I've made a binge watch playlist actually LOL kzfaq.info/sun/PL5T8bmLxd_T1GIYQWBEww85JM1O8_F8FK

Upon discovering you'r channel, i have been in a nonstop binge buying retro hardware.

Nice! Pentium 100 is what I've got in my sound card test machine :D

I'm very happy about it. I think it is a perfect fit for that kind of sound card. :)

Thanks :)

I think Phil is more focused on budget hardware that nearly everyone can afford - i like that!

Well hang onto that AWE, we will be looking at one next week :D It's likely a different model, but very interesting regardless.

I can relate to that urge to hunt down parts from our growing up! I wish I took photos but back in my days it was real film nothing digital. So I'll never know exactly what I had ...

My mom took a lot of pics with her camera, back in the day, but none with our old PC in them, unfortunately (there are pics of me opening Origin Systems PC game presents for Christmas though.) I found a card with the 82C924 chip but found out that it came out later. I just received a Diamond k2y-pro16 with the 82C929A but cannot find Diamond-specific drivers (I tried multiple search engines - I think that those drivers are extinct, but I can try alternative drivers,) and am preparing to test them. I have seen pics of the Diamond card with Reveal labeled on it instead of Diamond, though I think this card is from 1994, and it seems that multiple companies released this card under their own brand name. I am going to try to find one with the 82C930A chip as the Dos Days site lists it as coming out in 1993, with the alternative 82C928 which came out the same year is said to have poor compatibility. I think that once I find a 930a card, I will declare my hunt for my first sound card to be "close enough" and complete, hehe! @@philscomputerlab

Nice :)

Take a look at OPTi 82c931 cards. They are all over ebay these days. OPTi 82c931 has very weird FM synthesis. It is not broken like on most Crystal chips. Just very different.

Thanks. And great price!

That's great, do drop a line when it arrives and how you go.

Hey! The card arrived today and I installed it. It works just fine, but I've got a slightly different card. It's the same model but there are some other chips. Maybe an older or newer revision.

Cool, never heard of it. But I just did a Google search, looks impressive.

Fortunately i recently found and bought a soundblaster awe64. This card was my dream since i bought my first pc back in 1993. It was an amd 486 dx2 @ 66mhz.

Yes they are great. Very versatile with all sorts of little features. We will be looking at something similar next week, so stay tuned :)

Yes it is versatile. But i was happy enough with my wave sound gallant sc8000. It supported sound blaster 16 and roland mt32 and once. Good times....

You can just download it :D Here is the link: www.philscomputerlab.com/cd-rom-mouse-memory-start-up-files.html

Danke!

Nice :)

Yea I'm locked in with the games so you can compare them with other reviews of other cards.

They only had a few. The green ones are still available. Should be the same experience as they have the same chips :)

Yea the Mono issue is the only negative really, but this affects very few games. For old the golden DOS oldies, this is a great card to have!

Well on this card the AD chip handles only the WSS compatibility. On the Terratec Base-1 we looked at recently however, the chip did FM and Sound Blaster compatibility.

Nice!

Yea that chip just isn't fully SB Pro compatible. Under Windows though, the AD codec kicks in and you get 16 Bit and 48 KHz, whereas the Sound Blaster Pro can only do 8 bit and 22 KHz.

Yea almost perfect, but for many this could be THE perfect card.

Nice.

Some sound cards need a small driver to activate the CD port. Also there were different standards, like Sony, Philips and so on. Yes it's sometimes a little complicated. If you know the exact model, happy to take a look.

@@philscomputerlab MF-009 OPTi 82C924 CS4231A-KL ISA audio card -- The middle PC I picked up is my current Win95 machine, and it has this slotted in as its audio card (it didn't come with one when I bought it) - Driver vers 4.00.23 for Win95, and the VOGONS DOS drivers. It works good, and while the Sound Blaster Pro setting doesn't quite sound as good as Windows Media, it's at least compatible with most games ( The Need For Speed is one 3D game I play on there has uses Windows Media, the rest only support Pro). Can't really find much documentation on the card, besides the data sheet and very basic information. No Jumper settings on anything I've found.

I will try to get a 82C930 card for sure :D

I wonder what's different compared to the 82C929.

