RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-05-03, 08:27:

XP SP3 was when the OS went to shit, because they did a lot of changes under the hood in the kernel and processes, due to the security issues that were popping up and that SP broke a lot of games and drivers for soundcards. Before that, I had no issues with older 9x games, though a lot of 95-ME era games were a bit wonky due to the changes in the DirectX APIs and having to figure out OpenGL quirks.

leileilol wrote on 2022-05-03, 08:33:

Nah. It's usually FUD'd because that's when the WGA stuff came in.

Hmm. Perhaps SP2 is better for retro gaming then? But perhaps it's not a problem if you are careful what updates you install. Obviously if the computer is connected to the Internet it should be behind a firewall and that sort of thing (but then most of us are behind at least one router which is, by definition, a firewall) anyway since you're running older, less secure software (though it may be hackers aren't particularly interested in hacking an old laptop anyway, lol.) I can't remember when I actually transitioned, but I remember VDMSound in XP carried me pretty far until the days I could switch to DOSBox more. It could also be that I was just lucky in that I was just happening to play games that had fewer troubles versus some other people. I did have automatic updates turned off by the time of stuff like SP3 and WGA and when I installed SP3 I did so by integrating it into an install media (via XPLite I think) and installing clean. I guess it might be best to install SP3 for the better security (though you should still be sure you're running it behind a router or firewall of some sort anyway) and seeing how that goes, then if that fails reinstall with SP2 instead (definitely be behind a router/firewall then.) I do honestly feel like I played a lot of older games even on SP3 without problems, but I can't specifically remember much of anything useful in that regard.

guest_2 wrote on 2022-05-02, 14:41:

I always remember XP being a pain to get some older games running? Games like Duke3d, Blood, Rise of the triad and some newer like Need for Speed did not support XP.

I don't know if there might be some confusion or what, but that's totally backwards. Generally it's not a question of if a game "supports" running on anything other than the exact hardware and software it expected so much as if using something else can be made to support it because the answer is, in short, the game does not. Period. Running a retro game on anything it doesn't expect can result in troubles and what we have to do when dealing with them is adapt software and hardware as needed to try to get the best from them -- within the limitations of what we have available. Those specific examples (except NFS if you mean NFS:SE) are DOS games and didn't "support" running within any version of Windows -- not even 3.1. The question at hand isn't whether the games supported XP, but whether you can get them to run within it. I can tell you for certain I did run Blood and Duke Nukem 3D in my Windows XP days with VDMSound, but I'm not sure about the other two (I never particularly went back to ROTT. I only found it interesting as the first to do the things it did.) As for NFS, if you're talking about the DOS version, maybe try Need for Speed Special Edition which does run in Windows (albeit 9x I suppose.) I think it's supposed to be basically the same game, just looking better and with a couple more cars or something.

But, to be clear, this is basically true for all PC software. No game truly "supports" running it on anything other than exactly what the developers developed it on. With anything else you risk running into issues and may have to jump through a hoop or two to get a particular game working ideally. That's just PC gaming.

guest_2 wrote:

I was however unaware of NTVDM and VDMSound though.

To clarify this point too, NTVDM is built into NT itself as Microsoft's best compromise. Any time you run a legacy executable it used it automatically without you necessarily specifically knowing (though you may have noticed a small delay as it ran through its startup process since it doesn't run automatically with cmd.exe.) VDMSound is third party software that is designed to complement the built-in NTVDM and improves sound support in particular (though I would just swear I remember it actually doing something else besides sound to improve legacy gaming compatibility somewhat. I can't remember what, if so.)

