VOGONS


First post, by ODwilly

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claims to have an OPTI 82c930 chip, so my first question: Is this a good chip? Anyone with an identical card that can vouch for it's audio quality? It has a Wavetable header, 4 audio ports and midi. The other two isa audio cards I have are an ESS audiodrive and a labway card. Both of which look pretty cheap, the labway claims to have a Yamaha chip at least. I will upload some pictures later, but all of you MIDI experts and audiophiles please give an opinion!

The vga card is very strange. It has 2 HUGE removable bios chips, and a 3rd normal height one soldered. claims to have 1mb of ram. Again, pics coming soon. Here are some numbers: VGA732/1mb 051 253723
FCC ID: GDEVGA700
Big chips: M5F VGA732 v1.01
Smaller chip:VGA700-u26 v1.03

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 1 of 3, by Logistics

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All I can find is that the card was made by Cardinal Technologies, and that is uses the Tseng ET-4000 chip.

Reply 2 of 3, by Jolaes76

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On the sound cards:

the Magic S22 and the Yamaha 71x card both have real OPL on board. The Yamaha cards are generally very noisy when speaker out is enabled but pretty clear on line out level. The S22 is probably nice and quiet even when amp-ed. Not "Turtle Beach quiet" but still respectable. The Opti 930 is "Controller+Codec 16-Bit, SBPro/WSS/MPU-401 compatible, IDE" (cited gerwin here)
The Yamaha is also a very competent SB Pro clone (if not the best). Opti (and Crystal btw) chipsets are reported to have polyphony issues with certain games.

the ESS cards have good SB Pro compatibility as well but lack the original OPL3 (or relabelled LS-xxx chip) so they are not for a purist. ESFM does sound nice or even better in some games, though... but these cards fail the Warlord 2 intro speech test so they are a show stopper for me.

MIDI daughterboards are finely hosted by both the Yamaha and Magic S2x cards.

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 3 of 3, by ODwilly

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Very nice! The tseng labs et-4000 seems like a good DOS card. It was worth the $3 at goodwill! and it sounds like I will be reserving the ESS card as an emergency spare. Then the Yamaha Labway card gets to keep its decade+ place since it is such a great SB Pro clone. The Magic card will likely get put in for testing since other then the games it seems to be a great sounding card. I like nice, quiet and clear audio for everyday usage.
Also I would just like to thank everybody on this site, I don't have many friends or get out much. When I get on here and read about your projects and discussions and everything it is just so fantastic and my brain loves the vast amount of knowledge. My pc up until 2008 was a 450mhz slot 1 p3 rig that I got new in 98-99 and blew up in 08. When I think of computing, I think of my father and my uncle introducing me to games like StarSiege:Tribes, UT99, DOOM and many other fantastic games. 2004-2010ish were pretty much spent w/o a pc having anything to do with my life (thanks rural Dial-up). It wasn't until dad upgraded from Netburst to Bulldozer that his netburst rig became mine and I was back. Started out playing the old favorites, upgraded the p4 to play some more recent games and within a year had a new, fast gaming rig started (because the thirst for speed once fed, never stops). Oops sorry, its late and Im tired.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1