Also for completeness, the was an expansion slot that was similar to the CNR but shorter. It was designated as AMR or "Audio Modem Riser". Motherboards made by PC Chips/Amptron/ECS Elitegroup were notoriously adding the AMR in to the recipe for their ATX and mATX motherboards in the very late 90s to about 2005. The PC Chips M810LMR is a prime example.
Interesting information. Now in my Video: "General MIDI Synthesizer on a Motherboard's Game Port!" I used a M/B with a very similar integrated sound chip. Everything worked fine but I could not find a DOS mixer to enable the line-in. Now I have to do back and test this "VIASBCFG" if it can do the trick. Nice debugging repair of the audio Amp. However TL072 and LM358 are actually quite different chips. JFET vs BJT input stage and different Max Min input voltage levels (or common mode voltage). For this application in might not make a significant difference. But there might be some clipping now when you set the volume to the max. All depends on that is the circuit in the input of the Amplifier. This USB issue, I have noticed it too with some modern Systems in DOS. That is why I am always using PS2 KB and Mouse. There is sometimes an option in the BIOS about legacy devices USB that might help.
Yeah, I compared the ICs and circuits a little bit longer, than I showed it in the video. I didn't go into details, but you are absolutely right, the voltage levels of the ICs are slightly different, but I decided that it is good enough. The LM358 is not the best IC for this purpose actually, but so many cheap sound cards used it on their products, so I usually just decided not to care :D
How did you discover that the keyboard was the issue! Well done! When I was a kid I could not afford a genuine SB so I got a compatible one but it was not being recognised by games all the time. Then for the same price I got an Acer S30 - it had a Creative chip on it! I skipped Acer's drivers and realised I could install the Acer as a genuine SB under DOS and Windows! Amazing!
Via chipsets famous for their usage in budget mobos. Often those mobos does not have such a big love from vendor as more expensive intel-based boards. I want to say that slowdown with usb keyboard function enabled in bios can occur due to bug in bios routine that activates boot-up support for keyboard and it is possible that this bug can be fixed in rom.by' bios-fixer utility that you mention in previous videos. Its worth to try it on this mobo bios, i think. Thanks for video!
Another possible method may be voltage related, though your theory seems more likely as I don't think any USB keyboard that properly works with this setup would draw hardly a thing in most cases UNLESS the board is suffering unknown low-voltage issues from old age.
USB 1.0/1.1 in the early days were relatively CPU heavy. One of the reasons many touted Firewire (400) for data intensive work. Firewire chipsets did not require CPU for processing. Things like video transfer between devices (camera, PC, external drive) did performed much faster and w/less CPU overhead on Firewire.
also I recall old NIC card (windows 95 era) usually contains dumb chip that relied on CPU and dominate acess time on the PCI bus, that explain why CPU always near 100% whenerver I acess the network
It's possible to use SB/SB Pro sound with CPU cache disabled, and with no driver loaded. You just need the set blaster parameters. Adlib emulation will by extremely slow without CPU cache enabled though, since it's software based. I was using a Tualatin Celeron 1.3GHz (there's a video on my channel), but Test Drive III was still way to slow with CPU cache disabled (and way to fast with cache enabled). The SB Pro compatibility is good though, and the sound quality as well. Adlib emulation is acceptable, like you said nothing like a real OPL, but better than nothing. And when it comes to USB, I've had similar problems with Intel-based motherboards. It's always best to disable USB and use PS/2 instead. Pinball Fantasies with PC-speaker sound is a good way to test it, since it's very sensitive to timing issues/interrupts.
Nice video. The FM TSR taking up so much memory may be because the FM emulation in this case could be entirely done in software and I also suspect that's why Duke3D fails as the game is already very taxing on CPU. But just a guess
The sound comparisons sound like amplifier overdriving/clipping. Wonder if replacing either the decoupling caps or the amp with something higher quality might fix some of that distortion. Some of it does sound like it’s the voices used. Did you check if it’s clipping with a scope?
I once tried to use LM358 in audio amplifiers pre-amp-distortion was really noticable-replaced with soviet K157ud2-that reduced distortions to bearable levels. Here this opamp is probably used as a buffer so it could drive headphones properly. It could drive amplifier without this opamp probably, so I would have connected opamp inputs with outputs with wire links. With DOS games it does not bother so much though, so its better to leave it as it is.
Good to know! There are plenty of boards with a smoked onboard sound card. Mostly due to some bad speaker etc. I used to have one simillar board with AGP which a sold as "sound not working" to a guy who anyway wanted to have SB Live! in it. But now I know why maybe it was not working. It was possible to install the driver but there was no sound at all.
Hi! I loved that mobo! Got the user manual from MSI site and found that supports VIA C3 CPU's!!!!! So with setmul you can drop the speed without using BIOS... That board is awesome!! I have one also from MSI with AGP (MS-6153) and is my all in one mobo for retrogaming. My VIA C3@800 can go to 386DX40 using FSB 100Mhz and setting all to the minimum in setmul What a great board you have!
You could try to use UMBPCI instead of EMM386, if you only want UMBs and not EMS. VIA chipsets usually are well-supported with that driver. And it doesn't switch the CPU to V86 mode, which is awesome
FWIW Descent II is my favourite game from the era by far, but this is the first time I've heard the MIDI music. That game came with cd audio on the disc, and that's what I always played. I have the soundtrack to that game on my google music playlist.
your videos are great :) lovely and detailed but still accessible to those of us with no engineering training. Always cover interesting issues too. Always excited to see a new one in my feed :)
I have an HP thinclient with the VIA chipset and I had to change the BLASTER settings around to get Duke 3d to cooperate. Did you try a different IRQ or DMA channel by chance?
Deactivating usb legacy support can even free up conventional memory. Seems to depend on the implementation, though. For a DOS PC i would never use a USB-Keyboard, only if iam configuring things.
I have the same USB keaboard, which I usually use through a PS/2 adapter in my workshop. But in this case I was lazy and didn't connect the adapter, since the board has USB ports on-board. So, this was nothing what I'd usually would do, but on the other hand, I don't regret it, because I got an opportunity to run into this interesting issue.
I had same audio board from QDI, QDI Kinetiz 7E. It's VIA KT133A chipset, so same era. Also with ISA slot. I was so sad, when they stop included this nice audio chip later. Would not mind, if they would include it particulary in era, when ISA slot stopped to be presented on motherboards. In Pentium 4 era, socket 754/939 era, socket A - nforce 2 era , or later VIA KT600-880 chipsets. It was so good idea, but it's mostly presented only on boards which already have ISA, and so, its better option to use soundblaster for DOS gaming. Anyway, it saved me from buying new sound card, as when I've upraded to KT133A board, my ISA sound card was free, and I've moved it to secondary Pentium II computer, and we could play LAN games at home with soundblaster support on both computers. We played lots of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow warrior, Warcraft 2... over LAN. Man, that were the times! Btw, I don't remember any problems under Duke Nukem 3D, so there is certainly a way, how to get it working there.
