VOGONS


First post, by mbarszcz

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I'm putting together a high end P3 rig with a 1.4GHz Tualatin S and I'm looking for some input regarding soundcards. Being from 2001, the tualaking is starting to encroach on the Windows XP era, but I'd rather have the Tualatin than a P4, in which case I might as well just use my modern PC and install Windows XP on it. I realize it's going to be different for everyone, but for me a Tualatin build/Win98 is where retro computing ends for me.

My current PIII build has the following specs and has been generally a great, flexible build.
Asus P3B-F
PIII Coppermine Slot 1 850MHz (OC to 1020MHz, but it seems a bit flaky at that speed, probably would be happier <1000MHz)
512MB SDRAM
Asus GeForce 4 Ti4200 128MB AGP
Yamaha YMF-719 w/ DreamBlaster X2GS Wavetable
Intel Pro/1000 GT PCI NIC
40GB Maxtor Hard Drive
Windows 98 SE

This has been a very versatile setup for me, playing everything from Doom to Roller Coaster tycoon and UT99. It does have some limitations though and starts to run out of speed in the CPU department --bottleneck the Geforce 4 on games in the 2001/2002+ era. I'm hoping the new build with its 1.4GHz CPU, AGP 4x, ATA/100 will help open things up a bit for some of the later titles that will still run under Win98 and on a PIII (Halo CE, NFS Hot Pursuit II, Warcraft 3, Tony Hawk 2, Midtown Madness 2, etc).

One of my favorite things about my current rig though is the sound setup. I love old sound chips in vintage computers, they're part of what makes the system special, whether its a C64's SID chip, Amiga's Paula, Yamaha FM Synth, or General MIDI, each has its own personality. My current setup with its real OPL3 and Dreamblaster with the Roland GS MIDI sounds has great support under DOS, plus it still works in Windows with DirectSound really provides a lot of flexibility. It doesn't support EAX, but I never noticed much real world benefits with EAX even back in the day, so I'm not bothered by that.

So all this brings me to my question about what to do about sound in my new Tualatin rig. With the Intel 815 chipset, the ISA slots are gone, so no more YMF719, SB16s, wavetable headers, and any sound card has to be PCI 🙁. Although I'm assuming that's pretty much the end to native DOS MIDI compatibility due to the lack of ISA slot/SBLink/DMA/etc, there is still Windows 98 DOS mode, and I think the FM Synth still does have a place under Windows for some games that use MIDI soundtracks (Like that banging soundtrack to 3D Ultra Minigolf Deluxe or Maxis' Full Tilt Pinball). An Apollo 133T chipset is an option I suppose as that would bring back the ISA slot, but that brings AGP 4x issues to the table. Not sure how much of an issue that is though with a Ti4200/Ti4400.

The PCI options I'm considering (and already have in my collection) would be:

1. A Cobra YMF-744B. This seems like a pretty good option, and the Phil's computer lab video on it shows it being quite compatible with DOS games under Windows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNCg_zy1_d4
It has OPL3 support, but no wavetable header. Perhaps I could connect the dreamblaster to the external 15 pin MPU-401 and pass it back in through the line in. This would provide a PCI option with real OPL3, MIDI, and Windows support similar to the YMF-719 I'm using now. It also seems to have some decent MIDI capabilities of its own.

2. An Audigy 2 ZS
This card is a great PCI sound card, but drops the FM Synth and most any hope for DOS compatibility all together in favor of sound fonts, EAX, firewire, 24 bit audio, etc. It is very much a card of a later era.

What do you guys do for sound in the Tualatin era? What have you tried that's worked well (or hasn't) for you?

Reply 1 of 8, by TrashPanda

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I too am searching for a good all round pci sound card that doesn’t force me to give up DOS compatibility, if I have to compromise a little then that’s ok.

I have a p3 1.4s build on a sis635t board so no ISA for me either.

