OPTi 82C929A MAD16 Pro ISA DOS Sound Card Review
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- Опубликовано: 28 ноя 2024
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Upon discovering your channel, I have been in a nonstop binge of your older videos.
I've made a binge watch playlist actually LOL ruclips.net/p/PL5T8bmLxd_T1GIYQWBEww85JM1O8_F8FK
Upon discovering you'r channel, i have been in a nonstop binge buying retro hardware.
Damn I had that card well over 20 years ago in my 486DX2/66, thats brought back some memories.
I've owned in the past an OPTi 931 card and it was a nightmare. Nice to see that they made something good for once. Thanks Phil!
That was my first soundcard. It was included in my Pentium 100 system from the local distributor around 1996. Terrible DOS drivers though. Being 12 years old, knowing no english it was difficult for me to figure out how to get this thing running. Without having anything like the Internet - new drivers were out of scope and were nerver aquired. I always had to stick to gui less DOS drivers on my 1.44MB disk. Ahhh memories :)
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. :)
This is a real surprise; from random unknown sound card in your pickups video to a very positive recommendation! I'm highly tempted to buy one myself, although with shipping and the exchange rate, it gets a bit pricey. I've already spent enough on my AWE32, so I might just have to put up with its failings for a while longer.
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 was once a proud owner of the very same card.. Yea.. The nostalgia..
Nice :)
3:50 LS-212 moneyshot
Sid Meier's Civilization is a good game for testing old sound cards.
Yea I'm locked in with the games so you can compare them with other reviews of other cards.
Your video impressed me, this is truly a good soundcard for my 486 PC. I just ordered it with your discount code, thanks for the review! Now i can replace my old Soundblaster 16 Value, it makes a terrible crackle noise.
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.
You always go into great detail on these older cards, great stuff Phil
Thanks :)
I really enjoy your sound card and midi board reviews the most. I'm looking forward to seeing one on the Pro Audio Spectrum and maybe more Gravis Ultrasound content. Thanks for the awesome content.
I think Phil is more focused on budget hardware that nearly everyone can afford - i like that!
THANK YOU, Phil!!! I have been trying to hunt down my very first sound card which came in a Reveal Multimedia Upgrade Kit back in 1993, and the set up app for this card is the app that my card used. I am getting closer! I am very thankful for you, LGR, and Vogons.
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
Thanks a lot for the video! I had Miro Sound FM10 card for years and could not get it work anywhere. It has the same chip arrangement but only one IDE port. This driver works nicely under DOS. Now I have real OPL music in my DOS machine.
Stereo channels are swapped in every game but it is fixable.
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.
Very Impressive. Good find Phil!
I had one of those on one of my old PCs in the 90s... It was pretty cool... It was a step up from my Adlib only which I had in the computer before...
I love these sound card videos, have this card picked it up for $5AUD and replaced a broken cap. Will have to fire up my PII and play around with it.
Thanks. And great price!
Great video, and thank you especially for providing the documentation and drivers!
After spending countless hours scouring the net trying to find information on my childhood 486 system's components, I believe my soundcard is either a different revision, or otherwise very similar to this one; it has an OPTi chipset, a Crystal codec, and all the same headers and jacks except for one additional jack in place of the volume dial. One curiosity though is that my card's silhouette and component layout are exactly as shown in the MAD16 Pro documentation, which is different that the card in the video.
I was able to install the drivers and use the same configuration utility like you show in the video, though my Mitsumi FX400D1 cdrom isn't listed in the options (and plugging it in seems to cause the FM synth to stop working even if the drive is disabled.)
There also seems to be a conflict in the background or something, because my system will hang sometimes on loading programs, though other times I can run them fine and the sound plays great!
I'm going to continue tinkering with it, but I just wanted to comment and express my gratitude for all the retro resources you provide in addition to your video content!
That DOS boot menu does look neat. I remember spending far too long playing with menus and AUTOEXEC.BAT and such when I was younger. Would be lovely to get a link.
Another great vid as always!
You can just download it :D Here is the link: www.philscomputerlab.com/cd-rom-mouse-memory-start-up-files.html
Danke!
I just installed a variant of this card. It looks just like the layout of the ProComp one offered on electromyne, but is has the Crystal controller not the Analog Devices chip. And a real Yamaha OPL3.
