Orpheus 😁

badmojo wrote on 2023-05-23, 22:52:

Mine is probably this humble Labway branded YMF-719 sound card + X2GS, which I've been using for a few years now. This setup end […]
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Mine is probably this humble Labway branded YMF-719 sound card + X2GS, which I've been using for a few years now. This setup ended my 10 years long search for "the perfect" ISA sound card - totally subjective of course but the countless other options I've tried over the years always annoyed me in some way, where this never does.

I resisted these OPLSAx for years because of the unfiltered SB Pro output but once JamesF came up with the filter mod, that was it. True love.

The X2GS - configured to my tastes and with the stereo reversed to fix the YMF-719's reversed stereo wavetable header - likewise never disappoints. This little guy has replaced all of the other GM hardware I had - SCC-1, SC-55, DB50XG, etc.

IMG_8398.JPG

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Could you link me to the mods you have done? I’ve got the same card also fitted with an X2, and have been shying away from using it.

i have been liking my Aztech and ESS sound cards, they are quite solid and get the job done in terms of sound in DOS and Windows (3.11 or 9x). i have a AZT2316 I38-MMSN824 and a ES688FC with a DSP24S OPL3 copycat chip which sounds exactly like a authentic OPL3 chip. and i have been liking OPTi 895 based 486 VLB boards, they seem solid and have ok performance in DOS and Windows, even Win95 runs ok on there.

paradigital wrote on 2023-05-24, 05:20:

Could you link me to the mods you have done? I’ve got the same card also fitted with an X2, and have been shying away from using it.

Here's the hardware mod details - a bit fiddly but not too hard: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

Don't make the same mistake I did and try and mod a YMF-718 card in the same way, they have different pinouts - still possible to do the mod though: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

And another important thing to do with these cards is outlined on page 1 of the same thread - the 'SB' setting in the mixer needs to be set to 1, or you won't get correct behaviour in games that manipulate the mixer, like Wolf3D for example which uses the mixer to create a stereo effect. Only the Yamaha DOS driver allows this in my experience, Unisound, etc doesn't set it properly.

badmojo wrote on 2023-05-24, 05:57:

Here's the hardware mod details - a bit fiddly but not too hard: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix […]
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paradigital wrote on 2023-05-24, 05:20:

Could you link me to the mods you have done? I’ve got the same card also fitted with an X2, and have been shying away from using it.

Here's the hardware mod details - a bit fiddly but not too hard: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

Don't make the same mistake I did and try and mod a YMF-718 card in the same way, they have different pinouts - still possible to do the mod though: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

And another important thing to do with these cards is outlined on page 1 of the same thread - the 'SB' setting in the mixer needs to be set to 1, or you won't get correct behaviour in games that manipulate the mixer, like Wolf3D for example which uses the mixer to create a stereo effect. Only the Yamaha DOS driver allows this in my experience, Unisound, etc doesn't set it properly.

Excellent, thank you. Now I have something retro to do at the weekend!

badmojo wrote on 2023-05-23, 22:52:

I resisted these OPLSAx for years because of the unfiltered SB Pro output but once JamesF came up with the filter mod, that was it. True love.

Having recently modded my own YMF719 using this method by James-F, I can confirm that it makes a big difference.

It's especially noticeable in early 90s adventure games which use digitized voice recordings. The filtering smooths out the speech, making it sound much more natural.

Yes it makes early stuff great, but that reminds me that it pays to turn the filter off again for more modern stuff with higher quality samples - Duke3D, etc sounds a bit muffled with a OG SB Pro. I assume this is why the designers of the card did the filter as it is - newer stuff needs less filter and these cards were late 90's.

Anyway the mixer is proper SB Pro compatible so any software that can turn the filter off on those will work with the YMF-719, there are a few little command line things around 👍

Always wanted the SB AWE, I now own 2 AWE32's and a 64 value I'm happy sure but my all time favourite hardware to use is my childhood PC.

