Are you sure that RAM isn't broke? Are you able to test it elsewhere? I've tried a couple of different sized sticks (including 16MB ones) and haven't had a problem.

And yes the RAM expansion / soundfont functionality is really only useful for DOS gaming via Windows 95 and up. Loading fonts in pure DOS isn't really an option - you can do it, but it's slow and needs a nasty TSR.

The AWE line of cards are best supported under Win 9x environments. While the work fine in a pure DOS environment, they are often unable to use their advanced features. You can load soundfonts quite easily in Win 9x, but the required AWEUTIL for DOS tends to be a stumbling block. It requires emm386, and many DOS games don't get along with that. Also it's requires a hefty footprint in memory, which uses up more of the base 640k.

If you're really into using different soundfonts on the AWE, it's best to stick with Win 9x. DOS games that have native AWE support use the EMU8K and it's onboard 512k and will not need extra RAM or TSR's.

The OPL based AWE32 setups are highly thought of because they offer a lot of flexibility. With that flexibility comes alot of caveats though. Personally, I use one in my primary DOS rig along with a GUS as well as another one in my '98 rig. They're one of my favorite sound cards, but they have limitations and a bit of a learning curve to make effective use of them.

I toyed with a CT1920 attached to a CT2230 (with the ASP upgrade), and found it to be a fine combo in Win 98. The drawback for me was the need to use the second ISA slot which I wanted for a different soundcard. That's when I decided to move to a full AWE32.

As for a true DOS environment and the AWE, it's doable and works fine for the handful of games that take advantage of it. Otherwise it's more of an overpriced SB16 that will only be used for FM, 95% (or more) of the time. I can't recommend Tryian enough to make it really shine. But for many there are just to few DOS games to really make it a viable DOS only card.

Thanks for the clarification! That helps so much!

I'll probably just bite the bullet and install 9x on this system on a second drive. It can certainly handled it. At the moment this will still be primarily used for later DOS games, so which version of Windows is likely to have the least headaches? I've used 98se since 1999, but I don't know if it's too "heavy" or modern for DOS game compatibility. I'm running a pentium 200 MMX, Matrox Millennium 4MB, Orchid Righteous Voodoo, and currently 64MB of EDO, but I can put a bunch more in for 9x.

This also begs the question... What would you guys say are ideal (or better than average) dedicated DOS gaming sound cards? I have a CT2230, an AWE64 (non gold), a CT1600 SB Pro 2, and a CT1350B... and many other ISA cards (Aztech, Opti, ESS, maybe others). I keep my eyes open for old sound cards all the time though, especially locally. What should I be looking for for a future 386/486 DOS only system?

I would say that the CT1600 (aka SoundBlaster Pro 2), would be ideal for late '80s through mid '90s DOS games. The CT2230 is also a great choice, but will lack some stero effects that the SoundBlaster Pro 2 can offer on digital sound. It's a really minor point, but some people are real sticklers about it. The CT1600 is also a bug free card and doesn't suffer from the infamous hanging note bug. That's not an issue on the CT2230 unless you use the waveblaster header and/or the midi port for an external sound module and the OPL at the same time and with a game that's known to cause the bug.

The CT1350B (with CMS upgrade if available) is perfect for a 87-90 DOS rig. With SoundBlaster, GameBlaster (the CMS upgrade), and AdLib compatibility it's the universal card of choice for early sound card games.

My vote is the CT1600 for a DOS rig as it's pretty universal for most DOS games and easy to work with.

I also vote 98SE for a 9x os, as it offers lots of support for many DOS game and virtually all 9x games. It's what the majority of vintage Windows users tend to use and therefore you will get lots of easily available advice on almost any vintage forum.

If you're on a tight budget, consider the 486 for DOS (I have a special thing for the AMD DX-4 120 but that's just me), as it runs a majority of DOS games fairly well. There will be speed issues to deal with but it's a pretty universal DOS rig. If you can spend some extra, then consider a super socket 7 rig. http://www.philscomputerlab.com/4-in-1-retro-gaming-pc.html is a great starting point for such a rig. Just use your DOS of choice in place of 9x and you're pretty much in business.

The SB Pro 2 isn't even in the running to suffer from the hanging note bug because it doesn't have an MPU401 interface.

Something else of note with regard to the Goldfinch is that - in my experience at least - you can't use its sound font functionality in Win9x unless you use it along side a SB16 of some description (Vibra included). You can load a sound font, but to actually use it with a DOS game the 'Allow MPU401 Emulation on this device' option must be turned on via the AWE Util interface, and this simply won't work with a non-creative card.

So far I've tried it with a PAS16 and an OPL3Sax based card - I haven't given up yet but it's not looking good.

