fitzpatr wrote:I advise you to Google these questions. There is a lot of information available on these topics. […]
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I advise you to Google these questions. There is a lot of information available on these topics.
No way in hell for PCIe. In general, PCIe is a no-go for any Win9x for a large number of reasons. PCIe sound cards are well into the XP/Vista era, and I would strongly suspect that 9x drivers didn't even exist.
I refer you to this link for a potential PCI option. PCI Sound card for Windows 3.11 & Dos 6.22?
The earliest PCI sound cards were generally from 1997. Ensoniq AudioPCI, Creative Sound Blaster Live, Aureal Vortex, Yamaha YMF-724, and ESS Solo-1 are early PCI sound cards.
In my personal opinion, you're barking up the wrong trees with respect to trying to natively use DOS games on modern systems. MPU-401 over PCIe, running DOS for games on Core architectures, etc. Things have changed FAR too much to make this feasible.
All that being said, good luck with your experiments.
Please read the title. I'm looking for PCI or PCI express sound cards that work in Windows 3.X = Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11. I'm not looking for Windows 9X drivers for PCI or PCI sound cards in this thread.
But to correct your myth or assumption. PCIe cards do work in Windows 9X. The Cmedia CMI 8738 PCIe card will work in Windows 98SE.
Actually DOS games do work on modern systems. Prince of Persia 1 in DOS runs on a Z370 and Z390 Coffee Lake chipset in 2018.
I also will be testing the i9-9900k which is the 8 core beast from Intel on it as well just for compatibility when they actually ship it which should have released on October the 18th, but now delays state December before it will ship stalling my experiment.
fitzpatr wrote:
Your username obviously implies that you are aware of DOSBox, so I won't extol the virtues, but emulation really is the way to go if you're trying to use modern hardware.
Yes I wrote how to get DOSBOX and MUNT98 working Windows 98SE and it successfully works on a Coffee Lake system. Emulation is not always the way to go when it comes to the difficulty comparison of running Pure DOS then getting 9X installed. DOS also allows the ability to avoid OS installation headaches which I won't get into that the standard layman will not want to participate in. Also the ability to boot directly into DOS (98SE DOS) using a USB drive using BIOS emulation avoids any USB OS compatibility issue.
For example if using Windows 2000 or XP you will not be able to boot directly into any modern motherboard starting with SkyLake through the Intel USB 3.0 ports and load DOSBOX and run MUNT after. First Intel USB 3.0 drivers do not exist for 2K or XP so it will not boot into that OS. Second you have to deal with two more obstacles. The 256 Color requirement of DOSBOX to even function and the 256 Color requirement seems to be needed to run MUNT's interface to work with DOSBOX.
Again booting directly to pure or real DOS eliminates this obstacle since DOS can run in pure 256 color mode without needing any additional DOS drivers to do it. If you need an example then try Prince of Persia 1 which still works on modern day 300 Series Coffee Lake in real DOS in 2018.
The next best OS would be Windows 3.1 if DOSBOX could be ported to it. Then if the CMI 8738 Windows 3.1 driver could be developed you could then run DOSBOX within Windows 3.1 and access up to 512MB of memory that could be used for superior sound emulation if necessary riding on the CMI 8738 since DOS has its limits but Windows 3.1 would open the door to some extreme emulation possibilities.
There also may be the day when Microsoft releases the source code for Windows 3.X. Then people would rewrite the OS to support multicore and you can imagine a DOS session running in its own individual core unrestricted.
That would allow Munt to run on its own core or multicore reducing the load or the ability to emulate other synths like the SC-55, SC-88, ... given the extra accessible memory to Windows 3.1 even in standard mode.
Neco wrote:I read the post slightly differently. I think they were just looking for info on cards that might work with Windows 3.x in general, not necessarily games. "Sound effects" could mean different things but essentially it boils down to digital sound playback capability... whether that's an error.wav or some effect in a Win 3.x game
Yes Neco you interpreted the thread correctly. Windows 3.1 Sound effects = voice or digitized effects within the Windows 3.1 OS. This does not mean for DOS. However a port of DOSBOX to Windows 3.1 Standard could then do the sound emulation conversion of a native windows 3.1 sound card. If the CMI 8738 PCIe 3.1 driver were created it could output accordingly to Tandy, Adlib, Sound Blaster, Gravis Ultrasound, et cetera within DOSBOX's sound emulation capabilities.
By that token any DOS game could then be played with proper sound emulation avoiding the pure DOS headaches of ISA slots but use a PCIe slot and with a proper MUNT port to Windows 3.1 it would then do MT-32 emulation on top of that while all of this is happening on top of real DOS.
