Devices AD1846 chip.

Thanks Joseph, i will try those games out and get back to you

Okay i used the Sndinit.exe to change the sound card to Windows sound system mode and set WSS in the space quest V game install. All seemed to work fine made a quick video see link below. The version of kings quest VI i have doesn’t have a option for WSS in the install setup
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10oU_1i1BW7jB … ew?usp=drivesdk

s.mouse wrote on 2021-05-29, 00:07:

Okay i used the Sndinit.exe to change the sound card to Windows sound system mode and set WSS in the space quest V game install. All seemed to work fine made a quick video see link below. The version of kings quest VI i have doesn’t have a option for WSS in the install setup

That's good news! As for King's Quest VI, I think WSS support was added in the CD version of the game.

If you have any more Sierra titles like Gabriel Knight or Police Quest IV, give those a try as well. Aladdin and Tyrian are also good tests for WSS compatibility i.e. if those work, there's a decent chance that most other games will too. For reference, here are some tests that I've done on my own OPTi sound card: OPTi 82C930 review

Have all VIA and all UMC systems already been tried?

Fun idea to make it all OPTi, even though their hardware wasn't very good in general.

Name idea for this build: subOPTimal 🤣

no OPTI local bus no care

subOPTImal Speed 😹

Yeah also had OpTI Viper, put MMX Overdrive on it and it still was slow in Quake.
Never found subOPTImal VGA Card for PCI.
But got OAK spitfire PCI, it has similar Performance.
It’s Called Venus Solitaire PCI.

Nice System 👍

In the words of Doug DeMuro, this is a machine with many quirks and features. What a cool, original 'oddball' machine.

Too bad OPTi didn't make their own CPUs. It wouldn't surprise me if they tried though.
Maybe Winchip would be a good match for this system.

Do you know if there were any VLB cards with OPTi chips?

*edit*

Apparently there is one, but it is designed for an LCD display.

Opti LCD VGA OPTI 92C168/178

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-05-30, 13:54:

Have all VIA and all UMC systems already been tried?

UMC VGA is Oak or early TVGA8900 speed 🙁

What about the UMC VLB VGA?

Doesn’t that board work at 83mhz FSB though?

Set FSB to 83mhz, multiplier to 2x
Get excellent cache and ram
Tweek bios timings

And you might achieve “proper” performance

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-08-05, 14:39:

What about the UMC VLB VGA?

Never came across any myself, don't seem to be many pics around, rarer than the U5S??

Probably rarer than U5S, but not as rare as U5D.

I used Opti USB 2.0 PCI card on my MikroMikko (Finnish brand) computer which had ICL soc7 system board with Opti Viper M chipset. Now I have to find Opti sound card and graphics also and disable onboard 2MB Ati Mach64 😁

My 486 chipset is an opti and I think the sound controller on the sound card in that one is opti too.

I REALLY hated the Opti sound cards 82C924 and 82C929 I think. We used them in our PC builds when I worked in a local computer shop in the 90's.

Did they make you MAD16?