Nice! I think Aztech did well in the early Sound Blaster days. They where known to be compatible with many standards, even Disney and Covox.

But once MIDI took off they didn't really manage to compete anymore...

The AZT2320 sounds practically 100% identical to true OPL3. I have an Aztech sound card(I think specially-made for HP) with the AZT2320 chipset and I love that thing. The one thing I'm not too fond of is the clarity of the OPL3. It comes out like in DOSBox: 100% unfiltered. I'm not really a fan of raw FM Synthesis; it need some filtering for it to sound good to my ears.

But what really impressed me about the AZT2320 was the clarity of the SoundBlaster Pro digital sound. It's the clearest of any sound card I've ever used, perhaps a little too clear. It's also got a minor bug with the SoundBlaster Pro digital sound where sometimes, a digital sound will stop too soon. I'll have to record that sound card at some time on all my DOS games(Star Wars X-Wing, Star Wars TIE Fighter, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Descent, Red Baron, etc.).

Here's the sound card in question:

One of the weirdest-looking sound cards I've ever seen, but damn, does it work well.

ratfink wrote:

MMPRO 16 IIA, which was my first sound card. It's got a midi card header, ide cdrom header, some other header labelled expcon, and the big chips are Aztech AZT2316 and Crystal CS4231A-KL. I'm guessing the azt2316 is on opl clone of some kind.

But the actual yamaha OPL3 chip is right there near the letter "V1". Many aztech cards seem to retain a yamaha OPL3.

gerwin wrote:

But the actual yamaha OPL3 chip is right there near the letter "V1". Many aztech cards seem to retain a yamaha OPL3.

Yes you're right, it's a Yamaha OPL YMF 262-M, I hadn't spotted that. The azt2320 is presumably a later azt chip on the other boards, and there's no yamaha opl chip on those that I can see. I saw an old press release earlier about the azt2320 having opl3 functionality.

What do you guys think about this card here?, I'm thinking into replacing my SB Awe 64 Gold with this one since I'm tired of the hanging notes issues with the MT-32 music on Thexder 2

Sorry for the pcture quality, as you can see on the big chip to the left, it reads "Aztech"

Hey copados33, I have the exact same card (picture from inside my 486), but as a Packard Bell OEM version, so the Aztech stickers are stickered over with Packard Bell ones. It is recognized by Win95 as an Aztech Sound Galaxy Washington 16. Not a bad card really-- compatible with SB Pro and has always sounded really good. I don't know much else about it though, I haven't explored any other capabilities it might have, though it's been with me since I first played DOS games back in 1995. One thing I just noticed the other day is that it actually has a YMF262-M on it, so it should technically be capable of OPL3. However back when the PC it was in worked I tried a lot of OPL music programs and they would only work in OPL2 mode. I dunno if that is just a misconfiguration on my part or something else. If I can get that 486 working again I will try and figure it out.

Do you know if this model is compatible with Covox and Disney Sound System? I ask because I don't have my "retro boxes" with me right now in order to run testings.

No idea. I've never had anything that used either.

Anybody knows if Thexder 2 is on the list of games that suffer from hanging notes using the AWE64 Gold MPu-401??
I'm thinking into ditch the AWE64 gold and use this Aztech card instead, but I don't know if these have full MPU-401 support.

Since when does an AWE64 Gold suffer from the hanging notes bug? I thought all AWE64s had DSP version 4.16, which is immune to the bug. Unless I'm missing something? I'll tell you one thing: I never had any kind of hanging notes on any of my two AWE64s, both of which have DSP version 4.16(they're Value models, but it should be the same with an AWE64 Gold).

There's nothing wrong if use the AWE64 alone, it's the MT-32, Sc-55 and other external midi modules that suffer from this when you connect them to the Mpu-401 on the SB card.

Very weird... I've never heard of any AWE64 screwing up MIDI like that. I did have problems with my CT4520 AWE64 where it would suddenly stop playing any music from my CM-300, but I was using Windows 95, which has problems when you've got multiple MIDI devices. I mean, I'm currently using a SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects model CT4170 in my IBM Personal Computer 300PL until I get fix my YMF724 or get it replaced by another Yamaha sound card, and I don't get a single stuck note or completely messed-up MIDI from my CM-300(I'm now using Windows 98 on that computer since I can switch MIDI devices with less problems than in Windows 95). It uses the exact same DSP version as the AWE64(4.16). Essentially, the AWE64 is just a SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects with the AWE32's EMU8000 added in. I really don't see how your AWE64 manages to mess up that badly. What OS are you using?