Anyway, I installed the 82C929A drivers from your website (thanks BTW!). Works really nice. Seems to be a good compatible that worked well in DOS with everything I tried so far.
Glad to here you got much less problem with the drivers.
Maybe I should the ones you used, but I'm too afraid to configure my 486 all over again.
I've got a spare one lying around, with a red PCB. So if someone is interested in this card, you can contact me.
Unfortunately I had no time to test it.
I had the 82C933!
It supported Soundblaster pro.
I have a Samsung OEM variant of this card that has a genuine Yamaha OPL3 and a Dream SAM 9203 wavetable which I have not dabbled with yet and is larger than your particular variant. The only major flaw I have with the sound card is that the OPL3 chip has its audio channels swapped so I'm probably going to have to physically modify the card to fix that.
I'm considering doing a video of the card since its quite an oddball especially with its built-in Dream wavetable module.
I used to have a wave sound gallant sc8000. Amazing soundcard! Nice review man!
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....
If you can find a can of De-Oxit you fix the crackle on most volume pots. It flushes, cleans and lubrcates so makes the control wheel for the volume sound good again. It mainly is sold in The US but you might be able to get it in Oz. Highly recommended for refurbishing those old volume knobs. 👍
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.
A number of Aztech cards utilize the AD1845JP. I wonder how that compares to the AD1846JP on the card in this video? Since you mentioned Crystal, a bunch of Aztech cards also use the CS4231-KL in the same position. Similar ICs?
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.
I got Opti C930 and it actually had the legit Yamaha OPL3 chip, i also bought it from Electromyne for a similar price. Same drivers essentially. Did not pay much attention to sb pro compat but I did not notice any game output mono on sbpro mode so far.
I got this card in a Compaq Presario 486 66MHz I just bought. But it doesn't have two LS chips found here instead it got a DXP44Q which is a clone of the OPL3 snd the DAC in one chip. Seem to work just fine in the games I tested.
My childhood computer features a Sound Blaster clone by Acer featuring the same OPTi chipset as this card, as well as a real Yamaha OPL3 chip (YMF-262M) and a Crystal CS4231A-KL codec.
Nice!
I have a different OPTi 929-based sound card that I used to use in my 486, and I also had stereo compatibility problems with it. For me it was most noticeable in Jazz Jackrabbit. The horns that played the main melody were nearly inaudible if I had it set up for stereo, but they sounded fine if I had it set up for mono. I've got a real Sound Blaster Pro in that machine now and it sounds much better on most DOS stuff, but it's not quite as nice a card for Windows as the OPTi card was.
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.
Not too shabby. That jumper, you can see the trace going to the sony interface so I am guessing that enables that interface.
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.
The model of this card that I have has a line out and a speaker out instead of the speaker out and wheel. Mine also has an actual Yahama OPL chip instead of the clone.
This is a GREAT card. Very compatible and the drivers are a breeze. Oddly however most of the driver packages I have found only have either DOS drivers or DOS and WIn95 drivers. After some hunting I was able to find a Mad16 Pro floppy disk that has the DOS and Win31 drivers. The installer on that disk has another step that adds the software and drivers to Win31 as well. Once installed it adds sound support to your WIn31 installation as well as a mixer app and a karaoke app.
In the end, love this card. This was certainly a better value than a SBPro for me at the $10 I spent!
It is not the "best" sound card by any stretch, but honestly I do not think a best one even exists. I have tested (and I own) dozens of sound cards from official SB's, Crystal, ESS and more. Each has its quirks and not one can be considered the "end all" of sound cards. But, this card I have to say comes very close. It's the card that stays in my main 486DX4-100 only because it has better compatibility across the board than most of the others I own.
Sold out already. Damn your popular channel Phil ;)
They only had a few. The green ones are still available. Should be the same experience as they have the same chips :)
The CD Audio controls the Wavetable header on some cards, and I believe that card also includes that.
Thank you for the review!
It's been a while since I went looking for this card, or rather, for the version that I have (OPTi 82C924 with Crystal and OPL3 integrated chip), but I couldn't really get things to function correctly in my Valuepoint 433DX (I have an SB Pro in there as a basic stand-in). For some reason, I could never get the IDE connection for CD drive to work. Probably the IDE jumper that I failed to notice, or mistook it for a cap.