9:48 For me it looks like a correlation with keyboard interrupts. Maybe fiddling with A20 gate options in BIOS will change something? edit: Ohh. I see that you have fixed it by changing the keyboard interface :)
Hi, I saw the video when it was new. Now I got a Gigabyte GA-6VXTE from scrap. I had to replace 4 caps and then it was stable. I found also the legacy Sound Blaster options in BIOS. And this was the moment your video comes back to my mind and became quite handy. So thanks a lot, it saved me a couple hours. It is a quite nice option to have a tualatin running with an onboard dos compatible sound chip. Just to have the possiblity to go quickly back to classics like keen4 and doom2. But for long therm I guess I would insert a dedicated OPL3 sound card to the ISA-Slot. For me the music in some keen4 levels sound not that great in comparison. So thanks a lot and have (hopefully) a long weekend.
18:26 - I recently sold almost the same motherboard, I thought that nobody will want a MB with no AGP, but vice versa was true, people wanted it just because of ISA slot. 😀 If nobody bought it, I planned to build some little DOS gaming PC with that, but probably with Win 95 or 98, not actual DOS, I am to young to play with actual DOS. 😀 It's always surprise for me what people actually want, but it makes sense now, I didn't realize that later socket 370 boards don't have ISA anymore. BTW, I have pretty good experiences with VIA chipsets on sc 370 boars, I don't know why people hated them, from my personal experience, it was better than Intel boards, especially those shits with intel 810 and 815 chipsets where it was constantly throwing some errors while installing windows because those IDE controllers were really poor.
I have a HP Thin Client with the same VIA sound chip, that I wanted to use for DOS. Thanks for the great hints how to get it working properly. Especially the USB keyboard thing. The thin client only has one combined mouse/keyboard PS/2 port, I think I need to get a splitter for that to avoid issues with USB under DOS.
@@0815Backo Thanks, I didn't know. (Also didn't research at all yet tho'.) However, if that needs software support in the BIOS somehow, that could lead the same kind/similar of slowdowns Necroware experienced with the USB keyboard. Or maybe not. Depends on a lot of factors.
@@chainq68k no Problems on the HP T57XX Series. I've tested it with DOS 6.22, Windows 95 and Windows 98. For old games like Wolfenstein 3D DOS 6.22 is the best choice.
Nice to see you back again! My personal guess for the underlying problem, and why it didn't go away for Duke Nukem 3D: The AdLib playback is purely software-driven. Which would also explain the HUGE driver (besides bad development). Duke works in Protected Mode (Doom does too, I think, but may use it differently), and this produces some hiccups with the playback due to possibly non-handled cases or lack of CPU time (but this CPU should have plenty of it). I personally wouldn't use such a combo for DOS games... TSRs for audio are a pain in the... back ;)
TL072 happens to be a very common part in PC pedal building; I think I have a buttload of them from some previous projects. It is a dual op-amp, LM358, JCR4558, NE5532 being drop-in replacements. LM324 can do the same job but is not pin-compatible.
The reason for the AMR/CNR slots coming into existence was certification. If you added a modem directly to the motherboard it would need more certification which was costly.
Didn't know about the VIAFMTSR but that might explain why my VIA Epia VE5000 ITX mobo with a passive Eden (C3) 533 (no FSB slowdowns needed, it's a turd out of the box lol) didn't produce any sound in DOS despite being detected properly by games. The sound chip is slightly different (VT1612A) but other than that, most of the stuff said about this MSI board applies to the Epia as well... other than the lack of slots (only has one PCI). It even uses the same chipset (PLE133 aka VT8601A), just the onboard ethernet is not realtek but a VIA "Rhine" VT6103
I found interesting comment written by Krzysztof Kliś under PhilsComputerLab video about enabling Sound Blaster Pro and FM in VIA VT8231 in HP t5710, i think it might be usefull, or not 😁: 1) VIASBCFG can work with either IRQ 5 or IRQ 7, although IRQ 7 has much better compatibility. Some software doesn't work properly even when both the sound chip and the software are configured to use IRQ 5. It's because using IRQ 5 sometimes causes conflicts with the integrated USB controller on HP t5710. 2) You should turn off the parallel port completely in BIOS (Integrated Peripherials -> Parallel Port -> Disabled). It uses the same IRQ pool as the integrated sound chip. Even if you set up the sound chip to use IRQ 7 and the parallel port to use IRQ 5 (or vice versa), they still remain in conflict with each other. Probably a VIA chip bug, or HP t5710 specific, because it should not happen under normal conditions. 3) You can load VIAFMTSR into upper memory only when you turn off the network controller in BIOS (Integrated Peripherials -> Network Controller -> Disabled). It's because the program needs a large block of continuous upper memory, which can't be provided when some addresses in the middle of UMB are mapped to the network controller. So while in theory "mem /c/p" shows enough free upper memory, it is fragmented, and large programs (like VIAFMTSR) simply won't fit in. PS. If i remember correctly Duke Nukem 3D sound worked nice on HP t5710 thin client so it might be that motherboard issues.
DooooM! Just wouldn't be a NecroWare video without it showing up. BTW: Am i the only person who remembers that last game level was a big thumb-in-the-eye to whoever played it? There's no reward screen. Ending was a one cell box. Once you phased inside, it killed you.
When I run an ISA sound card into my KT133 board, the sound distorts and blurs horribly when the system is under heavy load. Often just like that in Windows. It doesn’t matter which Windows version or which sound card is installed. So I would be interested to know if the problem also exists with other VIA chip sets.
ive been playing around with my compaq socket 370 board as well. I upgraded it from a celeron 533 to a p3 1 ghz. I put in my voodoo 3 and sb live. I wish i had a isa slot like yours. But i was able to get the dos driver for the live to work. And im actually going to try your buck converter to lower the fan speed, right now its full throttle and load.
@@asanjuas although my board does have a ESS 1988 (although i dont think it sounded that great). im mainly wanting it for windows glide gaming. The live card also has EAX. I have other systems for much better dos sound i.e awe64 +X2GS.
@@asanjuas which in those cases i have 3 other options 386 with ESFM, or 486 with YMF262, or awe64 with CQM, and laptops with yahama sound. So i think i can be ok with the P3 running with the live ;-)
Nice you als found the viasbcfg. I've used it in the past on old laptops and motherboards. The VIA FM sound too harsh for my taste so don't tend to use it. I've also had a case where the FM was not working but the SB Pro emulation was.
