doshea wrote on 2022-01-10, 05:18:

Adding the /T parameter to the CFG801.EXE command line causes it to indicate what PCI chipset it detected. In my case it said "Can't find PCI Chipset Device!" and that it was defaulting to legacy 2 mode, whereas as noted above it turned out that legacy 1 mode was better for me.

Actually I used /t (lowercase) and I can see from disassembling it that that switch (but not the others) is case sensitive!

The command-line parsing in CFG801.EXE is pretty bad. It seems that the only way you can get usage information from it is if you pass a valid /t option followed by an invalid option, e.g. "/t /?".

Here is complete lspci -nn output showing both the 3DS801A card and the system I tested it in:

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge [1106:0314]
00:00.1 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge [1106:1314]
00:00.2 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge [1106:2314]
00:00.3 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge [1106:3208]
00:00.4 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge [1106:4314]
00:00.7 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge [1106:7314]
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge [1106:b198]
00:07.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Fortemedia, Inc Xwave QS3000A [FM801] [1319:0801] (rev a0)
00:07.1 Input device controller [0980]: Fortemedia, Inc Xwave QS3000A [FM801] [1319:0801] (rev a0)
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller [1106:3149] (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface [0101]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE [1106:0571] (rev 06)
00:11.0 ISA bridge [0601]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South] [1106:3227]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] [10de:0185] (rev a4)

Does this card work for you under Linux? I use Fedora Linux 36 with M4A785TD-V EVO mainboard now and card with such a chipset is detected by the system:

1$ lspci
202:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Fortemedia, Inc Xwave QS3000A [FM801] (rev b2)
302:06.1 Input device controller: Fortemedia, Inc Xwave QS3000A [FM801 game port] (rev b2)

but it does not work at all, dmesg shows:

1$ dmesg
2snd_fm801 0000:02:06.0: TEA575x radio not found
3snd_fm801 0000:02:06.0: AC'97 0 does not respond - RESET
4snd_fm801 0000:02:06.0: AC'97 0 access error (not audio or modem codec)
5snd_fm801: probe of 0000:02:06.0 failed with error -13

The chipset says:

1ForteMedia
2FM801-AU
30038
4H6315.00

AC97 IC says:

1STAC9700T
2LA2C09
39952

foxbat wrote on 2022-07-20, 23:31:

Does this card work for you under Linux?

I can't remember, but I think it did. I'll try to test it again sometime in the next week.

It might not be relevant, but what is the AC'97 codec chip on your card? Mine is the STAC9704T, yours looks similar but it's hard to read.

doshea wrote on 2022-07-26, 12:06:

It might not be relevant, but what is the AC'97 codec chip on your card? Mine is the STAC9704T, yours looks similar but it's hard to read.

It is STAC9700T

I tested it with a different motherboard to my previous post - one with a VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset - just for the sake of convenience, and it worked with Fedora 7 and Knoppix 7.2.

A weird issue I hit under Knoppix (and might have hit if I'd rebooted with Fedora 7) is that ALSA assigned a different order to the onboard audio vs. the 3DS801A between boots, so one time it was the default device and one time it wasn't. I actually failed to get the audio to work when it wasn't the default device, but I'm pretty sure that would just be because I needed to tell the aplay command to use a non-default device, and it hadn't occurred to me to do that until after I'd rebooted (and it coincidentally became the default device).

I was able to confirm that the card works at all. I run it on legacy P55 Pentium MMX 166MHz with MS5146 and Windows 98SE. Anyway the sound quality is really bad as it plays snatchy sound. I used drivers from Vogons downloads.

Thanks for documenting all this information doshea !

I've been doing some tests with this card.

The best performance is attained by avoiding the DOS801.EXE TSR which I guess redirects to the desired IRQ, and that introduces some latency or pop sounds in the FX playback, and incompatibilities too (Prehistorik 2).

I'm using a board with the VIA 8235M southbridge, and once I make sure the card gets the IRQ 5 or 7, everything just works in DOS, only by loading CFG801.EXE and setting the BLASTER variable.

I can't understand why everything works so well, every game I tested has 100% perfect DOS compatibility and to my ears, a sound which is very close to the OPL3.

How does such a card+driver work so well on a motherboard without DDMA, PC-PCI, etc? How is it possible?

OTOH, I haven't had such a successful experience (yet) with motherboards which do have SiS chipsets (compatible with DDMA).

Investigations are still ongoing...

I'm glad it was useful and that you had some success tauro!

I was actually wondering recently what else I might be able to get to work with this card, so I'd be interested to see a list of the games you tested it with, if you have time to share that.

