VOGONS


Reply 241 of 353, by keropi

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rasterscan wrote on 2022-09-24, 17:42:

Hi! May I get an update on my order? I reached out via email but haven’t heard back. Thank you!

send me an email at the dallas.....gmail address and I'll look it up for you!
everything is shipped since some time btw

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 242 of 353, by bullis1

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keropi wrote on 2022-09-04, 06:51:

This is very weird, I do not have something other to recommend trying...

Well, I've been trying to troubleshoot this periodically over the last few weeks.
I've been using pure dos mode, and CMI official DOS drivers as provided. The system is freshly rebuilt with only the motherboard, a Pentium 200, hard drive, VGA, and the MK8330.

CMI audio test program beeps along to the engine test noise.

Pinball Fantasies beeps along to certain sounds in the soundtrack, eventually just causing a long constant beep. At this point the motherboard power light starts blinking (really odd, and the Asus P5A docs don't mention this) If you keep going there's eventually screen palette flickering and corruption along with major slowdowns during loading.

Quake works sometimes, and doesn't cause any beeping. However, after running Quake once it won't detect the card anymore until reboot.

Shadow Warrior and Duke 3D sound setup programs hang when trying to detect the card.

Tried the same tests with a Vibra and MWave ISA cards and none of these problems occur.

Thoughts? Is this particular card a dud? Maybe just not compatible with all motherboards? It would have been nice if I could just disconnect the PC speaker and get some use out of this but the card is clearly having other effects on the system.

Sorry to bring bad news.

Reply 243 of 353, by keropi

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bullis1 wrote on 2022-10-05, 00:43:

[...]
Thoughts? Is this particular card a dud? Maybe just not compatible with all motherboards? It would have been nice if I could just disconnect the PC speaker and get some use out of this but the card is clearly having other effects on the system.

Sorry to bring bad news.

The only solution at this point is to send the card back for a repair/replacement/refund , I have not seen anything like that before... But whatever it is we will solve it one way or another 😀
Just contact via email the sales guy
Sorry this gave you so much trouble 🙁

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 244 of 353, by MadLynx

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bullis1 wrote on 2022-10-05, 00:43:

I've been using pure dos mode, and CMI official DOS drivers as provided. The system is freshly rebuilt with only the motherboard, a Pentium 200, hard drive, VGA, and the MK8330.

Have you tried it with any other motherboard? I'm assuming that something is wrong with the particular motherboard. PC speaker "sounds" just by connecting one of its pins to ground. It's also worth noting that P5A-B may have its own CMI8330 onboard sound chip. Does your motherboard have it?

Reply 245 of 353, by bullis1

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MadLynx wrote on 2022-10-05, 05:17:

Have you tried it with any other motherboard? I'm assuming that something is wrong with the particular motherboard. PC speaker "sounds" just by connecting one of its pins to ground. It's also worth noting that P5A-B may have its own CMI8330 onboard sound chip. Does your motherboard have it?

Thank you for chiming in. My P5A-B motherboard does not have the audio section populated. Obviously hardware this old can develop faults, but seeing that this behaviour does not occur with any other sound cards (I also tested with some PCI ones in addition to ISA) I can only conclude the MK8330 is the key to this oddity. The card is clearly well-built, to be clear. I know how the PC speaker works, which is why this is extra baffling. If the beeps were just superficial I'd disconnect the speaker. However, the system is having other glitches with the MK8330 present and I don't want to risk damage.

Reply 246 of 353, by keropi

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PdSUyay.jpg

after a loooong wait for the cplds - they are back with the expected inflated price 🤣
but it means PCMIDI addons can be made - so they are now available
I have added an item for it on the contact form , anyone interested please use it to enter the queue
thanks!

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 248 of 353, by Xanxi

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Hi there.

I am a proud owner of the MK8330 with PCMIDI addon.

This card has replaced a Vibra16 CT4170 which was working fine except that one can expect better than the CQM and it didn't have the MPU intelligent mode for my MT32 (Wing Commander not working).
My setup is peculiar as some of you may know from other retrocomputing boards : it is an Amiga 4000 with PC bridgeboard A2386/25 (with or without Cyrix 486SLC2 upgrade), VGA board STB Nitro 2 MB, which leaves room for one more card which is the audio card.
I run MSDOS 5.