Did you try disabling the on chip modem? For the Descent 2 music I liked the VIA version better. Sharper highs and the midrange wasn't muddy like with OPL3. The low range sounded that same. For Wolfenstein and DOOM there was good and not so good in each. It comes down to how well Yamaha and VIA did each individual instrument. Just worked out that the VIA chip had better ones for the Descent 2 music.
Hello there. I'm debugging a MSI 694T pro. Do you have the datasheet for VT1611A? This board (Also known as MS-6309 ver5) has a VT1612, but for some reason, the VCC is 5V - whereas the chip only accepts 3,3V! I'm wondering what the voltage for VT1611A might be..
What other options are there for IRQ, under ISA IRQ priority, they run from 0-7, with the high IRQs in slotted in at 2 (and IRQ 9 redirects back to 2) - so all the high ones are higher priority than the available low ones
OPL3 звучит ламповее! :) Ради этого VIA не стоит заморачиваться с такой материнкой, тем более на прожорливом Р4 ) Настоящий олдскул это Копермайн + 440BX + SB16 :)
Но это же не P4, а как раз Coppermine :) Как я сказал в видео, прикольно, что на этом борту есть все, что нужно и в маленьком корпусе получится замечательный компактный ретро ПК.
@@run4restrun259 Хехе :) Обычно у людей нехватает терпения досмотреть до конца, но тут я уже в 0:10 как раз говорю, что за борд и в 0:28 написано, что именно за процессор. Что-то я делаю не так :)
@@necro_ware Простите, смотрю видео по утрам на работе и переодически меня отвлекают звонками - хотят с утра услышать "выкключите-включите компьютер", поэтому я иногда пропускаю важные моменты)) Постораюсь отключать телефон на просмотре ваших видео :)
Does the problem with Duke3D persists when you choose 8bit mixing? Soundwise it is very problematic game, I had same issue on Toshiba 220CDT laptop and only changing card's address to 240H did help.
I have a VIA Epia 800 motherboard which uses the same chipset and the same VIA AC'97 codec. The sound works very well in DOS, however if I use setmul to slow down the CPU, the SoundBlaster emulation stops working. At least this MSI motherboard has an ISA slot for a real DOS-compatible sound card :)
Its interesting how IRQ's really affected older systems. Newer systems are so fast and more reliant on USB that it is barely noticeable. However if you look up the IRQ table you will see that USB and sound are higher on the list then PS2; and other keyboard inputs. PS2 has a fairly low IRQ, 11 or something. This means if you interrupt the CPU at a higher number for a USB input, you have to wait another several cycles for video or sound. If you put enough USB interrupts you can probably stall audio and other CPU activities. PS2 has such a low interrupt that the delay for the next exaction is low. Basically if you imagine a computer takes a second to go through each interrupt, and resets to 0 if it encounters one. Then you would reset the counter after only 11 seconds for PS2. but USB, which is around 50, would mean you would lose 50 seconds every time you interrupted the count. And if audio was say 60, you would have to wait 50+60=110 seconds for next interrupt. Computers are of course faster and the numbers are not exact, but you can get the idea.
with Wolf the VIA sounds like the Genesis a bit with those harsh sounding parts of the peace I didn't even know there was an OPL3 that sounded like that XD
Yamaha makes both of the sound chips in question here. The Genesis / MD is not OPL3, but it has a lot in common, and either can be programmed to make similar sounds.
VIA и ESS мой любимый DOS-звук ) Ну почти. И вижу, что VIAшный контроллер USB наносит ответный удар )) А так конечно круто, всё играет прилично, а звуковой карты как бы и нет.. А если вернуть драйвер в основную DOS-память, Дюку лучше не станет?.. PS. И даже тут ты умудрился перепаять дохлую детальку, за одно это лайк!
Hey, I have 3 the same MBs, but in rev.5.0 with newer chipset VT8601T. They can run Tualatin CPUs (tested by myself with Pentium III Tualatin 1.13GHz). I didn't know what to do with them, because I was dissatisfied they haven't got AGP slot. I even wanted to reserve them for parts, but I didn't do that. They are still in my collection, repaired and working ;).
I had similar experiences when I tried the VIA sound system on AMD motherboards but I don't remember any slowdowns! ... Imma going to have to dig out mah Athlon 650 Slot-A and have some fun with it! thnx!
those VIA chips are not supposed the opl are emulated by cpu? like today's modern sound ? going from USB to old PS2 unloaded some overhead from the cpu.
it has hardware emulation. the slowdowns were because of IRQ conflicts on USB, because of bug in BIOS. USB IRQ has higher priority, so it slow down everything else, when using (moving mouse, or press and hold key on keyboard)
A lot of DACs and codecs have VERY weak outputs that are unable to drive a significant amount of current. The op-amp is a buffer amplifier that may or may not be applying any voltage gain (amplifying), and may only be used for current gain (buffering.)
On my early USB motherboards, I always insisted to use the PS/2 ports so as to not waste USB. I reckon that's why I never ran into those strange slowdowns. Interesting.
Sounds like the via chip is offloading sound processing to the CPU. Duke Nukem 3D apparently taxes the CPU enough to spoil the audio playback. I remember running a Pentium 233mmx the addition of a Sound Blaster Live PCI card actually made Star Wars episode 1 Racer playable for me. GPU was a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI.
Well the Live cards did have more processing power than some Pentium (according to Creative) - so they are always good when paired with either old or weak CPU.
USB has great CPU overhead, even on modern CPU's... On your 'modern' PC, open task manager to the CPU tab, sit idle for a moment, then move your mouse in a quick circle (even just on empty desktop) - you will see how much your CPU spikes... On older machines, this was even more evident....
The LM358's output stage is not really suited for audio applications, creating crossover distortion. An audio op-amp such as NE5532 would be better suited.
I know, the best would be even to use the same as the original TL072, because of the parts around it. However LM358 is the only one I had at hand and for the low fidelity DOS sound (PCM @11kHz + FM) it shouldn't make a big difference. Furthermore on the old ISA sound cards LM358 was a quite widely used amp actually. I have multiple cards with this amp on board.
@@necro_ware It shouldn't matter much, but the TL072 has a J-Fet input stage and the LM358 and NE5532 are of the bipolar type. The J-Fet opamp has a much lower input bias current. LM358 has been widely used in ISA sound cards, because of its low price and ability to work with 5V power supply, TL072 at 5V shows strong asymmetry of the output signal.
