mikedebian wrote:

The problem is that DSDMA instantly reboots my computer. I've seen other people have the same problem in other threads, in which they have old(er) motherboards!

FM works without DSDMA as it doesn't require ISA DMA.

Here is the result of my DS-XG PCI configuration utility

1LEGACY  AUDIO    : ENABLE
2SB  PORT ADDRESS : 220
3IRQ    CHANNEL   : INTA#
4DMA    CHANNEL   : DISABLE
5FM  PORT ADDRESS : 330
6MPU PORT ADDRESS : 388
7IRQ     CHANNEL  : INTA#
8JOY PORT ADDRESS : ENABLE
9IRQ   MODE       : INTA#
10INTA#  IRQ       : 5
11DMA  MODE        : NOT ASSIGN
12D-DMA  BASE      : 8000
13VOLUME
14SOUND TEST
15EXIT

Autoexec.bat

1LOADHIGH C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
2LOADHIGH C:\DOS\DOSKEY.COM -I
3@ECHO OFF
4PROMPT $p$g
5PATH C:\DOS
6SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
7MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((850) C:\DOS\EGA.CPI
8MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=850
9KEYB NO,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
10SET  BLASTER=A220 I5  D1 T4
11copy C:\DS-XG\DOS4GW.EXE \
12chcp 437
13C:\DS-XG\SETUPDS.EXE /S
14del \DOS4GW.EXE

I then wrote a scriptfile for SMB using what you (kamerat) wrote above for my card and launched it. It said it found the card and set the properties.

I then went and edited the INI file for the ADTRACK2.EXE program and set the base to D060h

This is what it said:

1/|dlIb tr/|ck3r ][ coded by subz3r0/Altair
2            2.3.57 09-10-2019 1:13pm
3
4Reading configuration file ... ok
5WARNING: Mouse driver not installed!
6Autodetecting OPL3 interface at 260h ... not responding!
7
8Force base address in configuration file ....
9EOT

Assuming I've done everything correctly, I guess I'm shit out of luck then?

I am able to get music out of the soundcard using the SETUPDS.EXE program, under "NATIVE SOUND", which I guess loads a WAV file from the disk (that is included) and plays it through the card. I guess my computer is able to talk to the card and is able to input what to do, to it, but other than that...

Edit:

The file it plays is

1Playing: YMH16.WAV
2 (+) Audio --aid=1 (pcm_s16le 2ch 44100Hz)
3File tags:
4 Date: 1997-08-26
5AO: [pulse] 44100Hz stereo 2ch s16

Why are you trying to put FM at port 260?

It will work fine at the default. The YMF7x4 cards do not require anything special for FM to work even on newer motherboards.

cyclone3d wrote:

Why are you trying to put FM at port 260?

It will work fine at the default. The YMF7x4 cards do not require anything special for FM to work even on newer motherboards.

I think I was following Kamerats instructions. I might not have, and might have messed it up. I've never had to do this before. What do you suggest I do? Did I do it wrong?

Edit
ADTRACK sets it at a default 260, even if auto detection is set in the INI file

Ok, so yeah,. you have it remapped to 260h from what you did.

However, if you are just trying to use FM then you shouldn't have to remap anything. It should just work.

cyclone3d wrote:

Ok, so yeah,. you have it remapped to 260h from what you did.

However, if you are just trying to use FM then you shouldn't have to remap anything. It should just work.

I just want to make sure we're clear that I'm not trying to configure sound based on a motherboard that is in any way old, or compatible. Just so you know, this is what I am referring to, and it's just an experiment:

PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...

Ok... so the native 16-bit sound working is not surprising.

The Sound Blaster emulation may not work at all.

This is the first I have seen where the FM would not work on a newer system with a YMF7x4 setup though. Maybe there is some speed issue... or maybe the PCI bridge just won't work with it.

I do have a family member in the area that recently upgraded to a Ryzen system. I'm not sure of the chipset and also not sure if it has PCI slots or not although I do have a PCIe to PCI adapter that I could try to see if I could get FM working.

