Try looking for information on the OPTi 82C930 chip it uses. It's possible to have variances between different cards due to board design and the like. But it will let you know roughly how it performs.

OPTi 82C930 review

SScorpio wrote on 2022-07-08, 13:22:

Try looking for information on the OPTi 82C930 chip it uses. It's possible to have variances between different cards due to board design and the like. But it will let you know roughly how it performs.

OPTi 82C930 review

I did find that thread, and I think the main chip on it is ok. Just wondering if this particular board is exceptionally bad or is ok.

Then again maybe if it uses a known decent chip, they can't mess it up too bad.

eesz34 wrote on 2022-07-08, 13:32:

I did find that thread, and I think the main chip on it is ok. Just wondering if this particular board is exceptionally bad or is ok.

Unlike my generic OPTi 82C930 card, that MegaImage32 that you linked to has three jacks at the back. This means that it is either missing Speaker Out or Line Out. Hard to tell from the photos.

If it only has Speaker Out, then the output will be noisier.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-08, 13:45:

If it only has Speaker Out, then the output will be noisier.

If I can see, there is L-O, L-I and MIC, so i think SPK is missing (which is better option, than missing Line out IMHO).

Ydee wrote on 2022-07-08, 13:56:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-08, 13:45:

If it only has Speaker Out, then the output will be noisier.

If I can see, there is L-O, L-I and MIC, so i think SPK is missing (which is better option, than missing Line out IMHO).

Ahh, which is then why it doesn't seem to have a power amp on the board. Most speakers are amplified anyway so yeah that should work.

I have a bunch of the Opti930 based cards. The first card I ever had that had onboard wavetable (which this card has as well), was Opti930 based.

I never found a game that it didn't work with.

Also kept that original card I had from back in the day when I bought it when my family only had a 386.

I went as far as collecting as many variations of Opti930 based boards with onboard wavetable as I could find.

It is a good card and you shouldn't be disappointed with it.

I have an opti 82C929a card and it performs well.
Phil did a video on it, if that's anything to go by then the 82c930 shouldn't be any different. The clone opl3 on mine sounds pretty decent as well. This card on ebay seems to have a yamaha chipset on it which I assume must be a real opl3.

Give it a try, I think you will be fine

OPTi-based cards are unloveable, but very competent SBPro2 clones - in this case with an utterly unimpressive but highly compatible GM wavetable synth as well.

Great cards if you just want working sound that also sounds like what a non-millionaire would have had back in the day. Also great cards if you just want "it" to work, no matter what "it" is - no MIDI bugs, no major compatibility issues, PnP works as well as ISA PnP ever works.

Sure, I prefer my EWS64XL, AWE64 Gold and GUS, but compared to all of them this is a much more straightforward card to get to work and do what you expect.

dionb wrote on 2022-07-09, 17:37:

OPTi-based cards are unloveable, but very competent SBPro2 clones - in this case with an utterly unimpressive but highly compatible GM wavetable synth as well.

Great cards if you just want working sound that also sounds like what a non-millionaire would have had back in the day. Also great cards if you just want "it" to work, no matter what "it" is - no MIDI bugs, no major compatibility issues, PnP works as well as ISA PnP ever works.

Sure, I prefer my EWS64XL, AWE64 Gold and GUS, but compared to all of them this is a much more straightforward card to get to work and do what you expect.

Thanks to everyone for their replies. Seems like this should be good for my use.

If you need help setting up this card for DOS or drivers, please let me know.
It's on my channel you watched a video about this card.

Jccwu wrote on 2022-07-10, 17:16:

If you need help setting up this card for DOS or drivers, please let me know.
It's on my channel you watched a video about this card.

Thank you, I will keep this in mind. Hopefully it's straightforward though.

i purchased this exact card--it's still for sale at the link. the card is effortless to set up in dos, but it's giving all kinds of trouble in win9x & xp.

this link (probably mentioned above) has some additional info:
https://flaterco.com/kb/audio/ISA/index.html#OPTi930
he's right about the fm synth being loud and his kernel module parameters got the card running immediately in linux, but the info about the card manufacturer is wrong. when i downloaded the actual drivers for the btc 1817dw they were exclusively for the opti 82c931, not a 930/931 combo.

the nt drivers i located work for xp, but were a mess in dosbox which i assume has something to do with directsound. adjusting the mixer blocksize from 1024 to 4096 got the digital sound ungarbled in dosbox.

right now i'm trying to get the card working under win98se, which has actual drivers for the 82c930, but i can't get the onboard wavetable to work. the drivers i got from vogonsdrivers installs an opti930 sound system mpu-401 device (and corresponding midi mapper entry), but the device has a yellow exclamation mark in device manager that i can't resolve. i haven't reserved any irq/dma's in the bios config, but windows isn't reporting any resource conflicts (including the single memory & irq for the mpu-401 device). it's as if windows just doesn't see it

stanwebber wrote on 2022-12-28, 07:10:

i purchased this exact card--it's still for sale at the link. the card is effortless to set up in dos, but it's giving all kinds […]
Show full quote

i purchased this exact card--it's still for sale at the link. the card is effortless to set up in dos, but it's giving all kinds of trouble in win9x & xp.

this link (probably mentioned above) has some additional info:
https://flaterco.com/kb/audio/ISA/index.html#OPTi930
he's right about the fm synth being loud and his kernel module parameters got the card running immediately in linux, but the info about the card manufacturer is wrong. when i downloaded the actual drivers for the btc 1817dw they were exclusively for the opti 82c931, not a 930/931 combo.

the nt drivers i located work for xp, but were a mess in dosbox which i assume has something to do with directsound.

right now i'm trying to get the card working under win98se, which has actual drivers for the 82c930, but i can't get the onboard wavetable to work. the drivers i got from vogonsdrivers installs an opti930 sound system mpu-401 device (and corresponding midi mapper entry), but the device has a yellow exclamation mark in device manager that i can't resolve. i haven't reserved any irq/dma's in the bios config, but windows isn't reporting any resource conflicts (including the single memory & irq for the mpu-401 device). it's as if windows just doesn't see it

I haven't tried it in any Windows yet, but thank you for this info.

i sorted out the win9x drivers. the parent device creates 3 child devices (assuming ide cdrom not used). by default the resources are not automatically assigned by windows and set manually. the soundblaster/wss/opl3/wavetable features are combined into 1 device with 4 memory ranges, 2(1) irq and 2 dma resources. each independent feature responds at the expected resource address assigned. the mpu-401 and gameport devices are handled separately with 1 memory range each. i think the mpu-401 device isn't being recognized because it's for the wavetable header which is missing on this board. in any case if you select basic resource configuration 002 it removes the mpu-401 device and 1 irq from the soundblaster/wss/opl3/wavetable combo device.

the win9x drivers are not directsound compliant which appears to be causing issues when more than 1 application tries to access the card concurrently. e.g. munt can't open the virtual midi port when dosbox is running which is self-defeating and the timidity player by itself runs fine, but running the background synthesizer (twsyng) attempts multiple connections which locks itself out along with everything else until i kill the service.