*Bootsrap cap would be more appropriate, I believe. Those are on the output of the OpAmp if I'm not mistaking. Decoupling caps are usually used close to power pins like with RAM for example, to 'contain' the switching/digital noise locally to that chip.
Yep, that's what happens when you have a sound card that does not have real audio DSP hardware but instead relies on the CPU MMX instructions... (Does depend on driver implementations too though)
I also never use USB keyboards or mice with my retro systems anymore. On one system, when running games in Windows, the system would stutter every five seconds or so for about half a second. On others, simply moving the USB mouse produces a coil-whine like noise from the motherboard. Best to just stick to serial/PS2.
It's better to use Windows 98 and the Combo Driver. This driver emulates perfectly General MIDI. The music in Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and so on sounds great with it. The FM TSR driver is perfect for Prince of Persia, Wofenstein 3D etc.. The "soundbug" in Wolfenstein 3D is the result of a cpu, which is too fast.
The LM358 has a very slow slew rate, lower operating frequency and strong crossover distortion under certain output load conditions that make it work in class A. It is a very poor choice as a replacement for the TL072. The end result is going to be poor audio quality.
Yeah, true, but for DOS with it's 11kHz sound it wouldn't be noticable :) I didn't use it in HiFi, but may be in Windows at 44kHz there will be some difference. I already ordered new TL072 to make a comparison.
That slowing is a hardware issue. Believe me, i used to own the very same mobo and gave it up. I then bought a sb pro 2 with 8mb soundbank edit: 12:13 😳😳😳 do not tel me!! All i had to do is use ps/2??? 😱😱😱😱
@@xuchao9098 Yes and no. I commented this elsewhere. Isn't quite there, not enough integrated. I still own one from AMD. Has to put VGA and SOUND modules separately. I saw some videos on youtube trying to solve it. But isn't quite the same thing as a pentium class RPI idea I am dreaming here.
I'm always amused at how FM sound can be messed up, and how much that happened on clone cards. I think the worst was a clone card LGR showed, it made all the sounds into these weird toots.
I'm a little surprised the Sound Blaster Emulation isn't completely terrible. That TSR though is bad news and will make it impossible to play games like both ultima 7s that need a lot of conventional and can't run with Emm386/QEMM
Shame about that FM synthesis. It sounds like they got a lot of it right but it sounds like they totally fudged the envelopes. Everything just sounds super overdriven. Games with lower sounds and music sound mostly OK, at least not horribly distorted. If they got that one thing working right, it would probably be very acceptable.
Lm358 is a terrible audio opamp. Slew rate and crossover distortion, as well as noise are all sub optimal. I'd really recommend sourcing some tl072's or ne5532's as inexpensive audio opamps. This isn't a high fidelity application, but the difference will be audible
Yeah, I planned to give it a try next time I order some parts. I'm not going to use this board, but I'd be curious if I'd hear any difference. I think, that this setup is not high quality enough to hear any difference though.
It would have to be some pretty insane amount of distortion to account for the emulated FM difference... This isn’t a HiFi component. If you were going to use it for CD quality audio playback in Windows, then maybe care a little. But for the land of DOS, with its 11kHz sample rates and FM synth music? I don’t think the op-amp is going to be the bottleneck here. It’s probably already better than a garden variety Sound Blaster card. The slew rate for audio stuff doesn’t have to be very high. It is admittedly dependent on gain bandwidth product, but this isn’t a mic amp circuit, so the gain is probably fairly low, if not unity.
QDI used it on KT133A boards. Check it out, those have AGP and was meant mid-range in the era. Board's name's QDI Kinetiz 7E. I was lucky to buy it in 2002, and used a legacy audio for DOS, played lots of games without ISA sound card under DOS. Of course, at the same time, windows 98 and Windows XP 3d acclerated games could be played through AGP card. We had Geforce MX440 in that time. Played lots of Soldier of Fortune, Noone lives forever, Rainbow Six 3 Raveshield in those times. Also Morrowind ,Warcraft 3. Good times.
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Also for completeness, the was an expansion slot that was similar to the CNR but shorter. It was designated as AMR or "Audio Modem Riser". Motherboards made by PC Chips/Amptron/ECS Elitegroup were notoriously adding the AMR in to the recipe for their ATX and mATX motherboards in the very late 90s to about 2005. The PC Chips M810LMR is a prime example.
Also, some low cost manufactures, use two slots in place were must be AGP slot, and from distant is look like MB have AGP slot :)
Fun fact.
The MSI support page with drivers, BIOS and manual is still up and you can get drivers up to Win Vista x64!
Through compatibility mode I bet you could get those drivers working under Windows 7 too, had to do that with a WLAN card that only had Vista drivers
I was having a really good evening until your first lemming didn't start digging. Great video though, thanks!
Hah :D I din't have my mouse connected as I tested the sound and I didn't bother to make it with the keyboard.
Interesting information. Now in my Video:
"General MIDI Synthesizer on a Motherboard's Game Port!"
I used a M/B with a very similar integrated sound chip.
Everything worked fine but I could not find a DOS mixer to enable the line-in.
Now I have to do back and test this "VIASBCFG" if it can do the trick.
Nice debugging repair of the audio Amp.
However TL072 and LM358 are actually quite different chips.
JFET vs BJT input stage and different Max Min input voltage levels (or common mode voltage).
For this application in might not make a significant difference.
But there might be some clipping now when you set the volume to the max.
All depends on that is the circuit in the input of the Amplifier.
This USB issue, I have noticed it too with some modern Systems in DOS.
That is why I am always using PS2 KB and Mouse.
There is sometimes an option in the BIOS about legacy devices USB that might help.
Yeah, I compared the ICs and circuits a little bit longer, than I showed it in the video. I didn't go into details, but you are absolutely right, the voltage levels of the ICs are slightly different, but I decided that it is good enough. The LM358 is not the best IC for this purpose actually, but so many cheap sound cards used it on their products, so I usually just decided not to care :D
How did you discover that the keyboard was the issue! Well done! When I was a kid I could not afford a genuine SB so I got a compatible one but it was not being recognised by games all the time. Then for the same price I got an Acer S30 - it had a Creative chip on it! I skipped Acer's drivers and realised I could install the Acer as a genuine SB under DOS and Windows! Amazing!
Via chipsets famous for their usage in budget mobos. Often those mobos does not have such a big love from vendor as more expensive intel-based boards. I want to say that slowdown with usb keyboard function enabled in bios can occur due to bug in bios routine that activates boot-up support for keyboard and it is possible that this bug can be fixed in rom.by' bios-fixer utility that you mention in previous videos. Its worth to try it on this mobo bios, i think.
Thanks for video!