I'll look into it :)

DeoxIT D5 is what is called (I just found the can). Hope this helps pal.😉

PhilsComputerLab They sell it at jaycar.

How odd, maybe some power surge?

Yea something to do with the CD-ROM interfaces.

I dug up some reference material for the ISA bus interface, and I think you are right. The jumper connects/disconnects the 16 bit I/O chip select line which tells the system board if the expansion card can support 16 bit I/O transfers. If memory serves, the Sony CD-ROM interface is 8-bit, but IDE/Mitsumi/Panasonic interfaces are 16 bit.

Thanks guys, very good to know. All I have are IDE drives though, it seems very hard finding working Sony, Mitsumi and Panasonic drives these days.

Nope it was my first sound card,coming from pc speaker,for me it sounded awesome back then.

For anyone out there the chipset is a dxp44q. Not much info on it but after testing, it does the same job as the two ls chips. Sounds identical. Phils driver setup in this vid also works identical on this card variant.

The drivers just initialise the card, they don't stay in the memory. So compatibility is "baked" into the chipset. But yes, I believe this are the very latest drivers.

Cool, thanks for the reply Phil :)

Not sure, I certainly haven't changed anything on that card.

BTW checking out the different versions of games on different systems can be very interesting. AFAIK Turrican II on the PC has a few unique sprites.

If you set the jumpers to line-out, the wheel is bypassed.

Ace9921 Don't I know you? :p Yeah, the opamps in cards like this were often the cheapest they could find. I had a friend many years ago who didn't think that changing the JRC opamps in his Onkyo AV receiver would make any noticeable difference. Of course, I did replace them with the popular (at the time) OPA2134 chips, and even I was surprised at the difference. It wasn't just placebo, and not subtle, it was far less distorted and FAR less harsh in the mid-range. The bass response was also improved a lot. More punch to it, but still better balanced overall. "PPK - Resurrection" was a great test track. lol (definitely didn't need "golden ears" to hear the improvement, and I'm certain that most people would pick the OPA opamps in a blind test. Unless of course they are the type of people who misinterpret harshness for "clarity".)

Ace9921 I'm thinking about designing an ISA sound card with just an FPGA, SDRAM, and DAC / ADC on it. The Wavetable synth is still improving, and there's already a "Sound Blaster" PCM and OPL2 / OPL3 core working on the ao486. I've yet to merge the synth core with the ao486, but it does actually contain some MPU401 stuff that's disabled / unfinished atm. I'm also still making progress of extracting the samples directly from the SC-55 ROM, and the SR-JV80 expansion cards. I never realised until recently that the JV-80 / JV-880 is essentially the same chipset as the SC-55, which in turn means that they are all compatible with the SR-JV80 sample ROMs. Those are the very same (expensive) cards which can be used in the "big brother" JV-1080 / JV-2080, and many more. ;) The JV-80 / 880 even uses the same CPU as the SC-55, so it should be possible to mod them by simply changing the ROMs. Roland clung on to their custom chip designs for far longer than imagined, as even the MT-32 and D-10 / D-20 are almost the same as well. (LA32 chip) The classic D-50 is essentially just a suped-up MT-32 with a faster CPU, and extra reverb and chorus chips added.

Good to see you again Ace!

@ElectronAsh - Oddly enough, most of the cards I've come across make use of TL074s with a few mixing those with rather crappy op-amps. My own 82C929A-based card is a weird one since it uses an LF347, an op-amp with the same slew rate as the TL074 and 3MHz bandwidth, yet it causes distorted bass. Watch The Many Sounds of: Star Wars X-Wing - Part 3 on my channel and you'll see what I mean. Your sound card idea sounds lovely. Keep me informed on your progress. @SolarstrikeVG - I'll always be around whenever there's an interesting tech video that comes my way. :)

I'll have another card soon which has the LF347 as well as a real YAMAHA OPL3.

Thanks for the update, I know Dune 2, but not that other game.

That's odd, it's been years since I had this card, but I never remember any sound effects problems.