Ok, done a lot of testing, both this card and a SB16

I managed to limit my ram to 32MB using himemx, which then resulted in DSDMA working, however, no change.
I hear the audio pop in and out when DOS starts. Windows is unable to find the cards.
DOS is able to find and configure the SB16, which results in Audio pop (card reset?), but every setup program fails to find the card. Only the game Hocus Pocus is able to find it the general midi on the card, but fails to load after a while.

I guess that's it.

Today I got Sound Blaster digitized sound working on a motherboard with the AMD A75 chipset and I might also solved one of "mikedebian" problems. It looks like the I/O port range for Sound Blaster and Joystick overlaps and I got it working after changing them. I used Duke Nukem 3D to try out the Sound Blaster and MPU part and Adlib Tracker II for FM.

So "mikedebian" should try this to add this to the SMB script for changing the joystick base I/O to address CF00 (register 18, register 14 is the Sound Blaster I/O). I can in no way guarantee that it works, the A75 chipset got native PCI support, while his motherboard are using a bridge.

1pci_write16(14, D001)
2pci_write16(18, CF01)

1/|dlIb tr/|ck3r ][ coded by subz3r0/Altair
2            2.3.57 09-10-2019 1:13pm
3
4Reading configuration file ... ok
5WARNING: Mouse driver not installed!
6Autodetecting OPL3 interface at 260h ... not responding!
7
8Force base address in configuration file ....
9EOT

It shouldn't try to autodetect when you configured it to use a specific address. The ADLIB port config of your "ADTRACK2.INI" should look something like this:

1adlib_port=D060       ; OPL3 interface's base address:
2                      ;   [0] autodetection
3                      ;   [1-FFFFh] user definable range

Hi Kamerat

Is this the solution that resolves the issue that the dos initialize tool has (SETUPDS.EXE) when it can't find the sound blaster address?
I have an intel g31 motherboard (Intel DG31PR) with the ich7 southbridge, setupds outputs an error: "can't detect sound blaster at 220" but the fm synth and native 16 bit audio
works fine. i'm assuming the chipset didn't assign the base port ranges to the sound card's pci base address because the card is not connected to the main pci slot, which i can't
change cus the only two pci slots share the same IRQ number and there is no way to reserve the irq numbers in bios because intel make's crappy limited bios settings.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-10, 04:21:

Hi Kamerat […]
Show full quote

Hi Kamerat

Is this the solution that resolves the issue that the dos initialize tool has (SETUPDS.EXE) when it can't find the sound blaster address?
I have an intel g31 motherboard (Intel DG31PR) with the ich7 southbridge, setupds outputs an error: "can't detect sound blaster at 220" but the fm synth and native 16 bit audio
works fine. i'm assuming the chipset didn't assign the base port ranges to the sound card's pci base address because the card is not connected to the main pci slot, which i can't
change cus the only two pci slots share the same IRQ number and there is no way to reserve the irq numbers in bios because intel make's crappy limited bios settings.

Do you run the card behind a PCIe to PCI bridge?

no the card is in the standard pci slot, but setupds refuses to save & exit because of the can't detect sound blaster address error.
even in windows 98 se, there is no sound blaster sfx aside from the fm synth when playing dos games under windows dos box using the vxd drivers.
when using the wdm drivers, the yamaha legacy sound system has an exlamation mark with a code 10 error. i think the bios may be the culprit.

btw i used both pci slots and the results are the same, the bios allocated irq 7 for both slots.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-10, 04:21:

Hi Kamerat […]
Show full quote

Hi Kamerat

Is this the solution that resolves the issue that the dos initialize tool has (SETUPDS.EXE) when it can't find the sound blaster address?
I have an intel g31 motherboard (Intel DG31PR) with the ich7 southbridge, setupds outputs an error: "can't detect sound blaster at 220" but the fm synth and native 16 bit audio
works fine. i'm assuming the chipset didn't assign the base port ranges to the sound card's pci base address because the card is not connected to the main pci slot, which i can't
change cus the only two pci slots share the same IRQ number and there is no way to reserve the irq numbers in bios because intel make's crappy limited bios settings.

