I had one of these because back in the day I wanted a Wavetable sound card and this was the cheapest one sold as one. Turned out that the „Wavetable“ part was just a full version of Yamaha S-YXG50 bundled with it. However I got that going because S-YXG50 was awesome, although quite hefty on CPU usage especially when at that time I only had a PPro 233 as we were rather poor back then. But the card itself sounded good and it was also Linux compatible. So despite first having felt a bit ripped off about the Wavetable part I liked the card because it did everything I wanted it to do well enough.
@explorer90496 ай бұрын
Legacy mode 1 and 2 is their counterpart to ESS T-DMA. Both are a type of DMA controller snooping mechanism, which seems to be a proprietary DDMA scheme without needing the PCI chipset to do it but still requires the chipsets' onboard ISA DMA controller for it to copy the necessary register bits from an DOS application to their own sound chipset. this all involves PCI bus mastering instead ISA bus style transactions. Later chipsets (PCIE intel chipsets in particular) lack accesibility to the ISA style DMAC via PCI bus and only devices on LPC bus can only use the DMAC. Hence why Sound Blaster emulation on these type sound cards no longer function anymore on newer platforms. Even worst is that newer chipsets no longer have LPC bus which instead is replaced by eSPI bus making ISA truly dead.
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
oh that's interesting - thanks for that feedback! It makes sense now I refer back to what chipsets use which modes
@FoxMulder783 ай бұрын
To counter the mixer clipping issue with games that reset the mixer you can try with a third party utility. There's a little TSR mixer program on the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library under the Sound Devices -> Creative Labs category with the Sound Blaster Pro Volume Control TSR file title; it's a very useful piece of software for every SB Pro owner actually called SBPVOL Ver. 4.01 written by a spanish programmer back in the late 90's. It's description reads "SBPVOL, the SB Pro remote control is a resident program to adjust the volume of all the channels of the SB Pro. It only takes 1056 bytes of memory and works under nearly every single program (even under Windows in protected mode)". It can also turn the lowpass output filter on/off and Stereo/Mono switches of the SB Pro by a simple keyboard shortcut and uses the keyboard 3 leds as indicators when you switch settings.
@techdistractions3 ай бұрын
Will give this one a go cheers!
@miguelque91026 ай бұрын
The first time I learnt about FM801 was in an article about "counterfeit" Yamaha YMF724 cards. 😅
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
oh really? that's interesting - and with the XG software wavetable I did note some OEMs (and probably dodgy rip-off ones) were putting the XG label on the cards
@miaugato936 ай бұрын
I had this very sound card on my first ever proper computer - this was a Pentium 3 computer circa year 2000. I was never able to use it for DOS, but 8-year old me would never think of a DOS driver. And in Windows 98 i remember noting the sound was very crackly with bassy music - and speakers weren't the issue as my dad had connected the pc to a Mini-HiFi amp. I (much) later got a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Value and that solved the issue for that computer in particular, but i remember that my parents had bought for themselves a Pentium 4 with an integrated sound card that i remember sounded much better. Maybe it was a bad batch or lack of OEM configuration for DOS that spoiled it for me, but i don't have good memories about that one. That installer and audio setup utility was a throw back. That "Left......Right......" unlocked memories in me lmao. My retro build now has a mid-life Sound Blaster 16 PnP ISA sound card. It does all but the 3D sound which i remember was very gimmicky on the FM801 (QSound...) and suprisingly much better than the newer FM801.
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
Ah yes the good ol SB16 ISA - it is a classic with good reason. Thanks for sharing about your experience - I reckon the FM801 would've found its way to some cheaper and more budget orientated builds. Under Windows I've barely noticed any difference between it and the onboard AC'97 sound on the Via hence I didn't see the point to go into it too much. Qsound was pointless in my opinion :-)
@miaugato936 ай бұрын
@@techdistractions You said it all - barely any different from contemporary AC 97 which in their earliest days was also bad - it took until the Realtek IC's to really get going with quality in the AC97 world which was quite a bit later - in 2003 or something, when my mom's Pentium 4 was bought. Also I don't hold VIA sound chips very highly so perhaps yes the fm is as goos as a VIA chip which is not good praise.