Is your board identical to mine or just similar?

tauro wrote on 2023-11-20, 10:50:

How does such a card+driver work so well on a motherboard without DDMA, PC-PCI, etc? How is it possible?

interesting, I guess we need to look in CFG801.EXE assembler code and see what it's doing, because FM801 datasheets states things like:

Proprietary Logic for Real DOS SoundBlaster Pro games support

DDMA, PC/PCI and ForteMedia’s own proprietary mode

So, maybe "ForteMedia’s own proprietary mode" is something like ESS TDMA (Transparent DMA), i.e. build-in i8237 DMA controller inside FM801 chip. What I mean is if CFG801.EXE is not doing any software emulation, then probably it sets some special ForteMedia's hardware mode similar to ESS TDMA. So, it's interesting, based on your experience, the CFG801.EXE be investigated and a definitive answer be given.

Can you solder a header on the PC/PCI pads and test the SB-Link please... So far, the Yamaha cards are the only ones I know of that work with it. There is a single report here of success with an ESS Solo and SB-Link which I've not been able to replicate. It would be interesting to see what the story is with this card.

doshea wrote on 2023-11-21, 09:52:

I'm glad it was useful and that you had some success tauro!

I was actually wondering recently what else I might be able to get to work with this card, so I'd be interested to see a list of the games you tested it with, if you have time to share that.

Is your board identical to mine or just similar?

It's very similar to foxbat's, but mine has been manufactured by Genius. Forté Media chip reads H6L02.00 and the AC'97 chip is a STAC9704T.

The volumes are too low in general for my taste, but satisfactory enough.

I check the default volumes with BTTR's SBMIX upon boot and they are: MASTER 9, WAVE 9, FM 9. Creative's SBP-MIX also reports 9 9 9 as the default volumes.

Do you understand how to set the volumes using VOLUME.CFG?

This is the default file:

1[VOLCFG]
2MasVol=0
3PcmVol=0c0c
4FmVol=0c0c
5SurVol=0

I changed MasVol and SurVol to 3 and other numbers and it doesn't make any changes, SBMIX still reports 9/9/9 after a reboot. Also, what are the hex values 0c0c supposed to mean? What's SurVol?

The volumes can be set to 15 /w15 /f15 with SBMIX and that's as good as it gets.

With either SBP-MIX, SBP-SET or SBMIX I can't get the line-in and microphone volumes down to zero, they remain in 1. Probably a card incompatibility.

Since I'm not doing tests on Win9x for the time being, this is all I could find out. Maybe there are more volume options on Windows.

doshea wrote on 2023-11-21, 09:52:

I was actually wondering recently what else I might be able to get to work with this card, so I'd be interested to see a list of the games you tested it with, if you have time to share that.

I tried lots of games and I didn't find any such problematic games like you did. I always used mode 0 (auto), and it seems that that defaults to /2. Probably /1 is more compatible (since GP2 runs OK with it).

Here's the md5sum for the CFG801.EXE I'm using:

1083e97ced82da7abfd6508e2bfb852a3

Here's a list of a few games that I tried (all worked fine):

1GODS
2AITD
3PRE2
4LEMMINGS
5PINBALL DREAMS 2
6DUKE3D
7DOOM_SE
8WING COMMANDER 2 
9UGH
10MK
11WILLY
12HOLMES
13ENTITY
14EPIC
15F1GP
16WAR2          Fine with DOS32A
17JAZZ          Excellent (disabling L1)
18PRINCE2       Excellent - (Don't use SB PRO or FX stops working)
19LSL1 and Sierra point and click games in general.

doshea wrote on 2022-01-10, 05:18:

Prince of Persia: Fine apart from hanging notes

Prince of Persia exhibits the same behavior, hanging notes at the end of FM playback. Otherwise fine.

doshea wrote on 2022-01-10, 05:18:

Wolfenstein 3-D: Digital audio was distorted, as if it was playing too slowly, and the volume was perhaps dropping in the middle of playback. Adding the /1 parameter to CFG801.EXE's command line and/or not loading the DOS801.EXE TSR seemed to help with the volume dropping out but I think the sound still seemed to be playing too slowly.

Your observations are correct here too. FX sounds are low pitched. I don't think they are playing slower than normal, just lower pitch.

>the volume was perhaps dropping in the middle of playback
>volume dropping out

According to my tests, this is DOS801.EXE's fault. If you avoid that TSR, performance improves. The only problem is the lower pitched FX sounds.

doshea wrote on 2022-01-10, 05:18:

Microprose Grand Prix 2: Audio kept cutting out (for a fraction of a second every 5-15 seconds or so) until I added the /1 parameter to CFG801.EXE's command line.

100% true! great find.
This proves mode 2 is the most compatible, apparently (I wonder what is the real difference).

mattw wrote on 2023-11-21, 12:41:

So, maybe "ForteMedia’s own proprietary mode" is something like ESS TDMA (Transparent DMA), i.e. build-in i8237 DMA controller inside FM801 chip. What I mean is if CFG801.EXE is not doing any software emulation, then probably it sets some special ForteMedia's hardware mode similar to ESS TDMA. So, it's interesting, based on your experience, the CFG801.EXE be investigated and a definitive answer be given.

You are probably correct! Unfortunately it's beyond my capabilities to reverse engineer the drivers.

tauro wrote on 2023-11-21, 15:05:

It's very similar to foxbat's, but mine has been manufactured by Genius. Forté Media chip reads H6L02.00 and the AC'97 chip is a STAC9704T.

