Yes thank you. I have reviewed this blog before but nothing helpful stood out. Considering the amount of detail in it, can you be specific about which method you're referring to?

If "MTRRLFBE.EXE LFB WC" as a solution - I tried this but it had no effect.
If system.ini changes to limit Windows 98's "visibility" of usable RAM - I intentionally used 1GB on the Evga board to avoid doing this.

Keep in mind the Asus x58 board was behaving as expected and the Evga was not despite identical equipment and OS configurations. The BIOS settings described in that blog were specific to the board they used. There were many settings my Evga BIOS did not have so this blog isn't necessary a panacea for all X58 builds.

Does your BIOS have some option like memory remapping? If yes, try to change it when use 4GB or more. It may affect MTRR settings and performance.
also you can try my latest mtrrlfbe with debug option to see if there is some difference in MTRR setting with 3GB and 4GB (under DOS).

Does your BIOS have some option like memory remapping?

Ah, very interesting. Thank you. My Evga board is missing this option. Perhaps future Vogons readers can fully appreciate this advise 😀

I've moved on to another area of interest however:

I find out other pro thing, you can disable whole PCI-E root on OS level to disable some PCI-E slot

So ruthan, what is your preferred setup for multiple GPUs on these platforms? I'll be using an ATI X800XL (Windows 98) and a GeForce 750Ti (Windows XP+). I'd prefer a solution in Windows to avoid multiple BIOS profiles.

Which card do you use the first (or primary) PCIe slot? I presume the older card? This seems to make sense for booting to DOS/Windows 98.
What is the process to disable a PCIe in newer Windows's to use the other newer card however? I see in Windows 10 Device Manager several "PCI-to-PCI bridge" devices. Is it just disabling one-by-one until the PCIe slot with the older card is disabled? I suspect that the machine boots without video on the secondary card until you reach the Windows 10 login screen?

Well, im using Gigabyte board, because they could force primary PCI-E slot and profiles. Its in history, but some HP boards have this options too and some Supremicros too, without it, it could be problem.

Otherwise make sense use in primary GPU slot card which you are using most. To find which PCI-E root is for which card, open Device Manager Xp/Win7/Win10 and switch to Tree view for Device connections.. View-> Devices by Connection, here you can through device id indentify (or though card name if drivers are already instead ) which root is used by which card and disable it. Only problem is Windows 10 version major upgrade, it will reenable disable roots and you have disable them again.

Without primary GPU slot selection, you could have problem to get boot picture from not primary graphics cards, until OS is loaded.

Hi, I just got a Gigabyte GA-H97-HD3 rev. 1.1 mobo for 4./5. gen core with H97 PCH chipset & the same well known PCIE2PCI bridge IT8892E and performed a test with YMF744 PCI.
I disabled all features that may interfere with DOS like USB legacy support and left only legacy boot, no UEFI etc.
Yamaha driver and DSDMA.EXE loaded successfully, configured to IRQ5, DMA1 but Doom hangs at startup at InitSound, also few other previously tested games just hangs at startup. When I disabled SFX in Doom setup and left only music via SB or Adlib then it started and music played smoothly. I tried a bit messing around memory manager and swapped the soundcard between 2 PCI slots but result was always the same. So there's definitely some compatability issue that prevents DSDMA to do it's job on newer chipsets. We can assume that PCIE2PCI bridge IT8892E works fine and UEFI itself also is not the issue. So it seems that X79 chipset still remains to be the last fully working option (Ruthan's Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4).
I have also one H81 ITX board but it has not PCI so we are still not sure about 8x chipset series.

In this thread is maybe someone how would be able say something more about it:
PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...
or here:
PCie-to PCI, PCI to ISA, # of slots multipliers - bridges, risers, backplanes, research, especially for DOS, WIP.
PCI or PCI Express Sound Card for DOS Sound Blaster Sound Effects working on Intel Sandy Bridge Z68 or newer chipsets

If my memory serves, which i looked at all chipset diagrams, all boards which are working have som ICH10 chip.. and so i guess that its upgraded version is no more compatible.

Other adlib or SB music is not bad.. it could help of board without parallel port still to get some music working. (i know this one has parallel port too), without paying for OPT2LPT and need to patch the games and only small group of games is running.