Another possible method may be voltage related, though your theory seems more likely as I don't think any USB keyboard that properly works with this setup would draw hardly a thing in most cases UNLESS the board is suffering unknown low-voltage issues from old age.
The VIA FM rendition in Wolfenstein 3D sounds like an electric guitar mastering gone wrong
USB 1.0/1.1 in the early days were relatively CPU heavy. One of the reasons many touted Firewire (400) for data intensive work. Firewire chipsets did not require CPU for processing. Things like video transfer between devices (camera, PC, external drive) did performed much faster and w/less CPU overhead on Firewire.
also I recall old NIC card (windows 95 era) usually contains dumb chip that relied on CPU and dominate acess time on the PCI bus, that explain why CPU always near 100% whenerver I acess the network
It's possible to use SB/SB Pro sound with CPU cache disabled, and with no driver loaded. You just need the set blaster parameters. Adlib emulation will by extremely slow without CPU cache enabled though, since it's software based. I was using a Tualatin Celeron 1.3GHz (there's a video on my channel), but Test Drive III was still way to slow with CPU cache disabled (and way to fast with cache enabled). The SB Pro compatibility is good though, and the sound quality as well. Adlib emulation is acceptable, like you said nothing like a real OPL, but better than nothing.
And when it comes to USB, I've had similar problems with Intel-based motherboards. It's always best to disable USB and use PS/2 instead. Pinball Fantasies with PC-speaker sound is a good way to test it, since it's very sensitive to timing issues/interrupts.
Nice video. The FM TSR taking up so much memory may be because the FM emulation in this case could be entirely done in software and I also suspect that's why Duke3D fails as the game is already very taxing on CPU. But just a guess
The sound comparisons sound like amplifier overdriving/clipping. Wonder if replacing either the decoupling caps or the amp with something higher quality might fix some of that distortion. Some of it does sound like it’s the voices used.
Did you check if it’s clipping with a scope?
I once tried to use LM358 in audio amplifiers pre-amp-distortion was really noticable-replaced with soviet K157ud2-that reduced distortions to bearable levels.
Here this opamp is probably used as a buffer so it could drive headphones properly. It could drive amplifier without this opamp probably, so I would have connected opamp inputs with outputs with wire links. With DOS games it does not bother so much though, so its better to leave it as it is.
Good to know! There are plenty of boards with a smoked onboard sound card. Mostly due to some bad speaker etc. I used to have one simillar board with AGP which a sold as "sound not working" to a guy who anyway wanted to have SB Live! in it. But now I know why maybe it was not working. It was possible to install the driver but there was no sound at all.
I've never noticed how stoned the trees are in Commander Keen
LOL
Hi! I loved that mobo! Got the user manual from MSI site and found that supports VIA C3 CPU's!!!!! So with setmul you can drop the speed without using BIOS... That board is awesome!! I have one also from MSI with AGP (MS-6153) and is my all in one mobo for retrogaming. My VIA C3@800 can go to 386DX40 using FSB 100Mhz and setting all to the minimum in setmul
What a great board you have!
Thank you for this videos 👍
You could try to use UMBPCI instead of EMM386, if you only want UMBs and not EMS. VIA chipsets usually are well-supported with that driver. And it doesn't switch the CPU to V86 mode, which is awesome
Interesting, thanks!
FWIW Descent II is my favourite game from the era by far, but this is the first time I've heard the MIDI music. That game came with cd audio on the disc, and that's what I always played. I have the soundtrack to that game on my google music playlist.
your videos are great :)
lovely and detailed but still accessible to those of us with no engineering training. Always cover interesting issues too.
Always excited to see a new one in my feed :)
Thank you for sharing your experiences with us, God Bless my friend.
Perfect one with a complete step by step details u had shown.. thx u !!!
I have an HP thinclient with the VIA chipset and I had to change the BLASTER settings around to get Duke 3d to cooperate. Did you try a different IRQ or DMA channel by chance?
Deactivating usb legacy support can even free up conventional memory. Seems to depend on the implementation, though. For a DOS PC i would never use a USB-Keyboard, only if iam configuring things.
I have the same USB keaboard, which I usually use through a PS/2 adapter in my workshop. But in this case I was lazy and didn't connect the adapter, since the board has USB ports on-board. So, this was nothing what I'd usually would do, but on the other hand, I don't regret it, because I got an opportunity to run into this interesting issue.
I had same audio board from QDI, QDI Kinetiz 7E. It's VIA KT133A chipset, so same era. Also with ISA slot.
I was so sad, when they stop included this nice audio chip later. Would not mind, if they would include it particulary in era, when ISA slot stopped to be presented on motherboards. In Pentium 4 era, socket 754/939 era, socket A - nforce 2 era , or later VIA KT600-880 chipsets. It was so good idea, but it's mostly presented only on boards which already have ISA, and so, its better option to use soundblaster for DOS gaming.
Anyway, it saved me from buying new sound card, as when I've upraded to KT133A board, my ISA sound card was free, and I've moved it to secondary Pentium II computer, and we could play LAN games at home with soundblaster support on both computers.
We played lots of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow warrior, Warcraft 2... over LAN. Man, that were the times!
Btw, I don't remember any problems under Duke Nukem 3D, so there is certainly a way, how to get it working there.
Awesome content as always! Now I know some suspect components for repairing sound cards.
9:48 For me it looks like a correlation with keyboard interrupts. Maybe fiddling with A20 gate options in BIOS will change something?
edit: Ohh. I see that you have fixed it by changing the keyboard interface :)
Yup looks like irq storm. And i think it is usb keyboard routine bug somewhere either in usb controller chip or in bios.
Ahhhh A CLOSER LOOK!
Hi, I saw the video when it was new. Now I got a Gigabyte GA-6VXTE from scrap. I had to replace 4 caps and then it was stable. I found also the legacy Sound Blaster options in BIOS. And this was the moment your video comes back to my mind and became quite handy. So thanks a lot, it saved me a couple hours. It is a quite nice option to have a tualatin running with an onboard dos compatible sound chip. Just to have the possiblity to go quickly back to classics like keen4 and doom2. But for long therm I guess I would insert a dedicated OPL3 sound card to the ISA-Slot. For me the music in some keen4 levels sound not that great in comparison. So thanks a lot and have (hopefully) a long weekend.