So after all those years of dreaming of upgrading to a faster PC with an AWE I now choose to go back to the DX2-66 SB16 based PC

badmojo wrote on 2023-05-24, 05:57:

Here's the hardware mod details - a bit fiddly but not too hard: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

Don't make the same mistake I did and try and mod a YMF-718 card in the same way, they have different pinouts - still possible to do the mod though: Re: Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

And another important thing to do with these cards is outlined on page 1 of the same thread - the 'SB' setting in the mixer needs to be set to 1, or you won't get correct behaviour in games that manipulate the mixer, like Wolf3D for example which uses the mixer to create a stereo effect. Only the Yamaha DOS driver allows this in my experience, Unisound, etc doesn't set it properly.

Thanks for this info as well! I've got a couple YMF cards and I'll have to try this out and see how they sound.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-05-24, 11:49:

I've got a couple YMF cards and I'll have to try this out and see how they sound.

If you want a before/after comparison, I have attached a couple of recordings from the Fate of Atlantis to this post.

There's also a recording from an AWE64 card, which shows some of the filtering differences.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 18:16:

My favorite ISA sound card is the Guillemot Maxi 64 series. I bought a new Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio back in 2000 for next to nothing, planning to use it in a fast 486 I was building for my little sister. First time I heard that Dream chip in Descent I was blown away. I had no idea MIDI music could sound like that.

Reading up on it it sounds like they used Roland samples. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on one of those to try out myself. 😀

Absolutely the... intel 486DX2

My Voodoo 3 3000 that I bought new. I don't have it in service anymore but it still seems to work just fine even after being in a dozen different systems over the years.

I have a few interesting things like Voodoo3 3000, MT-32, and a 1Ghz Slot-A CPU. The first one.
My favorite though is the Alaris Cougar motherboard with it's weird IBM Blue Lightning triple-clocked 75mhz 386 that runs 486 instructions.
It's an odd bird, and I love it.
It has 2-pin fan header, a 486 CPU upgrade socket, and even has a bodge wire on it from the factory.
Here's what mine looks like, though this isn't it.
Mine has a weird fault with the built in serial ports, they don't work, but I use a PS/2 mouse card on it.

ASUS P/I-P55T2P4 Got this board when I upgraded to a Pentium 200MMX that I overclocked via a simple jumper setting to 233MHz. Way later I found out you could upgrade it with an AMD K6/III 450 after a BIOS update which I both did. It still works today. Amazing board with great value and flexibility. I got an additional TAG RAM so that the 512KB onboard Pipeline Burst cache can address more than 64MB of RAM (even though it gets degraded to 3rd level cache with the K6/III installed) as well as the USB board.

It's my current Retro build with a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI, SB Live! 1024 (with an additional digital I/O board from a normal SB Live!), 128 MB of 60ns EDO-RAM ( I believe it supports up to 512 MB EDO-RAM), Creative Encore DXr2 MPEG 2 Decoder card (which I might remove since I don't really need a region free DVD player that can copy to VHS anymore and it uses up a precious IRQ) and a 3com Etherlink III PnP ISA network card. Currently it still has its two HDDs (one WD Caviar with I believe 1.2 GB, another one with 3.2 GB) but I got a PCI SATA card (SiL 3114 chipset) that I plan to install alongside a 120GBSSD just to make Win98SE boot in an instant.

My second favorite piece or retro hardware has to be my first sound card, a "HighScreen Blaster 3.0" - a Soundblaster 2.0 clone from CPS (that they sold as "Soundblaster 2.5", the HighScreen blaster was sold by Vobis, a famous computer retailer in Germany):

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:43:

Compaq S3 ViRGE/GX video card, not the most interesting hardware but it has nearly excellent DOS compatibility and comes with VBE 2.0 onboard. The build quality of the card is excellent and doesn't suffer from the brightness bug out of the box.