I think this is a DMA problem and that SETUPDS.EXE falsely reports it as addressing issue. Your chipset should support subtractive decoding which is necessary for ISA I/O over PCI . You should run DSDMA.EXE aften SETUPDS to enable emulation of ISA DMA. Have you had a look at this thread?

Kamerat wrote on 2021-03-10, 20:03:

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-10, 04:21:

Hi Kamerat […]
Show full quote

Hi Kamerat

Is this the solution that resolves the issue that the dos initialize tool has (SETUPDS.EXE) when it can't find the sound blaster address?
I have an intel g31 motherboard (Intel DG31PR) with the ich7 southbridge, setupds outputs an error: "can't detect sound blaster at 220" but the fm synth and native 16 bit audio
works fine. i'm assuming the chipset didn't assign the base port ranges to the sound card's pci base address because the card is not connected to the main pci slot, which i can't
change cus the only two pci slots share the same IRQ number and there is no way to reserve the irq numbers in bios because intel make's crappy limited bios settings.

I think this is a DMA problem and that SETUPDS.EXE falsely reports it as addressing issue. Your chipset should support subtractive decoding which is necessary for ISA I/O over PCI . You should run DSDMA.EXE aften SETUPDS to enable emulation of ISA DMA. Have you had a look at this thread?

just to be sure, setupds does not output an dma error but an sound blaster address error. here's an image to get a better idea what i'm talking about.

i can't use the SETUPDS /S command because it just opens the main application in order to save the configuration settings, in which i can't save & exit from the error, then for i can't use dsdma.exe if setupds won't initialize properly.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-10, 20:56:

Kamerat wrote on 2021-03-10, 20:03:

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-10, 04:21:

Hi Kamerat […]
Show full quote

Hi Kamerat

Is this the solution that resolves the issue that the dos initialize tool has (SETUPDS.EXE) when it can't find the sound blaster address?
I have an intel g31 motherboard (Intel DG31PR) with the ich7 southbridge, setupds outputs an error: "can't detect sound blaster at 220" but the fm synth and native 16 bit audio
works fine. i'm assuming the chipset didn't assign the base port ranges to the sound card's pci base address because the card is not connected to the main pci slot, which i can't
change cus the only two pci slots share the same IRQ number and there is no way to reserve the irq numbers in bios because intel make's crappy limited bios settings.

I think this is a DMA problem and that SETUPDS.EXE falsely reports it as addressing issue. Your chipset should support subtractive decoding which is necessary for ISA I/O over PCI . You should run DSDMA.EXE aften SETUPDS to enable emulation of ISA DMA. Have you had a look at this thread?

just to be sure, setupds does not output an dma error but an sound blaster address error. here's an image to get a better idea what i'm talking about.

i can't use the SETUPDS /S command because it just opens the main application in order to save the configuration settings, in which i can't save & exit from the error, then for i can't use dsdma.exe if setupds won't initialize properly.

Okay i found the actual reason why i can't seem to get any pci sound cards with legacy isa i/o requirements for SB emulation to work on my particular motherboard. i found some info regarding an old mfsn forum post that was informational about mid to late lga 775 motherboards without LPC connected to address the isa resources to the ICH7 southbridge mostly from intel & oem motherboards. which i thought was the main culprit but ironically my Intel motherboard does have an Winbond LPC to PCI chip, but it only supports Super I/O devices like PS/2 Serial and dma only for floppy drives meaning my LPC chip is super limited. Which also means my motherboard does not meet the requirements for legacy ISA port addressing towards the pci bus which is why my sound card doesn't work with Sound Blaster Pro emulation. (See my post above this one for reference)

For the legacy ports stuff to work, You need a compatible chipset like intel's I/O Controller HUB (ICH Series chipset) or VIA VT8233 or later with a combined LPC to PCI bridge chipset with legacy ISA resources support! a.k.a ISA port mapping and DMA Support, Because without these; you will find similar issues like i or others experienced. So just having a compatible southbridge that support subtractive decoding is not enough!... unless it's like the earlier VIA/SiS chipsets with the LPC or ISA integrated in the chipset.