Installation of the MK8330 has been easy software wise.
Everything is working so far including the external Roland MT32. Wing Commander runs with the MT32 thanks to the intelligent mode of the PCMIDI.

Sound from the MT32 is coming though the line in of the MK8330 and is very sharp with no noise.
However the line out CM/OPL3 is giving a hiss sound which i didn't have with the Vibra16. The hiss is very audible unless i play some loud music.
I have tried to reduce the mixer to 10 instead of 14 for every output with no effect.

Would you have any advice about that?

Reply 249 of 353, by keropi

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Xanxi is it possible to test on some standalone pc? Just to make sure it's not the Amiga environment.
I only had experience with the goldengate cards - these for example had issues with sb16 cards: when much was happening on screen sound would play slower. The solution was to use an older SB2.0... never saw any similar behaviour anywhere else.
If card has the same issue with a "real" pc we will take care of it 😀

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 250 of 353, by tpowell.ca

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Got my MK8330 a while back but only just now had a chance to use it.
On paper it is the perfect card.

One thing I'm not in love with is the complete lack of lowpass filtering when emulating an SB(Pro).

The other issue, and is definitely more problematic for me is that in some apps and demos, in sound blaster pro mode, I get the channels swapping sides every second or so.
Very annoying.

I'll have to build a list of problem software.
So far, Epic Pinball, future crew demos and cubic player all do it in SBPro mode.

The computer is a P3-600 on a 440BX chipset. I also tried with a Via C3 at different clock speeds and with L1 cache enabled and disabled. The behavior was the same.

In WSS mode, I had no problems.

The final issue is that the volume/mixer would also get screwed up after leaving a game where the main volume would go to near zero.

  • Merlin: MS-4144, AMD5x86-160 32MB, 16GB CF, ZIP100, Orpheus, GUS, S3 VirgeGX 2MB
    Tesla: GA-6BXC, VIA C3 Ezra-T, 256MB, 120GB SATA, YMF744, GUSpnp, Quadro2
    Newton: K6XV3+/66, AMD K6-III+500, 256MB, 32GB SSD, AWE32, Voodoo3

Reply 251 of 353, by keropi

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Sadly these are not things that can be fixed - it's just the way CMI8330 is designed internally...
As with every "SB compatible" chip out there it also has it's own set of shortcomings that we have to live with.
I assume C-Media gave more importance to SB16/WSS modes than SBPRO one
A list of games with issues would be nice to have though!
When we decided about this chip it was because of the positive reputation it had - but not really surprising it has some issues with games

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 252 of 353, by appiah4

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To be honest it works flawlessly in all my games.. I don't play Epic Pinball though, and I don't even know the other games mentioned.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 253 of 353, by Shreddoc

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Demo scene and other cutting-edge-of-it's-time DOS audio content uses niche routines and techniques and workarounds, for which a great jack-of-most-trades card like the MK8330 is not the ideal choice. Such niche content needs a more deliberate and researched sound card choice, to cover those specific bases.

And, in turn, the cards which best suit that use case, will likely not cover nearly the same breadth of general ground that the MK8330 can.

There isn't yet a Full 100%-Everything DOS card. But we're getting closer.

Reply 254 of 353, by ldeveraux

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Shreddoc wrote on 2022-12-31, 00:10:

Demo scene and other cutting-edge-of-it's-time DOS audio content uses niche routines and techniques and workarounds, for which a great jack-of-most-trades card like the MK8330 is not the ideal choice. Such niche content needs a more deliberate and researched sound card choice, to cover those specific bases.

And, in turn, the cards which best suit that use case, will likely not cover nearly the same breadth of general ground that the MK8330 can.

There isn't yet a Full 100%-Everything DOS card. But we're getting closer.

Wasn't this supposed to be the jack-of-most-trades, Full 100%-Everything DOS card though?

Reply 255 of 353, by carlostex

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ldeveraux wrote on 2022-12-31, 12:00:

Wasn't this supposed to be the jack-of-most-trades, Full 100%-Everything DOS card though?

Every chip has its own quirks and limitations. There is nothing full 100% everything. With FPGA, maybe one day eventually.

