Gonna toot my own horn here but perhaps the MK1869 is of interest

]--Freeman--[ wrote on 2025-04-04, 13:22:

Hi! […]
Show full quote

Hi!

I have a soundblaster awe64 standar edition and I'm very dissapointed with the results with earlier games like Hocus Pocus, Cannon Fodder or Flashback that with the official drivers are not working the sound completely (sound fx and music). Unisound drivers is better but I lose the general midi and it isn't enough because hocus pocus or cannon fodder have the same problem.

I'm searching for the forum and there is a lot of information about others alternatives but it is very difficult to take decision when all the sound cards have negative points. I'm a little lost.

So, which sound cards are (in practice please) very compatible with earlier games? or at least with hocus pocus, flash back or cannon fodder 😀. I don't care if it doesn't have a tsr, sound fonts or all this stuff because if I want good quality sound with sound fonts or eax, I have a build with audigy zs 2.

Thanks as always to all the comunity!

Regards!

I wasn't very happy with an AWE64 last time I used one.

My personal favorite are Yamaha ymf719 cards, I have acquired several and they are now my go-to for my retro systems. I use a e-wave wavetable so one built in isn't a requirement anymore, which broadens what I can use.

A close second is most anything with an ESS1868 /9, these cards are cheap, available, have excellent sound quality and signal to noise, and drivers and setup is usually pretty bullet proof. ESFM opposed to OPL3 may bother purists but the truth is it just sounds a little different, in any case better then creative CQM (subjective obviously).

The main thing about both above cards is SB PRO compatibility with zero effort which can often get the best out of old dos games. Sound blaster unfortunately dropped this and SB16, awe64 etc can just work as an original SB (non-pro) which is not so great. AWE64 fans usually like them for the loadable sound fonts, or for games that specifically support them.

You are correct, there is no such thing as the perfect sound card/chip in this era, even both I mentioned have small nuances. However, they are both "pretty good"

SB16 should be good.. I know it can have bugs, but if you're not into general midi then who cares. SBPro is also fantastic, but will be harder to find, and more expensive. I don't know of any old game that the SBPro can't support. SBPro can't do 16-bit SFX, so for some later games you will lose quality, that's why I suggested an SB16 first.

YMF and ESS, GUS maybe.

Most Opti based cards before the 931 will be good.

Any ISA sound blaster card with real OPL3 should be good.

Aztech Sound Galaxy cards are generally very compatible as well.

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-04-04, 20:28:

SB16 should be good.. I know it can have bugs, but if you're not into general midi then who cares. SBPro is also fantastic, but will be harder to find, and more expensive. I don't know of any old game that the SBPro can't support. SBPro can't do 16-bit SFX, so for some later games you will lose quality, that's why I suggested an SB16 first.

The AWE64 already *is* an SB16. There are at least 45 different kinds of SB16. Which of them are you suggesting and what would it offer that the AWE64 - as an SB16 - wouldn't? The only improvement an older SB16 could add is a real OPL3 instead of CQM for FM synth... apart from that they won't fix MIDI slowdowns and most will introduce hanging note bugs, single-cycle DMA clicking and more noise too.

OP, before shelling out for new hardware, maybe it's worth doing some troubleshooting as to what's going wrong first. Maybe you card is dying, maybe there are insurmountable compatibility issues, but normally an AWE64 should at the very least be able to function with most games out there. Certainly Hocus Pocus isn't particularly old (1994). Even if the card is the problem. it pays to know exactly what it is, so you can choose something specifically avoiding/fixing that issue.

Also, sound issues with older games are frequently related to CPU speed - not sound hardware as such. Cannon Fodder is apparently very CPU speed sensitive. You don't mention system specs, but on a Pentium 233MMX, you need to disable L1 cache for sound to work. See here.

Not aware of similar issues with Hocus Pocus or Flashback though - but there too I'd wager that your AWE64 isn't the main problem.

- what are your system specs (in particular CPU, RAM and cache - and is it a PnP system or not)?
- are you running pure DOS (if so, which version?) or using DOS mode in Windows (if so, which)?
- which resources (addresses, IRQs and DMA) are you using?
- how is your DOS memory setup (XMS, EMS etc)?
- are there other games that do work well with the current configuration (if so, which)?

I'm with dionb on this one. I'd do some troubleshooting before spending more money, it should work. Unless of course you're like me and just want to try different things.

I run an AWE64 (CT4520) and I've only run into a few games that gave me issues, and Unisound fixed those. For me, Hocus Pocus and Cannon Fodder work, I don't have Flashback installed at the moment to test.

On a side note, I also have an OPTi 82C930 and it works even better than my AWE64 in terms of compatibility. I arbitrarily prefer the sound of the AWE64, and my specific Opti is noisier than my AWE64, so I don't use it much, but it's a great card, and cheap. I'm also seriously considering a PicoGUS to play with in my DOS 6.22 build. Do I need it? Nope, but is looks like fun.

