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Audio problem with old win98 rig

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First post, by ocdmonkey

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Ok, so a while ago I got this custom system from someone that I am fairly certain was originally a Windows 98 rig. After going through a bit of trouble to get it to work correctly, it seemed to be working just fine, but when I play certain games the audio (music is most noticeable) is completely messed up. Now, certain things also sound just fine. The music on the "Welcome to Windows 98" thing sounds just fine and the sound on the loading screen of The Sims is just fine, but then other times it almost sounds like it is trying to play the music too fast and then keeps skipping back. Here are two videos I shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0_hu3A6_d0 -- Shockwave tetris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYDURHxXwQI -- The Sims (working loading music and messed up main menu music)

Now, I feel like this might be a problem with the on-board sound card, but I don't really want to go through the bother of finding the correct drivers for, and installing, one of my spare cards until I am more certain. Worth mentioning is that I tried some DOS games that use MIDI (such as DOOM) and they didn't play music at all. Also, Half-Life refuses to play the CD audio tracks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Reply 1 of 3, by Skyscraper

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We need more information about the hardware in your computer.

Probably a driver issue or some sort of conflict.
VIA chipsets in combination with some hardware tend to cause this kind of issues.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 2 of 3, by ocdmonkey

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I believe I have an Intel Desktop Board D850MD, and I think the driver I used was the "ADI* Soundmax* Driver" provided by Intel:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc. … px?DwnldID=5587
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult … =eng&ProdId=609 -- drivers page for the board

Also, I am using Windows 98 SE, which all the drivers I am using (right from Intel) are meant for. I installed all the drivers listed on the page linked to above except the LAN driver.

EDIT: Got back from work today and just felt like doing it, so I installed an old Turtle Beach sound card in it, and it works just fine, although the cd audio in Half-Life still refuses to play.

EDIT 2: Aaand that got fixed by connecting a cord from the CD drive to the sound card. Finally have this thing in (hopefully) complete working order!

Reply 3 of 3, by raymangold

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So if that driver is correct, this is a much later soundmax sound card not really designed for 9x (as hinted due to the fact only 98SE is shown)

That means:
#1 no FM synthesis sub-system
#2 unlikely to have a CD-Audio connector
#3 poor-to-zero DOS soundblaster compatibility

So of course you'll get no FM synthesis music in DOOM, and if your CD drive is an old-style one with analog output-- it needs an audio wire to pass the signal through.

If you're honestly going to play DOS games, put in a soundblaster or compatible with FM synthesis support. No other options unless you want to run an emulator in that old hardware which is redundant and inefficient.

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