18:26 - I recently sold almost the same motherboard, I thought that nobody will want a MB with no AGP, but vice versa was true, people wanted it just because of ISA slot. 😀 If nobody bought it, I planned to build some little DOS gaming PC with that, but probably with Win 95 or 98, not actual DOS, I am to young to play with actual DOS. 😀
It's always surprise for me what people actually want, but it makes sense now, I didn't realize that later socket 370 boards don't have ISA anymore. BTW, I have pretty good experiences with VIA chipsets on sc 370 boars, I don't know why people hated them, from my personal experience, it was better than Intel boards, especially those shits with intel 810 and 815 chipsets where it was constantly throwing some errors while installing windows because those IDE controllers were really poor.
I followed the instructions and it easily worked!
Never saw cards for CNR slot - from 20 years mystery solved!! ))
Rare as hen’s teeth, those things. I was starting to wonder if they were just a myth.
I have a HP Thin Client with the same VIA sound chip, that I wanted to use for DOS. Thanks for the great hints how to get it working properly. Especially the USB keyboard thing. The thin client only has one combined mouse/keyboard PS/2 port, I think I need to get a splitter for that to avoid issues with USB under DOS.
This Thin Client can emulate PS/2 at USB Port. A USB Mouse will detect as an PS/2 Mouse with Dos Driver.
@@0815Backo Thanks, I didn't know. (Also didn't research at all yet tho'.) However, if that needs software support in the BIOS somehow, that could lead the same kind/similar of slowdowns Necroware experienced with the USB keyboard. Or maybe not. Depends on a lot of factors.
@@chainq68k no Problems on the HP T57XX Series. I've tested it with DOS 6.22, Windows 95 and Windows 98. For old games like Wolfenstein 3D DOS 6.22 is the best choice.
Nice to see you back again! My personal guess for the underlying problem, and why it didn't go away for Duke Nukem 3D: The AdLib playback is purely software-driven. Which would also explain the HUGE driver (besides bad development). Duke works in Protected Mode (Doom does too, I think, but may use it differently), and this produces some hiccups with the playback due to possibly non-handled cases or lack of CPU time (but this CPU should have plenty of it).
I personally wouldn't use such a combo for DOS games... TSRs for audio are a pain in the... back ;)
There is this sound on vía chipset 82C686A/B with same options in BIOS on some athlon XP or pentium 4 machines.
Very nice sound fix. I would have done nothing more than remove the VIA chip, to free up resources, and plopped in an old ESS 1868 card.
Very useful! Thank you for sharing!
Yeeey! There's now sound coming out the wazooo on DOS games :P
TL072 happens to be a very common part in PC pedal building; I think I have a buttload of them from some previous projects. It is a dual op-amp, LM358, JCR4558, NE5532 being drop-in replacements. LM324 can do the same job but is not pin-compatible.
Eagerly waiting....
The FM comparison makes me believe that the sound clips heavily. Perhaps lowering the volume with the utility helps?
The reason for the AMR/CNR slots coming into existence was certification. If you added a modem directly to the motherboard it would need more certification which was costly.
Looks like the same via sb emulation as in thin clients, mentioned by Phil.
Didn't know about the VIAFMTSR but that might explain why my VIA Epia VE5000 ITX mobo with a passive Eden (C3) 533 (no FSB slowdowns needed, it's a turd out of the box lol) didn't produce any sound in DOS despite being detected properly by games. The sound chip is slightly different (VT1612A) but other than that, most of the stuff said about this MSI board applies to the Epia as well... other than the lack of slots (only has one PCI). It even uses the same chipset (PLE133 aka VT8601A), just the onboard ethernet is not realtek but a VIA "Rhine" VT6103
I found interesting comment written by Krzysztof Kliś under PhilsComputerLab video about enabling Sound Blaster Pro and FM in VIA VT8231 in HP t5710, i think it might be usefull,
or not 😁:
1) VIASBCFG can work with either IRQ 5 or IRQ 7, although IRQ 7 has much better compatibility. Some software doesn't work properly even when both the sound chip and the software are configured to use IRQ 5. It's because using IRQ 5 sometimes causes conflicts with the integrated USB controller on HP t5710.
2) You should turn off the parallel port completely in BIOS (Integrated Peripherials -> Parallel Port -> Disabled). It uses the same IRQ pool as the integrated sound chip. Even if you set up the sound chip to use IRQ 7 and the parallel port to use IRQ 5 (or vice versa), they still remain in conflict with each other. Probably a VIA chip bug, or HP t5710 specific, because it should not happen under normal conditions.
3) You can load VIAFMTSR into upper memory only when you turn off the network controller in BIOS (Integrated Peripherials -> Network Controller -> Disabled). It's because the program needs a large block of continuous upper memory, which can't be provided when some addresses in the middle of UMB are mapped to the network controller. So while in theory "mem /c/p" shows enough free upper memory, it is fragmented, and large programs (like VIAFMTSR) simply won't fit in.
PS. If i remember correctly Duke Nukem 3D sound worked nice on HP t5710 thin client so it might be that motherboard issues.
That USB-keyboard stutter issue is common with intel-chipsets (440bx) with any sound card but not with VIA chipsets.
But of course you are going with a great little LM358D, I have lots of through hole version of that IC.
DooooM! Just wouldn't be a NecroWare video without it showing up. BTW: Am i the only person who remembers that last game level was a big thumb-in-the-eye to whoever played it? There's no reward screen. Ending was a one cell box. Once you phased inside, it killed you.
Interesting that only Duke 3D seemed to remain flaky with the onboard sound chip after those minor adjustments. Guess it doesn't like the TSR!
When I run an ISA sound card into my KT133 board, the sound distorts and blurs horribly when the system is under heavy load. Often just like that in Windows. It doesn’t matter which Windows version or which sound card is installed.
So I would be interested to know if the problem also exists with other VIA chip sets.
ive been playing around with my compaq socket 370 board as well. I upgraded it from a celeron 533 to a p3 1 ghz. I put in my voodoo 3 and sb live. I wish i had a isa slot like yours. But i was able to get the dos driver for the live to work. And im actually going to try your buck converter to lower the fan speed, right now its full throttle and load.
It's better for DOS Games to use PCI ES1938 or ESS Solo 1 which has hardware opl3 emulation.
@@asanjuas although my board does have a ESS 1988 (although i dont think it sounded that great). im mainly wanting it for windows glide gaming. The live card also has EAX. I have other systems for much better dos sound i.e awe64 +X2GS.
SB Live does not have an opl3 emulation even on hardware or software and It needs EMM386 to work
@@asanjuas which in those cases i have 3 other options 386 with ESFM, or 486 with YMF262, or awe64 with CQM, and laptops with yahama sound. So i think i can be ok with the P3 running with the live ;-)
I am in the reverse i have a banshee and an awe64 and a P3 1GHz no sound or video on board. With a zip Drive and a cdrw
Nice you als found the viasbcfg. I've used it in the past on old laptops and motherboards.
