LSS10999 wrote:

Modern AMD chipsets are a complete no-go for PCI audio cards. I once had boards of each generation (700/800/900) and none worked […]
Show full quote

Doomn00b wrote:

I have a question here... I have a Asus M3A78-CM rev 1.01G motherboard in my possession, it's an AMD board, it features an SB700 […]
Show full quote

I have a question here... I have a Asus M3A78-CM rev 1.01G motherboard in my possession, it's an AMD board, it features an SB700 southbridge chip - just to make sure, I had a look at the specs, and unless I've misunderstood it, this Southbridge has very complex DMA support, with Midi and Adlib mentioned:

http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012 … rg_pub_1.00.pdf

Is it me, or can this MB use PCI soundcards which will work quite well in pure dos??

Here's the specs for the entire board:
http://static.highspeedbackbone.net/pdf/Asus% … rd%20Manual.pdf

AMD rarely gets mentioned in these threads, so perhaps it's a good idea to take a closer look at their chipsets. A common thing I keep hearing, is that AMD has terrible support for ISA and DOS PCI sound, but as Ruthan says... "there are many urban legends spouted".

EDIT:

Some of the urban legends are indeed true... the SB700 line of southbridge chips are all good, but later chipsets have various types of DEFECTIVE LPC controllers - so, SB750S is the last one to definitively have a functional and rich LPC - complete with advanced Super-I/O.

Modern AMD chipsets are a complete no-go for PCI audio cards. I once had boards of each generation (700/800/900) and none worked, not to mention on those chipsets, the games still can't detect sound blaster even after I loaded the TSR (and confirmed the TSR is indeed loaded).

EDIT: I briefed the datasheet a bit and did find references of legacy audio. It seems starting from pages 171 (SMBus Module and ACPI Block) there were references about enabling some legacy audio hardware I/O addresses (Adlib 388-389, MIDI 300-330, Sound Blaster 220-280, WSS 530/604/E80/F40) to trigger SMI# (System Management Mode).

This makes it possible on SB7xx to emulate legacy audio using system management mode hacks, but it doesn't provide any means to make existing hardware's legacy TSRs usable (as they don't and can't use SMI). One needs to develop specific SMM code against the chipset and the target sound card then integrate it to the BIOS to get legacy audio working. For this, it might be more practical to target the onboard audio than targeting a specific discrete audio card (as if targeting a discrete card you'll probably need to modify the BIOS code every time you change stuffs, unless if it's possible to put soundcard-specific code in a higher ring from SMM(ring -2)). I'm not an expert in SMM so I'm not entirely sure). Again, this is only a possibility.

EDIT 2: Did not find any similar references on SB8xx register reference guide (and there's no SB9xx databook out yet), but on SB8xx databook it has references about LPC (which isn't useful on its own, SB7xx also has such mentions). The audio-related SMI# stuffs are so far only mentioned on SB7xx chipset documents.

PS: It has been possible to use SMI# to emulate legacy audio and other stuffs before (see Virtual Subsystem Architecture (VSA)).

EXCELLENT find, my dude!

So, there might be a form of virtualization available for legacy devices, eh? We just have to figure out more about it, 🤣! Custom Bios's are a thing, so once we know more, we shalt not let that stop us.

In the meantime, I've been checking out various AMD 790FX and 790GX bords, and a few look quite promising! One actually has 7 slots, and would hence be suitable - I believe it takes at least one AM3+ cpu as well...

MSI 790FX-GD70

DFI DK 790FXB-M3H5

These dont seems to be big deal, there are same age or older than X58/X79.. which are working out of box.
Phenom II wasnt great cpu. Maybe there is advantage, that you can get them cheap..

ruthan wrote:

I looke at that Magma cases: https://www.onestopsystems.com/product/3-slot-pci-expansion […]
Show full quote

I looke at that Magma cases:
https://www.onestopsystems.com/product/3-slot-pci-expansion

But even if they would work they are expensive as hell, simply company stuff where you need it and prices are not matter.. and we will not know if they are working for sound cards.. but contruction seems pretty simple some special card and case with backplate own PSU..

Regardless i tried to write them, but no lock:
MS DOS is not supported and not compatible with 3slot PCI Expansion unit,

Thanks,
OSS Technical Support

I've been getting my units off of eBay. I wouldn't dream of spending the amount they charge for new units.

As far as the DOS compatibility goes, we shall see. I'm guessing that is just their standard response since I'm guessing that they really have 0 incentive to test with DOS.
These setups are also driverless so I don't see why they wouldn't work with DOS. They should just be transparent to the OS and just be seen as a PCI bus to the host system.