Otherwise just idea.. is not possible to somehow record all communication during game starting on ASM level and compare too recording from still working HW and not working HW, to find out the difference? I never got into this low level dos debugging..

Just a quick note, 6x chipsets (including my P67) are single-chip solution (PCH) - no more ICH10 used so it is not the mandatory condition for working DSDMA. But of course newer PCH chipsets might removed some internal legacy circuitry (as intel did e.g. for SATA-IDE emulation) that is crucial for DSDMA function...

As i wrote my memory.. but when i was checking it, i found difference between X79 and Z97.

There is X79 Block diagram.. PCI Bus connected directly into chipset, like in case of old working board, that was that important thing..
https://download1.gigabyte.com/Files/Manual/m … a-x79-up4_e.pdf // page 8

Z97 - PCI bus is connected through PCIE- to PCI bridge:
https://www.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2014 … ock-diagram.jpg

Yes but my P67 board use exactly the same ITE PCI bridge like this H97 so it cannot be a culprit. Looking at bare diagram dosn't show much as (d)evil is hidden in details that are not much published, one would need read full datasheet carefully...

Hi, I want to jump into this adventure. I recovered an Asrock X58 Supercomputer and bought a Xeon from China 😂

Because Zoho docs died- changed for paid service all old links stopped working, i had to migrate all linked online docs to Google docs.. now every link should work if now please let me know..

Is this a correct setup?

MacDad wrote on 2024-06-26, 17:51:

Is this a correct setup? […]
Show full quote

Is this a correct setup?

Sorry but I've no idea from that screenshot alone (the one in your attachment)... can you provide any more detail about the question?

From the screenshot... I think JEMMEX and JLOAD should belong to CONFIG.SYS and not AUTOEXEC.BAT part.

Also, I don't think you can run DOS32A on its own. It's meant to start another protected mode program, similar to DOS4GW.

Just want to bring here that the HP Z800 shares the advantages of HP Z400 w.r.t YMF-744 DOS support and everything else mentioned in this thread. Also it adds a COM port on top as one more legacy device supported. Details here:

HP Z800 Time machine build

Software coverage so far is the exact same as the HP Z400.

I'd be curious to know how you feel about it today, compared to 10 years ago...
I created a MultiBoot setup with an X58 motherboard by installing MS-DOS 6.22/W95/98SE/ME/2K/XP/VISTA/7/8.1/10/11 + MacOS Catalina + Various Linux
Everything works perfectly!
One of the questions I was most concerned about was the Sound Card for MS-DOS, then I came in and answered it myself: there isn't a sound card for everything, and honestly, I can't stand there changing one depending on the game 😀
Then in recent years, the turning point came with SBEMU and VBSHDA. With these two, I can boot almost anything. If I want, I can always use the Vortex 1, with various menus. (Although I would have liked to get the Yamaha, but from what I see, it's even worse!)
Many games besides MS-DOS can also be run under Windows, so there's no need to worry unnecessarily.
If someone doesn't boot, it doesn't matter, I don't think any retro gaming system with ISA and 486 can boot everything with just one configuration.

Yes. Despite this being a super versatile setup, it still cannot cover everything. As you said, even machines of the time period can't do it for one reason or another. But I think the range covered by this setup is the widest I've come across so far just by counting what works vs. what doesn't. All the OSes, and all the generations of games and programs along with them.

So now compared to 10 years ago, I guess I'm even more convinced about it than before (after I've come across many more period-accurate builds).

The major period not well-covered by this is XT-era software, which is tough to get right even on anything newer than a real XT (super speed sensitive) like Digger, Bad Dudes, Might & Magic 1 to name a few.

I haven't tried SBEMU and its derivatives against the cases that fail with the YMF744. But if it works, then that makes for an awesome patch to the small hole left by the PCI sound card. The game I'm most interested in is Crusader No Remorse/No Regret. I'll try it and report back here.

I'm not a big fan of relying on emulation solutions though, that's the whole point of using the YMF744 (hardware OPL3).. but I'm ok with SBEMU to cover for SB16 games like Crusader and Extreme Pinball where everything is mixed in software anyways before being sent to the hardware.

Just one question because, strangely, no one here is asking.
But when you talk about tests passed with Vortex Aureal 1, do you mean both Music and FM?
Because I have the card mounted on an X58 motherboard, but FM has never started, only music.
Thanks.