Tense wrote on 2021-02-08, 04:23:

@carlostex Sorry for the delay getting back to you guys. I have been working on the setup some more and realized it is working. […]
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@carlostex Sorry for the delay getting back to you guys. I have been working on the setup some more and realized it is working. It was just a couple games (like DOOM) that do not sound that great with the X2 setup as Roland/General. But, I am going to mess around some more with that. But, I have a majority of my games working just fine with PCMIDI/X2.

So thank you.

My only outstanding issue with with the midi/digital mixing. I have been testing various volumes in the orpheus.ini and none of them seem to help with PCMIDI/X2 output being half the volume of digital. I have pretty much adjusted every mixer vol level in the ini PCM,FM,CD,LINE under sb and it just will not balanced out. The midi is very quiet and the digital is super loud.

But, besides that its working quite well now. Though, I still have no idea why the headphone jack on the X2 won't output. But, its not a huge concern right now. It is def working in game.

Well, the DOOM should sound pretty sweet with the X2 and ofcourse the headphone jack should work

Please go here: https://www.serdashop.com/DreamBlasterX2
- in the downloads section go here: Root > X2_SoundbankPack > GM > GUD and download GUD_104.zip and PhilsComputerLab Preset for X3MB Buran.DXP files
- flash them in the X2 (with the tool downloaded from Root > X2_SoftwarePack > X2_SoftwarePack1.02.zip) and test on your modern computer , all should work fine , both playback in normal volume and headphone jack.
If you find that after flashing your issues are not resolved please contact me so we can replace your X2 board 😀

I´m having some problems with my Orpheus card. It´s installed in a Olivetti M4 454S (486 DX2 66). If I use Unisound the card initializes just fine and I get sound effects but the PC Midi part of the card refuses to work. All my testing so far has been with Doom (ultimate Doom V1.9). Sometimes (quite rare) I have music when I start the game but after less than 2 minutes I just get one continous sound out of the SC-55 even after quitting the game. Most of the time there is no output at all.
If I try to use Oprhinit there is no response from the computer and I have to reset it. I have attached a photo showing orphinit with the /VV switch and also a photo showing successfull initialization with unisound.

At first I had some conflicts between the crystal MPU device and PC MIDI so I just disabled the crystal MPU device with the flash tool sionce I will not be using it anyway.

Anyone experienced something like this with this card? The PC MIDI part of the card should be very simple to get working in my experience so I´m at a loss as to why this is happening.

With unisound, please use p300 for midi on set blaster string. You should have pcmidi on 330.

Marmes wrote on 2021-02-09, 08:08:

With unisound, please use p300 for midi on set blaster string. You should have pcmidi on 330.

I have tried that before and tried it again now but no difference. I also have as I said disabled the MPU part of the crystal.

Arvid wrote on 2021-02-09, 09:34:

Marmes wrote on 2021-02-09, 08:08:

With unisound, please use p300 for midi on set blaster string. You should have pcmidi on 330.

I have tried that before and tried it again now but no difference. I also have as I said disabled the MPU part of the crystal.

if you do not run any crystal driver at all - what do you get with MQDIAG ?
pcmidi just needs an irq and 300 or 330 address , have you tried setting it to some other IRQ?
it should just work if it is assigned to it's own resources and nothing else uses them (so no conflicts)

I have attached a picture of the output of MQDIAG, it detects the card just fine.

I did some more testing with Doom now, playing with just music and not initializing the crystal part.
After a couple of minutes the music stopped and I was left with a continuous hanging note.
Then I tried ever so slightly touching the midi connector cable and it suddendly worked again. It was properly plugged in but nudging it will bring it back to life. If I let the music continue to play it will drop out again after a little while and I can bring it back by moving the cable a little. Seems there might be some bad connections in the MIDI connector plug?

ok it sounds like a bad cable or a bad jack...
I will send you a PM so we can find the best way to address this 😀

With that problem out of the way I have another one to solve, I´m unable to get it working under Windows 3.11.
The installation went fine with the IRQ 5 version of the driver, however upon rebooting the computer and starting windows I get to the Windows for workgroups 3.11 splash screen and then I end up back at the DOS prompt without entering Windows. Also after the installation the config.sys was edited to contain the line DEVICE=C:\CRYSTAL\CS4237B.EXE but that file was not in the Crystal directory or anywhere else. Adding it manually after downloading it from the internet did not help either.
I was able to get back into Windows by editing the system.ini and removing some lines from the sound card config so that windows boots up with an error message about missing drivers but that does of course not help with getting it working.
Am I doing something wrong here or are the Win 3.X drivers just not very good?

win3.x drivers are indeed a mess and hardlocked to settings but I never faced this issue...
let me investigate it - could be the installer doing different things if it detects a PnP or no-PnP bios

edit:
just to make sure - the card is initialized under dos before you load 3.x right? because dos-init is needed by the 3.x driver

Yes I am pretty sure I initialized it. I think I tried it both ways since I wasn´t sure if that step was needed or not.
I´ll try it again later tonight and make sure it is initialized first.
What about that CS4237B.EXE that it calls as a device in config.sys after the installation, is that needed ?