Reply 3 of 8, by Boohyaka

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I have such a build and ended up using my P3B-F and a slotket with a modded Tualatin 1.4 and running at 133FSB. I get to keep the 3 ISA slots for all the soundcards glory, all graphics cards I've thrown at it happily ran on the overclocked AGP bus, and my understanding is that in terms of performance 440BX at 133 is still very competitive against i815.

Maybe something to consider 😀

Reply 4 of 8, by appiah4

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It's quite easy to get hardware FM synthesis as well as fantastic MIDI capabilities from many PCI cards.

Yamaha YMF7x4
ESS Solo-1
Fortemedia FM801
Aureal AU8830

These cards are troublesome with i815 due to ICH having no real DMA. For this chipset, they work best with PC/PCI. If your board lacks PC/PCI then you have to rely on their DMA emulation methods and TSR programs, which can be very hit and miss depending on your specific board and BIOS. If you go VIA 133T pretty much all of the above work flawlessly.

For reference, I have the following boards and cards paired for DOS sound:

GA-BX2000+ & AU8830 (Works with TSR but real mode games can crash, bad FM)
Compaq 239117-001 (Dekpro EN-SFF) & YMF744 (Works fine with TSR, more compatible than Aureal IME)
Biostar P4M890-M7 SE & FM801 (Works great with TSR, OK FM)

Overall, Fortemedia FM801 is my favorite PCI card for DOS, but I always try a YMF7x4 followed by an ESS Solo-1 to see if I can get them to work well before I fall back to that.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 5 of 8, by TrashPanda

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appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-22, 08:03:
It's quite easy to get hardware FM synthesis as well as fantastic MIDI capabilities from many PCI cards. […]
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It's quite easy to get hardware FM synthesis as well as fantastic MIDI capabilities from many PCI cards.

Yamaha YMF7x4
ESS Solo-1
Fortemedia FM801
Aureal AU8830

These cards are troublesome with i815 due to ICH having no real DMA. For this chipset, they work best with PC/PCI. If your board lacks PC/PCI then you have to rely on their DMA emulation methods and TSR programs, which can be very hit and miss depending on your specific board and BIOS. If you go VIA 133T pretty much all of the above work flawlessly.

For reference, I have the following boards and cards paired for DOS sound:

GA-BX2000+ & AU8830 (Works with TSR but real mode games can crash, bad FM)
Compaq 239117-001 (Dekpro EN-SFF) & YMF744 (Works fine with TSR, more compatible than Aureal IME)
Biostar P4M890-M7 SE & FM801 (Works great with TSR, OK FM)

Overall, Fortemedia FM801 is my favorite PCI card for DOS, but I always try a YMF7x4 followed by an ESS Solo-1 to see if I can get them to work well before I fall back to that.

Does the lack of DMA also apply to the sis 635t chipset?, I'm assuming it does as its even newer than i815 and uses DDR.

Reply 6 of 8, by appiah4

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I never owned a 635T but browsing manuals for 630/635/T boards I can see that their PCI/PNP configuration options include things like reserving DMA and the like so I would think they should be on par with VIA with regards to compatibility.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 7 of 8, by LubieCipy

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mbarszcz wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:04:

An Apollo 133T chipset is an option I suppose as that would bring back the ISA slot, but that brings AGP 4x issues to the table. Not sure how much of an issue that is though with a Ti4200/Ti4400.

AGPx2 only hurts the eyes, the speed difference compared to AGPx4 is marginal

Reply 8 of 8, by appiah4

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LubieCipy wrote on 2021-12-22, 11:25:
mbarszcz wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:04:

An Apollo 133T chipset is an option I suppose as that would bring back the ISA slot, but that brings AGP 4x issues to the table. Not sure how much of an issue that is though with a Ti4200/Ti4400.

AGPx2 only hurts the eyes, the speed difference compared to AGPx4 is marginal

I remember AGP 4x being a problem with VIA KT333 for my Radeon 9600PRO back in the day, and using SMARTGART to limit it to AGP 2x resulted in no visible performance loss even for that card. I doubt anything that isn't already bottlenecked by a Socket 370 CPU will suffer from AGP 2x at all.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.