Scalpers have arrived 😒

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-16, 16:48:

Scalpers have arrived 😒

Seems a silly price given a real Adlib Gold goes about the same.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-16, 16:58:

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-16, 16:48:

Scalpers have arrived 😒

Seems a silly price given a real Adlib Gold goes about the same.

And also the fact GoldLib itself is not Retro, just a lovely discontinued reproduction but can be again back to the production.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-16, 16:58:

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-16, 16:48:

Scalpers have arrived 😒

Seems a silly price given a real Adlib Gold goes about the same.

For now this thing is even more rare than the real one 😀

I’m wondering how feasible, would be to improve this design, taking only 3 things in mind:

1- Making the card more tolerable of faster systems;
2- Somehow the card sometimes seems to lose its configuration, needing to reset the CTRL chip, improve that;
3- Add the 16bit part connector with one objective only, add more IRQ and DMA options, like the planned AdLib Gold 2000;

I think AdLib planned the 2000 to mitigate some of these issues they were well aware of but it was too late…

These improvements would make the card much more usable. This card and the MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum cards don’t go along well, if the AdLib Gold hijacks port 388h.

carlostex wrote on 2023-07-27, 20:35:

This card and the MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum cards don’t go along well, if the AdLib Gold hijacks port 388h.

I find the Adlib Gold / GoldLib don't get along well with any card that uses 388h.

I was trying to get the GoldLib working along side a GUS Extreme and Orpheus II LT, and in both cases encountered various issues when the latter cards were enabled. For example, trying to run the Gold setup program would cause lock-ups.

Even soft reboots didn't solve this.

The Gold / GoldLib really needs to be run along side a card where the address can be either reassigned or the card wholly disabled.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-27, 21:22:

I was trying to get the GoldLib working along side a GUS Extreme and Orpheus II LT, and in both cases encountered various issues when the latter cards were enabled. For example, trying to run the Gold setup program would cause lock-ups.

Never had any issues with the setup locking up, only the program complaining about card not found. The card seems to annoyingly lose its configuration. Don't know if this is related to be using a Pentium MMX @100MHz. Tried a 75MHz regular Pentium but it keeps happening. I have my ISA bus running with the most wait states i can. I need a lot more testing though.

You are basically asking for an AdLib Gold II and this is something that won't happen probably ever

It is a known fact that the Gold behaves weird in situations, that games program their own values on eeprom, that it is speed-sensitive - all the things that have been discussed before.
The fact that some people have it working for example on p1/p2 systems is just a bonus and depends hardware combos, chipsets , luck and other random voodoo.

Cards like the Gold/Goldlib are what they are, take it or leave it. You either dedicate a system to them or pray to the hardware gods it will work good in whatever system you install it in, that's just how things are with it.

keropi wrote on 2023-07-28, 06:37:

You are basically asking for an AdLib Gold II and this is something that won't happen probably ever

And how possible would be to "upgrade" the FM section of the Orpheus II LT? By upgrading, I mean doing it like AdLib did on the Gold? Add the TDA8425 and YM7128 and a setup tool for the YM7128?

Or maybe someone has found a card, that can be used with the Gold, that would give SBPro compatibility? Because, from a retro gaming perspective, the main limitation of this card (and other fancy cards like the RAP-10 or Multisound) is their digital section that is compatible with few games. And the Gold makes it harder, because it uses port 0x388 which also all the SB clones seem to use. I'm basically looking for an SB Pro without FM.

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-28, 06:49:

[...]I'm basically looking for an SB Pro without FM.

with all Orpheus cards you can just disable the OPL3 completely and it won't interfere with $388 at all , just a matter of editing orpheus.ini to disable it

edit: as for the surround chip one would have to also re-create the gold to a point it gets detected along with the interface to enable/disable the chip on demand so for example Dune thinks there is a real gold installed and use it... as you can imagine this is not a somewhat easy thing to add

keropi wrote on 2023-07-28, 07:46:

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-28, 06:49:

[...]I'm basically looking for an SB Pro without FM.

with all Orpheus cards you can just disable the OPL3 completely and it won't interfere with $388 at all , just a matter of editing orpheus.ini to disable it

Are there games that try to use FM via the SB 0x220 address? I think I've read somewhere about such cases, but I'm not sure now.

keropi wrote on 2023-07-28, 07:46:

edit: as for the surround chip one would have to also re-create the gold to a point it gets detected along with the interface to enable/disable the chip on demand so for example Dune thinks there is a real gold installed and use it... as you can imagine this is not a somewhat easy thing to add

This is what I've feared. I guess the GoldLib will be unbeatable in the FM department for the foreseeable feature.

^ if you don't care about the surround functions then there will be something nice soon-ish 😀

keropi wrote on 2023-07-28, 11:31:

^ if you don't care about the surround functions then there will be something nice soon-ish 😀

Sounds exciting 😉

carlostex wrote on 2023-07-27, 22:27:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-27, 21:22:

I was trying to get the GoldLib working along side a GUS Extreme and Orpheus II LT, and in both cases encountered various issues when the latter cards were enabled. For example, trying to run the Gold setup program would cause lock-ups.