I did try the PC-card with the 1-slot on one of my Toshiba notebooks but it didn't like it. It had some sort of resource conflict that was messing with the video card. The PC-card I have is also the earlier version which apparently has issues with some cards that these setups are normally used for. I'll try it again with some different laptops to see what the results are and post back.

I also have one of the PCI host cards on the way so I can test with a regular desktop system as well.

I've also acquired a couple Magma "split-bridge" cards that may be able to be used for a PCI expansion setup but I don't have a cable to try it with. If I do find a cable, I'm going to test with some low-end stuff since it is unclear if these cards can just be hooked together or if these are just host cards. I wasn't able to find any documentation whatsoever on them. Maybe I will try e-mailing onestopsystems to see if they have info on them anymore.

Doomn00b wrote:

EXCELLENT find, my dude! […]
Show full quote

EXCELLENT find, my dude!

So, there might be a form of virtualization available for legacy devices, eh? We just have to figure out more about it, 🤣! Custom Bios's are a thing, so once we know more, we shalt not let that stop us.

In the meantime, I've been checking out various AMD 790FX and 790GX bords, and a few look quite promising! One actually has 7 slots, and would hence be suitable - I believe it takes at least one AM3+ cpu as well...

MSI 790FX-GD70

DFI DK 790FXB-M3H5

I'm still looking at it, as I'm not really experienced in low-level assembly programming I'm still having difficulty figuring out the correct values to use (in assembly) to communicate with the chipset registers (it might be doable with simple DOS programs as you can directly interact with the low-level hardware there)... but anyway, what you've mentioned was definitely something interesting to look into.

The Adlib/MIDI/Audio (and a lot of other legacy stuffs) SMI# trigger settings are inside Power Management registers... Not sure about the extent of their usefulness... maybe it's just to specify which legacy address can trigger SMI#.

I think the BIOS should already have SMM handlers for things like keyboard/mouse so that USB ones could behave the same as PS/2 ones in legacy environments, but as for Adlib/MIDI/Audio SMM handlers... it's still a mystery about how it should work, whether it's just to emulate the signals TSRs needed so they can work, or it needs to completely emulate a legacy sound card and send the result to a target sound card (so it can be heard).

EDIT: Was able to set up a testbed using a M5A78L/USB3 (760G/SB710, and an FX processor for confirming Vishera CPU support). By default, the PCI audio cards I tested can be detected by HWiNFO (which confirms its presence), but TSRs either couldn't detect (ES1370), or it could detect and load (AU8830), but programs still cannot detect the presence of Sound Blaster. Also, for the former (ES1370), even MPXPlay couldn't pick it up despite it's supposed to be supported natively. The onboard Intel HDA codec, however, can be picked up by MPXPlay.

Currently it's only some basic testing. It's apparent that existing PCI audio card TSRs don't work at all (not even FM Synth) with AMD 700 series (as well as future series). For further tests, I'll need to take some time figuring out more about how to access the SMBUS registers to take a peek, or find a good tool that could display chipset register settings inside a BIOS image (so one can modify it to enable the bits that we need, to test further).

EDIT 2 (CPU support related, off-topic): Regarding FX processor support, unfortunately, only the lesser 760G/770 (with SB710) chipset boards from some manufacturers have newer PCB revisions and official BIOS support for FX processors. There are no known boards with high-end 790FX/GX chipset (with SB750) that received official support for FX series (although it might be doable through possible BIOS mods I'm yet to actually find one).

EDIT 3: I was able to find the same registers in the SB600 register reference guide as well, so the possibility has existed for a while, and it was on the same address location. However, in SB800 register reference guide the particular registers were removed (Reserved).

EDIT 4: Tried a SB Live! 5.1... SBEINIT loads (taking about 4K) but programs can't see it. However, this card can be picked up natively by MPXPLAY and audio works correctly there (so native PCI access works). In such case, the SB710's onboard Intel HD should also work if accessed natively. It's now just how to peek the registers (maybe with PCISET) to see whether the necessary signals are enabled, and whether it's possible to enable legacy audio related SMI# triggers...

Have gotten myself a PCIe to PCI bridge based on the PEX 8112 chip that I'll be playing around with.

Kamerat wrote:

Have gotten myself a PCIe to PCI bridge based on the PEX 8112 chip that I'll be playing around with.

What are expectations, there is something better in specs than in Pericom / ASM sheets?
https://www.macrogroup.ru/sites/default/files … pb_ec111207.pdf

I have a development board that use a PEX chip. It has either 3 or 4 PCI slots. Has some different jumpers and LEDs on it as well.

I haven't tested anything with it yet though. I just got it because it was a good price and knew I would probably never see one again.