In short, when playing older games on newer systems, we have to expect to have to jump through a few hoops and potentially risk losing some quality or compatibility along the way sometimes because the only alternative is to actually buy and fix up the old physical hardware to provide a perfect environment (and sometimes that could even involve a soldering iron and ordering replacement caps and stuff online.) And if you think it's bad in the PC world, just look at how much collectors spend on retro console game stuff. If you really wanted perfect retro support you'd need perfect retro hardware and then you may actually be looking at spending as much as retro console game collectors spend because you'd want two PCs with some old hardware that would be very hard to find. For example, for perfect retro DOS gaming you'd probably want a 100MHz 486 or 75MHz Pentium 1 to avoid game startup crashes but set maximum on everything and a Vibra16 soundcard for the best digital sound with either a nice daughterboard like the DB50XG or an external synthesizer. Whereas for early Windows 9x gaming you'd probably want a Pentium 2 (something like 350MHz I guess?) and maybe a combo of a Voodoo2 and a TNT2 setup with the V2 acting as a passthrough only for Glide games along with probably an Audigy ES. And, of course, all this in a desktop PC, not a laptop as laptops all too frequently compromised in hardware. And, of course, you'd want to pair each with an appropriate CRT monitor because LCDs never have handled analog inputs and low resolutions super well. This would probably get very costly and time-consuming even finding the hardware. For most of us some compromise is just absolutely necessary. You may not get everything working 100% on that old laptop, but if you jump through the hoops I think you'll get quite a lot out of it all the same.

guest_2 wrote on 2022-05-02, 14:41:

I always remember XP being a pain to get some older games running? Games like Duke3d, Blood, Rise of the triad and some newer like Need for Speed did not support XP.

I don't know if there might be some confusion or what, but that's totally backwards. Generally it's not a question of if a game "supports" running on anything other than the exact hardware and software it expected so much as if using something else can be made to support it because the answer is, in short, the game does not. Period. Running a retro game on anything it doesn't expect can result in troubles and what we have to do when dealing with them is adapt software and hardware as needed to try to get the best from them -- within the limitations of what we have available. Those specific examples (except NFS if you mean NFS:SE) are DOS games and didn't "support" running within any version of Windows -- not even 3.1. The question at hand isn't whether the games supported XP, but whether you can get them to run within it. I can tell you for certain I did run Blood and Duke Nukem 3D in my Windows XP days with VDMSound, but I'm not sure about the other two (I never particularly went back to ROTT. I only found it interesting as the first to do the things it did.) As for NFS, if you're talking about the DOS version, maybe try Need for Speed Special Edition which does run in Windows (albeit 9x I suppose.) I think it's supposed to be basically the same game, just looking better and with a couple more cars or something.

But, to be clear, this is basically true for all PC software. No game truly "supports" running it on anything other than exactly what the developers developed it on. With anything else you risk running into issues and may have to jump through a hoop or two to get a particular game working ideally. That's just PC gaming.

guest_2 wrote:

I was however unaware of NTVDM and VDMSound though.

To clarify this point too, NTVDM is built into NT itself as Microsoft's best compromise. Any time you run a legacy executable it used it automatically without you necessarily specifically knowing (though you may have noticed a small delay as it ran through its startup process since it doesn't run automatically with cmd.exe.) VDMSound is third party software that is designed to complement the built-in NTVDM and improves sound support in particular (though I would just swear I remember it actually doing something else besides sound to improve legacy gaming compatibility somewhat. I can't remember what, if so.)

In short, when playing older games on newer systems, we have to expect to have to jump through a few hoops and potentially risk losing some quality or compatibility along the way sometimes because the only alternative is to actually buy and fix up the old physical hardware to provide a perfect environment (and sometimes that could even involve a soldering iron and ordering replacement caps and stuff online.) And if you think it's bad in the PC world, just look at how much collectors spend on retro console game stuff. If you really wanted perfect retro support you'd need perfect retro hardware and then you may actually be looking at spending as much as retro console game collectors spend because you'd want two PCs with some old hardware that would be very hard to find. For example, for perfect retro DOS gaming you'd probably want a 100MHz 486 or 75MHz Pentium 1 to avoid game startup crashes but set maximum on everything and a Vibra16 soundcard for the best digital sound with either a nice daughterboard like the DB50XG or an external synthesizer. Whereas for early Windows 9x gaming you'd probably want a Pentium 2 (something like 350MHz I guess?) and maybe a combo of a Voodoo2 and a TNT2 setup with the V2 acting as a passthrough only for Glide games along with probably an Audigy ES. And, of course, all this in a desktop PC, not a laptop as laptops all too frequently compromised in hardware. And, of course, you'd want to pair each with an appropriate CRT monitor because LCDs never have handled analog inputs and low resolutions super well. This would probably get very costly and time-consuming even finding the hardware. For most of us some compromise is just absolutely necessary. You may not get everything working 100% on that old laptop, but if you jump through the hoops I think you'll get quite a lot out of it all the same.
[/quote]

OK, sorry I'll re-phrase. Win98 always had better compatibility for DOS and early 9X games.
Opening an MS-DOS or early 9X game for me in XP resulted usually in it either not opening at all or there being no sound fx or music. Patches for games were usually required. Win 98 you could always boot to native DOS too.
The 9X kernel being on Win9X, not XP or 2000.

