OtakuN3rd wrote on 2021-09-16, 16:43:

Other information: I noticed the DOS installer wanted to put it at IRQ 7 and DMA 3. IRQ 7 is already used by LPT1, so I switched it to IRQ 5, and to DMA 1 while I was at it.

Welcome to Vogons!

If you're not using the serial and parallel ports on your retro rig, it's always best to disable them in the BIOS in order to free up a few extra resources. That might not necessarily help with the issue you're having, but it's considered good practice.

Hi and welcome!

As mentioned in the previous post, I'd suggest disabling these ports if you aren't using them at all. Some early DOS games with SB support could have the IRQ hardcoded to 3 and/or 7 instead of 5.

For that "soundcard-drivers.com" page which later got a questionable "downloader", the drivers were archived into the following site by fellow VOGONS user Deksor:
https://archive.org/details/xxxxxxx-drivers.com

I don't have a PAS card to help you further though. 🙁

Wait... What!?!?!?!?. How did I not know about those files being archived? Now I am going to have to download everything and go through it as there are some drivers that were thought to be lost to time.

Thank you for the link to the archive of that website! I searched for the individual zip file at Archive.org, but I didn't see the entire website archived.

I am aware some programs have specific resources hard coded, which is why I switched it to DMA 1. I do plan to do some experiments and playing around with serial and parallel devices with this machine, but can disable / switch around resources if needed.

I started downloading the archive for sound drivers, and will pull out that file after it finishes and see if I fare any better with that.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-09-16, 17:38:

Wait... What!?!?!?!?. How did I not know about those files being archived? Now I am going to have to download everything and go through it as there are some drivers that were thought to be lost to time.

Yeah, Deksor did it starting in February of this year! We got into it here: Link Repository for Vintage PC Driver\Documentation Archives, FTPs, Websites

Deksor does admit that he wasn't able to get -all- of it though, IIRC some had gone missing/broken or something.

However, in the same thread he mentions that some of the content is mirrored from DriverGuide, so if you find it at one of the "-drivers.com" websites in your search results, you may be able to find it there, now that you know its numerical identification.

I guess that would be this, once DriverGuide is back online (they have had some server outage recently): https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … driverid=141778

Reminder: you don't -have- to download everything if you are after something specific from an archive.org upload, you can browse within ZIP/RAR/etc. compressed files there, and only download parts! This used to be pretty secret functionality, but it's come a long way. The easiest way to do that nowadays is to click "SHOW ALL" under the available download options, and then click "View Contents" beside the file you are interested in!

(I have been hoping some hero does such a scrape of DriverGuide too, but the current workaround to avoid their downloader works for me usually: Re: DriverGuide.com’s Not-so-surprising Scammy Tactics )

Yeah, I saw the Show All on archive.org. there are just so many files in those zips that it takes absolutely forever for it to load the list... And then it actually stops once it gets to a certain number of files. I wasn't even a me to get to any of the actual driver files.

As for Driver guide, I download a lot from them. The silly driver installer link is lame but I guess they have to trick people into paying them money somehow.

Back to the OP's topic, I recently installed my PAS16 into a DOS/WFW 3.11 system so I thought I should share what I did. My card is a PAS16 with the SCSI interface. I am the original owner of this card from the early 90s, still have the box, mic and install floppies. For the recent installation I used the "Media Vision Pro Audio Studio 16 with SCSI driver and utils" on Vogons drivers which is on 7 floppies and includes the software suite for Win3.1. Even though your card is not SCSI, I would give it a try, maybe you can skip the SCSI installation (I am not using my SCSI interface). I used real floppies, made the discs, started with INSTALL.EXE on disk 1 and followed the prompts. My system had WFW 3.11 already installed, can't remember if the installation detected Windows or asked whether to install in Windows.

Thank you all for the suggestions.

So far I have been unable to download the soundcard drivers archive. My ISP has some minor hiccups every now and then. When that happens the download fails, and trying to resume it results in a corrupted file ( I have tried using the built-in Firefox download manager and DownThemAll). I am going to try using uGet as a download manager this time around. For some reason, it appears that the soundcard drivers archive isn't in the torrent file, otherwise I would use that.

@mistermister,

Thanks! I will give those a try while I attempt to download the archive again. I saw them there, and had them downloaded, but it looked more like a Windows 95 driver than Windows 3.1. My mistake, I guess.

As far as DriverGuide goes, it looks like they may be back up and running, though the file mentioned at soundcard-drivers doesn't seem to be there. If the tip about using the SCSI version doesn't work, or I still can't get the archive downloaded, I will dig through there to see if I can find any other packages for PAS 16 cards and experiment as I have time.

