Comes down to resources, even then you can get away with sharing IRQ's etc in some instances.
I forget the name but someone here did put in a crazy amount of cards and explained how he managed it, but it's definitely possible

Oof this is looking for trouble. Besides resources I can imagine software hell with things like attempted autodetection or TSRs.
Good luck with it though, I'm curious to learn how it went if you give it a go.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-05-19, 10:35:

Comes down to resources, even then you can get away with sharing IRQ's etc in some instances.
I forget the name but someone here did put in a crazy amount of cards and explained how he managed it, but it's definitely possible

I think it was carlostex iirc?
He had that crazy Sonic Ecstasy build with like 6 or 7 sound cards?

https://youtu.be/kk6nyrX4DK8?t=885

It would be possible provided that computer has enough IRQ and DMA channels available. The only card that won't take any of these resources is the Voodoo Graphics card.

Speaking of crazy builds, Cloudschatze had a similar one named The MIDI General, being more oriented towards MIDI as the namesake indicates.

Some industrial motherboards have nice quantity of slots and IRQ/DMA control in BIOS (without controls it maybe hard to configure).
PS. My new baby for such things

I was able to do three cards in one system. It was doable in DOS because I could load the correct driver/TSR which then assigned the right IRQ and DMA . I had to sacrify a second COM port to get this all to work.

For 5 cards you'd probably need a good solution in software so you can disable and enable cards to take them out of the equation.

I would not recommend doing this for a PC that you want to work with regularly. You'll just run into all kinds of issues. It's a fun challenge to get it to work, but that's probably the only reason to go this route.

I may need to revise my plans for this build, but the core goal is still the same: to have access to ESS, Crystal, Yamaha, and OPTi FM cards in the same machine. A secondary goal is for this to also play nicely with my Roland SC-880 and also my MT32pi over MIDI from a gameport on one of those cards.

I will first try to make this work on a Slot 1 440BX motherboard with a Via C3 CPU in a slotket (already have, with jumpers for "Cyrix"). There are many ATX motherboards of this type available with 3 ISA slots, 3 PCI, and 1 AGP. So I ordered one and it should be here next week.

You might want to read about the “MIDI General” build.
He posted his config files too.

Link:
Re: The MIDI General

I have had some more time to work on this. I got my motherboard in, and ai tried running with five soundcards at once. The whole computer is unstable when I do that, and worse once the graphics drivers get installed. I pulled two of the cards and I have been able to make this current configuration work well so far. It is stable, and I can switch between default MIDI synthesizers for Windows in the Multimedia tab of the Control Panel. And they all work. However, if I try to switch the default output card (mixer) in that tab, I get graphical glitching and immediate instability. The solution to this, I think, is to simply use an external passive summing mixer and find a way to integrate it into this lovely full-ATX tower case. The system configuration is currently:

Pentium 3 700E slot 1
Intel BX440 (Biostar, ATX)
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Yamaha YMF744 DS-XG PCI (Aopen Cobra)
ESS Solo - 1 PCI (Teratec)
AWE64 Value
256MB Generic CL3
CD-ROM on IDE
SD2IDE interface for system disk
Windows 98SE

I had to disable the gameport on the AWE64 in order to clear up a conflict, but that was all. No one really needs 3 simultaneous gameports anyway. Windows is looking good, but now I need to do some DOS testing. My go-to for testing in Windows is the Sonic3&Knuckles collection, which allows a quick toggle between GM and FM mode before you start the game. It also has a great soundtrack that was written for FM synthesis. Also Age of Empires is an underrated MIDI soundtrack. It lacks the "soundtest" feature found in thr port of Sonic, though.

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-05-19, 12:36:

I think it was carlostex iirc? He had that crazy Sonic Ecstasy build with like 6 or 7 sound cards? […]
Show full quote

chinny22 wrote on 2023-05-19, 10:35:

Comes down to resources, even then you can get away with sharing IRQ's etc in some instances.
I forget the name but someone here did put in a crazy amount of cards and explained how he managed it, but it's definitely possible

I think it was carlostex iirc?
He had that crazy Sonic Ecstasy build with like 6 or 7 sound cards?

https://youtu.be/kk6nyrX4DK8?t=885

SE.PNG

Yep that was me.

At that time it actually had 10(ish) sound cards (devices).

From that picture starting up to bottom:

1 - Ensoniq Soundscape S2000;
2 - Roland RAP-10;
3 - Orpheus 1 + Tiido XG DB card;
4 - MediaTrix AudioTrix Pro;
5 - Ultrasound PnP;
6 - Pro Audio Spectrum (dual OPL2);
7 - Creative Game Blaster;
8 - IBM Music Feature Card;
9 - Creative CT1920 AWE Upgrade (wired around back);
10 - Tandy LPT;

I since removed the RAP-10 and replaced the XG DB with FalcoSoft + VSTi (including MUNT plugin), the Ultrasound is also out because i've been testing an Orpheus 2 prototype. It would be actually nice to condense the Game Blaster + Tandy + Innovation SSI on a single card, if not the latter at least the Game Blaster + Tandy. We have so many clones now that it would be nice to cram that all into a single FPGA. Will probably take years until that happens.