Now that I'm getting a nice "middle PC" between the 486 and '98 machine, I'm wondering if I shouldn't give it another go.
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.
Hey.. I remember this card! Was the "poor mans Soundblaster 16". I think had one at one in a 6x86 PC I purchased back in the 90's. No issues with it. Did not notice any difference from my previous SB Pro. But the stereo vs mono issue I did not make a note on back then. Just wanted sound in my games - and wanted them to run Lag free.
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!
I found some interesting information about Opti sounds cards in a text file found posted by Gerwin on Vogons
"-924/928/929/930 used in several variants of the OPTi MAD16 soundcard.
-MAD16 is related to the OAK OTI-601 / OTI-605 'Mozart': The Mozart chip was developed by OAK and Media Chip, the latter now owned by OPTi.
-Creative Labs bought OPTi's sound division around 1997 (not sure on the year)."
High frequencies in OPL3 seem to get quite garbled on this card compared to the ones I've had come my way. I think it comes down to that quad op-amp near the wavetable header as looking at the part number, that looks to be a variant of the LM324, which is a TERRIBLE op-amp for audio purposes. I would be interested in hearing the OPL3 from the Collector's CD-ROM Edition of X-Wing on this thing to compare with my card that uses the LF347 as its op-amp (this one causes garbled bass is some games).
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.
I have a similar opti based card, Green PCB labelled PT-200 82C929A chip with the AD1846JP, clone chips labelled S-062 and S-012, very cool card I also used the MAD16 drivers and had the same issues with Stereo sound, Dated April 96, V1.3, nice relatively cheap cards, there's also some cards out there with the 82C930 chip I don't know if there's any difference.
I will try to get a 82C930 card for sure :D
I had like 2 or 3 of those at one time and from what I can remember, I kept on blowing the left channel on these, otherwise they are decent SB compatible cards.
How odd, maybe some power surge?
I had one like this in my intel 486 dx4-100mhz system back in mar96, but with the 82C931 chip, unfortunately without the IDE or wave table connections, just cd cable connections only, it faired well with the DOS games back in that time with WIN95 installed on top of DOS6.22 and a 850mb hdd.
Nice.
Although the sounds in Duke Nukem II did work, they sounded very scratchy, I've not heard Duke Nukem II sound like that before.
Hi Phil
I have just bagged this card from ebay and it is in the post but ive noticed that the one I've ordered has no LS chips but one populated in the blank area just below the LS-212. until I receive the card I wont be able to test it but oddly enough I can't make out the chipset number from the screenshot. but it looks like 0XP440 9537. obviously must be an OPL3 clone. Other than that card is identical to yours in this video.
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.
Good stuff.
Hi Chris!
I have a MAD16 plus card with those OPTi and Analog devices chips but it has a real OPL chip
Mine is dark green and it is called "Sound machine pro16 plus" and it is branded Quickshot
Can the "pro" mean is somewhat compatible with the sound blaster pro ?
If I remember this card correctly, SOUND BLASTER PRO was supported but there was limitation, I dont remmeber correctly what it was:
22KHZ stereo
44KHZ mono
and maybe with also 2x8bit or 1x16bit resolution. Not sure.
Nice dear review /test man
Playing Turrican II on a PC, that is a sacrilege! ;-)
But who am I to judge, I prefer playing Pinball Fantasies on the Atari Jaguar...
Also, the C1 capacitor on the board (top left) looks to be too small compared the the reserved space of the mounting pad. Was it replaced or is it still the original one?
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.
This reminds me of my first "real" PC, which was too slow for Syndicate Wars. Just the MAD 16 Pro was a good card indeed.
I have a Diamond Pro 16 card and the CD-ROM controller for the Panasonic CD-ROM drive won't work. I changed the address for it and still nothing. It says the drive is not "connected" and it is. My Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro never had issues unless address 300 was used by another card.
The MS Windows Sound System support would come from the Analog Devices chip. I remember it being a nightmare with DOS games because my first laptop, a Toshiba T4850CT which had an AD1848KST chip, I couldn't get the blasted thing to work. The DOS SB compatibility driver would not work in games, unless Windows was running, much to my dismay, but the Adlib sound however, worked perfectly.