Sure, its best to have a period laptop/desktop/console for each era of games but most will not do this due to cost and ending up with many different systems to play x game or run x program.

The 98 SE desktop with a PIII, Voodoo 3 and ISA Soundblaster covered most bases. The Soundblaster 16 even worked fine in games upto around 2005. Some early DOS games ran too fast but you could use programs to slow them down like Moslo. I downsized from that machine with a Samsung CRT to the Dell laptop, but it seems almost impossible to get DOS sound working well due to the terrible ESS audio card inside it. The hunt continues I guess!

Edit, also Windows 98 takes 350MB of disk space and flys on the Dell inspiron 8100. It seems faster (and certainly cleaner) than my Windwos 10 machine using an NVME SSD!

guest_2 wrote on 2022-05-05, 17:55:

OK, sorry I'll re-phrase. Win98 always had better compatibility for DOS and early 9X games.
Opening an MS-DOS or early 9X game for me in XP resulted usually in it either not opening at all or there being no sound fx or music. Patches for games were usually required. Win 98 you could always boot to native DOS too.
The 9X kernel being on Win9X, not XP or 2000.

Right. 9x is built on a legacy setup with a DOS backing and even though it tried to modernize things more, it was obviously limited in what it could do from there. It will always be better at handling DOS stuff directly than anything with a real kernel like XP obviously, but with disadvantages like we've established here -- it's too much better. It handles stuff like what you're trying to do a lot closer to the DOS way, meaning newer, potentially better ways can become impossible. In this case it means DOS games aren't going to use the Windows MIDI mapper because, well, why would they?

Sure, its best to have a period laptop/desktop/console for each era of games but most will not do this due to cost and ending up with many different systems to play x game or run x program.

Exactly. For a short time when I had an actual physical DOS computer I dreamed of someday going the full route with a real DB50XG and etc, but it was too unrealistic for me then and now even less so. Now I personally feel like DOSBox on my current generation computers is actually just great (and despite how inaccurate it is, I like the video resize algorithms that can make some stuff look a bit nicer like 2xSaI.) Of course, a laptop is more convenient than a full desktop anyway, so if I had a really old one like that I might potentially consider setting it up for retro gaming too.

Edit, also Windows 98 takes 350MB of disk space and flys on the Dell inspiron 8100.

This is why I suggested using XPLite or a similar tool to slim XP down. There also is an equivalent for 2000 which might get a bit smaller. I realize, of course, that thing isn't overflowing with space, but since your primary goal is DOS gaming and perhaps some 9x gaming, you probably should be ok. (Plus XP has actually viable USB storage support, unlike 9x which still wasn't exactly great at it even in WinME. I think the manual for your laptop even says it has FireWire which was actually better than USB 2.0 on such devices for consistent high speed read operations.)

It seems faster (and certainly cleaner) than my Windwos 10 machine using an NVME SSD!

Hmm. This is a separate issue and I'm not going to go into it too in-depth, but I'm not sure it should feel that way to you. Windows 9x will certainly feel snappy on a > 1GHz Pentium 3 -- after all, even WinME was designed to be able to run quite well on a Pentium 1 or even a fast 486 -- but 10 should still feel pretty ok. It's a bit bloaty compared to, say, Windows 7 and I always felt like 7 was the best current generation OS (but sadly it's abandoned by MS which isn't so bad except that it translates to manufacturers abandoning it too) but it really should still feel pretty snappy on that hardware (in fact, your system is better than my desktop and it runs great on my desktop.) In particular I'd say maybe disable a few unnecessary services and most of all get rid of all the random crap that runs on startup to do stuff you don't really need (especially quickstart applications. These are ridiculously dumb anyway. Update checkers should go too. You can manually check things for updates.) Not a popular opinion, but I think also people should forcibly disable Windows 10's automatic update (there are a few tools that can do this like O&O's ShutUp 10) as automatic updates can sometimes do a lot more harm than good (I've had one before completely bog my entire system down continuously no matter what I did until I removed it.) Though you have to reenable it long enough to manually install updates from time to time and such. Also, perhaps one other less considered thing: disable things like system animations. I've noticed this on Android devices, but the animations add delays and if you disable them it actually feels snappier even though that has absolutely no effect whatsoever on system performance and turn off most of the unnecessary Aero stuff. Windows 9x, of course, didn't really have most of those animations and didn't wobble windows or any weird stuff like that so adds no delays for unnecessary visuals. With a light and minimal setup you really should be able to get it to still feel pretty much the same on that hardware.