Never had any issues with the setup locking up, only the program complaining about card not found. The card seems to annoyingly lose its configuration. Don't know if this is related to be using a Pentium MMX @100MHz. Tried a 75MHz regular Pentium but it keeps happening. I have my ISA bus running with the most wait states i can. I need a lot more testing though.

I've had both lockups and no card found. This is in testing with the GoldLib and Adlib Gold, although I haven't done fully systematic tests with both to see if there are any differences between card behaviors.

For testing I've been using 386DX-40 and 486DX-33 systems.

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-28, 06:49:

Or maybe someone has found a card, that can be used with the Gold, that would give SBPro compatibility?

In my recent 5 sound card build (386DX-40), I had success with a Yamaha YMF719-based card (Atrend ATC-6631): 386 DX-40 multi-sound card build (5 sound cards!)

Most of my testing was alongside a real Adlib Gold, so not sure yet if there would be any significant differences with a GoldLib instead. In my limited testing with a GoldLib in this setup, I didn't see any immediate differences though.

Even with both cards set to 388 (Yamaha + Gold), they would both play FM music without issues. And the Yamaha card can have its FM port re-assigned and then play digital audio independent of the Gold.

The one issue I did run into was trying to use DMA channel set to 1 on both cards. That just didn't work and resulted in lockups. So I disabled DMA on the Gold.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-28, 12:49:

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-07-28, 06:49:

Or maybe someone has found a card, that can be used with the Gold, that would give SBPro compatibility?

In my recent 5 sound card build (386DX-40), I had success with a Yamaha YMF719-based card (Atrend ATC-6631): 386 DX-40 multi-sound card build (5 sound cards!)

This was admittedly using a real Adlib Gold alongside, so not sure yet if there are any significant differences with the GoldLib in this configuration.

This is good news. I think I have 4 or 5 YMF71x based cards, they SBPro compatibilty is good, they would be a perfect companion to the GoldLib.

And with SETYMF you can free up the 388 range on YMF71x cards aswell, so the coexisting problems should get solved apart from lack of IRQ and DMA channels.

Having the GoldLib / AdLib Gold work with a YMF / Crystal / ESS card is rather simple since the latter cards are flexible in their configurations. These being PnP usually don't hog resources like other cards do. With PAS cards it's a different story though, because the Gold cards grab the resources at boot via its EEPROM configuration which messes up the Media Vision driver (MVSOUND.SYS) detection routines. Changing the GoldLib / AdLib Gold default port to 398h does help and a PAS 16 can even use IRQ 10 and DMA 0 freeing up IRQ 3 DMA 3 for the Gold card, IRQ 5 DMA 1 for SB and IRQ 7 DMA 7 for GUS.

With an original dual OPL2 Pro Audio Spectrum, the issue is obvious, there aren't IRQ's and DMA to spare unless someone wants to disable the floppy controller and use IRQ 6 and DMA 2 on the PAS, which is allowed in its jumper config. Games that look on MVSOUND.SYS *should* work, but others don't even allow for that odd configuration. Been using IRQ 3 DMA 3 for the PAS and it just works on everything.

Problem is when the GoldLib / Gold loses its configuration messing up the MVSOUND.SYS driver detection again due to the Gold cards are probably hogging the default values again. Reading some comments here, seems like that behaviour even happens on slower machines which sucks royal balls. To me it seems VERY odd that games alter the EEPROM configuration, since these changes will only take effect AFTER a reboot.

Out of curiosity sake i gotta check the AIL source code, and figure out what the ADLIBG.ADV and ALGDIG.ADV drivers are actually doing.

Unfortunately my GoldLib appears to have died. 🙁

I was testing it in a 486 DX-33 build. Initially it worked and I was able to detect and configure it just fine.

I'd been adding and testing other sound cards. At the time I was mainly working with the AWE64 and Yamaha Audician 32. Then went back to try the GoldLib again, and it wasn't working anymore. The Adlib Gold setup program won't detect it.

I tried removing everything and just testing the Goldlib, but it still wouldn't detect it. I tried it my other 386 DX-40 system, it won't detect there either. I tried the control chip reset instructions listed here (three times in both systems). Didn't help.

I also confirmed that my original Adlib Gold card works in both setups (386 and 486). So it doesn't appear to be a system specific issue.

I did a cursory inspection for any physical damage, but didn't see anything immediately obvious.

Any suggestions on anything further to try?

Lots of youtube hardware troubleshooting repair channels. Daunting starting from scratch but maybe able to run though some of the initial/basic troubleshooting, like testing voltages on the card with a multimeter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkAp5x3Z_gc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6BJvS3nrb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I6Mudx0Rm0
https://www.youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement
https://www.youtube.com/@necro_ware

but before that, clean the pins on the card with a pencil eraser, the proverbial turn it off and turn it on again move.