some final thoughts on the cardinal card: i finally did get wss working, but dma1 and ONLY dma1 works on this card, for either sb emulation or wss so they can't operate concurrently. also, as mentioned in the companion beethoven adsp16 thread, wss doesn't initialize until after the 1st try so you need to restart your game.

none of the mt32.ld dsp files from any driver package worked. the adsp16 synth.ld and soundwave32 v1 genmid.ld files worked ok (the v2 invision genmidi.ld had severe clipping). i'm wondering if the 512kb cardinal rom is just the soundwave32 original rom less the mt32 instruments given how the soundwave32 rom only takes up a small portion of the second 4mbit chip.

all card variants are dos/win3x only. there is a workaround for win95 where you load the dos drivers and use the 'ms windows sound system compatible' windows device driver, but trying this under win98se causes an instant blue screen during the installation.

On some SB clone cards in the past I managed to get SoundBlaster drivers going in 9x, though it's quite likely that might have only been 95. I think PnP has to be off and you have to force everything though.

Cardinal Technologies seemed to be in the process of dying while Win98 was in the process of being born, no mention of it at all on their last archived support page. They were still posting beta drivers to their dial-in BBS in 1997-98 though so unless someone imaged that back in the day we've got what we've got.

Was looking at my MCP700 last night that doesn't have a socket installed, not sure there's much the socket frame is hiding.

stanwebber wrote on 2023-08-03, 06:53:

there is a workaround for win95 where you load the dos drivers and use the 'ms windows sound system compatible' windows device driver, but trying this under win98se causes an instant blue screen during the installation.

I do have the Beethoven ADSP-16 working in Win98SE using this workaround but the "MS WSS" driver was only installed after the OS was already installed.

jtchip wrote on 2023-08-03, 20:54:

I do have the Beethoven ADSP-16 working in Win98SE using this workaround but the "MS WSS" driver was only installed after the OS was already installed.

huh, my situation is the same. nothing is detected when i scan for non-pnp devices even with the dsp16 drivers loaded. as soon as i select the 'ms windows sound system compatible' or 'mpu401 compatble' device in the add new hardware dialog my system instantly blue screens. i wonder what it is about my config that is causing the issue. i guess i could try a few more things starting with setting pnp os to yes in the bios.

stanwebber wrote on 2023-08-04, 03:19:

as soon as i select the 'ms windows sound system compatible' or 'mpu401 compatble' device in the add new hardware dialog my system instantly blue screens. i wonder what it is about my config that is causing the issue. i guess i could try a few more things starting with setting pnp os to yes in the bios.

The Beethoven is configured as port 530h, IRQ 11, DMA 0; the IRQ and DMA were reserved in the PCI/PnP BIOS setup (on a Socket 7 platform with i430FX chipset). I have the MPU-401 driver installed too and the wavetable synth works fine. Technically I should have said "had it working" as while I do still have the hard drive with that installation of Win98SE, I no longer have that motherboard and CPU.

for whatever reason, dma is hardcoded to 1 on the cardinal card. i have tested this exhaustively. i can configure wss to use dma 0 or 3 and it still works only when selecting dma 1. to be clear, i'm not reconfiguring the dma setting to 1--i'm leaving it on 0 or 3 and then selecting dma 1 in-game and it still works. address 530 likewise appears to be hardcoded. about the only time i can't get wss working on addr 530 dma 1 is when sb emulation is also configured to use dma 1, then only sb works. if i configure sb to any dma other than 1, it stops working.

i've tried cardinal, orchid and beethoven driver sets. cardinal and beethoven (blank sb settings in pss.ini for wss) drivers have identical results and sw32.exe just produces a loud feedback loop (similar to setting volume above 27) using wss with the orchid set.

i wish i could get a hold of more of the driver files. 3dfm.ld has been mentioned, but i can't find a copy of it anywhere. how many other ld files existed for these cards?