The VIA FM sound too harsh for my taste so don't tend to use it. I've also had a case where the FM was not working but the SB Pro emulation was.
Did you try disabling the on chip modem?
For the Descent 2 music I liked the VIA version better. Sharper highs and the midrange wasn't muddy like with OPL3. The low range sounded that same. For Wolfenstein and DOOM there was good and not so good in each. It comes down to how well Yamaha and VIA did each individual instrument. Just worked out that the VIA chip had better ones for the Descent 2 music.
Hello there. I'm debugging a MSI 694T pro. Do you have the datasheet for VT1611A? This board (Also known as MS-6309 ver5) has a VT1612, but for some reason, the VCC is 5V - whereas the chip only accepts 3,3V! I'm wondering what the voltage for VT1611A might be..
What other options are there for IRQ, under ISA IRQ priority, they run from 0-7, with the high IRQs in slotted in at 2 (and IRQ 9 redirects back to 2) - so all the high ones are higher priority than the available low ones
OPL3 звучит ламповее! :)
Ради этого VIA не стоит заморачиваться с такой материнкой, тем более на прожорливом Р4 ) Настоящий олдскул это Копермайн + 440BX + SB16 :)
Но это же не P4, а как раз Coppermine :) Как я сказал в видео, прикольно, что на этом борту есть все, что нужно и в маленьком корпусе получится замечательный компактный ретро ПК.
@@necro_ware Аааа, по куллеру показалось что это на 478-сокете)
@@run4restrun259 Хехе :) Обычно у людей нехватает терпения досмотреть до конца, но тут я уже в 0:10 как раз говорю, что за борд и в 0:28 написано, что именно за процессор. Что-то я делаю не так :)
@@necro_ware Простите, смотрю видео по утрам на работе и переодически меня отвлекают звонками - хотят с утра услышать "выкключите-включите компьютер", поэтому я иногда пропускаю важные моменты))
Постораюсь отключать телефон на просмотре ваших видео :)
Does the problem with Duke3D persists when you choose 8bit mixing? Soundwise it is very problematic game, I had same issue on Toshiba 220CDT laptop and only changing card's address to 240H did help.
Yes, unfortunately in both 8-bit and 16-bit mixing.
What's that tiny brown slot above the ISA slot? Something proprietary?
I have a VIA Epia 800 motherboard which uses the same chipset and the same VIA AC'97 codec. The sound works very well in DOS, however if I use setmul to slow down the CPU, the SoundBlaster emulation stops working. At least this MSI motherboard has an ISA slot for a real DOS-compatible sound card :)
Its interesting how IRQ's really affected older systems. Newer systems are so fast and more reliant on USB that it is barely noticeable. However if you look up the IRQ table you will see that USB and sound are higher on the list then PS2; and other keyboard inputs. PS2 has a fairly low IRQ, 11 or something. This means if you interrupt the CPU at a higher number for a USB input, you have to wait another several cycles for video or sound. If you put enough USB interrupts you can probably stall audio and other CPU activities. PS2 has such a low interrupt that the delay for the next exaction is low.
Basically if you imagine a computer takes a second to go through each interrupt, and resets to 0 if it encounters one. Then you would reset the counter after only 11 seconds for PS2. but USB, which is around 50, would mean you would lose 50 seconds every time you interrupted the count. And if audio was say 60, you would have to wait 50+60=110 seconds for next interrupt. Computers are of course faster and the numbers are not exact, but you can get the idea.
with Wolf the VIA sounds like the Genesis a bit with those harsh sounding parts of the peace
I didn't even know there was an OPL3 that sounded like that XD
Yamaha makes both of the sound chips in question here. The Genesis / MD is not OPL3, but it has a lot in common, and either can be programmed to make similar sounds.
VIA и ESS мой любимый DOS-звук ) Ну почти. И вижу, что VIAшный контроллер USB наносит ответный удар )) А так конечно круто, всё играет прилично, а звуковой карты как бы и нет.. А если вернуть драйвер в основную DOS-память, Дюку лучше не станет?..
PS. И даже тут ты умудрился перепаять дохлую детальку, за одно это лайк!
Hey, I have 3 the same MBs, but in rev.5.0 with newer chipset VT8601T. They can run Tualatin CPUs (tested by myself with Pentium III Tualatin 1.13GHz). I didn't know what to do with them, because I was dissatisfied they haven't got AGP slot. I even wanted to reserve them for parts, but I didn't do that. They are still in my collection, repaired and working ;).
just use Kinetiz 7E, VIA KT133A version.
It has AGP slot, and same audio chip for DOS soundblaster support.
i have this on my mainboard but playing any DOS game in windows i get no sound. .
I had similar experiences when I tried the VIA sound system on AMD motherboards but I don't remember any slowdowns! ... Imma going to have to dig out mah Athlon 650 Slot-A and have some fun with it! thnx!
Yikes, that's a nasty sounding FM implementation! 😶
it can fixed pretty simply with better drivers and capacitors
those VIA chips are not supposed the opl are emulated by cpu? like today's modern sound ? going from USB to old PS2 unloaded some overhead from the cpu.
it has hardware emulation.
the slowdowns were because of IRQ conflicts on USB, because of bug in BIOS. USB IRQ has higher priority, so it slow down everything else, when using (moving mouse, or press and hold key on keyboard)
I wouldn't have thought an amplifier would even be needed. It's only a line-level output, I thought the codec would be able to drive it directly?
A lot of DACs and codecs have VERY weak outputs that are unable to drive a significant amount of current. The op-amp is a buffer amplifier that may or may not be applying any voltage gain (amplifying), and may only be used for current gain (buffering.)
I think codec could drive audio amplifier directly but not 32 ohm headphones.
On my early USB motherboards, I always insisted to use the PS/2 ports so as to not waste USB. I reckon that's why I never ran into those strange slowdowns. Interesting.
Sounds like the via chip is offloading sound processing to the CPU. Duke Nukem 3D apparently taxes the CPU enough to spoil the audio playback.
I remember running a Pentium 233mmx the addition of a Sound Blaster Live PCI card actually made Star Wars episode 1 Racer playable for me. GPU was a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI.
Well the Live cards did have more processing power than some Pentium (according to Creative) - so they are always good when paired with either old or weak CPU.
Coppermine, one love! ❤️🙃
USB has great CPU overhead, even on modern CPU's... On your 'modern' PC, open task manager to the CPU tab, sit idle for a moment, then move your mouse in a quick circle (even just on empty desktop) - you will see how much your CPU spikes...
On older machines, this was even more evident....
The LM358's output stage is not really suited for audio applications, creating crossover distortion. An audio op-amp such as NE5532 would be better suited.
