Tertz wrote:

Among Intel ones, it would be interesting to try ALS4000 with 845 chipset.
What sound card model are you using and which DOS drivers?

I'm using this "driver" (not a driver itself, just initializes the card and leaves no TSR). I think the card is a Labway one, it got an Xwave 4000 sticker on the ALS4000 chip and got the FCC ID: LWHA511P7. The "legacy mode" in the initializor is what I list as DDMA mode in my spreadsheet. It got a couple of other DMA modes, but they doesn't work very well.

There is even a comptibility list in the readme.txt in the driver archive, it dosen't seem like you will get good results with the 845. 😖

1# following chipsets work
2    AMD 750
3    AMD 761 / VIA VT82C686B    (tested by Q)
4    Intel 430TX
5    Intel 440BX
6    SiS 630
7    SiS 730
8    SiS 735
9    SiS 745
10    SiS650 / SiS961
11    VIA ApolloPro133
12    VIA PLE133
13
14# probably will work
15    SiS 540/630/730 or later
16    VIA ApolloPro/PLE/KLE/KT133 or later
17
18# NOT work
19    Intel i810
20    Intel i815    (tested by NOG)
21
22# will NOT work
23    Intel i810 or later
24
25  (Intel i810 or later do not support Distributed DMA for legacy DMA support for PCI.
26   If you want SBPro function in pure DOS on Intel i8xx based motherboard, try Fortemedia FM801.
27   FM801's writeback DMA emulation method may work on Intel i8xx.)
28
29# unknown
30    ALi
31    ATI
32    NVIDIA

Kamerat wrote:

it dosen't seem like you will get good results with the 845

There was some hope. Thanks.

It seems my initial fear was right and the people that have done this don't want to talk publicly about how they did it, effectively keeping a secret.

All the boards available on eBay are Socket 478 despite those I mentioned being 775; I'm guessing the former really were more common as 478 was the only thing around when the 8xx chipsets were universal - they were likely never meant by Intel to be made with LGA-775 at all! But the 865 lived on ... even today it should be possible to make functionally-new 865 boards with ISA, at least by cannibalising parts from older boards.

In addition to coming from China those accessible boards are generally used which could mean anything when it comes to motherboards - I suspect often boards being disposed of have developed hard-to-diagnose problems (mainly bad capacitors) that can't be caught without a long stress test, that no sellers really perform even if they say 'working'. I guess I'd rather pay a higher price for ones truly guaranteed to be working.

Just buy already tested by other people s775 boards with isa bus and enjoy. Connecting external isa bridge requires a lot of efforts until you familiar with pc architecture and asm programming and have soldering skills

I think that's kind of what I'm trying to do, so by all means if you can find me such a board available...

An external ISA bridge should just plug into a PCI slot, I would think. Configuring it is probably not so difficult, but, yeah, ISA slots on the board are preferable.

Beside pci bus there should be 3 wires connected to pci-isa bridge chip, or even 4. Two of them very difficult to find on mobo without desoldering ich

Well, if you have that knowledge, might as well talk about it. The PCI/ISA bridge chip in such a solution would be on the add-on card; are you saying there would also be 3 or 4 places it would need to be soldered to the motherboard by open wires?

Exactly. Just explore Costronic site for instance. There plenty information about their bridge card
http://costronic.com.tw

koverhbarc wrote:

I think that's kind of what I'm trying to do, so by all means if you can find me such a board available...

An external ISA bridge should just plug into a PCI slot, I would think. Configuring it is probably not so difficult, but, yeah, ISA slots on the board are preferable.

Will even a PCI to ISA bridge adapter even work? I'll give it a try if possible. Where is this adapter at? How much? But given how poorly PCI Sound Blaster emulation already is and limited to certain chipsets or due to the South Bridge I'm not even sure such an adapter will work but still worth a shot.

There were some USB to ISA slot adapters which got me curious but the question is will these work in DOS? If so without drivers then the ISA SB should work.

anthony wrote:

Just buy already tested by other people s775 boards with isa bus and enjoy. Connecting external isa bridge requires a lot of efforts until you familiar with pc architecture and asm programming and have soldering skills

I'm not familiar with any intel 865 chipset motherboards with ISA slots. There were a few industrial ones using socket 775 with a single ISA slot but I read somewhere that someone bought one of those and the Sound Blaster ISA sound card did not work. 😕

Now if they didn't cost like $300-$400 each and more like $100 for the MB I'd give one a shot and troubleshoot it. A socket 775 with single ISA slot for sound card is still a better option than a socket 478 if it truly does work. It would have SATA and IDE connectors making it more useful and possibly some dual core CPUs.