The hunt continues I guess!

It's up to you which way you want to go from here. You can search for physical hardware that is more tuned for this sort of setup, but most likely a laptop will never be as good at DOS gaming. (BTW, a warning ahead of time, older laptops from the DOS and Win9x sort of era had some fairly bad LCD screens with lots of ghosting and latency.) I do still believe your laptop's main problem can be as simple as making a leaner, cleaner XP build and using that along with good drivers and VDMSound -- though it will never be as good at FM synthesis apparently (at least General MIDI would be great and then there's MUNT for MT-32 and similar emulation I believe.) It's up to you if you want to try it or not, but regardless I don't think you're going to get anything more out of 9x on that laptop than what you've already been running into because software like S-YXG50 does not take DOS gaming into account in its design and was specifically made for Windows only, so it's either go the route of a software setup that does what you need better (which may mean dual booting potentially) or a hardware setup that Just Works(tm). Alternately, maybe you'd be better served going forward and finding a cheap older model of a more modern laptop (you should be able to find something in the $100 range or maybe even lower that should be great at DOSBox) and setting it up with the Arakula VSTMIDI driver along with the S-YXG50 VSTi plugin for General MIDI or DOSBox's built-in synthesizers. Possibly running Windows 7 if 10 is too much (though, like I said, manufacturers abandoned it, so you have to be careful to make sure you can find the right drivers if you want to go back a bit.) Anyway, whichever way you ultimately go, good luck.

Nazo wrote on 2022-05-05, 22:03:

Right. 9x is built on a legacy setup with a DOS backing and even though it tried to modernize things more, it was obviously lim […]
Show full quote

guest_2 wrote on 2022-05-05, 17:55:

OK, sorry I'll re-phrase. Win98 always had better compatibility for DOS and early 9X games.
Opening an MS-DOS or early 9X game for me in XP resulted usually in it either not opening at all or there being no sound fx or music. Patches for games were usually required. Win 98 you could always boot to native DOS too.
The 9X kernel being on Win9X, not XP or 2000.

Right. 9x is built on a legacy setup with a DOS backing and even though it tried to modernize things more, it was obviously limited in what it could do from there. It will always be better at handling DOS stuff directly than anything with a real kernel like XP obviously, but with disadvantages like we've established here -- it's too much better. It handles stuff like what you're trying to do a lot closer to the DOS way, meaning newer, potentially better ways can become impossible. In this case it means DOS games aren't going to use the Windows MIDI mapper because, well, why would they?

Sure, its best to have a period laptop/desktop/console for each era of games but most will not do this due to cost and ending up with many different systems to play x game or run x program.

Exactly. For a short time when I had an actual physical DOS computer I dreamed of someday going the full route with a real DB50XG and etc, but it was too unrealistic for me then and now even less so. Now I personally feel like DOSBox on my current generation computers is actually just great (and despite how inaccurate it is, I like the video resize algorithms that can make some stuff look a bit nicer like 2xSaI.) Of course, a laptop is more convenient than a full desktop anyway, so if I had a really old one like that I might potentially consider setting it up for retro gaming too.

Edit, also Windows 98 takes 350MB of disk space and flys on the Dell inspiron 8100.

This is why I suggested using XPLite or a similar tool to slim XP down. There also is an equivalent for 2000 which might get a bit smaller. I realize, of course, that thing isn't overflowing with space, but since your primary goal is DOS gaming and perhaps some 9x gaming, you probably should be ok. (Plus XP has actually viable USB storage support, unlike 9x which still wasn't exactly great at it even in WinME. I think the manual for your laptop even says it has FireWire which was actually better than USB 2.0 on such devices for consistent high speed read operations.)