I know, the best would be even to use the same as the original TL072, because of the parts around it. However LM358 is the only one I had at hand and for the low fidelity DOS sound (PCM @11kHz + FM) it shouldn't make a big difference. Furthermore on the old ISA sound cards LM358 was a quite widely used amp actually. I have multiple cards with this amp on board.
@@necro_ware It shouldn't matter much, but the TL072 has a J-Fet input stage and the LM358 and NE5532 are of the bipolar type. The J-Fet opamp has a much lower input bias current.
LM358 has been widely used in ISA sound cards, because of its low price and ability to work with 5V power supply, TL072 at 5V shows strong asymmetry of the output signal.
The VIA FM sounds like it's clipping.
*Bootsrap cap would be more appropriate, I believe. Those are on the output of the OpAmp if I'm not mistaking. Decoupling caps are usually used close to power pins like with RAM for example, to 'contain' the switching/digital noise locally to that chip.
What is the oscilloscope you are using?
I've spent countless hours playing all of these games.
reltech micro logo is a crab nice!
you deserve to test DOS compatible sound card by mediagx 5530A, it will much better by via .
you don't even need a driver in DOS. and all Dos game works great.
Sound was likely IRQ related. Sound interrupted via USB
Yep, that's what happens when you have a sound card that does not have real audio DSP hardware but instead relies on the CPU MMX instructions... (Does depend on driver implementations too though)
Same crap with PCI modems in fact...
I also never use USB keyboards or mice with my retro systems anymore.
On one system, when running games in Windows, the system would stutter every five seconds or so for about half a second.
On others, simply moving the USB mouse produces a coil-whine like noise from the motherboard.
Best to just stick to serial/PS2.
True, I usually use PS/2 as well, but in this video I used USB for simplicity and well....
It's better to use Windows 98 and the Combo Driver. This driver emulates perfectly General MIDI. The music in Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and so on sounds great with it. The FM TSR driver is perfect for Prince of Persia, Wofenstein 3D etc.. The "soundbug" in Wolfenstein 3D is the result of a cpu, which is too fast.
no Commander Keen 4? F.
The LM358 has a very slow slew rate, lower operating frequency and strong crossover distortion under certain output load conditions that make it work in class A. It is a very poor choice as a replacement for the TL072. The end result is going to be poor audio quality.
Yeah, true, but for DOS with it's 11kHz sound it wouldn't be noticable :) I didn't use it in HiFi, but may be in Windows at 44kHz there will be some difference. I already ordered new TL072 to make a comparison.
@@necro_ware thanks for your response 😊
I consider use of SMM for this type of emulation a clever hack but nobody should ever have to use it. Does this chip have a native mode (AC97 or MSS)?
Btw; Could you please list here what kind of scope do you use? It looks small and handy and I am very missing something like that. Thank you!
I'm getting this question every time I use it :D It's a Fnirsi 5012H an older version. It has it's flaws, but for my purpose it is good enough.
@@necro_ware Thank you
That slowing is a hardware issue. Believe me, i used to own the very same mobo and gave it up. I then bought a sb pro 2 with 8mb soundbank edit: 12:13 😳😳😳 do not tel me!! All i had to do is use ps/2??? 😱😱😱😱
ano, stacilo pouzit PS/2. Mal som rovnaky sound chip na QDI Kinetiz 7E a pamatam si ze v 2002 som to pouzival, uplne bezproblemov, pod DOS hrami.
My dream is to have some raspberry pi sized SBC DOS compatible pentium based machine.
pc104, you are welcome.
@@xuchao9098 Yes and no.
I commented this elsewhere. Isn't quite there, not enough integrated. I still own one from AMD. Has to put VGA and SOUND modules separately. I saw some videos on youtube trying to solve it. But isn't quite the same thing as a pentium class RPI idea I am dreaming here.
@@madson-web EC3-1541 EC3-1547 just a single pc104,no more expansion card is needed.
I'm always amused at how FM sound can be messed up, and how much that happened on clone cards. I think the worst was a clone card LGR showed, it made all the sounds into these weird toots.
Interesting
I was using an 667mhz Celeron with 128MB SD Ram back then. 🤣
How can I get softs na please
just looked on ebay and found a 2890 for $25. good deal.
interrupt problems?
where did you get midi music?
All recordings were made directly from the games.
I'm a little surprised the Sound Blaster Emulation isn't completely terrible. That TSR though is bad news and will make it impossible to play games like both ultima 7s that need a lot of conventional and can't run with Emm386/QEMM
It works if you optimize the memory layout properly, but is very much on the edge.
Shame about that FM synthesis. It sounds like they got a lot of it right but it sounds like they totally fudged the envelopes. Everything just sounds super overdriven. Games with lower sounds and music sound mostly OK, at least not horribly distorted. If they got that one thing working right, it would probably be very acceptable.
Lm358 is a terrible audio opamp. Slew rate and crossover distortion, as well as noise are all sub optimal. I'd really recommend sourcing some tl072's or ne5532's as inexpensive audio opamps.
This isn't a high fidelity application, but the difference will be audible
Yeah, I planned to give it a try next time I order some parts. I'm not going to use this board, but I'd be curious if I'd hear any difference. I think, that this setup is not high quality enough to hear any difference though.
@@necro_ware come to think of it, crossover distortion may account for some of the 'harshness/buzziness' vs the OPL3
It would have to be some pretty insane amount of distortion to account for the emulated FM difference...
This isn’t a HiFi component. If you were going to use it for CD quality audio playback in Windows, then maybe care a little. But for the land of DOS, with its 11kHz sample rates and FM synth music? I don’t think the op-amp is going to be the bottleneck here. It’s probably already better than a garden variety Sound Blaster card.
The slew rate for audio stuff doesn’t have to be very high. It is admittedly dependent on gain bandwidth product, but this isn’t a mic amp circuit, so the gain is probably fairly low, if not unity.
use command in dos Memmaker memaker
Oh no, Via
I don't know why almost all the vt8601T motherboard without AGP , actually if it come with a AGP it will be a perfect MB, without it , its a garbage.
QDI used it on KT133A boards. Check it out, those have AGP and was meant mid-range in the era.
Board's name's QDI Kinetiz 7E. I was lucky to buy it in 2002, and used a legacy audio for DOS, played lots of games without ISA sound card under DOS. Of course, at the same time, windows 98 and Windows XP 3d acclerated games could be played through AGP card. We had Geforce MX440 in that time. Played lots of Soldier of Fortune, Noone lives forever, Rainbow Six 3 Raveshield in those times. Also Morrowind ,Warcraft 3. Good times.