Thanks for sharing this. Tried the modified "driver" on a system with an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard. I gave my two CMI 8738 based card a try. The newest card could run Duke Nukem 3D for about 10 min before crashing but the older revision card failed the DMA test in the setup menu of DN3D. Both card had PCI IRQ 5. Jazz Jackrabbit usually crashes a few seconds into the intro giving an error: "Runtime error 216 at 50FE:0FCF."

Cool

Even though the newer revisions of these cards are working. they seem to have stability problems with some of these games with the aforementioned program modes for sound effects in my original post.

i tested the patched driver in a via epia board with the vt8237r chipset and it seems to be the same with the earlier tests on my socket 370 machine with an intel based chipset.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2020-09-18, 02:00:

SOME NOTES: Important! […]
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SOME NOTES: Important!

This card seems to have trouble with highspeed dma modes in some games as they crash after running normally for awhile with sound effects.
examples:descent 1+2, epic pinball, jazz jackrabbit and pretty much all Epic Megagames titles. "in at least in my tests"

Credits go to an unnamed forum member that is not on this site, which he figured out first to why these cards didn't work so well.

With the EPIC games you may have success using FIXEPIC.EXE which comes on the base CMI8738 DOS package.
I've just started testing this chip as I picked up a PC Chips M571LMR which contains a "SoundPro" version of the chip and have a few cheap PCI versions coming from eBay/AliExpress
It's a neat little chip and could use some love and attention on the retro scene 😀

This patch fixed my PCI sound problem. Thanks a lot! 😀

Hi, this is an old post so I am not sure if you will see this but I was trying to apply this fix and run this program in full DOS mode (not the one through Windows 98SE, and I keep getting an error message of "Bus Master Error!". What can I do to fix this when running it in full DOS mode?

raddy wrote on 2024-11-05, 03:33:

Hi, this is an old post so I am not sure if you will see this but I was trying to apply this fix and run this program in full DOS mode (not the one through Windows 98SE, and I keep getting an error message of "Bus Master Error!". What can I do to fix this when running it in full DOS mode?

I am getting this error too ... did you manage to resolve the issue?

MysticVoyager wrote on 2025-05-06, 19:44:

raddy wrote on 2024-11-05, 03:33:

Hi, this is an old post so I am not sure if you will see this but I was trying to apply this fix and run this program in full DOS mode (not the one through Windows 98SE, and I keep getting an error message of "Bus Master Error!". What can I do to fix this when running it in full DOS mode?

I am getting this error too ... did you manage to resolve the issue?

ive tried the fixed file up top (C3DPCI.EXE) its the same file posted by a user on VCFED forum thats been renamed incase anyone was wondering if they are different files, ive tried it on a couple of pci cards ones an LX the other an MX version, so cant speak for the onboard version, neither one worked.

with the standard drivers you will only get FM synth (Adlib) working under dos, sound blaster sound effects always give an IRQ/DMA conflict, its fine for games that only use adlib like monkey island 1/2 or prince of persia, for anything that uses sound blaster for sound fx, your out of luck even with this fixed file i never got it working, once i got a load of static/white noise through the speakers and that was it, then it kept giving me the IRQ/DMA conflict error.

under windows 9x dos games work perfectly though if you want working FM synth you need to use the older driver version 2.37 or version 2.73, both have slightly different sounding softsynths, any drivers after this such as 2.81 wont have FM synth installed, since the FM synth sounds like a genuine yamaha OPL3 thats the main reason for using one of these cards.

ive heard the problems with these cards not working under dos is due to the broken driver, ive also heard these cards need a motherboard that supports DDMA, which ever it is im not sure, but if you want the card fully working under pure dos the working solution is to use SBEMU, if you run SBEMU with /SCFM it will use the 8738 cards FM synth for OPL3 rather than SBEMU's emulated OPL3, ive tried out a bunch of games and it works perfectly.

While you're trying these CMI8738 cards, do you set the PCI slot to "legacy mode" with a fixed IRQ in the BIOS? If you don't do this, there's no chance it will work in a pure DOS, whatever driver version you try. Also the motherboard should support DDMA.

Does Duke3D sound works properly now with these 8738 cards or not?

marxveix wrote on 2025-05-07, 17:48:

Does Duke3D sound works properly now with these 8738 cards or not?

it does under 9x using standard drivers (use v2.37 or 2.73 anything later and Adlib/OPL3 wont work)
for pure dos use SBEMU instead of the 8738 dos driver, and run it with /SCFM so you can use the 8738's hardware for Adlib/OPL3,
while SBEMU's emulated OPL3 sounds pretty good, the 8738's OPL3 is identical to the real thing.
duke3d, doom, heretic all sound works perfectly and sound awesome. 😀

Again...

analog_programmer wrote on 2025-05-07, 17:27:

While you're trying these CMI8738 cards, do you set the PCI slot to "legacy mode" with a fixed IRQ in the BIOS? If you don't do this, there's no chance it will work in a pure DOS, whatever driver version you try. Also the motherboard should support DDMA.

analog_programmer wrote on 2025-05-07, 19:13:

Again...

analog_programmer wrote on 2025-05-07, 17:27:

While you're trying these CMI8738 cards, do you set the PCI slot to "legacy mode" with a fixed IRQ in the BIOS? If you don't do this, there's no chance it will work in a pure DOS, whatever driver version you try. Also the motherboard should support DDMA.

i mentioned DDMA support in my first post, the problem is most of us are using later motherboards which lack DDMA support so the only option under pure dos is SBEMU, for dos games under 9x even with out DDMA support the card works perfectly with standard drivers, as for the different driver versions in the case of pure dos it wont make a difference,
under 9x the later drivers wont have FM synth, you'll only have sound blaster sfx and general midi.

I think I've explained it briefly, but clearly: The problem with CMI8738 DOS driver is not in the driver itself. In order to use CMI8738 soundcards in pure DOS with its own "broken" driver, you need a motherboard with chipset, which supports DDMA, and you have to set the right "soundblaster" IRQ for the corresponding PCI slot in the mobo's BIOS.