It seems faster (and certainly cleaner) than my Windwos 10 machine using an NVME SSD!

Hmm. This is a separate issue and I'm not going to go into it too in-depth, but I'm not sure it should feel that way to you. Windows 9x will certainly feel snappy on a > 1GHz Pentium 3 -- after all, even WinME was designed to be able to run quite well on a Pentium 1 or even a fast 486 -- but 10 should still feel pretty ok. It's a bit bloaty compared to, say, Windows 7 and I always felt like 7 was the best current generation OS (but sadly it's abandoned by MS which isn't so bad except that it translates to manufacturers abandoning it too) but it really should still feel pretty snappy on that hardware (in fact, your system is better than my desktop and it runs great on my desktop.) In particular I'd say maybe disable a few unnecessary services and most of all get rid of all the random crap that runs on startup to do stuff you don't really need (especially quickstart applications. These are ridiculously dumb anyway. Update checkers should go too. You can manually check things for updates.) Not a popular opinion, but I think also people should forcibly disable Windows 10's automatic update (there are a few tools that can do this like O&O's ShutUp 10) as automatic updates can sometimes do a lot more harm than good (I've had one before completely bog my entire system down continuously no matter what I did until I removed it.) Though you have to reenable it long enough to manually install updates from time to time and such. Also, perhaps one other less considered thing: disable things like system animations. I've noticed this on Android devices, but the animations add delays and if you disable them it actually feels snappier even though that has absolutely no effect whatsoever on system performance and turn off most of the unnecessary Aero stuff. Windows 9x, of course, didn't really have most of those animations and didn't wobble windows or any weird stuff like that so adds no delays for unnecessary visuals. With a light and minimal setup you really should be able to get it to still feel pretty much the same on that hardware.

The hunt continues I guess!

It's up to you which way you want to go from here. You can search for physical hardware that is more tuned for this sort of setup, but most likely a laptop will never be as good at DOS gaming. (BTW, a warning ahead of time, older laptops from the DOS and Win9x sort of era had some fairly bad LCD screens with lots of ghosting and latency.) I do still believe your laptop's main problem can be as simple as making a leaner, cleaner XP build and using that along with good drivers and VDMSound -- though it will never be as good at FM synthesis apparently (at least General MIDI would be great and then there's MUNT for MT-32 and similar emulation I believe.) It's up to you if you want to try it or not, but regardless I don't think you're going to get anything more out of 9x on that laptop than what you've already been running into because software like S-YXG50 does not take DOS gaming into account in its design and was specifically made for Windows only, so it's either go the route of a software setup that does what you need better (which may mean dual booting potentially) or a hardware setup that Just Works(tm). Alternately, maybe you'd be better served going forward and finding a cheap older model of a more modern laptop (you should be able to find something in the $100 range or maybe even lower that should be great at DOSBox) and setting it up with the Arakula VSTMIDI driver along with the S-YXG50 VSTi plugin for General MIDI or DOSBox's built-in synthesizers. Possibly running Windows 7 if 10 is too much (though, like I said, manufacturers abandoned it, so you have to be careful to make sure you can find the right drivers if you want to go back a bit.) Anyway, whichever way you ultimately go, good luck.

Thanks for your help Nazo
I sort of already knew the convenience of a laptop would have its drawbacks in some way. When I looked at the older laptops with more compatible (for DOS) sound chips, they were too underpowered and had terrible screens.

I too looked at getting a DB50XG when I had my desktop with Soundblaster 16. £150+ for improved MIDI on a few DOS games seemed a bit overkill, similar to a Roland SCP-55 on this laptop which seems like the only good sound upgrade albeit for £500+ 😁

Anyway, back on topic...
The S-YXG100 with 2MB or 4MB wavetable files work great in Win 98 SE. Ultimate Doom for 9X, the MIDI sounds about 100x better than Microsoft GS Wavetable

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words - I know you can't hear it but it sounds nice 😀