I loved my Elsa Victory 3D with the first ViRGE 325 back in the day, 3D games really were an eye opener. Even though it didn't really accelerate anything. I had to send in my BIOS chip in order to get a VBE 2.0 replacement. Still got the card (along with a Voodoo 2 that I added later):

Siran wrote on 2023-05-24, 18:54:

ASUS P/I-P55T2P4 Got this board when I upgraded to a Pentium 200MMX that I overclocked via a simple jumper setting to 233MHz. Way later I found out you could upgrade it with an AMD K6/III 450 after a BIOS update which I both did. It still works today. Amazing board with great value and flexibility. I got an additional TAG RAM so that the 512KB onboard Pipeline Burst cache can address more than 64MB of RAM (even though it gets degraded to 3rd level cache with the K6/III installed) as well as the USB board.
20230518_155253.jpg

It's my current Retro build with a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI, SB Live! 1024 (with an additional digital I/O board from a normal SB Live!), 128 MB of 60ns EDO-RAM ( I believe it supports up to 512 MB EDO-RAM), Creative Encore DXr2 MPEG 2 Decoder card (which I might remove since I don't really need a region free DVD player that can copy to VHS anymore and it uses up a precious IRQ) and a 3com Etherlink III PnP ISA network card. Currently it still has its two HDDs (one WD Caviar with I believe 1.2 GB, another one with 3.2 GB) but I got a PCI SATA card (SiL 3114 chipset) that I plan to install alongside a 120GBSSD just to make Win98SE boot in an instant.

Yes, this is one of most legendary boards out there. I had this board in use for almost 5 years with countless CPUs.

paradigital wrote on 2023-05-23, 19:18:

Probably my Powerleap PL-iP3/T complete with Tualatin 1.4GHz.

Had the same one with a Tualeron 1.4 GHz on my Asus P2B-S Rev 1.02 - really made the old girl shine again. Never really used it as much though since I planned on using it as a secondary PC but never really needed it so I sold it to someone who'd appreciate it a few weeks back after I found it in the attic again.

Gumur.gurl wrote on 2023-05-23, 19:51:

Socket3 wrote on 2023-05-23, 15:16:

Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encoura […]
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Hey guys. I was wondering what your favorite piece of retro hardware is - be it in your collection or not - pictures are encouraged!

For me it would be the Geforce 4 Ti4600 - specifically the Leadtek Winfast A250 Ultra TD. The reason is probably pretty boring - it was in most tech and PC gaming magazine ads when I was in highschool - and I was never able to come close to affording one.

Here she is:

a250.jpg

... and only 20 years too late!!! 😜 (got her about a year ago). In fact I plan to collect all the cards on that ad page. So far I've got the A250TD (Ti4200), the A170 DDR T (Geforce 4 MX460), Winfast Geforce 2 MX400TH and the WinFast Titanium 200 TH. I'm only missing the regular Winfast A170T and the Winfast Geforce 2 MX64.

A close second would be the Slot A platform, with the reason being intel of all things. Their pricing in my country back in 1999-2000 was horrendous - not because of intel themselves (well, partly) but because the sole intel CPU importer had near 50% markup on all CPUs - so a 400MHz pentium 2 cost double what a 400MHz K6-2 cost. i440bx boards were also more expensive than any super socket 7 - so when I could finally afford to upgrade my ancient 586... a no-name via MVP4 chipset board with a 450Mhz K6-2 is all I could afford. Kinda made 8th grade me hate intel. So when the Athlon started showing up in tech and gaming magazines it was love at first sight - especially considering a 650Mhz slot A Athlon cost as much as a slower Celeron + slotket (according to the offers printed in magazines at the time). So I used to drool over these things up until I finally managed to raise enough money for another upgrade, but at that point slot A had been superseded by socket A - so I went with that.

What about you guys? What did you wish for back in the day and were never able to afford (or were able to and loved it)?

This is all what i need to be happy.

do you have it? there are so many versions of it, i saw one on a really big green box with some 5 1/4 bay accessory

Probably my awe32ct 3900. Such a flexible good sounding card. My musicquest adjacent clone and connected midi stack probably comes a close second.

Other honorable mentions?
- voodoo sli cards. Just quake the way it was meant to be played.
- my 1ghz via c3 cpu. Amazing speed range from slow 386 to about 1998. Runs cool.
- a simple Ess audiodrive with onboard wavetable. It just works with everything with minimal configuration and is perfect for a test bench card.