VOGONS


Reply 20 of 33, by PARUS

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I don't know, it's only your choice. PCI is Audigy1 for sure, with 5'25 extension (Live/Audigy1 pinouts are compatible with each other, Audigy2 pinout is not compatible). ISA - maybe AWE64 Gold and GUS Ace - much expensive. Maybe good cheap ESS with WT-header and WT-daughter, second is cheap AWE. Maybe GUS Extreme and Roland LAPC-I - haha, tooooo much expensive!!! Maybe Terratec EWS64XL (love it), second is some Roland. Maybe CMI8330 - crystal clear sound SB16 clone.

Reply 22 of 33, by chinny22

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You've been given good advise and agree with most of it, I have ISA + PCI cards in all my PC's that support it.

But before spending more money on more cards I would test try out what you already have, get a feeling of how where each card can be used and then decide if you need to upgrade anything.
All 3 of your cards are pretty good to start with and no such thing as the perfect card. Once you start playing a few games you'll know better if any of the existing cards are limiting you in any way or not.

Reply 23 of 33, by PARUS

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Yes, it's very sober remark. Moreover if you don't need EAX, if you don't need to mix more than 1-2 cards (modules) you can try it without Live/Audigy. Live/Audigy gives us two (three) digital stereo, three analog stereo and three analog mono inputs. If we add 5'25 Extension we have two more analog stereo inputs (total five analog stereo inputs). Not everyone needs it within one computer. On the other hand I can say Creative's Live/Audigy models are cheap now. Therefore it is incorrect to say that you should spend much money for it.

These 4 things - many inputs, easy digital interface avaibility, prevalence in the market, low cost - became big reason to make DOS mixer on EMU10k exactly.

Reply 24 of 33, by p6889k

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I ordered the Audigy 1, they are really cheap ($15 including shipping), should be fun. But...yes, I get the point, that sometimes we just chase for the next best thing without fully utilizing what we already have or making setups unnecessarily complicated. Thank you everyone for your advice.

I'm still confused about few things:

In Win98 device manager there is a Legacy Audio driver configured, what exactly does it do and how? Is it just setting up some virtual routing from dos games to native windows drivers? That's what I assumed in case of PCI cards. How about ISA cards, would Windowed DOS games talk to the ISA card directly ignoring the Legacy Audio device, or would the sound request go from game to Legacy Audio Driver?

Also, when I read people's posts about loading soundfonts to their AWE32/64 cards in windows for windowed dos games with general midi, is it because you can't do it in DOS and it only works if you have "Legacy Audio" device configured in windows?

Please educate me.

Thank you.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

Reply 25 of 33, by chinny22

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Audigy is a good card I don't think its wasted money.

Your assumption is correct. The Legacy Audio device is used to emulate a SB16 in a dos window. If you check it's resources in Device manager and lets say its DMA1, IRQ7. If you enter these in a dos games setup it'll use the Audigy.
Lets say the AWE is DMA5, IRQ 5. If you enter these in a dos games setup it'll use the AWE.

This is how you tell dos games which sound card to use, they will just use whatever settings you tell them 1/2 the time not even checking if a sound card is at that address or not. Doesn't matter if your in a dos window or native dos prompt.

Auto detect may confuse games, but if you enter the settings manually you'll be fine.

Re soundfonts on the awe.
You still wouldn't use legacy audio, you load a soundfont using the creative control panel in windows, think of this like loading custom instruments onto the sound card. The game will still play to the AWE as per normal as it doesn't know or care what instrument set it on the card.

Reply 26 of 33, by PARUS

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p6889k, I already said when you have real ISA blaster just forget about PCI emulation. So you have real Sound Blaster 16, just remove Legacy Audio Driver and forget it. Of course you can configure 2-3 sound blasters. But why? It doesn't have any sense.

Second, about soundfonts. Yes, you can load them only in Windows. The games may play MIDI in AWE standard or in GM standard. If you're loading soundfont to AWE64 the game should work with AWE standard. If you're loading soundfont to Audigy the game should work with GM standard. AWE cards can load size up to 28MB. Live/Audigy cards can load size limited only by system RAM size. GM IO address should be ONLY 300, 320 or 330!!!! There are some games which can't work with IO 310, 340, 350, 360. But all games which can GM are working with 300, 320, 330 addresses.

Third, your last question about Legacy driver. And I say you again: forget about Legacy driver. GM interface and SF2 loading on Audigy can exist without Legacy driver. You may need Legacy only for SB16 emulation but not for MIDI.

Reply 27 of 33, by p6889k

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So I got my Audigy 1 and am successfully using it together with AWE64. So far tried only pure Windows where Audigy plays and Windowed DOS where AWE64 plays.

