The cable you are referring to is the SB-LINK. There are other threads about that already. It was not supported by very many sound cards or by very many motherboards.

The major problems with the DOS driver for PCI cards is that it does not work with motherboards starting from around the Pentium 4. It also requires EMM386 to be loaded, but really there are very few games that object to EMM386 and I think that problem is vastly overstated.

ISA cards are generally very much preferred as they tend to have superior MIDI features, like OPL3; the legacy MIDI capabilities of PCI sound blaster cards leave much to be desired. There are a bazillion threads about this already.

Yeah, PCI sound cards are really not worth it for DOS stuff. They're really for Windows 98 PCs that won't be used for DOS games much at all.

On the other hand, DOS compatibility with PCI sound cards in Windows 98 is generally OK, AFAIK, as long as the card is meant to support it.

The only exception to these rules wrt PCI cards are the Yamaha YMF-7xx PCI series, especially if they have SB-PCI and you have a compatible motherboard.

gdjacobs wrote:

The only exception to these rules wrt PCI cards are the Yamaha YMF-7xx PCI series, especially if they have SB-PCI and you have a compatible motherboard.

I use a 724 pci + SC55 in DOS - haven't found a problem yet. The Ensoniq AudioPCI / Creative PCI128 and Aureal Vortex 1 are pretty good in DOS too. So is the Crystal 4xxx series and the ALS1000s.

Strange, mine crashes the whole computer when I'm playing duke3D with the sfx activated. It could be related to the fact that I didn't plug the sb_link because I don't have that cable at the moment

computergeek92 wrote:

I recall that some early PCI sound cards, like those from Creative and Aureal, supplied a DOS driver that emulated an older sound card standard for gaming. Some even had a cable that connected to the mobo with a cable? I have never tried them, but how well do they work versus the traditional ISA based cards? Thanks.

Have a look at this thread for PCI sound cards under DOS: PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...
Also have a look at this spreadsheet where I list compatiblility between PCI sound cards and motherboard chipsets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cvhr6 … dit?usp=sharing

Not all PCI sound cards requires a driver but only an initializer when running in DDMA mode or with a PC/PCI cable. The Sound Blaster AWE64D is the only Creative card with PC/PCI and it's the only option for this card in DOS.

Deksor wrote:

It could be related to the fact that I didn't plug the sb_link because I don't have that cable at the moment

PC/PCI or SB-LINK cable. How to make?

😀

I know, i know, but thanks ^^

I just didn't have anything to pay things online until, well ... a few days. I'll buy that when I will be able to

kanecvr wrote:

I use a 724 pci + SC55 in DOS - haven't found a problem yet. The Ensoniq AudioPCI / Creative PCI128 and Aureal Vortex 1 are pretty good in DOS too. So is the Crystal 4xxx series and the ALS1000s.

The Yamaha cards include an OPL core which makes them just a little more special, IMHO.

Is there any reason not to use an ISA sound card (other than when your motherboard doesn't have ISA) for Win 95/98 games?

I tried to get my on board PCI sound (the brand/model escapes me right now, I think it's AudioPCI) to work in DOS on my Socket 7. I found drivers that claim to work but quality and compatibility seemed bad as it sounded real bad or caused memory protection faults.

When did ISA started to disappear, around Pentium 3 or so?
Pentium 4 had no ISA slots while Pentium 3 MAYBE had one single ISA slot...?
So Socket 7 and Slot 1 are the last generation of ISA equipt motherboards.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, just thought it was beneficial to know.

As for PCI audio card for DOS gaming... nah, you want an ISA Sound Blaster Pro with OPL3, Wavetable and MPU-401 for the complete package.

James-F wrote:

When did ISA started to disappear, around Pentium 3 or so? Pentium 4 had no ISA slots while Pentium 3 MAYBE had one single ISA s […]
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When did ISA started to disappear, around Pentium 3 or so?
Pentium 4 had no ISA slots while Pentium 3 MAYBE had one single ISA slot...?
So Socket 7 and Slot 1 are the last generation of ISA equipt motherboards.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, just thought it was beneficial to know.

Also on Via chipset motherboards for Athlon you can find ISA slots until KT133A, then they disappear.

SB-LINK: The terminolog "SB-Link" originated from Creative® to propose a standard which can be a bridge between the mainboard an […]
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SB-LINK:
The terminolog "SB-Link" originated from Creative® to propose a standard which can be a bridge between the mainboard and PCI sound card to deliver Sound Blaster 16 compatibility under DOS real-mode environment.

This technology provides the DMA and IRQ signals present in the ISA bus, but not on the PCI bus. Not having these signals does not effect a PCI sound card to produce the sound capability under Microsoft Windows environment but for people using DOS, there may be a problem. SB-Link is invented exactly for this purpose.

SB-Link utilizes the technology from Intel's newest generation of chipsets in TX, LX and newer core logic chipsets, called "Serialized IRQ" protocols, which has been endorsed by many mainboard manufactures. Through the SB-Link acting as a bridge, sound card users will be able to enjoy stereo sound quality in most of OS environment.
From now on, you can fully enjoy the benefits of using a PCI sound card without loosing the compatibility. A PCI sound card bypasses the 8MHz limitation imposed on the ISA sound card and will effectively use system memory to buffer the media data. It is so far the most efficacious way for an audio enthusiast to put together a home entertainment system.
Document dated on 06/08/98.

Never heared of SB-Link before.

If SB-Link (also known as PC-PCI) are working without problems, then a PCI card are usefull.
That said, I have personally only had two cards with SB-Link header on them.
Those are Yamaha YMF724 and A-Open AW320.
And I have only had 4 motherboards with that header on them.
Those are: Asus P2B-S, Intel se440bx-2, Epox MVP3-C and Intel VC820.
The best thing is still to go with an ISA card.

notsonic wrote:

Is there any reason not to use an ISA sound card (other than when your motherboard doesn't have ISA) for Win 95/98 games?

The PCI sound cards support WDM drivers, which are inherently more stable than VXD drivers. But then, they sometimes introduce compatibility problems and in theory can negatively impact performance (though I would think that would be a negligible concern, especially on a "retro" machine that's supposed to be "slow"). Sometimes they also support various fancy 3D effects, though I have often understood such effects to be unpredictably buggy.

I tried to get my on board PCI sound (the brand/model escapes me right now, I think it's AudioPCI) to work in DOS on my Socket 7. I found drivers that claim to work but quality and compatibility seemed bad as it sounded real bad or caused memory protection faults.

While onboard sound is perfectly fine on computers nowadays, onboard sound devices from that era were typically a very bad idea.

The way I see it, Non ISA machines are usually fast. Pentium 4 or Athlon XP stuff.

So games that run well on these machines are mostly later DOS games, high resolution VESA modes, that sort of thing. The good news is that the sound drivers of these newer games are quite compatible with PCI sound cards.

Now there is the extreme case of someone wanting to play Wing Commander or Fate of Atlantis on a Pentium 4 with a PCI sound card, but for all the newer stuff like Doom, Descent or System Shock you will find PCI cards working really well.

What all these modern games have in common is the support for MIDI. So a cheap AudioPCI is a great fit. Vortex 2 you can use a wavetable board. Or go with a Yamaha if you are an OPL3 purist. Lots of options.

I see this is all the time that people focus on what doesn't work, but totally ignore that 90%, a TON, of cool DOS games will actually work just perfectly fine.