@Roxor1286 ай бұрын
Whoopsy! A few wrong captions with the game footage. Death Rally, One Must Fall 2097, and Epic Pinball do not have any FM sound. They're all-digital with tracker music.
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
Point taken - thanks for the feedback! I believe I actually called out tracker for something else as well.. will need to watch for that in future.
@nigelrhodes43306 ай бұрын
I scrapped about 12 of these last week.
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
did you deem it more valuable than selling on eBay/ FB Marketplace?? curious to know
@DOSStorm6 ай бұрын
Great video! Its not perfect but it seems like a "good enough" solution if your only choice is a PCI slot. It does seem like it is messing up the sample rate for the digital sounds in Wolf3D and OMF. I will keep this on my eBay radar...
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
Absolutely - and it’s always good to have some options even if theyre a bit limited. The real mode aspect is what got me the most interested
@fanis40936 ай бұрын
Does it work with FreeDOS? (I guess it does, but would be nice to confirm)
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
i didn't try FreeDOS on this build but on a SIS based P3 build it worked off a FreeDOS floppy :-) So I too am assuming it would be fine on this
@dabombinablemi61886 ай бұрын
Does FM synth better than the AudioPCI, but not as well with digital effects - clipping might be a settings issue like with the SB 16XV. How much memory did you have available under DOS after the card was initialised?
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
Thanks for asking this - I am going to pin the response in the comments also. According to MEM /D DOS801.EXE uses approx 2144 bytes (so a little over 2K). In my case this reduced an unoptimised himem.sys setup from 608K to 606K conventional memory free.
@dabombinablemi61886 ай бұрын
@@techdistractions Does better than my Awe64 Value in that case. Excellent for a PCI card.
@Shmbler6 ай бұрын
Not bad at all for a PCI card.
@kiki67136 ай бұрын
Ah, I don't know... subjectively I never had any luck nor was I satisfied with its performance. For me it was always the "dire straits" type of card for when I built setups that had no onboard audio and I didn't have any "better" card to fill the void; a stop-gap, if you will. Maybe I'm bad at setting things up, maybe I used the wrong drivers all the time, but it just didn't work for me the way it did for you, and given that it falls into the later era of soundcards - times when they started to become integrated into the motherboards and that wasn't received as a "bad" thing (I'm referring to PCChips, their badge-engineered Amptron/Whatever-brand brands, and their hateful SoundPro onboard ICs), times when the wavetable aspect was being pushed out by CD audio, and times when the sound card market was tight, fierce, and experienced, the FM801 is, as the kids say, "very fucking mid". No wonder ISA stuck around until 2003 or so for all the gamer holdouts, MIDI musicians, and the like (not including people that needed ISA for cards other than sound cards). That said, it's indescribably better than other abominations such as the Avance Logic ALS200 or the Crystal CX4235. On the other hand, I read the FM801 is very much loved by the Amiga community. Subjectivity aside, this is a great video and I am hooked after one vid; keep it up! You enticed me to dig the poor thing out of storage and give it one more shot.
@techdistractions6 ай бұрын
Thanks for commenting and the feedback :-) I always have a soft spot for manufacturers that tried to jam some legacy block in for real-mode DOS. I'm glad you're going to dig your one out of storage - hopefully it can give you better memories than back in the day!
@kiki67136 ай бұрын
@@techdistractions All retro hardware deserves a second chance! Too many people are blinded with going with only the best parts possible. I dug it out this morning and the answer to such different experiences may as well be that mine is not the FM801AS like yours, but the FM801AU. Waiting for the weekend to slap it all on a desk and play around and see! :)