kolderman wrote on 2020-05-05, 02:25:

I thought Keen was pc speaker.

Looking to double check... I haven't played it in a long time.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-05, 02:27:

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-05, 02:25:

I thought Keen was pc speaker.

Looking to double check... I haven't played it in a long time.

Ok... so I was wrong.. sorta. Keen 1-3 are PC Speaker only. 4-6 have Adlib and Soundblaster support. I think Keen Dreams has at least Adlib support I think.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-05-05, 02:17:

Music working and sound not working doesn't make sense.

Ikr? But it doesn't work, at least in apogee games and in POP.

I will take for example game Major Stryker and Prince of persia (ignore all other games).

The music plays just fine, but sound effects defalts to PC speaker. When I run Major Stryker it says : "SB, Adlib detected", but in the menu "game options", if I select for digitalized sound "sound blaster" and I test the sound there is only silence. If I select "PC speaker", then I have PC speaker, but the music plays just fine.

I don't know what hardware and options are used in this video, but here is an example with music and PC speakers for digitalized sound effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EP9BiDmLA8

and here is an example with sound blaster sound effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueSS8IGBz98

In the Prince of persia is the same story, music is fine, but sound effects are in PC speakers.

The worst thing is, both games don't have any setup file, where I could configure my sound card and I found on the web that I'm not the only one with this issue.

Has this anything to do with my configuration of my sound card (address, irq, dma and that stuff)?

It could be that your BLASTER environment variable doesn't match your card's resources.

Oetker wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:35:

It could be that your BLASTER environment variable doesn't match your card's resources.

how can I change my BLASTER environment variable to match my card's resource?

Open a DOS prompt and type SET. It should show a BLASTER environment variable. Some games, which don't have a setup program, use this to get the card's settings. This should match whatever your drivers are emulating, however I don't know what the SBLive driver expects, maybe someone else can help with that.

Apparently there might be a 'Creative SB16 Emulation' device in your device manager that contains the settings.

ok, I'm back with an update.

At first I was thinking I would mess with the settings of my soundblaster live SB0100, but changed my mind, because I didn't want to mess anything up.

So I bought some new cards. I acquired: Avance logic ALS4000, Forte Media FM801 and Hercules Gamesurround Muse XL.

- The Hercules Gamesurround Muse XL was weird. The drivers seems to be available on manufacturers website, but instructions forinstalation was rather unique. First you have to extract the driver files and then install the drivers via windows wizzard for instaling new hardware. Good thing It was specificaly mentioned in the driver files instructions. The sound card was successfully detected, but the card was super quiet and If I raised the volume, there was a loud buzzing noise coming out of speakers. Indication, taht the sound card is damaged?
Also when I started any DOS game, the music didn't work, only sound effects were present, despite the fact, that this sound card has C-media cmi8738 chip.

- Avance logic ALS4000 was the same, sound in windows OK, but only sound effects in DOS, no music. Is this card even DOS compatible?

- Forte Media FM801 didn't even work, no matter which drivers I installed. There were no sound.

But then I had a conversation with a guy who sold me Forte media and Avance logic card and told me he had great experience with ESS Solo-1 card and gave me a link to a guy who was selling it. I got it like dirt chip for only 5€, and as I said before, market for these things is very limited in my country.

But salvation was very short. The card was detected by windows, the wizard for new hardware was shown, but there was no sign of a new card under device manager. The drivers from vogons I installed didn't work. Then I tried to install the same drivers via the new hardware wizzard and it finally worked....in windows at least. When I run any DOS game it was not detected for some reason. When I run winter challenge I got a warning for missing sound device and computer just froze. I restarted the PC and was ready to give up. But then I started DOOM and the sound worked for some reason. Then I run wolfenstein and winter challenge again and it worked. Don't know why the game said "no sound device present". Even the major stryker worked, which I had trouble before. But this is it. Some games which worked in SB Live, I didn't manage to work in ESS Solo-1. Prince of Persia still defaults to PC speaker, Duke nukem 3D don't work, lion king also.