I just find this picture in on-line market and post it here.

price begins at $10, should I buy it as a "Historical purpose"? Now I see real picture (first in the net), it was worst Aztech card ever.

So I do some grave digging here, but I have gotten a Aztech Waverider Platinum 3D PnP recently.
It features the Aztech 2320 DSP and a wavetable part consisting of the "SEC C727B" and "Samsung KS0174-1M04 Korea Wavetable" chip.
The FCC-ID is I38-MMSN853 which is an ID that Aztech used for a few different Waverider cards.
I identified the wrider96 directory on aztechs ftp as the correct driver source.

Windows 98SE installs Aztech2320 PnP WDM drivers automatically as well a MPU-401 drivers.
Playing a MIDI file uses the Hardware Wavetable.

The DOS installation from Aztech features Intels PnP ICUU tool only to set resources with systems that do not support PnP. No Mixer or any actual sound related tool.

Trying the Windows 95 drivers on Windows 98SE asks for a genmidi.wsl from a "MIDI Music Workstation CD" which I do not have. So I took those files from the Riptide 80076 driver.
Now the Multimedia Control panel offers me the Hardware MPU-401 wavetable and the Software Wavetable Engine (Readme states 96 voices).

edit: Found the datasheets of this wavetable solution.

copados33 wrote:

Do you know if this model is compatible with Covox and Disney Sound System? I ask because I don't have my "retro boxes" with me right now in order to run testings.

Only some of the first generation Aztech sound cards supported the Covox Speech Thing and Disney Sound Source.
These cards normally had a jumper that enabled you to set up a virtual parrallel port in case your PC didn't have one available.
My Sound Galaxy Basic 16 (I38-MMSN810) does support these standards but none of my 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation Aztech cards.
Not many games supported these sound standards so, I guess that is why Aztech also dropped support for them after releasing their 2nd generation cards (which utilises the AZT-1605 chipset).

I can remember my 1st Aztech card back in the day, really impressive cards some of the best sounding Sound Blaster compatible cards of the time thats for sure. 😀

I got this Aztech sound card today, yet to find any drivers or test it yet though.

Is it any good...?

turtlesedge wrote:

I got this Aztech sound card today, yet to find any drivers or test it yet though.

Is it any good...?

It's one of the Aztech combo cards, which had a modem and sound card on one board.

Your card appears to be using the AZT-2316 chipset, which was used on the 3rd generation Sound Galaxy sound cards (it's still a non Plug 'n Play card) - you should be able to use one of the driver sets of one of the 3rd generation sound cards. Check out Vogons drivers. There are driver sets for a range of Aztech cards.

The modem chipset appears to be a Rockwell. There's usually a model (chipset) number printed on the chipset. Once you know what the chipset number is, then you can just Google it. You should then be able to obtain a generic driver for it.

Is there a model number (FCC-ID) printed somewhere on the board? The picture isn't very clear. Will usually be something like I38-MMSNxxx (later models had an FCC-ID of I38-SNxxxx).

jesolo wrote:

It's one of the Aztech combo cards, which had a modem and sound card on one board. […]
Show full quote

turtlesedge wrote:

I got this Aztech sound card today, yet to find any drivers or test it yet though.

Is it any good...?

It's one of the Aztech combo cards, which had a modem and sound card on one board.

Your card appears to be using the AZT-2316 chipset, which was used on the 3rd generation Sound Galaxy sound cards (it's still a non Plug 'n Play card) - you should be able to use one of the driver sets of one of the 3rd generation sound cards. Check out Vogons drivers. There are driver sets for a range of Aztech cards.

The modem chipset appears to be a Rockwell. There's usually a model (chipset) number printed on the chipset. Once you know what the chipset number is, then you can just Google it. You should then be able to obtain a generic driver for it.

Is there a model number (FCC-ID) printed somewhere on the board? The picture isn't very clear. Will usually be something like I38-MMSNxxx (later models had an FCC-ID of I38-SNxxxx).

Hey jesolo, thanks for the quick reply. There doesn't appear to be an FCC-ID on the board but there is a sticker on the back with a code "AZSC55010468". I have searched and still have no idea what model it is. I was hoping DOS drivers would exist for it.

Sorry about the image quality, I took 2 more photos...