So i now switched to a gigabyte ga-g31m-es2l motherboard and my yamaha ds-xg works fine with complete & fully functional Sound blaster emulation in both real mode DOS via TSR and Win9x. So for those who want to experience an easy compatible setup for retro dos support on modern lga775 chipsets from the get go, I highly suggest to avoid all intel oem motherboards made after the 865G series as those have crappy LPC to PCI bridges with no legacy support which can't support the ICH chipset's subtractive decoding I/O to PCI. Just stick to a named branded manufacturer as those have fully feature sets to get everything needed to work.

Also an other thing to note is that later lga775 intel motherboards are usually crappy and are usually low quality + have severe BIOS limitations.

Thanks for info, one again if someone could make some simple testing utility, to check if MB has all needed thing, it would be great time saver..

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

Okay i found the actual reason why i can't seem to get any pci sound cards with legacy isa i/o requirements for SB emulation to work on my particular motherboard. i found some info regarding an old mfsn forum post that was informational about mid to late lga 775 motherboards without LPC connected to address the isa resources to the ICH7 southbridge mostly from intel & oem motherboards. which i thought was the main culprit but ironically my Intel motherboard does have an Winbond LPC to PCI chip, but it only supports Super I/O devices like PS/2 Serial and dma only for floppy drives meaning my LPC chip is super limited. Which also means my motherboard does not meet the requirements for legacy ISA port addressing towards the pci bus which is why my sound card doesn't work with Sound Blaster Pro emulation. (See my post above this one for reference)

Here's a perhaps crazy idea: could DMA channel 2 be accessed through the floppy interface on such motherboards? I know it would still require patching games to support Sound Blaster on DMA channel 2, but that would be a trivial patch.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

Okay i found the actual reason why i can't seem to get any pci sound cards with legacy isa i/o requirements for SB emulation to work on my particular motherboard. i found some info regarding an old mfsn forum post that was informational about mid to late lga 775 motherboards without LPC connected to address the isa resources to the ICH7 southbridge mostly from intel & oem motherboards. which i thought was the main culprit but ironically my Intel motherboard does have an Winbond LPC to PCI chip, but it only supports Super I/O devices like PS/2 Serial and dma only for floppy drives meaning my LPC chip is super limited. Which also means my motherboard does not meet the requirements for legacy ISA port addressing towards the pci bus which is why my sound card doesn't work with Sound Blaster Pro emulation. (See my post above this one for reference)

Most motherboards come with a SuperIO chip connected to LPC, mainly for PS/2, COM or maybe LPT ports. That chip has little use outside its intended purposes. Today SuperIO is only relevant for PS/2 ports and maybe hardware monitoring (temperature, voltages, fan speed, etc.).

Motherboards using LPC-to-ISA (such as RUBY-9719VG2AR) to provide ISA slots can make use of DMA, but one needs to configure the chipset to correctly route necessary I/O ranges to the bridge to make the device accessible. This, however, is not going to be helpful for PCI devices.

Given PCI-to-ISA bridges don't have issues with I/O ranges compared to LPC-to-ISA ones, and that industrial use cases usually don't have extensive use of DMA, ISA motherboards using PCI-to-ISA bridges are more common. LPC-to-ISA bridges can use DMA on chipsets up to Intel 9-series. According to Tiido, DMA-related pins were removed from the LPC bridge on 10-series and onwards such as H110 (EDIT: It appears this was for the transition to the new eSPI).

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

For the legacy ports stuff to work, You need a compatible chipset like intel's I/O Controller HUB (ICH Series chipset) or VIA VT8233 or later with a combined LPC to PCI bridge chipset with legacy ISA resources support! a.k.a ISA port mapping and DMA Support, Because without these; you will find similar issues like i or others experienced. So just having a compatible southbridge that support subtractive decoding is not enough!... unless it's like the earlier VIA/SiS chipsets with the LPC or ISA integrated in the chipset.

DDMA-capable southbridges like VT82C686B can make PCI sound cards work with little efforts.

PC-PCI is a different story as it requires physical connections which I'm yet to find any on modern motherboards using chipsets capable of such. For ISA motherboards using ICH5 or earlier, these wires were used to provide DMA-capable ISA slots. I think PC-PCI might be able to provide better legacy compatibility than DDMA, since most of the operations are being performed directly over physical wires.