Not needed - that line on the config.sys is added by the 3x installer and it's baked in the setup script so I could not remove it.
What I did remove was the actual file so that line does nothing and can be removed - it's just the stock crystal dos driver to init the chip before 3x starts.
I am working more on the 3x driver as I already experienced your issue and found the solution - just need verification 😀

I got it working with your suggested fix, for anyone else having the same problem change PNP=1 to PNP=0 in the system.ini file 😀

Orphinit still does not work for me but that is not an issue really since everything works just fine with unisound.

thanks to Arvid's report I have now created 2 new win3x drivers for non-PnP systems...
yes yes it is weird but keep in mind that the original Crystal driver for 3x is hardcoded to IRQ5 and PnP system usage.
Although it has options and hidden menus to change these settings they do not work 🤣 and that is why there are 2 drivers for IRQ5 and IRQ7
Nothing magical about them - they just have different hardcoded values in SETUP.INF so people don't have to mess with editing
You can always use the original Crystal driver but if you do not use ports 220/530 , DMA1 and IRQ5 you will need to manually edit system.ini to get the driver working.

For non-PnP systems now you get this "Configuration" window on setup:

Do not bother changing any values other than the (CS) MPU 401 enable/disable box.
The other values get passed only to the DOS portion of the driver and do NOT update windows driver settings - even when using the original CS driver (thanks Crystal!)
The MPU 401 enable/disable checkbox is for the Crystal MPU device - PCMIDI will still work with it but if you need to install the Roland driver then it is easier to just not install the CS MPU driver at all so you avoid system.ini editing....
A line in config.sys will be added "DEVICE=C:\CRYSTAL\CS4232C.EXE /O" that will do nothing. Again this change is coded in the setup script and I could not remove it - but I did remove the CS4232.EXE file from the installation directory so that like has no effect. It is the original Crystal DOS driver that gets loaded on system boot since the win3x driver needs DOS initialization before it can work.

IRQ5 version: https://mega.nz/file/ZcdyTJaT#BFvkgsXFmEDvtI9 … zusiA9_LGVvvFVw
IRQ7 version: https://mega.nz/file/4RMGHDBC#-nvt0-0w3TBMW98 … axNlsqsAAI0VixQ

Arvid, you should post on the ORPHINIT thread about your issue so 640k!enough can take a look at it: ORPHINIT: New Init Software For The Orpheus Sound Card

Great job keropi.

I removed the old driver and all associated software and installed the new one. It worked perfectly the first time and I did not have to reinitialize the sound card after exiting Windows for it to work in DOS games either 😀

great thanks for verifying it Arvid!
you only need to re-initialize if you want s/pdif active under DOS, win3x driver kills it when it loads

Love that Orpheus service.

Excellent work!
Any progress on the Win9X driver?

nope, nothing new on the 9x front... the only thing missing to make it perfect is to make it use the external OPL3 instead of CSFM - other than that it's fine.

keropi wrote on 2021-02-08, 09:09:

Well, the DOOM should sound pretty sweet with the X2 and ofcourse the headphone jack should work […]
Show full quote

Tense wrote on 2021-02-08, 04:23:

@carlostex Sorry for the delay getting back to you guys. I have been working on the setup some more and realized it is working. […]
Show full quote

@carlostex Sorry for the delay getting back to you guys. I have been working on the setup some more and realized it is working. It was just a couple games (like DOOM) that do not sound that great with the X2 setup as Roland/General. But, I am going to mess around some more with that. But, I have a majority of my games working just fine with PCMIDI/X2.

So thank you.

My only outstanding issue with with the midi/digital mixing. I have been testing various volumes in the orpheus.ini and none of them seem to help with PCMIDI/X2 output being half the volume of digital. I have pretty much adjusted every mixer vol level in the ini PCM,FM,CD,LINE under sb and it just will not balanced out. The midi is very quiet and the digital is super loud.

But, besides that its working quite well now. Though, I still have no idea why the headphone jack on the X2 won't output. But, its not a huge concern right now. It is def working in game.

Well, the DOOM should sound pretty sweet with the X2 and ofcourse the headphone jack should work

Please go here: https://www.serdashop.com/DreamBlasterX2
- in the downloads section go here: Root > X2_SoundbankPack > GM > GUD and download GUD_104.zip and PhilsComputerLab Preset for X3MB Buran.DXP files
- flash them in the X2 (with the tool downloaded from Root > X2_SoftwarePack > X2_SoftwarePack1.02.zip) and test on your modern computer , all should work fine , both playback in normal volume and headphone jack.
If you find that after flashing your issues are not resolved please contact me so we can replace your X2 board 😀

Okay. On a modern system the 3.5mm jack works. And DOOM sounds great with the new soundfont. I guess I really wasn't happy with the default bank. 🤣

Honestly thank you guys. You make great products and your always so helpful. The only thing left for me to figure out is why the midi vs digital is so out of balance. But, I will continue to just test different ini settings.