95DosBox wrote:

Will even a PCI to ISA bridge adapter even work? I'll give it a try if possible. Where is this adapter at? How much?

With an Intel 8xx chipset it should. I don't know where to get one, and that's one of the questions I was asking.

There were some USB to ISA slot adapters which got me curious but the question is will these work in DOS? If so without drivers then the ISA SB should work.

You won't get DMA at all. It's possible to play sounds without DMA, I've heard, but I don't think many games will like it.

I'm not familiar with any intel 865 chipset motherboards with ISA slots. There were a few industrial ones using socket 775 with a single ISA slot but I read somewhere that someone bought one of those and the Sound Blaster ISA sound card did not work.

Probably it had a later chipset which will not support ISA DMA. But even with an 865 there's a possibility of having a bridge that doesn't, which is why I'd check the exact model bridge used (if possible) before buying.

A socket 775 with single ISA slot for sound card is still a better option than a socket 478 if it truly does work. It would have SATA and IDE connectors making it more useful and possibly some dual core CPUs.

All 865s should have SATA regardless of socket (though I wouldn't be surprised to find some old boards omitted the connectors). Support for dual-core is a function of the BIOS, so is possible.

koverhbarc wrote:

95DosBox wrote:

Will even a PCI to ISA bridge adapter even work? I'll give it a try if possible. Where is this adapter at? How much?

With an Intel 8xx chipset it should. I don't know where to get one, and that's one of the questions I was asking.

If this really works then it would be interesting to test on a Z68 with PCI slot and test a SB ISA card in it.

There were some USB to ISA slot adapters which got me curious but the question is will these work in DOS? If so without drivers then the ISA SB should work.

You won't get DMA at all. It's possible to play sounds without DMA, I've heard, but I don't think many games will like it.

This was the only external solution that could work with getting an SB ISA card to work with a laptop. But that seems more affordable to try as I think those might be around $150 range.

I'm not familiar with any intel 865 chipset motherboards with ISA slots. There were a few industrial ones using socket 775 with a single ISA slot but I read somewhere that someone bought one of those and the Sound Blaster ISA sound card did not work.

Probably it had a later chipset which will not support ISA DMA. But even with an 865 there's a possibility of having a bridge that doesn't, which is why I'd check the exact model bridge used (if possible) before buying.

It's very limiting but it looked like at one point the only solution to get SB ISA on something more powerful than a P4 at the time. If I saw one of these dirty cheap for $100 I'd give it a go to see if the PCI SB emulation worked too. I think it could handle a Core2Quad possibly it might have been a socket 1366.

A socket 775 with single ISA slot for sound card is still a better option than a socket 478 if it truly does work. It would have SATA and IDE connectors making it more useful and possibly some dual core CPUs.

All 865s should have SATA regardless of socket (though I wouldn't be surprised to find some old boards omitted the connectors). Support for dual-core is a function of the BIOS, so is possible.

For the most part the P4 should be powerful enough to handle every DOS game. Probably a P3 1GHZ would be enough. It's that between P4 to Z68 chipset for finding the most powerful 98SE system that works with video and audio gaming.

Are there DOS games that natively support SXGA or UXGA -- something that will actually benefit from a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 -- that will not work with a PCI sound card?

Off the top of my head I know Quake supports SXGA and the Build engine games UXGA. Do either of these demand an ISA sound card? Can you still use your midi synths in the gameport of a PCI card like an Aureal Vortex?

Some PCI sound caveat, that I could not find in my quick reading of this topic. I had this Athlon XP on a VIA motherboard with a SB-Live! PCI soundcard. The SB16 emulation actually worked, until you tried to disable the L1 cache for a CPU slowdown; then the SB16 emulation gave garbled output. Pretty useless.

infiniteclouds wrote:

Are there DOS games that natively support SXGA or UXGA -- something that will actually benefit from a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 -- that will not work with a PCI sound card?

Off the top of my head I know Quake supports SXGA and the Build engine games UXGA. Do either of these demand an ISA sound card? Can you still use your midi synths in the gameport of a PCI card like an Aureal Vortex?

I'm not sure about what resolution max but I believe Quake 1 still worked in DOS and supported Sound Blaster. I wasn't too much of a fan of Quake 1 at the time because it was more 3D based than Doom.

But even a P3 500MHz should be powerful enough if it supported 640x480, 800,600, but 1024x768 possibly?

I don't think you need to go to P4 for most of these older games but PCI sounds cards would be the worst choice if you wanted Sound Blaster sound in pure DOS. I'm not sure about the Vortex but most people would prefer Sound Blaster and use the Midi Game Port to hook up to a Roland MT-32. But you can always try. I think compatibility and support most likely would be easier on the Sound Blaster.

gerwin wrote:

Some PCI sound caveat, that I could not find in my quick reading of this topic. I had this Athlon XP on a VIA motherboard with a SB-Live! PCI soundcard. The SB16 emulation actually worked, until you tried to disable the L1 cache for a CPU slowdown; then the SB16 emulation gave garbled output. Pretty useless.