I discovered the most interesting bit of information the other day, while moofing around the information tubes. The sound banks for the YMF chips (The ones used in laptops and soundcards) are not hardware bound and are ROM files that are loaded into system memory on startup and can actually be swapped out with better sample banks. This also carries over to the soft-synth side of things, where the community has already hacked the XG engine and created their own spin on the XG soft-synths, using bigger and better banks.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-05-06, 09:20:

I discovered the most interesting bit of information the other day, while moofing around the information tubes. The sound banks for the YMF chips (The ones used in laptops and soundcards) are not hardware bound and are ROM files that are loaded into system memory on startup and can actually be swapped out with better sample banks. This also carries over to the soft-synth side of things, where the community has already hacked the XG engine and created their own spin on the XG soft-synths, using bigger and better banks.

Hmmm, if they (thinking S-YXG100plus soft synth) can be loaded into system memory on startup does that mean they could potentially work in DOS games to replace General Midi / 'Microsoft GS Wavetable'? If so, fantastic problem solved

guest_2 wrote on 2022-05-06, 10:10:

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-05-06, 09:20:

I discovered the most interesting bit of information the other day, while moofing around the information tubes. The sound banks for the YMF chips (The ones used in laptops and soundcards) are not hardware bound and are ROM files that are loaded into system memory on startup and can actually be swapped out with better sample banks. This also carries over to the soft-synth side of things, where the community has already hacked the XG engine and created their own spin on the XG soft-synths, using bigger and better banks.

Hmmm, if they (thinking S-YXG100plus soft synth) can be loaded into system memory on startup does that mean they could potentially work in DOS games to replace General Midi / 'Microsoft GS Wavetable'? If so, fantastic problem solved

With DOSBox, you can get XG MIDI, but you are still limited by the low processing power of the YMF chips. In theory, it could be possible to implement XG MIDI in DOS, but it would require customized software and a bit of R&D, to create new drivers and such, to load the banks into the memory above 1MB. Yamaha did not design their cards for DOS, so they do not have any onboard memory for samples and such, so the MIDI samples have to be loaded into system memory, which works fine with Windows and the PCI bus. With XG MIDI, the only true way forward is with soft-synth hacking, as the XG hardware used in their cards isn't capable of checking all the use boxes due to low polyphony.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-05-06, 09:20:

I discovered the most interesting bit of information the other day, while moofing around the information tubes. The sound banks for the YMF chips (The ones used in laptops and soundcards) are not hardware bound and are ROM files that are loaded into system memory on startup and can actually be swapped out with better sample banks. This also carries over to the soft-synth side of things, where the community has already hacked the XG engine and created their own spin on the XG soft-synths, using bigger and better banks.

Yeah, the YMF7x4 series left out the ROM chip. I used to have a 724. The actual synthesis is still part of the chipset, it just left out having a ROM and held the samples in system RAM. This had a severe disadvantage in that you could not use it in pure DOS because the DOS drivers didn't have the means of holding the samples in RAM, but by then it was mostly only people like us still playing DOS games at that point and most were Windows only, so the chipset was mostly just oriented towards being cheaper and that it was. It was actually an official feature that they were supposed to have sort of the equivalent of SoundFonts in something called "Downloadable Sound" (DLS) which was also actually technically present in the Microsoft synthesizer too (utilized in the No One Lives Forever game btw, but I never got that game to switch to the Yamaha card to see if it would sound any better on it as it's basically hardcoded to use the MS synth regardless of system settings.) It's interesting that you could actually swap the base samples themselves though. I never figured out a way to do the equivalent of soundfonts with DLS from the user side of things and this would have done it.

Are there any good sample sets? Perhaps for the S-YXG50 soft-synthesizer by any chance? I use a VSTi version of S-YXG50 along with a VST MIDI host driver for my MIDI in games. Though I don't want to go too far. As I've said in the past, I feel like the default sound of the DB50XG is among the best as a generic hands-free option across all games, whereas soundfonts tend to be more personal (individual tastes of course, but also you sort of need a different one for each game and sometimes you almost even need different ones for different BGMs...) Still, it could be interesting to play around with if nothing else.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-05-06, 10:37:

With DOSBox, you can get XG MIDI, but you are still limited by the low processing power of the YMF chips.