My experience with some other PCIe to PCI adapters has been that they work great with some cards and not at all with other cards.

Fun fact. There are a couple different PEX chips. They are what pretty much all the newer-ish PCIe cards that were back-ported to PCI use.

ruthan wrote on 2019-04-07, 12:12:

I found out that Gigabyte is still making some MB with PCI slot, at least few Z270 and 1 Z370 MB, i added them to first post.

I use this MB in my main rig, and I had success using a PCI CMI8738-based sound card with it. I have both Windows 7 and Windows 98SE installed on my PC, the card works fine in both OSes. As for DOS side of things: noop 's RemapCMI works just fine - so basically now I have a PCI-based Adlib.
Also, there is something else I found out about it - since it has a gameport, initially I didn't think I could use it as a MIDI interface in Windows 7, but I was proven wrong - there was an option in MIDIMapper Configurator which said "MPU-401". So I connected a Dreamblaster X2 to it through CHiLL & Phil, tried to play a MIDI file, and it worked!

Are you talking about DOS games run under Win98 DOS window or true DOS mode?
Adlib and MIDI would work - it's only I/O acces, no IRQ/DMA involved. But SFX doesn't work I expect...

RayeR wrote on 2020-03-05, 18:38:

Are you talking about DOS games run under Win98 DOS window or true DOS mode?
Adlib and MIDI would work - it's only I/O acces, no IRQ/DMA involved. But SFX doesn't work I expect...

I'm talking about true DOS mode. And it's not just games - I was able to run LLSID and listen to some .sid tunes, something that wasn't possible with OPL3LPT for some reason.
And yes, SFX doesn't work, as well as C-Media's official DOS drivers.

tyukok wrote on 2020-03-05, 18:20:

I use this MB in my main rig, and I had success using a PCI CMI8738-based sound card with it. I have both Windows 7 and Windows 98SE installed on my PC, the card works fine in both OSes. As for DOS side of things: noop 's RemapCMI works just fine - so basically now I have a PCI-based Adlib.

Breakthrough time, i gonna living it.. Thanks for sharing.

What about games compatibility? Because it can simply replace be cheaper and more easy to use that OPL2LPT adapter.. BTW there is some play on Adlib thread and nices demos pack:
The Unofficial OPL2LPT and OPL3LPT demopack (for convienient testing of Adpatch)

CMI8738 was know as dead on arrival for Dos, i know that Phil made few games working:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHKa-TE-U4Y
If my memory hold - TERRATEC AUREON 5 should be decent card with this chip.

Which MB you have exactly?

Maybe dont need for Dos some HW mods, which were are discussion here for long time after all - at least for Adlib..
PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...

ruthan wrote on 2020-03-05, 20:39:

Which MB you have exactly?

Gigabyte Z370 HD3P. Its PCI slot is bridged via ITE8892 chip.
There's also another thing about it - when I was building my multiboot rig, I was experimenting with all kinds of different cards. And, originally, I wanted to use a PCI video card - the video card that I use for Windows 7 side of things is much too new even for DOS, much less Win9x, and most of Gigabyte MoBos (especially high-end ones) have an option to choose your Primary GPU in BIOS. Normally this means that if you put a second video card in the second PCIe x16 slot then it will use it as a main GPU, but in reality any other slot worked - including PCI. So I ended up using one of those ATI Rage XL 8MB cards I saw on eBay, and it worked fine... for a little while at least. Problems arose when I tried to install a better video card in its place - no matter what card I tried, if it had more than 8MB of VRAM the drivers failed to install and it started having lots of conflicting memory range errors. Also it had same errors whenever I tried to install other new peripherials, like a USB 2.0 controller, or an IDE controller. So I ended up using GeForce 6200 for PCIe instead, no issues so far.

I'm using this sound card because I'm interested in something that would work In Win98SE as well as Win7 - this way I don't need to constantly shuffle around my audio cables when I switch between the two OSes. The fact that it can play FM is more of a nice bonus. If you're interested only in the DOS gaming, then it might be cheaper to use OPL2LPT, because RemapCMI is a TSR that functions in the same way as OPL2LPT's TSR. And the real thing is better than emulation, right? But then again, some problems may still arise - as I mentioned before, LLSID just sounds wrong.
I haven't tried using the OPL2LPT patch. Is it possible to patch games with it to some other addresses, and not just LPT? This could solve a lot of problems.

These CMI8738 cards are underappreciated IMO. Sure, sound quality is nothing outstanding, but is there any other sound card with official driver support going all the way from Windows 95 to Windows 10? All the while having a pretty decent-ish FM emulation, as well as a MIDI interface? Also they were made in millions, so they are very easy to get today. And there is even a PCIe version of this card too, that functions exactly the same.