What motherboard model was this?
Did you notice the stuttering or pausing with the Pure DOS SB emulation using TSR with the SB Live PCI?

95DosBox wrote:

But even a P3 500MHz should be powerful enough if it supported 640x480, 800,600, but 1024x768 possibly?

I don't think you need to go to P4 for most of these older games but PCI sounds cards would be the worst choice if you wanted Sound Blaster sound in pure DOS.

DOS Quake goes up to SXGA (1280x1024) and Build engine games like Blood go up to UXGA (1600x1200). I don't think that the fastest Slot 1 or 370 CPUs would do these resolutions with a solid FPS. SXGA/UXGA seems to be the reason anyone would want something faster.

I suspect these games will work fine with a PCI sound card and as we're talking CD Audio in Quake and General Midi in Blood it isn't as though you'll be needing an authentic FM chip.

infiniteclouds wrote:

95DosBox wrote:

But even a P3 500MHz should be powerful enough if it supported 640x480, 800,600, but 1024x768 possibly?

I don't think you need to go to P4 for most of these older games but PCI sounds cards would be the worst choice if you wanted Sound Blaster sound in pure DOS.

DOS Quake goes up to SXGA (1280x1024) and Build engine games like Blood go up to UXGA (1600x1200). I don't think that the fastest Slot 1 or 370 CPUs would do these resolutions with a solid FPS. SXGA/UXGA seems to be the reason anyone would want something faster.

I suspect these games will work fine with a PCI sound card and as we're talking CD Audio in Quake and General Midi in Blood it isn't as though you'll be needing an authentic FM chip.

1600x1200 would be a bit extreme and definitely need something like a P4 or greater. But DOS Quake had a CD track and non MIDI? I guess that could be possible since Warcraft 2 had MIDI but also CD audio tracks. Any Quake 1, 2, 3, or 4 preference or ranking order?

95dosbox wrote:

gerwin wrote:

Some PCI sound caveat, that I could not find in my quick reading of this topic. I had this Athlon XP on a VIA motherboard with a SB-Live! PCI soundcard. The SB16 emulation actually worked, until you tried to disable the L1 cache for a CPU slowdown; then the SB16 emulation gave garbled output. Pretty useless.

What motherboard model was this?
Did you notice the stuttering or pausing with the Pure DOS SB emulation using TSR with the SB Live PCI?

MSI KT4V 6712. In pure DOS yes.

gerwin wrote:

95dosbox wrote:

gerwin wrote:

Some PCI sound caveat, that I could not find in my quick reading of this topic. I had this Athlon XP on a VIA motherboard with a SB-Live! PCI soundcard. The SB16 emulation actually worked, until you tried to disable the L1 cache for a CPU slowdown; then the SB16 emulation gave garbled output. Pretty useless.

What motherboard model was this?
Did you notice the stuttering or pausing with the Pure DOS SB emulation using TSR with the SB Live PCI?

MSI KT4V 6712. In pure DOS yes.

Sounds like this stuttering effect for DOS SB Emulation with SB PCI sounds cards under DOS seems to be consistent and not fixed with faster CPUs. I noticed this even with Prince of Persia 2 which isn't that intensive of a game on a P4.

You may be talking about something different. I meant to say that at full processor speed the SB16 emulation was fine. Then disabling L1 cache on such a fast system gives a 486 like system speed, which is useful in DOS. It is with L1 disabled that the SB16 emulation became garbled.

I've been running DOS machines for about a year on the P4 platform and will be writing up everything about my experiences. The most difficult task is finding a sound card that is compatible with the DMA on the motherboard. I have purchased and tested many. The only ones I got fully working were SB 16 and up, or a couple Aztech clones. Even the Audician can't do it on my boards, which is a shame.

I have purchased the "845GL with ISA" board from AliExpress (the 1 slot version) and a couple of the P7LI/C-AL boards from both there and eBay. EBay was cheaper.

I need to talk with the seller of the last one because they were selling the P7LI-AL (not the C variant) and based on some fuzzy pictures it has the SB-LINK connector.

I can't get the boards to go above 533 FSB, and some cannot go above 400. Still, the options for these still go up to close to 3ghz, which is fine for games that scale well with faster CPUs such as Build engine games.

Caches can be disabled on both boards. Both boards also allow disabling PNP for certain resources so you can set your sound card to a specific IRQ.

More to be written later. Please let me know what you still need to figure out. I'll answer as best I can.