Woohoo! I've got 98SE on my "DOS" rig and I've loaded the AWE32 Upgrade software and it works great! It detects 28MB of memory and I can load the Chorium RevA sound font without issue (other than the 30 second wait). Its amazing how much different these fonts can make things sound.

Really cool stuff!

I did find a fantastic page with download links for several sf2 files that are plainly described and are almost all small enough to fit on an AWE32:

http://www3.telus.net/a6120536/oldscardemu.htm

The MT32 ones sound pretty cool too. Hopefully some day I'll get my hands on a real midi device to play with.

There are a number of soundfonts there that I've never heard. I'll have to give them a shot, thanks for the link.

Good to hear that you can now make use of your CT1920. It's a good add-on worth the price for beginning midi. It's very versatile with the right soundfonts. Enjoy all your new options.

This is not related to this subject exactly, but after getting Windows 98SE installed on this system, I decided to finally set up and test the Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo Graphics card that was intended for this system (before I realized that it required Win9x).

It seems to be working just fine in the Racing and Room demos from 3dfx and it's so awesome to hear that insanely loud, metallic sounding relay click on and off when you enter and exit 3D accelerated games. Its so old school... I love it! Now I just need to find some games that'd make use of it but not be way too much for a Pentium 200 MMX...

... along this same line, is it normal to notice a reduction in desktop clarity when running through the passthrough on a Voodoo card? I'm using an STB Velocity 3D 4MB Virge VX for 2D, which I'm told is one of the best quality Virge cards you can get. My Matrox Millennium was giving me major issues in Windows 98SE (tries to sync my monitor at like 270Hz for some reason once the drivers are installed). When I hook it up through the passthrough the image looks noticeably less sharp. I'm running at 1024x768@75Hz (its even worse at 85Hz) on an HP P1230 (Mitsubishi Diamndo Pro 2070SB) CRT.

I have an Orchid Righteous too, and I adore the sound of the switching relays as well. As far as the loss of clarity goes, yeah it's par for the course with Voodoo 1's and 2's. The Righteous is actually one of the cleaner of the Voodoo's because of the relays. It's a tad worse on bog standard Voodoo's with standard electronic switching. The best thing you can do is use a really heavy shielded pass through with a RF choke clamped on it, as well as a superior primary video card. The end result will not be a huge improvement. Your S3 should be a decent pairing for the Orchid. So a better pass through is really about the biggest point for improvement and it won't be huge.

I have no idea why your Matrox is acting in that way. It's a superior card, but I've always run into "little" issues with Matrox cards in the past and have never been partial to their lineup. Maybe someone here can shed some light on that issue.

Kodai wrote:

I have an Orchid Righteous too, and I adore the sound of the switching relays as well. As far as the loss of clarity goes, yeah it's par for the course with Voodoo 1's and 2's. The Righteous is actually one of the cleaner of the Voodoo's because of the relays. It's a tad worse on bog standard Voodoo's with standard electronic switching. The best thing you can do is use a really heavy shielded pass through with a RF choke clamped on it, as well as a superior primary video card. The end result will not be a huge improvement. Your S3 should be a decent pairing for the Orchid. So a better pass through is really about the biggest point for improvement and it won't be huge.

I have no idea why your Matrox is acting in that way. It's a superior card, but I've always run into "little" issues with Matrox cards in the past and have never been partial to their lineup. Maybe someone here can shed some light on that issue.

Thanks for the info.

I installed some different drivers for my Matrox (its a 4MB Mil1 with the 4MB memory expansion) and it seems to be working great now. I think there's a slight improvement in clarity over the STB but it could just be my eyes. The Matrox offers a ton of fantastic features though with the proper drivers and software installed. Easy shortcuts to swap display modes (some games require 256 color 640x480, but I can't use the system at that res... no way) are really handy. I'm not sure why the default Windows 98SE drivers wouldn't work... oh well.

Back sort of onto the topic of the thread, I'm trying to figure out what soundfonts to use for games. I just dug out a big pile of midi files and I'm playing them in Media Player (win98se) and swapping sound fonts with the AWE32 control panel. There are a lot of them where the volume is really wonky with certain instruments. Huge fluctuations in volume between instruments isn't something I want to bother with. Most of the ones I've tested are from the link I posted earlier, except for Chorium. Do you guys have any recommendations for fonts that are designed for games from the mid 90s? I was testing with music files from games that had well written music, like Descent, Doom, Daggerfall and Dink Smallwood... woa, what's with all the Ds? 🤣... anyway... As long as the file is less than 28MB and doesn't require anything that an AWE32 can't manage, it should work for me.

Also, its strange but I can't seem to get Windows to use FM properly. My CT2940 has the Yamaha OPL3 chip, and it works when I run DOS setup programs, but when I try to use the SB16 midi device labeled as 330 in Windows, media player gets glitchy and I don't get any sound. Probably just a media player bug, so its no big deal... but I'm curious as to whether this could be an issue if any native Win9x (not in a DOS box) games that use FM will have issues with this too. I'm not sure how many exist, but I'll inevitably run into one if they do...