On a sound card related note, Phil, will you eventually do a review of the Gravis UltraSound (GUS)?
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.
One question, was that the latest drivers or just the ones that came with it? Just curious if a newer driver could have potentially resolved the sound blaster pro issues.
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 :)
And now I want one.
This is a very late comment, but I stumbled upon this card recently so I decided to take it for a spin after like 15 years of being in a box. Aaand mostly OK (played well in windows as well, aka mapping manually SB or WSS device to the one emulated made win accept it as such device and the playback quality was fine (especially WSS). But then I got in to two issues in 2 games. First in Dune2, the unit sounds are somehow slower and deeper. Like when the tank says "reporting" it just sounds like it was played 20% slower. Other than that the game runs fine, and then in Vinyl the goddess of mars if the sounds are enabled (music is ok) when playing sounds the game start to stutter and is basically unplayable. None if these issues exist on random SB16 I picked from the bin so... yeah, this card is going back to the box.
Thanks for the update, I know Dune 2, but not that other game.
I'd say the FM sounds a bit unfiltered and harsh and lacking in bass. Kinda like how dosbox tends to sound.
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
ahhhhhh, sexy.
You're the Tom's Hardware Guide for a new age. They're still around but not the same THG. Phil's Hardware Guide.
I have a 82C930 card that is very nice.
I wonder what's different compared to the 82C929.
These might have also been branded Aztech something or other. I installed bucket loads of these (and Opti 931) many moons ago and one of the two is making me shudder with bad memories - I think it was the 931 that was rubbish as it might have had an emulated OPL3 but my memory is a little foggy!
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!
I'm sure this was my first soundcard. Till I broke it.
I installed it in an InterTan 286
Had horrible experience trying to use it in Windows 95. Then i realized that SET BLASTER worked and i just needed to load MSCDEX for the CD-ROM.
So i guess the good old Opti sound chip it's not so bad after all :),well at least the c929,i had the c925 not sure what the difference between the 2 are,i also remeber that setups program's interface.
Nope it was my first sound card,coming from pc speaker,for me it sounded awesome back then.
I have a Reveal Sound FX RV82C929KT which i belive is similar, i set it uup with the drivers for this and got Music in Doom but no sound effects, any ideas?
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
I got the same card, but I can't get it to work with gamepad in windows 98 (no gameport available), the drivers I found supports only sound. Do you know any solutions for it?
There are thin clicking sound on POP when landing.
yessssssssssssssssss still have A WORKING ONE SINCE...........................................
God damn, that is good as heck!
Yea almost perfect, but for many this could be THE perfect card.
I have the terrible feeling that I threw one of these away once...
I thought the Sound Blaster Pro incompatibility thing was something inherent to all sound cards, including the later Sound Blaster cards?
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.
What a nice card it is! would consider getting it if i ever have retroPCs
Hi Phil
Thanks for the video, really interesting. I have a question. Can I connect my Canvas SC 55 or are there any bugs, or notes hanging on the midi like the creative ones??
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?
Just out of curiosity, is there a PCI version of this available?
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.
This particular card seems to be sold out, unfortunately. There's a similar card listed next to it, but I'm not sure what the differences are (no volume knob, at least).
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.
@
PhilsComputerLab
do you know why Deues EX lagging so much with Pentium 3/4 systems and with Windows 98/2000/XP?
And why Hitman Codename 47 has this texture bugs? And why GTA San ANdreas laggs in some areas so much:(
Please help
Excellent timing, I'm just putting together a K6 rig, from a big hardware lot. Among the soundcards, there's a version of this card. Slightly different, but the same chips on it. What would you choose, I have narrowed it down now, to either this, or a Vibra 16S. (Just to chose something else than ES1868F as usual)
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? ruclips.net/video/H4fluxPuioo/видео.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 :)
The name gave me the impression that the card could have an optical output XD
Had one of these in my first 486, a 486SLC2/50. At the time (some time around 92-93) my parents bought it on installments, lol
Don't know if it was the same board exactly - I don't remember it having a volume knob, but it was a long time ago - it was a MAD16 and I remember that DOS setup program and sndinit well
It also had a "media rack" program for Windows 3.1 that was made up to look like a very early 90s stereo set. Had a mixer, WAV player, and MIDI player that looked like a tape deck... they all looked like stacked stereo components. If you google "opti media rack" you'll find it's still out there
I'm always amazed by the stuff that pops up on your channel that I remember having in my parts bin or in working systems at some point... that's why I keep coming back. Wish I never threw all that stuff away.