So for the time being, I will switch to my previous card EI Sound blaster Live SB0100, which mostly works. For games that don't work I will use DOSBOX. I think this is a good compromise.

I will definetely come back with the expreriment, when I get more energy. I still have to test sound card from China with cmi8738 chip when I get it.

If anybody knows what I'm doing wrong let me know, because it would be strange that cards just "don't work".

I also forgot to mention I have used 2 different PCs. One for testing and one is my main rig. I tested all the card on my tes rig (apart from solo-1), and nothing worked. Is it possible that the chipset is not supported?
Test PC has a MSI ms6547 mother board with SIS chipset, while my main retro rig has asrock p4i65g with Intel® 865G chipset

https://microdream.co.uk/msi-ms-6547-645-ultr … ml#.Xs4yrDlpErg
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P4i65G/

The Solo-1 requires DOS drivers to be installed for it to fully work in DOS. Then, you get Soundblaster Pro 2.0 and Adlib support. Just use the search, we should have many threads here about the Solo-1 in DOS. It's a great card.

Da Playa wrote on 2020-05-27, 09:36:

- Avance logic ALS4000 was the same, sound in windows OK, but only sound effects in DOS, no music. Is this card even DOS compatible?

Yes, ALS4000 is DOS compatible.
More precisely: Sound Blaster 16 compatible.
In fact, out of all PCI sound cards I tried, ALS4000 was the only card that worked in DOS without any memory-resident drivers.
And it worked in both real and V86 modes.

But...
In order to be so compatible, ALS4000 needs a chipset with Distributed DMA support.
Intel 865G doesn't support DDMA.
SiS961, however, is supposed to work - you need "ALS4000 DOS initializer by saka", search for "als4kdos.zip"

Da Playa wrote on 2020-05-27, 09:36:

ok, I'm back with an update. […]
Show full quote

ok, I'm back with an update.

At first I was thinking I would mess with the settings of my soundblaster live SB0100, but changed my mind, because I didn't want to mess anything up.

So I bought some new cards. I acquired: Avance logic ALS4000, Forte Media FM801 and Hercules Gamesurround Muse XL.

- The Hercules Gamesurround Muse XL was weird. The drivers seems to be available on manufacturers website, but instructions forinstalation was rather unique. First you have to extract the driver files and then install the drivers via windows wizzard for instaling new hardware. Good thing It was specificaly mentioned in the driver files instructions. The sound card was successfully detected, but the card was super quiet and If I raised the volume, there was a loud buzzing noise coming out of speakers. Indication, taht the sound card is damaged?
Also when I started any DOS game, the music didn't work, only sound effects were present, despite the fact, that this sound card has C-media cmi8738 chip.

- Avance logic ALS4000 was the same, sound in windows OK, but only sound effects in DOS, no music. Is this card even DOS compatible?

- Forte Media FM801 didn't even work, no matter which drivers I installed. There were no sound.

But then I had a conversation with a guy who sold me Forte media and Avance logic card and told me he had great experience with ESS Solo-1 card and gave me a link to a guy who was selling it. I got it like dirt chip for only 5€, and as I said before, market for these things is very limited in my country.

But salvation was very short. The card was detected by windows, the wizard for new hardware was shown, but there was no sign of a new card under device manager. The drivers from vogons I installed didn't work. Then I tried to install the same drivers via the new hardware wizzard and it finally worked....in windows at least. When I run any DOS game it was not detected for some reason. When I run winter challenge I got a warning for missing sound device and computer just froze. I restarted the PC and was ready to give up. But then I started DOOM and the sound worked for some reason. Then I run wolfenstein and winter challenge again and it worked. Don't know why the game said "no sound device present". Even the major stryker worked, which I had trouble before. But this is it. Some games which worked in SB Live, I didn't manage to work in ESS Solo-1. Prince of Persia still defaults to PC speaker, Duke nukem 3D don't work, lion king also.

So for the time being, I will switch to my previous card EI Sound blaster Live SB0100, which mostly works. For games that don't work I will use DOSBOX. I think this is a good compromise.