That is interesting. I have Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming, i bought it when platform started to finally have on normal consumer mb something better than quad core (9900K strugle with it a lot because of power modules design.. i had to force it to 95W everything, intel unlocked it up to 165W for shorted periods.. and even with 95W.. my MB sensors show something like 80-90C), it has not PCI, but i had 3 PCI-E long slots for graphics cards. I had problem to make working PCI-E gen 1 cards with it.. i tried multiple Geforce 6/7 cards and Ati X600 i thing.. and result was always the not only that not boot picture from it regarless of primary gpu slot settings.. but not even detection within any os, as uknonw device nothing.. Im not sure if this was thing before i installed unofficial bios to make XP somehow working, i thing that it was, but im not 100% sure..
Regarding of you problems.. you didnt wrote with which OSes you had these problem, if you made Win98 working on Z370 - good job.. i though about it but because Gen 1 videocards not worked i gave up.. Geforce 6200 working fine with Win98. What USB 2.0 controler and IDE controller is working for you? I made ASM106x with IDE BIOS working with this MB.. but now with free Rloew AHCI driver, is probably no more needed.

These boards needed bios mods even to properly working with XP - to not have hardware conflicts etc.. and i had to use it in MPS mode that blocked some things and even than some things where broken because of timers.. Know there not Bios mods needed, because there are software fixes of acpi.sys and other things.. You can find info, i this endless thread:
https://www.win-raid.com/t4035f45-Windows-XP- … n-Hardware.html
There are also fixed USB3 drivers, some PAE fixed for more memory etc.. but i took me few days to read it whole.

These MSFN threads could be interesting for you too:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/175035-windows-9 … odern-hardware/
https://msfn.org/board/topic/178240-winxpz170 … comment-1160661
https://msfn.org/board/topic/178110-xp-on-z37 … comment-1158664

Lots of these thing could affect maybe even Win98, bios is not really designed to play well with old work..

CMI8738 card - there main problem is they never had too much publicity, no own special features like EAX or Aureal 3D and from XP+ all most all board had decent on board sound, so nobody really too much wanted or appreciated that it has Win95 to Win10.. and with Win95, 98 without good DOS sound is a bit crippled experience.
Audio switching is annoying, i have some clunky cheap jack switching.. i still dream about some inteligent audio switch with signal detection and auto switching.. some people are using some mixer boards, but on want to have other quite big ugly thing on my desk. Jack switch has just small button in the front.. with mixe board you need see / have access to all top part..

Multibooting well i know something about it:
X58/i865/V880 - Yamaha7x4/AurealV1/2 pure Dos7.1- compatibility list/research/ultim. drivers configs, WIP- gurus needed

BTW yesterday i made Win98 videocard pass through working with KVM+Qemu to make Windows 98 working also with less additional cards, bios setting and all mbs switch are supporting virtualization and older cards:
KVM(QEMU) Win98 videocard passthrough.I finally got it working- with full 3D API support Quake III 1600x1200 90+ FPS!

ruthan wrote on 2020-03-06, 00:48:

Regarding of you problems.. you didnt wrote with which OSes you had these problem, if you made Win98 working on Z370 - good job.. i though about it but because Gen 1 videocards not worked i gave up.. Geforce 6200 working fine with Win98. What USB 2.0 controler and IDE controller is working for you? I made ASM106x with IDE BIOS working with this MB.. but now with free Rloew AHCI driver, is probably no more needed.

Memory range conflicts were happening only in Win98SE, but it doesn't matter now - with GeForce 6200 there are no conflicts anymore, everything works just fine.
For storage - at first I was using Rosewill RC-200 with Startech's PCIe-PCI bridge. It worked fine, but the speed never went above Multiword DMA-2 - only 16.7 MB/s. So just yesterday I switched to a Sil3114-based PCI SATA card with the same bridge, and everything works fine - the speed is now at Ultra DMA-6 level. Too bad there are no Win98 drivers for any SATA-2 cards.
As for USB - there is a PCIe USB 2.0 controller with Win98 drivers that works for me - Startech PEXUSB4DP. Some say it can cause conflicts with Win10 though, but I don't have a way to test it, so I can't tell anything about it.

i tried multiple Geforce 6/7 cards and Ati X600 i thing.. and result was always the not only that not boot picture from it regarless of primary gpu slot settings..