You can really dive down the rabbit hole on this sort of thing (I have three sound cards in my late DOS system and four (if you count an MPU401 as a sound card) in my early to mid DOS build). In general I'm a big fan of Aztech 3rd gen chips (AZT2316) for trouble-free compatibility and agree with OPTi chips being similar. I have however had some corner cases. In particular Ultima 7 - which must be about the single most difficult game to get working with all options - only gave me working digital sound alongside MT-32 (via real MPU-401 as you can't use SoftFSB with it) when I used a SnarkBarker 1:1 SB 1.0 replica. Aztech or OPTi cards I tried either gave distorted sound or none at all, despite being rock-solid in most other things.

Wow!! I'm really very impressed with all the answers. Thanks mates! 😀 😀

Dionb, I'm very agree with you. In other post (unisound thread), Vico said me that he has an awe64 and got it work Hocus Pocus or Flashback with unisound driver and creative driver. So, you're right that surely the issued is my building and the bios settings. With pentium 3 and earlier pcs I don't have much experience and I wanna learn (especially to reduce speed properly depending on the scenario/game), but I admit it's a little hard.

With Hocus Pocus I've tried to shorten BLASTER variable but I have the same Blaster environment error. It's like Blaster variable is protected once is loaded in autoexec.bat.

This is my building:

Motherboard QDI Legends Advance 10T
Pentium 3 933MHz
512M RAM 133MHz
MSDOS 6.22 + Windows 98SE
Voodoo 3 3000 16MB RAM

I'll update this post with images from bios and the files config.sys and autoexec.bat from MsDos. Let's see if we can all figure out what's going on.

Edit: Post updated with all the info.

Gallery Bios Settings:

What "Blaster environment error"?

If you're using Unisound, the SET BLASTER variably is used to set the resources for your PnP card. If using anything else, you need to make sure that what's in the SET BLASTER corresponds to whatever resources are set.

To slow down your PC, set External Cache to Disabled and see what manual options are available if you don't set CPU Host/PCI Clock to default (with a P3-933EB you should be able to halve speed to 466MHz by setting that to 66/33). Unfortunately there's no option to disable L1 (Internal) Cache, which truly hamstrings performance and might be needed for something like Cannon Fodder.

Hi! Finally I found out the problem with set blaster problem in Hocus Pocus. My error was to put one space between "BLASTER" and signal "=". Removing that I got it to work Hocus Pocus with unisound or with the official creative driver. Flashback it's working now with both drivers and wolfenstein 3d. I can run general midi with creative driver. I had another error here and it was in config.sys where the ctcm was no declared as device.

About the bios and the caches stuff. I can disable internal cache too but I realized in the screenshot isn't captured all the options (scroll bar is down and not up). I have not tested Cannon Fodder with this options disabled. My motherboard can be set with 66/33 with jumpers. One of thing I want to test is for every jumpers and caches configuration which is its perfomances equivalent (Ex.: 486,386, pentium, etc).

I've disabled internal and external cache and now I can set the soundblaster in Cannon Fodder. It works like a charm 😀

I've installed Dosbench from Philscomputerlab and I've run Norton System Information 8.0 with internal and external cache disabled and I have a result very weird. In performance is lower than a 386DX-33 but in main processor says Pentium 86Mhz. Is it normal?

]--Freeman--[ wrote on 2025-04-14, 21:16:

I've disabled internal and external cache and now I can set the soundblaster in Cannon Fodder. It works like a charm 😀

I've installed Dosbench from Philscomputerlab and I've run Norton System Information 8.0 with internal and external cache disabled and I have a result very weird. In performance is lower than a 386DX-33 but in main processor says Pentium 86Mhz. Is it normal?

Norton is one that I don't use at all from that bunch... But with the other programs yes - it's not uncommon to run into CPU speed / type mismatches, it doesn't necessarily indicate a problem. Sometimes you will find that if you run all 3-4 of the programs on there that report CPU you will find at least one that gets it right, the one that reports only cpu info with model and stepping #s (sorry the name eludes me atm) tends to be the most accurate in my experience.

]--Freeman--[ wrote on 2025-04-14, 21:16:

I've disabled internal and external cache and now I can set the soundblaster in Cannon Fodder. It works like a charm 😀

I've installed Dosbench from Philscomputerlab and I've run Norton System Information 8.0 with internal and external cache disabled and I have a result very weird. In performance is lower than a 386DX-33 but in main processor says Pentium 86Mhz. Is it normal?

Lies, damned lies and benchmarks 😉

The performance is simple enough: Norton SI ran a benchmark and the score achieved was lower than a 386DX-33. That's what you can expect things to run like so long as their system load is similar to this benchmark.

As for the "main processor" - this is a 1994 piece of software trying to identify a 1999 CPU and doing its best to make sense of utterly unknown values. I'm impressed it identified any kind of Pentium 😜