Thanks for the info, and thanks for the info regarding games too!

Do you understand how to set the volumes using VOLUME.CFG?

No, sorry, or if I figured it out I didn't make any notes!

What's SurVol?

Maybe it's "surround"? AC'97 supports surround sound (or at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC%2797 says this), so I suppose it's possible for am FM801 card to have surround sound outputs. My card doesn't seem to have such outputs as can be seen in the photos.

With either SBP-MIX, SBP-SET or SBMIX I can't get the line-in and microphone volumes down to zero, they remain in 1. Probably a card incompatibility.

Strange! I saw https://github.com/volkertb/ich2player referenced on these forums at one point, and I noticed it is able to control AC'97 mixers, so I think at one point I wondered if it might be possible to borrow some code from it to make a DOS mixer for AC'97 cards, or maybe I actually saw some such DOS mixer software, I can't recall now. If such a thing exists it might be useful.

mattw wrote on 2023-11-21, 12:41:

interesting, I guess we need to look in CFG801.EXE assembler code and see what it's doing, because FM801 datasheets states things like:

I started looking at it with IDA once, but I can't recall why. I still have the database, I can check if I figured out anything useful from it if you'd like. I wasn't looking at this kind of thing though.

mockingbird wrote on 2023-11-21, 14:05:

Can you solder a header on the PC/PCI pads and test the SB-Link please

Sorry, I doubt I'll be able to find the time to try this kind of thing! In fact when I saw my original post in this thread I was surprised, because I forgot how much free time I had back then, that I could try out these things and write up my results 😁

mockingbird wrote on 2023-11-21, 14:05:

Can you solder a header on the PC/PCI pads and test the SB-Link please... So far, the Yamaha cards are the only ones I know of that work with it. There is a single report here of success with an ESS Solo and SB-Link which I've not been able to replicate. It would be interesting to see what the story is with this card.

So I want to report that I have a motherboard, the ATREND ATC 7610M (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/a-tren … -7160-atc-7160m) and this thing is a hoot. It has a built in Intel i740 graphics and FM801. Interesting thing about the FM801 implementation is I believe the SB-Link is wired in, because I am able to initialize it CFG801 with /4 PC-PCI mode and does so successfully. Compatibility was already amazing with DOS titles so it’s tough to test the improvement unless a game is known to not work with TDMA or DDMA outright.

The manual appears to confirm it

1-4 SB-Link Sideband Signals In order to migrate the legacy Sound Blaster compatible audio to the PCI bus, EMU8008 incorporates […]
Show full quote

1-4 SB-Link Sideband Signals
In order to migrate the legacy Sound Blaster compatible audio to the PCI bus, EMU8008 incorporates a pair of SB-Link request/grant sideband signals (PCPCIR EQN and PCPCIGNTN) to interface to the PCI bus. SB-Link is a mechanism that was defined and developed by INTEL as a docking solution which allows ISA slots to exist in docking stations connected to desktop PC PCI bus.

…

The default on-board Forte Media sound is recommended. After installing the sound driver, the user can enable this function without plugging any cable into jumper of SB-Link.

Great news Zeerex !
What's the status of Wolfenstein 3D on your setup? With my card I tried all the modes (0,1,2) and the sounds are low pitched.

Zeerex wrote on 2024-06-27, 02:47:

So I want to report that I have a motherboard, the ATREND ATC 7610M (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/a-tren … -7160-atc-7160m) and this thing is a hoot. It has a built in Intel i740 graphics and FM801. Interesting thing about the FM801 implementation is I believe the SB-Link is wired in, because I am able to initialize it CFG801 with /4 PC-PCI mode and does so successfully. Compatibility was already amazing with DOS titles so it’s tough to test the improvement unless a game is known to not work with TDMA or DDMA outright.
<snip>

Thanks for the confirmation... So this confirms YM7x4 and Fortemedia FM801 have operational SBLINK... Maybe also the Solo 1, but there is only one report, and I had no success. I also tried recently with the Philips Thunderbird (large VLSI chip variant) and had no success (or couldn't figure out how to enable it, but I think that I concluded at the time that this was never actually implemented by Philips).

Zeerex wrote on 2024-06-27, 02:47:

So I want to report that I have a motherboard, the ATREND ATC 7610M (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/a-tren … -7160-atc-7160m) and this thing is a hoot. It has a built in Intel i740 graphics and FM801. Interesting thing about the FM801 implementation is I believe the SB-Link is wired in, because I am able to initialize it CFG801 with /4 PC-PCI mode and does so successfully. Compatibility was already amazing with DOS titles so it’s tough to test the improvement unless a game is known to not work with TDMA or DDMA outright.

Just a follow up...

I soldered a PC/PCI header on my card and hooked it up... No go. Heck, I can barely get the card to work at all. I put my Yamaha YMF724 with PC/PCI for a sanity check and it worked fine. So either my card is defective or I'm doing something wrong.

I'll stick with the Yamaha.