I'm not sure if "low processing power" is a very proper statement. They "processed" fine compared to other chipsets of the time. Multi-channel, 16-bit digital audio in stereo or even surround sound, etc etc with a full on XG wavetable synthesizer as well as proper OPL capabilities (no tricks like that ESS did.) Processing power-wise I'd say it was quite good for what it aimed to do and everything any DOS game could want it can do. Early Windows games don't use hardware accelerated 3D sound processing (EAX and A3D) but I think it may have had the early generation A3D and supported early software EAX processing as well. Not sure (it has been a long time.) The MIDI synthesizer is still capable of the typical number of channels used in the same way that any General MIDI game would expect and is not reduced in that respect. This is not as much as what a real music maker would want out of such a device, but it meets or exceeds all requirements from games.

Really, the only real problem with using a YMF7x4 for what guest_2 wants is that it's probably not used in any laptop cards.

guest_2 wrote on 2022-05-06, 10:10:

Hmmm, if they (thinking S-YXG100plus soft synth) can be loaded into system memory on startup does that mean they could potentially work in DOS games to replace General Midi / 'Microsoft GS Wavetable'? If so, fantastic problem solved

The YMF7x4 cards are physical soundcards. That's how they are able to handle DOS gaming in 9x in the way you actually do want. They still have an actual XG synthesizer and the drivers merely keep the samples in RAM for the card to refer to. Thus it's able to present ports, interrupts, etc etc to the system for games to actually use as they basically aren't really "emulating" or even truly wrapping anything but actually presenting the hardware that is actually there and merely complimenting the hardware in regards to holding the samples in RAM. This would be great for what you want except for one thing: they're desktop cards generally. I'm not going to say it's impossible for a YMF7x4 chipset to be in a laptop card, but at least I'm not aware of any. If you wanted to go to a desktop I would say that's not a terrible option and, in fact, they were dirt cheap at the time (I think I got my Turtle Beach YMF724-based card for something like $20 in some little PC shop back in the day) but may not be easily found these days (probably still not terribly expensive since they aren't super specialized or recognized for what they are mind you, but probably more than $20.)

To be clear, S-YXG50 and, by extension, S-YXG100 are indeed software synthesizers. They load entirely in RAM but have the problems you've already seen up to now. S-YXG100 is definitely not made for DOS gaming and not only won't perform better than S-YXG50 at gaming -- and actually has less compatibility in regards to OS installation and such. The point of S-YXG100 was it had more complexity and capabilities than the 50 mostly only in regards to actually creating music with it as one source. But, to be clear, DOS games do indeed not use any of the features of even the DB50XG -- for that matter I don't think any even used General Sound, let alone XG. They certainly wouldn't benefit from the 100. You can use this for their General MIDI (I thought this is what we were already talking about???) but only via the right methods such as VDMSound or DOSBox because they are just for the Windows MIDI mapper and do not present what games expect from physical hardware and S-YXG50 with its better drivers makes more sense for DOS gaming. The point and benefit of S-YXG50 and S-YXG100 in regards to gaming is only that they represent a DB50XG in MIDI sound (with the extras of the either being meaningless in gaming) and were better than other software synthesizers at the time. Modern software synthesizers are technically better, but I just haven't found any that could match the sound of the DB50XG (and by extension S-YXG50 and S-YXG100) as a generic game sound.

BTW, the EMUxxx cards (Creative Labs with the AWE on up) had the same basic thing you're talking about there via SoundFonts. That Audigy you talked about would work about the same as a YMF7x4 card. Just you get the Creative Labs sound instead of the Yamaha sound for the wavetable. Which is really down to preference. A good soundfont can still sound great. Potentially they can be a lot better than what S-YXG50 and 100 use really. It really comes down to the question of whether you want to invest effort in dealing with software (which means Windows 2000 or XP) or money (buying extra hardware.) I'm afraid you'll have to pick one.

Just leaving a note that this thread has been very helpful. I recently got a Dell Dimension V350 and have set it up for DOS/Win98 gaming. The PC has a YMF724 on the motherboard. At first I was mainly using it in DOS mode and enjoying the real adlib support, but using what I believe is the 4 MB font using the instructions in Win98 provided is way more satisfying for games that support it. Dark Forces will run in DOS, but running it in Win98 and getting that lovely MIDI is a treat. Thanks!