Question, how can I use Audigy as General Midi device for windowed dos games? I was expecting to see Audigy General Midi device in Device Manager, but don't see it there. I've never done General Midi before, so really don't have much to go by beyond just guessing.

I'm using Win98SE and I installed these drivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=397
I picked VXD when prompted for driver choice.

I tried installing these, but the system either freezes or BSOD during install:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1529

The first set of drivers appears newer, has Win98 driver, but is missing DOS driver. The second set seems to include DOS drivers, trying to install either Win98 or DOS crashes windows.

The installer did install AudioHQ-SoundFont app. I can load fonts in it, but it doesn't have any configuration options that would allow me to configure it as general midi for DOS window - I believe that needs to be done in Device Manager? Maybe general midi is only installed as part of the DOS drivers?
I'm able to play midi files in Creative Play Center Win app.

Here's all I see.

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Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

Reply 28 of 33, by Revolter

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PARUS wrote:

You can throttle it. For example you can't throttle P2, P3.

Do not confuse people. Of course you can throttle P2 and P3 via chipset throttling, which gives the same results but is actually a much better experience: no need for two-layer throttling implementation with both throttle.exe and msred.com at those low frequencies and no need to reboot each time you want to adjust CPU throttling in pure DOS with EMM386 enabled.

I can understand if somebody doesn't like using P2 and P3 for retro purposes (which is just crazy to me), but why being a sleazy used car salesman about it? If you meant that "P2 and P3 don't throttle via MSR's like P4's do" - why didn't you just say so?

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 29 of 33, by foil_fresh

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p6889k wrote:
foil_fresh wrote:

Sometimes running a DOS game in Windows still uses the AWE64 via the YMF744 stereo mix. I also get a lot less hiss and noise with this hardware config compared to the single AWE64.

Thank you for all the detail, great info. How does windows decide whether to use ISA or PCI for your windowed DOS games? Do you do anything or is that by default PCI is used, but for some reason some games pickup the ISA?

Well the DOS games don't really rely on windows settings - the device(s) simply needs to be initialised on boot, and you configure the sound card resources via the game's settings. I will have 2 soundblaster 16 addresses configured - 220 (pci) and 240 (isa). I choose 240 for the AWE64's SB16 and then choose port 388 which is the FM chip of the PCI card, to avoid the AWE64's CQM synthesis. Other times I might not need the FM chip and i want AWE music, so I configure the game to use the AWE64's SB16 (240) and AWE music (640).

Windows 98 lets you reconfigure addresses via device manager so you can reconfigure ports with a few buttons and a reboot. I suggest setting up the PC in a way where you can fiddle with all the settings for a few hours, testing out every mode and configuration to get the hang of it. It's extensive but you'll learn a lot this way. You may find quirks with your hardware that only works in a specific configuration and not in other ways.

Good luck

Reply 30 of 33, by PARUS

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Revolter wrote:
PARUS wrote:

You can throttle it. For example you can't throttle P2, P3.

Do not confuse people. Of course you can throttle P2 and P3 via chipset throttling, which gives the same results but is actually a much better experience: no need for two-layer throttling implementation with both throttle.exe and msred.com at those low frequencies and no need to reboot each time you want to adjust CPU throttling in pure DOS with EMM386 enabled.

I can understand if somebody doesn't like using P2 and P3 for retro purposes (which is just crazy to me), but why being a sleazy used car salesman about it? If you meant that "P2 and P3 don't throttle via MSR's like P4's do" - why didn't you just say so?

What? I'm not confusing! Chipset throttling always was known and never depended on CPU model. Please be precise with your wording. We can't throttle P2/P3, we can only throttle i440/Apollo chipsets. And P2/P3 never can have better experience, P4 can be much slower than P2 and can be much faster than fastest P3. Do you think what you say? Two-layer throttling implementation with both chipset and CPU ways - this is NOT disadvantage, this is benefit! The only downside of CPU throttling is EMM386 issue. I know and I have told already about real lacks but you want to put all in a different context with "winning" P2 and "defective" P4. You can do like using P2 and P3 for retro purposes and you can crazy if someone doesn't but we talked not about this. Man has P4+ISA board already, and I didn't ask him to buy this board. I just told him what I know. Sorry that you like P2 and don't like P4. Despite this P2/P3 aren't better or worse, they are just different.

"P2 and P3 don't throttle via MSR's like P4's do" - you know this is incorrect. Because throttle.exe works with MSRs too but with SouthBridge's MSRs. OK, I'll say correct: "P2 and P3 based systems don't throttle via CPU MSR's like P4's do". Are you happy now? Why do you attack me not the first time?

