Could also be a speed issue, this is an old card and that is an Athlon motherboard.

Recently got one of these working. Was positively surprised to hear that stereo sound did work if you forced it despite DSP identifying itself as SB2.0. Did my tests on a 486DX33. Previously the card refused to work at all on a P3 Win98 system. Strongly suspect it's speed sensitive.

If you do suspect IRQ it would help if you shared which resources you allocated to it.

That would very much suck as otherwise this system is ideal. There's always something though!

I've not actually allocated any resources, I just let it go with defaults. The BIOS doesn't let you assign them per say, just certain DMA/IRQ to ISA or auto pnp.

How would I go about troubleshooting that? Do you think an underclock may help?

dionb wrote on 2023-03-29, 07:36:

Could also be a speed issue, this is an old card and that is an Athlon motherboard.

Recently got one of these working. Was positively surprised to hear that stereo sound did work if you forced it despite DSP identifying itself as SB2.0. Did my tests on a 486DX33. Previously the card refused to work at all on a P3 Win98 system. Strongly suspect it's speed sensitive.

If you do suspect IRQ it would help if you shared which resources you allocated to it.

That's surprising to hear. Did you have to load that "stereo" utility that comes with some AZT-1605 models?

Retrorepair wrote on 2023-03-29, 02:07:

This card has been waiting for a build for a while and now I finally get to use it.. I can't :( […]
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This card has been waiting for a build for a while and now I finally get to use it.. I can't 🙁

I tried the Nova 16 drivers and Orion 16 drivers in windows, neither work. After driver installation I get a "windows is restarting..." message, then an opcode error, then back into windows and no driver is installed except a wave device for modem.

In DOS I get FM but no DAC in Doom and FT2 plays a mod for a few seconds then stops.

I'm thinking this must be an IRQ problem but buggered if I know how to resolve it. The motherboard is a GA-71xe4.

Any ideas?

I agree with DionB's assessment. What is the model no of your card? I38-MMSN?

jesolo wrote on 2023-03-29, 08:45:

dionb wrote on 2023-03-29, 07:36:

Could also be a speed issue, this is an old card and that is an Athlon motherboard.

Recently got one of these working. Was positively surprised to hear that stereo sound did work if you forced it despite DSP identifying itself as SB2.0. Did my tests on a 486DX33. Previously the card refused to work at all on a P3 Win98 system. Strongly suspect it's speed sensitive.

If you do suspect IRQ it would help if you shared which resources you allocated to it.

That's surprising to hear. Did you have to load that "stereo" utility that comes with some AZT-1605 models?

Which bit surprising? The speed sensitivity or the stereo?

If the latter, it was just selecting SBPro2 in a game where you could manually configure. Could have been Tyrian but not 100% sure.

dionb wrote on 2023-03-29, 10:28:

jesolo wrote on 2023-03-29, 08:45:

dionb wrote on 2023-03-29, 07:36:

Could also be a speed issue, this is an old card and that is an Athlon motherboard.

Recently got one of these working. Was positively surprised to hear that stereo sound did work if you forced it despite DSP identifying itself as SB2.0. Did my tests on a 486DX33. Previously the card refused to work at all on a P3 Win98 system. Strongly suspect it's speed sensitive.

If you do suspect IRQ it would help if you shared which resources you allocated to it.

That's surprising to hear. Did you have to load that "stereo" utility that comes with some AZT-1605 models?

Which bit surprising? The speed sensitivity or the stereo?

If the latter, it was just selecting SBPro2 in a game where you could manually configure. Could have been Tyrian but not 100% sure.

The stereo part. I could never get my AZT-1605 based cards to produce stereo sound (digitised voices). FM synthesis I know are in stereo since those cards have an OPL-3 FM chip.

jesolo wrote on 2023-03-29, 11:00:

dionb wrote on 2023-03-29, 10:28:

jesolo wrote on 2023-03-29, 08:45:

That's surprising to hear. Did you have to load that "stereo" utility that comes with some AZT-1605 models?

Which bit surprising? The speed sensitivity or the stereo?

If the latter, it was just selecting SBPro2 in a game where you could manually configure. Could have been Tyrian but not 100% sure.

The stereo part. I could never get my AZT-1605 based cards to produce stereo sound (digitised voices). FM synthesis I know are in stereo since those cards have an OPL-3 FM chip.

If I have time I'll see if I can reproduce and document. Big "if" I'm afraid, I have to move my whole retro setup to free up a room for my son. Could take a while.

Just to update this, I think it just needed a clean. After cleaning the card edge with contact cleaner and doing the same to the ISA slot it works perfectly. Nice card too.

To address the stereo thing, Fast Tracker 2 seems to output stereo with this card. If that can surely games can too?

Retrorepair wrote on 2023-04-15, 21:24:

To address the stereo thing, Fast Tracker 2 seems to output stereo with this card. If that can surely games can too?

Of course, if one software product can output stereo on that card, another software product that tries the same way to output stereo can also do it. On AZT 1605-based cards, there are two ways to output digital sound: Either you bypass the AZT 1605 and directly program the AD1848 digital sound playback chip, or you interface with the AZT 1605 and have the AZT 1605 set up the AD1848 to play sound. The programming interface of the AD1848 is often called "Windows sound system" or "Microsoft sound system", because the hardware solution suggested by Microsoft to get 16-bit duplex 48kHz stereo audio for Windows multimedia applications was an ISA card with the AD1848 and some simple glue logic to route the IRQ and DMA signals to software-programmable ISA pins. You can select the I/O base address of the AD1848 using the setup program for your Sound Galaxy (default is 534), and configure many modern applications to use this card in WSS mode. This will result in the capability to play back 16-bit stereo sound.

On the other hand, at I/O address 220 (unless you reconfigured the SB base address) you interface with the sound blaster emulation built into the AZT 1605. This chip translates SB 2.0 commands into the necessary programming of the AD1848 chip, so software that expects a SB 2.0 can play back digital sound with this card, without needing to support the AD1848 interface. The AZT 1605 does not support SB Pro stereo, though.

TL;DR: If you can choose WSS/MSS in your game, you can get stereo sound. If your game only supports SB / SB Pro (and maybe SB16), this card will play back mono.