On modern chipsets these capabilities are gone so it pretty much depends on whether the sound card's own DMA technology can work with a given chipset. VIA/SiS chipsets might be the most cooperative ones in this aspect.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

So i now switched to a gigabyte ga-g31m-es2l motherboard and my yamaha ds-xg works fine with complete & fully functional Sound blaster emulation in both real mode DOS via TSR and Win9x. So for those who want to experience an easy compatible setup for retro dos support on modern lga775 chipsets from the get go, I highly suggest to avoid all intel oem motherboards made after the 865G series as those have crappy LPC to PCI bridges with no legacy support which can't support the ICH chipset's subtractive decoding I/O to PCI. Just stick to a named branded manufacturer as those have fully feature sets to get everything needed to work.

Intel ICH only supported PC-PCI up to ICH5. It cannot be used directly, unless the board is generous enough to have the necessary pins accessible (which I've never seen one) so you can connect your sound card to it.

Intel ICH never supported DDMA. I don't know much about LPC-to-PCI bridges, but I don't think LPC is going to be of any use for PCI devices to access legacy DMA.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

Also an other thing to note is that later lga775 intel motherboards are usually crappy and are usually low quality + have severe BIOS limitations.

If you're talking about industrial LGA775 motherboards, yes, these boards' BIOS usually don't provide anything extra, as industrial use cases are more conservative and favor stability and reliability over anything else.

On the other hand, consumer motherboards have a lot of interesting features, and actually some LGA775 CPU-motherboard combinations can overclock very well, from what I've read before.

LSS10999 wrote on 2021-03-24, 02:39:

Most motherboards come with a SuperIO chip connected to LPC, mainly for PS/2, COM or maybe LPT ports. That chip has little use o […]
Show full quote

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

Okay i found the actual reason why i can't seem to get any pci sound cards with legacy isa i/o requirements for SB emulation to work on my particular motherboard. i found some info regarding an old mfsn forum post that was informational about mid to late lga 775 motherboards without LPC connected to address the isa resources to the ICH7 southbridge mostly from intel & oem motherboards. which i thought was the main culprit but ironically my Intel motherboard does have an Winbond LPC to PCI chip, but it only supports Super I/O devices like PS/2 Serial and dma only for floppy drives meaning my LPC chip is super limited. Which also means my motherboard does not meet the requirements for legacy ISA port addressing towards the pci bus which is why my sound card doesn't work with Sound Blaster Pro emulation. (See my post above this one for reference)

Most motherboards come with a SuperIO chip connected to LPC, mainly for PS/2, COM or maybe LPT ports. That chip has little use outside its intended purposes. Today SuperIO is only relevant for PS/2 ports and maybe hardware monitoring (temperature, voltages, fan speed, etc.).

Motherboards using LPC-to-ISA (such as RUBY-9719VG2AR) to provide ISA slots can make use of DMA, but one needs to configure the chipset to correctly route necessary I/O ranges to the bridge to make the device accessible. This, however, is not going to be helpful for PCI devices.

Given PCI-to-ISA bridges don't have issues with I/O ranges compared to LPC-to-ISA ones, and that industrial use cases usually don't have extensive use of DMA, ISA motherboards using PCI-to-ISA bridges are more common. LPC-to-ISA bridges can use DMA on chipsets up to Intel 9-series. According to Tiido, DMA-related pins were removed from the LPC bridge on 10-series and onwards such as H110 (EDIT: It appears this was for the transition to the new eSPI).

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

For the legacy ports stuff to work, You need a compatible chipset like intel's I/O Controller HUB (ICH Series chipset) or VIA VT8233 or later with a combined LPC to PCI bridge chipset with legacy ISA resources support! a.k.a ISA port mapping and DMA Support, Because without these; you will find similar issues like i or others experienced. So just having a compatible southbridge that support subtractive decoding is not enough!... unless it's like the earlier VIA/SiS chipsets with the LPC or ISA integrated in the chipset.

DDMA-capable southbridges like VT82C686B can make PCI sound cards work with little efforts.

