I have just purchased a Yamaha PCI soundcard model: SP-724.... I heard these have great OPL3 and SB Pro Dos compatibility 😀 I don't see why i should keep my Soundblaster PCI anymore as it has recently been giving me problems, it used to be a great with Dos ....... 😖

turn off "PNP OS" in the bios. find the pci slot where it settles on the IRQ you want it on.

similar discussion but with ISA card:
AWE32 IRQ Questions

more troubleshooting tips:
http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/snddosdr.htm
http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/sndhelp.htm
http://dosmame.mameworld.info/

Hi, thanks for the links!

I always have PNP OS disabled in the bios as it causes more problems than it's worth 😒 I tried the Dos drivers from the Mame website and they work with a few Dos games such as Blood, Carmageddon, Quake, Doom and Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D etc... in both 8 and 16 bit modes! Some other games have sound stutter when using the 16 bit DMA.

At the moment it just seems to be the old Lucasarts games and a few other older titles that do not work or just sound terrible! The card is good with general midi and roland sounds in Dos but when it is set to Soundblaster midi it all goes wrong and sounds nothing like real soundblaster midi!

Anyway i have ordered a Yamaha PCI sound card that has hardware 3D support for windows and hardware soundblaster pro support for Dos

😁

I do have an ISA soundblaster 16 but it sounds bad when using it in a Pentium 3 system! especially with 3D games in D3D, OpenGL and Glide. It sounds like it is struggling and suffers from stuttering and slow down.... and that is why i wanted a PCI card. I am looking for another old system as my Olivetti 486 has just died on me 🙁

plus afaik sb16's dont support directsound

PowerPie5000 wrote:

Hi, thanks for the links!
Anyway i have ordered a Yamaha PCI sound card that has hardware 3D support for windows and hardware soundblaster pro support for Dos
😁

The YMF724 PCI chipset should work well. Genuine OPL3 FM-sound indeed. But no Midi in pure dos without an external midi device, so be aware of that. It remains a PCI card, so it needs to use an emulation method to do DOS ISA sound. I always used mine with a SB-Link cable which connects to the mainboard. It can work without the cable too, but you have to find the right settings in the dos setup program, which is a bit tricky.

I have my Yamaha PCI sound card now and it is great! It's a Yamaha YMF724 DS-1.

This one came with a PC/PCI link cable that i had to plug into my motherboard (Intel SE440BX-2) and now i can run just about any Dos game using it's Soundblaster Pro 2.0 with OPL3 compatibility + all the various midi devices 😎 It actually sounds better than my old ISA SB16 which is one thing i did not expect!

@Gerwin
My Yamaha card has no issues playing Midi when i restart Win98 into Dos mode (is this considered pure Dos?). It works with MT-32, Roland, Sound blaster Midi, OPL3 and General Midi... I tried a few different games that support various midi modes such as Settlers 2 and it worked flawlessly in Dos.... makes me realise how terrible Sound blaster midi is 😁

Monkey Island 1 and 2 sound superb using Roland midi but you miss out on the digitised sound effects which i think are Sound blaster only?? Is there a way to get Roland midi and soundblaster effects running at the same time in Monkey Island 1+2 ??

I recommend this to anyone wanting a PCI card with excellent legacy support. It's also got hardware support for A3D, Directsound 3D, EAX and some Sensuara 3D thingy under Win 98!.... It murders my Soundblaster PCI in everyway... even has an s/pdif port (not that i will ever use it!)

Glad you like the soundcard, it is a very nice soundcard I agree. I even got me a second one some time ago. But I am currently messing about with ISA cards.

Good thing you used the SB-Link cable. In the Windows 98 dos box (when windows is actually loaded) you can use the semi-software midi synthesizer indeed. But when in pure dos (going to the dos prompt straight after turning the computer on, then pressing F8, or something) this midi device is not available, so you would need an actual soundcanvas compatible device connected to your gameport. Without something attached, you can still select General Midi, but there would be no audible music. So you would have to go back to OPL3/FM music instead.

Hey, you have an actual intel mainboard, may I ask which CPU you are running on it?

@gerwin

I am running a slot-1 Pentium 3 650mhz (coppermine) the board revision i have will take anything upto a Pentium 3 850mhz (It uses 100mhz bus).

I also have 384mb Ram and a Matrox G400 Max AGP video card.

This is not my main PC - just one of the few old legacy systems i have for messing about with 😁 (i am getting rid of an old P200 MMX Compaq Deskpro 4000 on a certain bay 😁 )

Nice system for sure. What harddisk sizes can it handle? I was actually hoping you would have one of the older 'multiplier limited' Pentium-II's installed. Because with your mainboard and such a CPU you can use intel's newspeed.exe to set the CPU multiplier, hence the CPU speed.

gerwin wrote:

Nice system for sure. What harddisk sizes can it handle? I was actually hoping you would have one of the older 'multiplier limited' Pentium-II's installed. Because with your mainboard and such a CPU you can use intel's newspeed.exe to set the CPU multiplier, hence the CPU speed.