@@grappydingus yeah trying to figure it out, also don't know how to get the CD-ROM to work

The Expertcolor Med3931/OPTi 82C931? Yeah, they do emulate OPL3, and the sound is atrocious when playing games (as in its unbearably bad). Really wish my ESS 18xx hadn't lost another capacitor.

Yea I will try to get those chipsets as well!

Try out all of them and choose which one you like best! It's a very subjective and personal decision :)

Then I got my work cut out for me lol, think there is around 5-6 different cards. But yeah, true, should probably choose by sound, and not by the books "cover" :)

That's it :D It's a huge part of this hobby, and I think otherwise you end up just second guessing your choice over and over.

That it sure is, and true, that lure of optimizing and tweaking, into the best possible system, is keeping the hobby fresh :D I have been putting together, and upgrading old rigs for days now, out of that lot. Got some great stuff, motherboards, cpu's, 486's, Cyrix 5x86, Geforce 256, and the list goes on and on. Your great dosbench have really been through the mill :D By the way, unrelated to this sound card, have you ever rund this 3d benchmark on old hardware? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fpqWn9iptdvNn6M.html It was a personal favorite (and battleground lol), before 3dmark

Haha that's awesome. I remember when I "started" with this hobby and my first videos. I had a like 4 or 5 set computers. But I kept changing things. I tried 3 sound cards in one machine and all of that. In the end I gave up, and I moved to test bench builds, putting something together for just one game if needed :)

Yea we all regret getting rid of parts. But most are quite easy to acquire again :)

I don't remember if I've tested the MIDI port. If it's not mentioned in the video then I don't know. There are workarounds with creative cards. The bug only happens if you use Sound Blaster and MIDI simultaneously. So you can use a second Sound Blaster and turn into a dedicated MIDI card...

@@philscomputerlab so will I have to have two sound cards in the same system to avoid the bug of hanging notes or slowdowns?? I have a sc 55 connected to a sound blaster 16

@@giuseppeluccitelli6624 Yes. For testing, play with the no sound option only MIDI. It should be smooth ....

@@philscomputerlab Thank you. but I'm not very expert I'll make a topic about Vogons because I didn't quite understand how to physically connect them to the SC 55. One for sound effects and the other for MiDi only

@@giuseppeluccitelli6624 No worries. Yes there is more to it but using another card as the MIDI interface is the main principle. Did you try the game without sound and just MIDI?

It's fascinating how every sound card has their own signature and sounds different. I tend to like to hear more detail in the highs, and prefer a more unfiltered sound. The YAMAHA 718 or the Aztech AZT2320 are good examples. Having said that, I also dig how the Sound Blaster 2 sounds, quite filtered and bass heavy. So yea, it's hard to make up your mind :D

I think you are referring to Sound Blaster 16 and later cards. But this one is meant to be Sound Blaster Pro compatible, not 16.

That was quick! Let me take a look at the other cards.

Ok so they have 4 connectors, so one would be line-out and the other one speaker out. The have the same chipsets, so in terms of features and software they should be the same. They might sound a bit different because of different components, but that's hard to say.

I'm sure we will check out the GUS at some point! Yes, the AD chip does the WSS under DOS and Windows. You can also find similar cards to this one, but with a Crystal chip.

If ISA is an option, either an ESS AudioDrive or a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold; otherwise an Aureal Vortex 2. IMO only, your mileage may vary.

I'm not sure, but I think that with PCI cards they have "moved on" to newer chipsets.

Mmm. I only ask because I'm thinking of keeping something like this in mind if I decide or need to replace my SB Live! CT-4870 in the near future, and I'm using an ASUS P4SD-LA, so, no ISA slots. Just PCI slots on that motherboard.

There are so many cool sound cards to discover, I hope I get around to testing them all :D

The thing that surprises me here how good some of the "clones" that emulate SB are. And on other hand how bad a lot of the actual sound blaster cards are. (I instantly remember how bad the AWE cards play music in doom for example). But not only that. In the early SB a SB PRO days creative was relatively stable with quality. But as SB16 hit it got really bad. You have like 2 good SB16 cards (the big ones with native OPL3 capability), and then you have tons of terrible SB16 cards all the value and vibra series, and as they changed over years they only got worse. So its generally better to grab a clone with known chips aka known quality than bad SB card from creative. This guy made a nice comparison, and to just think those were all available at the same time period and known as SB16, uff, the cheaper models really make your hair stand in agony: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/b86qq6hixNTQYJ8.html

Yea the Sound Blaster 16 range is riddled with poor cards :D

I'm not sure if HDD drives are supported. Certainly haven't tried that yet.

be interesting to see if HDDs could be hooked up

Well you can already have 4 HDDs running off the motherboard. I think that's plenty, but if you're dealing with a system with one a single IDE interface, then yea, that might be worth looking into.