OtakuN3rd wrote on 2021-09-18, 20:03:

So far I have been unable to download the soundcard drivers archive. My ISP has some minor hiccups every now and then. When that happens the download fails, and trying to resume it results in a corrupted file ( I have tried using the built-in Firefox download manager and DownThemAll). I am going to try using uGet as a download manager this time around. For some reason, it appears that the soundcard drivers archive isn't in the torrent file, otherwise I would use that.

I can browse the "soundcard-drivers.zip" without having to download the entire file and mmdbcd16.zip is actually there. Here is the direct link: https://archive.org/download/xxxxxxx-drivers. … %2Fmmdbcd16.zip.

Seems that file has references to "Multimedia DoubleCD 16" and while Windows is mentioned in the drivers, there is no references to Windows 95.

It's true that several drivers were exactly mirrored from DriverGuide and I recall once a time that these sites ending with "-drivers.com" were redirecting to DriverGuide. 😁

Well, I managed to get the driver archive downloaded and found the file I was looking for. Unfortunately, it is just a copy of an already-installed driver directory and doesn't have the windows-related drivers (just DOS drivers), though the file dates are newer than the other ones I have played with. I also tried the deluxe drivers that were in the archive, all with the same results as what I had been experiencing.

I suspect at this point there is some sort of a resource conflict, likely on the DMA side of things, and possibly with my network card. I went ahead and disabled the parallel port and allocated several IRQs and DMA channels to "Legacy ISA" in the BIOS, but there are no changes to the behavior. I tried manually setting different DMA and IRQs, but no dice.

FWIW, my NIC is a PCI card from SMC with a DEC chipset on it (I don't recall the exact model). I am not using a DOS packet driver other than what comes with WFW 3.11.

At this point I have spent too much time on this. I think I am going to switch over to my SB 16 and stop fighting with the drivers for the PAS. I will probably put the PAS in a Windows 95 or 98 system down the road. (I tested it in my K6-2 system running Win 98SE and it worked without a fuss.) If I get a 486, I will probably try it in that as well.

I remember when the Media Vision PAS cards came out. They needed a lot of resources IIRC. There was a short period of time where they were at the top of the heap, but a very short time. They were surpassed by better cards. Are you sure you don't want to use something else?

A few days ago, fellow Vogons member @Scorp released a great video on the PAS16.

It seems like a very interesting card.

The PAS is far from being just a SB clone and certain DOS games has the option to use the PAS16 for stereo and 16-bit mixing output on DOS. It also shielded to prevent any kind of noise according to Great Hierophant on his blog.

Like the SB16 it isn't compatible with SB Pro and seems to have bugs with the MPU-401 on certain revisions (and worse from what I read). Unlike the SB16 it doesn't suffer from the single-cycle DMA clicking bug.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-20, 15:34:

A few days ago, fellow Vogons member @Scorp released a great video on the PAS16.

It seems like a very interesting card.

I'm speaking under correction, but since I was a PAS16 user in the 90s, please let me add these 2 cents of mine:

It was what the Sound Blaster standard should have had been.

And, maybe, in another reality, it succeeded..
Personally, I never had trouble with games using the PAS16 natively or its on-board Thunderboard chipset.

On hardware of its era, the PAS16 was hassle free and "just worked", thanks to its intelligent setup program and the user-friendly manual.

Also, resources could easily be changed whenever needed.
This allowed for boot disks with special sound card settings.

The microphone port of the PAS16 allowed using high quality dynamic studio microphones.

Edit: The PAS16 had a stereo/surround effect that could be enabled through one of the utilities, too.

Edit: EMM386 could be a cause of trouble.
If anyone of you encounters trouble, please try using the PAS16 without EMM386.

I forgot to mention - I once was able to use bothba PAS16 and a SB16 CT1740 in a 586 machine.

Initialization worked fine, but there was a conflict between both OPL3s,
or more precisely, the PAS16 control port and the SB16 OPL3.

The PAS16 uses the 388h address as its control port and because of this has a special circuitry to integrate its OPL3 into that scheme.

The OPL3 on the SB16, however, has not and thus generates a horrible noise tone when the PAS16 drivers load.

To fix this, the diagnose program of the SB16 can be used.
After FM test finishes, the noise is gone.

Edit: A workaround would have been to disable on of the OPL3s, say, the one on the SB card.
Though the later SB16 P'n'p cards are a mess (imho), they do allow to comfortably disable the FM portion, at least.

I apparently completely failed to notice the replies on this thread after my last post.... Sorry about that!

Anyway, I ended up putting in my SB16 PnP Value card and it is working as well as I can hope. With that being said, I was blessed with a load of old hardware yesterday. Nothing super interesting on the sound card side, but I do have some more machines/parts now that might be a good choice to play around with to see if I can get the PAS16 working under WFW311. I haven't given up on the card, I just gave up on it in that computer.

It will all be "as I have time" projects. There's a lot of irons in the fires of my hobbies right now, so it probably won't be any time real soon that I can play with the PAS16 again.