One more thing! Is there anything at all that can be done about the amount of time it takes to load SF2 files into my cards memory? Its not the end of the world, but the largest fonts do take quite a while.

Try 'masterpiece.sf2' here: http://rkhive.com/banks.html

Sounds nice I think, but does take a while to load with the Goldfinch.

Not sure what you mean regarding the FM issue - it ain't on port 330. That's the MPU-401, and you probs don't have anything attached to that. You can tell the Goldfinch to emulate an MPU-401 (via the Windows AWE Util dialog), and it will take over the MIDI duties on port 330 in DOS games.

badmojo wrote:

Try 'masterpiece.sf2' here: http://rkhive.com/banks.html

Sounds nice I think, but does take a while to load with the Goldfinch.

Not sure what you mean regarding the FM issue - it ain't on port 330. That's the MPU-401, and you probs don't have anything attached to that. You can tell the Goldfinch to emulate an MPU-401 (via the Windows AWE Util dialog), and it will take over the MIDI duties on port 330 in DOS games.

Oh I see. So then 220 would receive FM? I don't fully understand all of this yet...

Also, what is actually happening when I run a game's sound setup program and choose awe32 when the card is already emulating MPU-401? In Descent selecting AWE32 sounds totally different than opl3 or General Midi (GM clearly uses the sound font I've loaded). Is it actually loading a different sound font from the game somehow? If so, where is it being stored if the card's memory is full? It doesn't seem to have any kind of delay for loading or unloading a sound font.

Thanks for helping me to understand all this. I've always liked how synth music can change so much depending on the software and hardware available.

badmojo wrote:

Try 'masterpiece.sf2' here: http://rkhive.com/banks.html

Sounds nice I think, but does take a while to load with the Goldfinch.

Thanks alot for that info, I didnt had those soundfont, cant wait to hear them! btw... do you mean the goldfinch load sf2 slower than a sb32 ? If so, why would you think?

About the ram, I was in the impression that the sb32 needed no parity simm... Look like I was wrong, or maybe it's a goldfinch thing, I bought those and they work allright http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/30PS16MB/

Didnt knew about the goldfinch, I see selling them cheap on amazon.ca, might grab one, seem like a gravis ACE from the creative Labs.

FWIW this memory works fine in both a CT1920 and in a CT3600: http://www.ebay.com/itm/32MB-KIT-16MB-X2-MEMO … =item51cb1338ad

Cheapest I found anywhere.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Oh I see. So then 220 would receive FM? I don't fully understand all of this yet...

Also, what is actually happening when I run a game's sound setup program and choose awe32 when the card is already emulating MPU-401? In Descent selecting AWE32 sounds totally different than opl3 or General Midi (GM clearly uses the sound font I've loaded). Is it actually loading a different sound font from the game somehow? If so, where is it being stored if the card's memory is full? It doesn't seem to have any kind of delay for loading or unloading a sound font.

Thanks for helping me to understand all this. I've always liked how synth music can change so much depending on the software and hardware available.

Yep that's right, 220 is FM. The MPU-401 is usually at 330 but can be set at 300, 320, etc. Default is 330.

Yes it's a bit confusing and I'm probably going to out myself as AWE ignorant here but here are the scenarios as I understand them:

- [DOS] Some games support AWEs natively (@ port 620 or whatever it is) and can sound quite nice. Descent might be one of them, X-Wing / Tie Fighter are other good examples.
- [DOS] More common are games who list AWE32 as an option in their music setup apps but simply send MIDI to 330, and the AWE card uses its default MIDI samples which are pretty nasty. DOOM does this for example.
- [DOS] You can attempt to use AWEUtil to load a sound font and emulate an MPU-401, but this is more trouble than it's worth.
- [Windows 9X] All of the above applies, but the windows drivers do a much better job of MPU-401 emulation, allowing you to load .SF2's and get some really nice MIDI action.

ElBrunzy wrote:

do you mean the goldfinch load sf2 slower than a sb32 ? If so, why would you think?

No I'm sure it's the same on all AWE cards - loading a 28MB sound font just takes a while, that's all!

badmojo wrote:

No I'm sure it's the same on all AWE cards - loading a 28MB sound font just takes a while, that's all!

did some benchmark on a dual ppro200 with a ct2760:

• loading 28mb of sbk using aweutil under msdos 6.22 took 92sec
• loading 28mb of sf2 using sfxload under debian sarge took 20sec
• loading 28mb of sbk using sfxload under debian sarge took 20sec

I think win2000 load about as fast as linux, I just dont have that os now.