Reply 256 of 353, by Shponglefan

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ldeveraux wrote on 2022-12-31, 12:00:

Wasn't this supposed to be the jack-of-most-trades, Full 100%-Everything DOS card though?

You might be thinking of the Orpheus II. Although that card is also not the 100% do-everything dos card either.

The holy grail of do everything cards does not yet exist.

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Reply 257 of 353, by Boohyaka

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ldeveraux wrote on 2022-12-31, 12:00:

Wasn't this supposed to be the jack-of-most-trades, Full 100%-Everything DOS card though?

Only a Sith deals in absolutes 😁

Seriously though, as most things in life, a perfect jack-of-all-trades doesn't exist. There's always compromises. IMO, the MK8330 is mostly an awesome SB16/WSS alternative, that also supports earlier SB Pro and 2.0, but the implementation obviously cannot be better that what the CMI8330 chip it's built around can do. It's probably the closest Adlib to SB16 jack-of-all trades available, as no other card has the overall quality around it as this one and the chip was originally mostly used in budget cards. But in the end, there are better Pro/2.0 recreations if that's your focus, Orpheus being near the top of those. If you have the means and space and you want the "perfect" experience for different era's, you'll need several builds anyway, and the MK8330 definitely has a spot in a late DOS up to early 9x build. And if you don't, and your goal is to have a global all-rounder, the MK8330 is still a very good choice.

Demo scene and other cutting-edge-of-it's-time DOS audio content uses niche routines and techniques and workarounds, for which a great jack-of-most-trades card like the MK8330 is not the ideal choice. Such niche content needs a more deliberate and researched sound card choice, to cover those specific bases.

Definitely. I strongly agree that the demoscene is a very poor benchmark, as demomakers were always trying to impress by coming up with creative coding tricks and optimizations on the hardware of their release era. Unlike mass market games, their goal was definitely not wide compatibility or being short future-proof. Just look at the many DOS demos that only support GUS because they couldn't afford the computer resources (or couldn't be bothered) to add SB support.

I'm lucky being able to have several builds to cover a lot of options, and a happy owner of the MK8330. It does what I want it to do well. Haven't come across anything problematic myself, but probably because I'm not using it for Pro/2.0 stuff. I have other builds for that.

Happy new year all 😀

Reply 258 of 353, by Shreddoc

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ldeveraux wrote on 2022-12-31, 12:00:
Shreddoc wrote on 2022-12-31, 00:10:

Demo scene and other cutting-edge-of-it's-time DOS audio content uses niche routines and techniques and workarounds, for which a great jack-of-most-trades card like the MK8330 is not the ideal choice. Such niche content needs a more deliberate and researched sound card choice, to cover those specific bases.

And, in turn, the cards which best suit that use case, will likely not cover nearly the same breadth of general ground that the MK8330 can.

There isn't yet a Full 100%-Everything DOS card. But we're getting closer.

Wasn't this supposed to be the jack-of-most-trades, Full 100%-Everything DOS card though?

I don't think so. Re-reading Page 1 of this thread, the notion of (fair) compromise is mentioned several times. For example: "This is just one more choice out there , the goal was to make something that would rival the mid-tier cards one can get on eBay while offering better results."

It's one of the more broadly-compatible cards, across it's feature set, and is built to a higher standard than most cards, with the associated low-noise/etc performance benefits.

Reply 259 of 353, by tpowell.ca

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I have made a video of the issue I face. You can skip to 0:44 in the video to get to the actual problem.
https://youtu.be/DVCmx0Sj65M

Let me know if this is unique to my current setup/card or is this a known issue or limitation of the CMI8330.

Thank you

Note: I want to be clear; this card was exceptionally well made, and I only want to get these issues clarified as I do want to use this card in my retro 486 setup.
I also own the orpheus 1 card and love it.

  • Merlin: MS-4144, AMD5x86-160 32MB, 16GB CF, ZIP100, Orpheus, GUS, S3 VirgeGX 2MB
    Tesla: GA-6BXC, VIA C3 Ezra-T, 256MB, 120GB SATA, YMF744, GUSpnp, Quadro2
    Newton: K6XV3+/66, AMD K6-III+500, 256MB, 32GB SSD, AWE32, Voodoo3