I did not know about "newspeed.exe" and i still have the original PII 233mhz CPU that came with the system.

I am using a 40gb Maxtor hard drive with no problems... i am not sure what the max supported size would be?

PowerPie5000 wrote:

gerwin wrote:

Nice system for sure. What harddisk sizes can it handle? I was actually hoping you would have one of the older 'multiplier limited' Pentium-II's installed. Because with your mainboard and such a CPU you can use intel's newspeed.exe to set the CPU multiplier, hence the CPU speed.

I did not know about "newspeed.exe" and i still have the original PII 233mhz CPU that came with the system.

I am using a 40gb Maxtor hard drive with no problems... i am not sure what the max supported size would be?

40GB, that is good enough 😀. (I wanted to know because someone threw such a board away because of harddisk INT 13 problems, but that was with an obsolete BIOS version. )

Attached is newspeed, which is supposed to be an Intel tool to change CPU speed, but only under the right circumstances. I have not tested it myself much, because it does not work with any mainboard of mine. I cannot tell you to test it for me of course, so do what you please. Either way I am somehow kinda curious myself, to the point that I consider getting me an intel SE440BX or similar. 🙄

Thanks for the file, i will give it a try and see what happens.... I will try it with both PII and PIII on my Intel board. I am using the latest/last bios for this board which is version P17 and i have had no problems with it so far.... It is extremeley reliable and i have used all sorts of hardware with it 😀

I was going to try newspeed but i am not sure now as it flashes the CPU bios instead of unlocking bios features on the actual motherboard. If i flashed the CPU bios to a different speed it might go wrong and i will be left with a useless CPU 😖

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I was going to try newspeed but i am not sure now as it flashes the CPU bios instead of unlocking bios features on the actual motherboard. If i flashed the CPU bios to a different speed it might go wrong and i will be left with a useless CPU 😖

There is something mentioned like that in one of the quotes that I found and put in the readme file. But that article is somewhat nonsense, because there is no BIOS on any Pentium CPU... I think it might change a value on the mainboard BIOS though, as such it is a bit the same as changing the multiplier setting from within the BIOS setup, but then from the commandline. It will have no effect when using your Pentium-III, because that CPU is totaly multiplier locked, it disregards BIOS multiplier settings.
Still, if you fear for your system's safety, or are unsure about how CPU multipliers and FSB speeds work, then by all means just leave the program alone until I test it myself, one day 😉.

Usually i would change the FSB or the CPU multiplier within the bios but with it being an Intel Board they do not allow access to those featuresd. Intel boards have a fairly limited bios 😖

I didn't think CPU's had a bios either? I may test it if i can find my old PII 233 CPU.

I finally decided to use that newspeed.exe util on a spare slot-1 machine i have acquired... and to my surprise it actually does flash the CPU and not the motherboard! I used a PII 233mhz CPU and changed it to 300mhz using newspeed.exe and i then tested the CPU in another slot-1 PC (Intel SE440BX-2) and it booted up as 300mhz! So i am guessing this util overwrites the CPU ID code? It works anyway 😎

That utility is VERY interesting. I have an SE440BX (again), with a Slot1 P2 400 MHz cpu, and I thought that was too fast for the several oldies I might play on it, so I want to try telling the 400 (or perhaps a 266 that I have as well, but really don't have as confident of a feeling about) that it's really a 233.

Thanks, Gerwin!

P.S. Hey, Power Pie! That 233 to 300 overclock amounts to a 28% jump. That's massive, & asking for instability, don't you think?

Kiwi wrote:

That utility is VERY interesting. I have an SE440BX (again), with a Slot1 P2 400 MHz cpu, and I thought that was too fast for the several oldies I might play on it, so I want to try telling the 400 (or perhaps a 266 that I have as well, but really don't have as confident of a feeling about) that it's really a 233.

Thanks, Gerwin!

P.S. Hey, Power Pie! That 233 to 300 overclock amounts to a 28% jump. That's massive, & asking for instability, don't you think?

I was playing around with it for hours and it ran fine... It does have a chunky foxconn heatsink + fan 😁 I have now put it back in it's original system as my SE440BX-2 is for my P3 Coppermine 😀

Thanks for the feedback, and glad that the utility has some use for you guys! Even though it does not exactly work the way I expected it to, but that keeps things interesting.
Will again consider to get a suitable mainboard myself, once I return home. since I am currently abroad for work, yet able to surf the net in between the numerous power outages. 😜