Hi,

While I don't consider myself an expert about the VIA K8T800 chipset, I don't think that any motherboards based on that chipset have ISA slots, and as such I don't think that a traditional DMA controller even present in those motherboards, and if present it most likely only hooked up to the IDE(PATA) channels.

A traditional DMA controller isn't needed for native PCI devices to function, PCI devices transfer data from and to memory through bus arbitration and after receiving bus mastering transferring the data. There are ways for PCI Bus Controllers to emulate old style DMA, but the newer the motherboard is, the less likely that feature is included(I don't remember the name of the feature, but the PCI standard doesn't require it, it is optional for the motherboard makers to include).

The sound card isn't the issue, it's the motherboard chipset.

According to retroweb that board uses a VT8237 southbridge chipset. And according to this thread, the VIA VT823x series doesn't support DDMA, which is needed for DOS sound support via direct memory access.

The thread also says that ESS Solo-1 and FM801 may work with "varying compatibility". Having tested an ESS Solo-1 on various motherboards myself, I wouldn't necessarily bank on it being fully compatible in this instance.

I also hate the fact that the first time I used the card in DOS, it worked perfectly inside Doom, so SFX and music at the same time. Ever since I switched it out, it doesn't want to work with SFX. Even in its original position and driver.

Shponglefan wrote on Yesterday, 12:49:

The sound card isn't the issue, it's the motherboard chipset.

According to retroweb that board uses a VT8237 southbridge chipset. And according to this thread, the VIA VT823x series doesn't support DDMA, which is needed for DOS sound support via direct memory access.

The thread also says that ESS Solo-1 and FM801 may work with "varying compatibility". Having tested an ESS Solo-1 on various motherboards myself, I wouldn't necessarily bank on it being fully compatible in this instance.

I once used this exact card and it worked in Doom both with SFX and audio, so I don't what it could be. I've put it back into the PCI slot where it worked, and even used the driver which worked before, but it didn't work.

itzCrassio wrote on Yesterday, 14:18:

I once used this exact card and it worked in Doom both with SFX and audio, so I don't what it could be. I've put it back into the PCI slot where it worked, and even used the driver which worked before, but it didn't work.

Without knowing anything more about set up, driver/game version(s), configuration, etc., it's hard to know what happened.

FWIW, I've tested an ESS Solo-1 (PCI) sound card with an ASRock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard. It uses the same VT8237 southbridge chipset as your board. As you can see in the below chart, the results are mixed when it comes to DOS sound compatibility.

If you really want to do DOS gaming on this system, you might want to look into SBEMU as an alternative: SBEMU: Sound Blaster emulation on AC97

Shponglefan wrote on Yesterday, 14:28:

Without knowing anything more about set up, driver/game version(s), configuration, etc., it's hard to know what happened. […]
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itzCrassio wrote on Yesterday, 14:18:

I once used this exact card and it worked in Doom both with SFX and audio, so I don't what it could be. I've put it back into the PCI slot where it worked, and even used the driver which worked before, but it didn't work.

Without knowing anything more about set up, driver/game version(s), configuration, etc., it's hard to know what happened.

FWIW, I've tested an ESS Solo-1 (PCI) sound card with an ASRock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard. It uses the same VT8237 southbridge chipset as your board. As you can see in the below chart, the results are mixed when it comes to DOS sound compatibility.

If you really want to do DOS gaming on this system, you might want to look into SBEMU as an alternative: SBEMU: Sound Blaster emulation on AC97

I was using the following config:

Soltek SL-K8AV2-RL
AMD ATHLON 3000+
NVIDIA GEFORCE2 MX400

SOFTWARE TESTED:
FREEDOS 1.4
MSDOS DRIVER V2.1
REMAPCMI
C3DPCI
DOSPLAY

Game tested: doom19s

I've also noticed that for some reason, the setaudio app sets SB port to IRQ A instead of IRQ 5, which I feel should correlate to this issue. It does set IRQ 5 in the BLASTER variable however.

itzCrassio wrote on Yesterday, 12:56:

I also hate the fact that the first time I used the card in DOS, it worked perfectly inside Doom, so SFX and music at the same time. Ever since I switched it out, it doesn't want to work with SFX. Even in its original position and driver.

If the same hardware worked correctly before, the problem can't be with the chipset. So far, VIA and Intel have worked correctly for me in DOS games with PCI sound cards; I've only had problems with nVidia and ATI (AMD).

I don't have any experience running a pure DOS system; I usually install W98SE and run DOS games from within Windows, but since I have a motherboard with a VIA 890/8237A chipset, I might try running pure DOS this weekend.

My experience with Windows 98 SE:
The CMI 8738 is a bit finicky when it comes to driver installation—two main devices must be installed in Device Manager:
"CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device"
"C-Media PCI Audio Legacy Device"
Sometimes only the first one installs, and the second must be forced via Control Panel > Add/Remove Hardware manually. The driver creates a folder named PCIAUD (and runs SETAUDIO from it, which initializes the card in DOS at system startup (overwriting AUTOEXEC.BAT)).

After installing the DOS driver, you need to check the volume settings in the mixer; sometimes the volume is set to 0. The IRQ is set correctly to 5; IRQ "A" only appears when the system starts up under the mixer settings panel, but both the music and FX sounds work correctly.

In Control Panel > Multimedia > MIDI, check the settings for CMedia MIDI Synthesis as the output device (I have two CMI/Audigy cards).
I have versions of the cards with LX and MX chip revisions, but no matter which one you have, if it worked perfectly for you once, it should work again.