Ah, I see. I had a similar problem when I tried to install Geforce 9800GT here. I guess Slot 2 just doesn't work well for the high-end cards. Better stick with the lower-end cards - FX 5200, 6200. I got 6600LE for cheap on ebay recently, I'll try it out once I recap it.

tyukok wrote on 2020-03-05, 19:17:

I'm talking about true DOS mode. And it's not just games - I was able to run LLSID and listen to some .sid tunes, something that wasn't possible with OPL3LPT for some reason.
And yes, SFX doesn't work, as well as C-Media's official DOS drivers.

Well, did you / can you try some YMF724/744 or Vortex 1 PCI card? There is a chance that SFX may work. I have CMI8738 too and didn't have much success in my P67 board but YMF/Vortex works well (SFX too) for me.

tyukok wrote on 2020-03-06, 10:30:

For storage - at first I was using Rosewill RC-200 with Startech's PCIe-PCI bridge. It worked fine, but the speed never went above Multiword DMA-2 - only 16.7 MB/s. So just yesterday I switched to a Sil3114-based PCI SATA card with the same bridge, and everything works fine - the speed is now at Ultra DMA-6 level. Too bad there are no Win98 drivers for any SATA-2 cards.
As for USB - there is a PCIe USB 2.0 controller with Win98 drivers that works for me - Startech PEXUSB4DP. Some say it can cause conflicts with Win10 though, but I don't have a way to test it, so I can't tell anything about it.

You should really tried Rloew Sata and AHCI drivers, it worked fine with Z170 intel AHCI on board controller and Sata driver should work with some external controllers too.
About Startech USB2 - its expensive.. i dunno about their items, sometime are really unique and good, sometimes they some like some rebrand of something cheaper with big price tag.. In already linked thread some mention some PCI-E USB2 cards, which are working in Win98.. and are available on ebay for 10-15$, i have 1 on the way.

About soundcards, if Yamaha or Vortex 1 would work in Dos, also Vortex 2 would work..

RayeR wrote on 2020-03-06, 10:43:

Well, did you / can you try some YMF724/744 or Vortex 1 PCI card? There is a chance that SFX may work. I have CMI8738 too and didn't have much success in my P67 board but YMF/Vortex works well (SFX too) for me.

I tried out a Vortex 1 card a few months ago, and, unfortunately, no luck - the DOS driver didn't see it. Windows drivers worked, and even the SB Emulation looked like it installed fine, but when I tried to actually play the games in DOS box I had no sound.
I bought a YMF744 card a couple of days ago, I'll test it out when it arrives. From what I know so far, even if its own official TSR won't work, RemapCMI should work for it anyway.

ruthan wrote on 2020-03-06, 16:27:

About Startech USB2 - its expensive.

Oh yeah, I know, their stuff is not cheap. That's why I haven't bought it from them directly, instead I got it from ebay for about 15$.

You should really tried Rloew Sata and AHCI drivers, it worked fine with Z170 intel AHCI on board controller and Sata driver should work with some external controllers too.

I tried the AHCI driver with a PCIe JMB363-based card at first (my onboard SATA controller is already pretty densely populated), but wasn't very successful - the C drive was running in MS-DOS compatibility mode.
However, once I carried over my Win98SE drive to the onboard SATA controller, it worked like a charm. I'm out of the SATA ports now, but it's okay.

Its 99% chance that you know it but to be sure.. compatibility mode.. for make DMA working to get more than 2 MB/s you have to go into device manager select disk device and check DMA checkbox and reboot.

tyukok wrote on 2020-03-06, 17:49:

I tried the AHCI driver with a PCIe JMB363-based card at first (my onboard SATA controller is already pretty densely populated), but wasn't very successful - the C drive was running in MS-DOS compatibility mode.

It could be probably because your JMB363 card BIOS is configured in RAID mode instead of AHCI mode. There are different ROMs that you can flash in, give it a try https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2012/08/jmicron-j … card-ahci-mode/

ruthan wrote on 2020-03-06, 18:47:

Its 99% chance that you know it but to be sure.. compatibility mode.. for make DMA working to get more than 2 MB/s you have to go into device manager select disk device and check DMA checkbox and reboot.

Yeah, this was one of the first things I tried, but, interestingly, there was no DMA checkbox. And when I switched over to onboard SATA controller, there was no checkbox either. However, now the warning has disappeared and the benchmarks show the speed you'd expect from a SATA3 SSD. So I'd say the problem is solved.

RayeR wrote on 2020-03-06, 22:54:

It could be probably because your JMB363 card BIOS is configured in RAID mode instead of AHCI mode. There are different ROMs that you can flash in, give it a try https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2012/08/jmicron-j … card-ahci-mode/

Thanks for the link. It looks like this was the problem all along, I tried it out and the warning is now gone. I think I'd rather stick with SATA3 for now though.