VOGONS

I need help configuring an 8-bit sound card in an XT.

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First post, by Ernesto22

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Hi, I'm building an XT clone on a Juko V20 motherboard with 1MB.
I have this Toptek Golden Sound v2.01 8bit ISA sound card, I am not planning to use a CD-ROM.

I don't have much experience with XTs and I can't get it to work.
I looked for drivers in the VOGONS library but didn't find any, only for 16bit bales.
As the board has jumpers for IRQ 3,4 or 5, I disabled one of the COM ports to release IRQ 3. IRQ 5 is reported as Hard Ddrive, I ‘m using an XT-IDE.
I added the line SET BLASTER=A220 I3 D1 T1 to autoexec.bat
I'm not sure about the T parameter, and I can't find any reference to the address on the board, I just put 220 because it's the most common. The addresses that appear on the board I interpret as being for the CD-ROM.
I ran prince of persia as a test with the adlib or sblat parameters with no results.
My questions are: how should I configure the card? what standard is it supposed to be compatible with? how do I test it properly (at this point I don't know if the card is working).
Thanks

Reply 1 of 10, by Tiido

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Does the entire card looks like this ?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/276583643689

There is *only* CD-ROM functionality on that card, nothing else whatsoever.

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 3 of 10, by zb10948

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https://archive.org/details/TopTek-Golden-Sound-Drivers/

The issue I see here, a non-PnP card should expose OPL port automatically, and if there are no conflicts, games like Prince give out sound immediately in 'Adlib' mode, no environment variables needed.

Are you sure the card works?

Reply 4 of 10, by mkarcher

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zb10948 wrote on 2025-05-29, 13:31:

https://archive.org/details/TopTek-Golden-Sound-Drivers/

The cards shown on the archive.org entry you link look like a Soundblaster 2.0 and a Soundblaster Pro 2.0 clone. The drivers will work for those cards, possibly also for the original Creative Labs cards they were cloned from, but they won't make the CD interface card shown in this thread produce any sound. The only "sound" stuff that's on that card is a headphone amplifier for the CD audio signal.

Reply 5 of 10, by MMaximus

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AFAIK you shouldn't need any driver or environment variable in an XT machine to get sound. Usually the correct settings old DOS games expect are IRQ7 and I/O 220, but I/O might be all these games look for anyway...

It looks like this jumper allows IRQ and DMA to be set up on the same jumper block so it might mean the numbers written on the card don't represent the actual IRQ numbers but rather a setting for a particular DMA or IRQ address?

edit: somehow the page on the retro web doesn't show any configuration being possible for the sound card part of the card, only for the CD-ROM interface 🧐

https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/topt … 3-in-1-ver-3-01

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 6 of 10, by mkarcher

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MMaximus wrote on 2025-05-29, 14:46:

edit: somehow the page on the retro web doesn't show any configuration being possible for the sound card part of the card, only for the CD-ROM interface 🧐

Yeah, because that card is only a CD-ROM interface. It has no sound card part.

Reply 8 of 10, by Ernesto22

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zb10948 wrote on 2025-05-29, 13:31:

https://archive.org/details/TopTek-Golden-Sound-Drivers/

The issue I see here, a non-PnP card should expose OPL port automatically, and if there are no conflicts, games like Prince give out sound immediately in 'Adlib' mode, no environment variables needed.

Are you sure the card works?

Well that's not the card I have.. I think previous poster is right abot not being an actual sound card

Reply 9 of 10, by Ernesto22

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MMaximus wrote on 2025-05-29, 14:46:
AFAIK you shouldn't need any driver or environment variable in an XT machine to get sound. Usually the correct settings old DOS […]
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AFAIK you shouldn't need any driver or environment variable in an XT machine to get sound. Usually the correct settings old DOS games expect are IRQ7 and I/O 220, but I/O might be all these games look for anyway...

It looks like this jumper allows IRQ and DMA to be set up on the same jumper block so it might mean the numbers written on the card don't represent the actual IRQ numbers but rather a setting for a particular DMA or IRQ address?

edit: somehow the page on the retro web doesn't show any configuration being possible for the sound card part of the card, only for the CD-ROM interface 🧐

https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/topt … 3-in-1-ver-3-01

This card is very similar. Jumpers are the same.. So I don't have sound card at all.. sad
Thank you

Reply 10 of 10, by devius

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For that class of PC an Adlib or Sound Blaster 1.0 or 2.0, or their clones, would be a good match. A recently made card that should work well is the Sonic Buster 8.

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