I will definetely come back with the expreriment, when I get more energy. I still have to test sound card from China with cmi8738 chip when I get it.

If anybody knows what I'm doing wrong let me know, because it would be strange that cards just "don't work".

I also forgot to mention I have used 2 different PCs. One for testing and one is my main rig. I tested all the card on my tes rig (apart from solo-1), and nothing worked. Is it possible that the chipset is not supported?
Test PC has a MSI ms6547 mother board with SIS chipset, while my main retro rig has asrock p4i65g with Intel® 865G chipset

https://microdream.co.uk/msi-ms-6547-645-ultr … ml#.Xs4yrDlpErg
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P4i65G/

This much broken sound cards or bad luck is extremely improbable, either your Windows installation is bust or your motherboard is flaky. Try a fresh Windows install and try the cards in another motherboard.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-01, 12:06:

Finally, there are the YMF724/744 cards but these in my experience are even worse than ESS Solo-1 and flat out won't work in DOS without the SB-Link header, although their FM Synth is genuine OPL3.

This is definitely not the case, at least not with the YMF724 cards I tried (and I have tried quite a few).
They work perfectly in DOS with DDMA on chipsets such as 440BX, without needing SBLink, or with emulated DDMA (DSDMA) for most other VIA/Intel chipsets from up to ~ 2004. In fact, these are my favourite DOS sound cards (yes, blasphemy, including ISA sound cards such as the Sound Blaster Pro 2, Sound Blaster 16, AWE32/64, etc).
Some of them (not all) have crystal clear sound, deep bass, and VERY low noise (this is not the case with most ISA sound cards, which for me are unusable with headphones, with very few exceptions). And I, for one, haven't found a single game that doesn't work with them, with or without SB Link (as long as the CPU speed is appropriate for the game you're playing). Indeed, there are a few games that will only work with Adlib instead of SB, but those games have the same problem with most ISA sound cards.

Yes, I should have said 'on motherboards that do not support DDMA' when saying they require an SB-Link.

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-27, 09:48:

The Solo-1 requires DOS drivers to be installed for it to fully work in DOS. Then, you get Soundblaster Pro 2.0 and Adlib support. Just use the search, we should have many threads here about the Solo-1 in DOS. It's a great card.

So first I install the drivers on windows and second I install the DOS drivers?

Do I understand correctly?

Grzyb wrote on 2020-05-27, 10:51:

Yes, ALS4000 is DOS compatible. More precisely: Sound Blaster 16 compatible. In fact, out of all PCI sound cards I tried, ALS400 […]
Show full quote

Yes, ALS4000 is DOS compatible.
More precisely: Sound Blaster 16 compatible.
In fact, out of all PCI sound cards I tried, ALS4000 was the only card that worked in DOS without any memory-resident drivers.
And it worked in both real and V86 modes.

But...
In order to be so compatible, ALS4000 needs a chipset with Distributed DMA support.
Intel 865G doesn't support DDMA.
SiS961, however, is supposed to work - you need "ALS4000 DOS initializer by saka", search for "als4kdos.zip"

I don't know if I installed "als4kdos.zip", but I do know, that after installing drivers in windows, I also installed the DOS drivers, because the drivers didn't work. Well after installing the DOS drivers the PC "bricked", I barrely fixed it to its previous state. Is it because I ran the DOS drivers under window instead first booting into DOS? I'm new with this stuff and I'mm not really familiar with installing drivers for old sound cards. That's why I switched back to SB Live SB0100, because the driver instalation was easy. I just installed the drivers in windows and it worked. No messing around with anything else.

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-27, 09:48:

The Solo-1 requires DOS drivers to be installed for it to fully work in DOS. Then, you get Soundblaster Pro 2.0 and Adlib support. Just use the search, we should have many threads here about the Solo-1 in DOS. It's a great card.

It's a great sound card for DOS if you use a VIA chipset. Doesn't run well on Intel chipsets newer than 440BX unless your motherboard has PC/PCI support.