Reply 31 of 33, by Revolter

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PARUS wrote:

What? I'm not confusing! Chipset throttling always was known and never depended on CPU model. Please be precise with your wording. We can't throttle P2/P3, we can only throttle i440/Apollo chipsets. And P2/P3 never can have better experience, P4 can be much slower than P2 and can be much faster than fastest P3. Do you think what you say? Two-layer throttling implementation with both chipset and CPU ways - this is NOT disadvantage, this is benefit! The only downside of CPU throttling is EMM386 issue. I know and I have told already about real lacks but you want to put all in a different context with "winning" P2 and "defective" P4. You can do like using P2 and P3 for retro purposes and you can crazy if someone doesn't but we talked not about this. Man has P4+ISA board already, and I didn't ask him to buy this board. I just told him what I know. Sorry that you like P2 and don't like P4. Despite this P2/P3 aren't better or worse, they are just different.

"P2 and P3 don't throttle via MSR's like P4's do" - you know this is incorrect. Because throttle.exe works with MSRs too but with SouthBridge's MSRs. OK, I'll say correct: "P2 and P3 based systems don't throttle via CPU MSR's like P4's do". Are you happy now? Why do you attack me not the first time?

I sincerely apologize to you if the tone of my remark was inadequately negative, and yeah, it's not the first time, but it always starts with you saying something along the lines of "P2/P3 cannot do this or that in general" (when in reality they actually can if they're a certain model or in certain circumstances) and me thinking you did this on purpose! To a random person who's not into advanced CPU slowdown techniques (something other than using Setmul or disabling the caches), the's a world of difference between the statements "cannot throttle at all" and "cannot throttle via CPU MSR's only", don't you agree?

I mean, it was never a big deal to me to include a link to your CPU MSR throttling guide when I was mentioning this capability of older CPU's:

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=+ … author_id=37632

Could you please at least include a mere "[...] using CPU MSR's" at the end of such statements, so that they don't look misleading? It's hard to get these guys to know about any form of throttling as it is 😀

PARUS wrote:

you want to put all in a different context with "winning" P2 and "defective" P4

Sorry, but I had to say it just because It seemed you were doing the same thing with "winning" P4 and "defective" P2/P3! 😀

PARUS wrote:

Despite this P2/P3 aren't better or worse, they are just different.

This is exactly how I really think, and I couldn't agree with you more (P2/P3 are much slower than P4/C2D, no doubt about that, and probably less versatile, but this doesn't mean they're useless for speed-throttling builds). P4/C2D are just not for me, but there are others who can find them perfectly matching *their* dream time machine computers, and it's good to let them know such tricks even exist.

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 32 of 33, by p6889k

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PARUS wrote:

Second, about soundfonts. Yes, you can load them only in Windows. The games may play MIDI in AWE standard or in GM standard. If you're loading soundfont to AWE64 the game should work with AWE standard. If you're loading soundfont to Audigy the game should work with GM standard.
...
GM interface and SF2 loading on Audigy can exist without Legacy driver. You may need Legacy only for SB16 emulation but not for MIDI.

So I did some more testing and can't figure out how to utilize the Audigy for GM in DOS Window. I have both AWE64 and Audigy in the PC with drivers setup as shown in the picture. In DOS windos, the AWE64 can emulate GM, but Audigy cannot. For testing, I removed AWE64 drivers and physically the card from the computer. Windows loaded "Creative SB Audigy" device driver only. That driver/device has no configuration for DOS games. I launched a game, tried GM and no sound. I then removed the Audigy and installed Ensoniq AudioPCI and Win98SE installed Windows driver and Legacy Driver which allows me to see GM midi configuration and when I then test GM in games it works. If I disable the Legacy Driver GM doesn't work.

So, how can I get Audigy 1 installed in Windows98SE to provide GM (MPU-401) interface for DOS Window (not pure DOS)? I'm able to get it working with AWE64 (MPU-401 in addition to native AWE music), Ensoniq AudioPCI, but not Audigy1.

Parus, in your posting you say "GM interface and SF2 loading on Audigy can exist without Legacy driver. " how do I do that? I know how to load the SF2 on it, but don't see how to configure MPU-401 IRQ and get games to play to it in DOS Window.

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Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

Reply 33 of 33, by p6889k

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So I was finally able to force Audigy to install SB16 legacy driver which also provides GeneralMidi capability. To do that I had to use the hack listed here: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 for in windows98 dos prompt

After this I could choose Audigy as my GM device in DOS window game, but, this only worked without AWE64 being installed at the same time. When I had both AWE64 and Audigy SB16 legacy driver, I couldn't get the AWE64 working in DOS window, despite the fact that none of the resources conflicted with each other. Each card was using different interrupts and DMA.

So at the end I ended up disabling the Audigy legacy driver. I was really hoping I could use AWE64 for SB16 and AWE music and then Audigy with some large soundfonts for GM under DOS window. Interestingly AWE64 with Ensoniq AudioPCI legacy drivers works just fine, but the ensoniq doesn't support loading of SF2 soundfonts.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.