PC-PCI is a different story as it requires physical connections which I'm yet to find any on modern motherboards using chipsets capable of such. For ISA motherboards using ICH5 or earlier, these wires were used to provide DMA-capable ISA slots. I think PC-PCI might be able to provide better legacy compatibility than DDMA, since most of the operations are being performed directly over physical wires.

On modern chipsets these capabilities are gone so it pretty much depends on whether the sound card's own DMA technology can work with a given chipset. VIA/SiS chipsets might be the most cooperative ones in this aspect.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

So i now switched to a gigabyte ga-g31m-es2l motherboard and my yamaha ds-xg works fine with complete & fully functional Sound blaster emulation in both real mode DOS via TSR and Win9x. So for those who want to experience an easy compatible setup for retro dos support on modern lga775 chipsets from the get go, I highly suggest to avoid all intel oem motherboards made after the 865G series as those have crappy LPC to PCI bridges with no legacy support which can't support the ICH chipset's subtractive decoding I/O to PCI. Just stick to a named branded manufacturer as those have fully feature sets to get everything needed to work.

Intel ICH only supported PC-PCI up to ICH5. It cannot be used directly, unless the board is generous enough to have the necessary pins accessible (which I've never seen one) so you can connect your sound card to it.

Intel ICH never supported DDMA. I don't know much about LPC-to-PCI bridges, but I don't think LPC is going to be of any use for PCI devices to access legacy DMA.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

Also an other thing to note is that later lga775 intel motherboards are usually crappy and are usually low quality + have severe BIOS limitations.

If you're talking about industrial LGA775 motherboards, yes, these boards' BIOS usually don't provide anything extra, as industrial use cases are more conservative and favor stability and reliability over anything else.

On the other hand, consumer motherboards have a lot of interesting features, and actually some LGA775 CPU-motherboard combinations can overclock very well, from what I've read before.

My presented topic was about the presence of compatible LPC to PCI bridges to get Sound Blaster ISA resources (ISA I/O port resources not DMA!) in order to get working emulation of sound blaster ports to work because ICH7 and later only support ISA style port resources with legacy ports decoding through PCI with conjunction by a compatible LPC bridge connected to ICH chipset, The chipsets cannot handle ISA resources alone which is why all of them have an LPC Bus present with an LPC bridge connected. I am not referring to chipset exclusive features support like D-DMA or PC-PCI! as others stated already that ICH5 was bottom of the road... D-DMA is an ISA DMA resource exclusive to certain chipsets that supported it and i'm well aware Intel's I/O Controller Hub never supported this.

And Just if there is confusion about what i'm talking about let me be clear... I'm only referencing chipsets like ICH7 through 10 as those chipsets do have Legacy ISA through PCI resources but not ISA DMA resources (ISA I/O ports only). And again i'm not refering to exclusive support like PC-PCI (SB-LINK). Also note LPC to ISA bridges are only important actual ISA devices which my topic was not about. Mines was about LPC to PCI chipsets which does give ISA resources (Again no DMA) through PCI which is needed for SOUND BLASTER PORT RANGE FOR SOUND BLASTER EMULATION!

The whole reason i wrote my previous posts because i found out that sound cards that use Sound Blaster TSR driver emulation can still not work without the previously aforementioned requirements.

Stainlesscat wrote on 2021-03-14, 09:33:

mid to late lga 775 motherboards without LPC connected to address the isa resources to the ICH7 southbridge mostly from intel & oem motherboards. which i thought was the main culprit but ironically my Intel motherboard does have an Winbond LPC to PCI chip, but it only supports Super I/O devices like PS/2 Serial and dma only for floppy drives meaning my LPC chip is super limited.

Interesting, what chips exactly did have your intel MB? I though that LPC to PCI bridge is integral part of every ICH but I never tried with ICH8-10 that was common on i965 MBs. I only had ICH7. Even my MB has much newer PCH P67 that still have LPC to PCI bridge and DSDMA is working, even on newer X79 chipset so I wonder it doesn't work on ICH8-10. Maybe the LPC to PCI bridge in ICH can be configured to be disabled and then alternative superIO is used. It's configured by BIOS so maybe it would be possible to reenable it and configure properly after boot. But I didn't studied differences between ICH7 and newer if it's true...