PhilsComputerLab yeah for that system I meant use this as a legacy part not even to use the sound card part just to use my IDE drives was all

I was able to drive IDE HDD's trough mine (but it was not exactly this one, it was called Audio excel 16). I also was able to drive IDE drive on SB AWE32 IDE interface in winXP. But the AWE could not boot it cause it did not show in bios as IDE interface, it was the driver that initialized it. If you want bios to see it as IDE device, you must use non PNP card with switches and the interface must be switchable to IDE, like my Audio Excel 16 sound card can do. If it works only after the sound card driver initializes the interface, than you cannot use it to boot or in DOS based systems. Basically, if you are looking for sound card with IDE and you want to run actual hard drives there, it must have jumpers/switches to set it as IDE by default on it. Also keep in mind that those are very basic PIO IDE ISA controllers, they do not support DMA, so using it as additional IDE controller on modern machine is really bad idea it will do between 2,5-4MB/s with 100% CPU load. Thats what I measured on the AWE32. Its really useful with older 386/486 with no integrated IDE controller where it can serve as one (or as secondary one if your IO card has primary channel only, which most do, I have only one VLB controller that has both). On more modern systems the IDE controllers on board support DMA transfers which is miles ahead and on those systems you should avoid the sound cards IDE like plague.

Nope

@philscomputerlab what's the ide on the sound card? I tired drivers so far no luck.

Yea that's a fair comment. A command line tool would be nice. Later chipsets do Sound Blaster and WSS in a single chip, so no need to switch.

brostenen : the amplifiers and capacitors on these cards are horrible. Replacing them might yield interesting results?

I've got exactly the same that I recapped, I may record it someday but currently it's just stored away.

Don't have one, don't think I've used one...

@@philscomputerlab I see. Aside of the *930A chipset it still has the LS-212 and 215, but lacks the AD1846JP. What's in its place is a very small IC and a bunch of SMD resistors and capacitors. www.pchistory.lv/soundcard-bravo-ba019a003x-16-bit-isa.html Maybe a more budget oriented variant? I'm just curious if it's worth 10$.

Of course not, that standard wasn't out yet I believe. But WSS is 16 Bit and 48 KHz, just go with that option.

I see. So I guess selecting "SB16" in a DOS game won't work then? I've always wondered whether that setting actually makes a difference in DOS games or whether it just uses the same SB 8-bit sampling.

Creative was very protective about their Sound Blaster 16 standard. A few compatibles exist, but not this card. Hopefully we get to check out some of those cards in the future :)

yea they still have cheap stuff , but some parts esp the "somewhat higher end" like a 3.2ghz 478 p4 are at like 50+€ or heck , QX9770 for 379€ ? thats just bonkers

You are biased or have an agenda. Why not talk about what is shown in the video and that these sound cards are the cheapest with them? I picked affordable and available options. Plenty of other channel make "$15 Retro PC" videos that are totally unrealistic and nobody can replicate.

what im saying is that elecromyne have increased prices considerably ever since they started sponsoring youtubers , the content you make is great and a wonderful source of information , but elecromyne is not the best place to get this stuff , they charge 2x the price on more popular gear or specific stuff that has been shown off compared to normal ebay prices

Ok that is now just made up and not true. I go out of my way to pick out decent value options for many of my videos. None of them have gone up 10x in price. It's hard with the Internet, but you might be working for a competitor and want to tarnish their reputation? Either way it's odd and I my gut feeling is concerned.

Maybe you should watch the video?

Can't believe I missed it, thanks! :)

Haha :D All good, it happens! AFAIK SoftMPU works with pretty much every card. At least I haven't used one that doesn't work with it.