Yea we all regret getting rid of parts. But most are quite easy to acquire again :)
I've got the same card, but it's got opti 82C924 and LS262 chips. The output didn't work at all the last time I tested it, wonder if the capacitors or the volume wheel are broken in mine
If you set the jumpers to line-out, the wheel is bypassed.
only thing i had with Opti is some games leave the sound on. Card will not reset even if computer is booted it needs reinstallation 5/10
I would consider the software a weak spot. The config should be separate from install and allow CLI configuration with no reboot. Something that could be used in a batch file for the WSS only games. Having to open a gui utility, tweak, save, and reboot just for a simple setting change is a very kludgy solution.
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.
Do you need an ide on the card to make the sound work or not? my ide cables are either 1 port short not long enough...
Nope
@philscomputerlab what's the ide on the sound card? I tired drivers so far no luck.
drivers link not working (
Nice card. I wonder if it is just me but the music on Lemmings was over amplified, just made me cringe a little. Everything else seemed ok. This is the opposite reaction of the Terratec video you did where Lemmings was ok but everything else just did not sit well with my ears.
I have this exact card! This brings some memories, this was my second ever sound card built back then for my secondary 486 DX4 PC, aka the first 2 PC's over LAN setup I had, back then via the coaxial LAN, not RJ45 heh. Its pretty good, and honestly the only sound card I like more is my first one ever, its called "Audio Excel 16". The thing is so obscure I cannot even google it. The closest one I could is this: " www.recycledgoods.com/audio-excel-dream-sam9233-wave-excel-isa-sound-card/ " The logo and style fits, but but mine does not have the dream chip and generally thins looks generation newer than mine.
What I like on AE16 is that the mixer is extremely lightweight (both on CPU overhead and memory + can be completely moved to HMA. The onboard CD-rom controller is fully IDE compatible and can be switched by jumpers on the card to act as your secondary IDE controller and you can even boot normal HDD from it and the bios sees it as if on normal controller card (very useful on the early 486 board with no integrated IO.) The sound quality is overall excellent (better than the MAD16) from DOS all the way to win98 (there are no drivers newer than win 3.11 but you can point the WSS or SB pro to the mixer settings and win9x will initialize it as the real thing and play trough that. This thing basically does SB PRO better than SB PRO or SB16 itself.
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:
ruclips.net/video/9hzxE1_nl0k/видео.html
Yea the Sound Blaster 16 range is riddled with poor cards :D
Treble and middle tone is all right. Yet there is some funky something. Going on regarding the bass. It lack's something in some games, and I can not quite put my finger on what it is. Not that noticeable in monkey2, yet there is something not quite right there.
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.
Guys, what would be the best sound card to plug into an Athlon 1 machine intended to work with Windows XP (to play XP games) but also to play DOS games occasionally... Thanks for tge advise!!
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.
No SB16 compatibility?
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 :)
Opinion on the 82C930A?
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$.
alright finally a yamaha synth clone that was working fine. well the opl.
I had opti sb pro clone it was shitty and buggy. I remember endless audio bugs. When i booted windows just odd noise. Then reinstallation worked for days and same shit.
Has anyone been able to install the drivers on a Windows 98 SE machine? After installing the drivers in DOS, Windows 98 crashes on boot.
I would love to buy one of these just to use some IDE drives if it lets the CPU access the drives.
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.
Hey Phil, as always, nice Video. Well made, informative and enjoying. Did you ever made a review of the Opti 82C928 chipset? I am interested in it for adding it to my 486 machine because this has got an Opti chipset as well (495SX) so I find it quite fitting. But I cannot find out if it supports the Soundblaster ADPCM compression needed for Duke2 for example.
If you like you could also check out our channel PC-Sound-Legacy.
Greetings,
Thomas.
ever since you get stuff from elecromyne and promote the store they went on a godamn price hike , some stuff went 10x in price and it really sucks
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.
Noice!
what about SoftMPU?
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.
I hate the Lemmings music... Blech!