Soldato
Yep! I'm on HDD on all my machines now, every single CF has died or gone corrupt in some way.
Caporegime
Switched to the re-released RLOWE patch today, as I was having problems with the GPU (7900GS) and wanted to rule out both the modded driver and the extra RAM. Installed the RLOWE patch and now all is well, even with the modded nVidia drivers that allow 7-series cards on 9x.
Installed a 120GB Seagate Barracuda V IDE drive to replace my failing 20GB Western Digital.
I forgot the joys of having to go into DOS and fdisk drives first then format them before they can be used.
Also had to unscrew half my Gateway machines to remove the HDD cage and work out what jumper setting would allow it to be a slave disk
Once formatted it defaulted to D: so had to reassign it a new letter so D: could be the virtual drive I mount ISO images with, otherwise some games throw a wobbly that need the ISO and have been installed from D:
C: primary OS 120GB WD
D: Daemon tools virtual
E: Sony CD drive
F: LG DVDRW
H: secondary Seagate 120GB
I forgot the joys of having to go into DOS and fdisk drives first then format them before they can be used.
Also had to unscrew half my Gateway machines to remove the HDD cage and work out what jumper setting would allow it to be a slave disk
Once formatted it defaulted to D: so had to reassign it a new letter so D: could be the virtual drive I mount ISO images with, otherwise some games throw a wobbly that need the ISO and have been installed from D:
C: primary OS 120GB WD
D: Daemon tools virtual
E: Sony CD drive
F: LG DVDRW
H: secondary Seagate 120GB
He did some really nifty stuff with Windows98. RIP!
You making progress on your benching?
Soldato
New PSU fixed my CDRom issues.. Guess I need to re-test my pile of broken ones now.
Been having some compatibility issues around MPU Ports on my 233mmx Machine. Was due to cramming 4 cards in it and trying to juggle resources among them all. Providing SB Pro duties was the Yamaha YMF917 card, but I wasn't using the MPU on this but it can't be disabled. The Original OG Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 (CT1600) doesn't have MPU onboard so I switched that in. Slightly more nosier than the Yamaha card but now everything works nicely together.
Was listening to some midi files on the Maui now I fixed the resources. Recording stuff using my Dell PC is a pain as I have to set it up so I tried using my phone to record and it works quite well and making it far easier to record tracks.
I recorded a track from Descent and one for @LewisRaz favourite game Transport Tycoon. For a 1994 ISA wavetable card it doesn't sound half bad!
Transport Tycoon - https://soundcloud.com/user-802159307/transport-tycoon
Descent - https://soundcloud.com/user-802159307/descent
Was listening to some midi files on the Maui now I fixed the resources. Recording stuff using my Dell PC is a pain as I have to set it up so I tried using my phone to record and it works quite well and making it far easier to record tracks.
I recorded a track from Descent and one for @LewisRaz favourite game Transport Tycoon. For a 1994 ISA wavetable card it doesn't sound half bad!
Transport Tycoon - https://soundcloud.com/user-802159307/transport-tycoon
Descent - https://soundcloud.com/user-802159307/descent
Soldato
That sounds pretty good! Although it goes a bit mad with the pitch bends at the end?!
Soldato
Ah I have done all of my recordings in game so far as I am paranoid about inaccurate midis and someone spotting them!
So I ran the same Midi File through DOSmid this time (Above recordings were done in windows) and it doesn't do the crazy pitch bending. I'll re-record it later.
Soldato
Midi does do some crazy stuff sometimes, at least for me!
I got a telling off from ebay for trying to list an "illegal item"... Apparently they dont like the intel engineering sample!?
Also been toying around now my "main" rig is back up and running. Not super impressed with the P2 350. (The sims 1 as my usual benchmark..) Having trouble with the SBLive too, on my last install I was able to completely disable the FM emulation but this one is not doing it. Perhaps it was a different driver on the other one?
Yeah its a weird old thing sometimes. I'm going to try an start to try and catalogue recordings from the different modules/cards. Really enjoying listening to midi's and they sound based on the device/card used. I just need to try and put together some good recording box so I can get nice clean recordings.
Soldato
I am really beginning to respect your multi soundcard setups. I have tried 3 different PCI cards and cant get any to work right.
ISA: Adlib
ISA SW60XG
PCI: Tried
SBLive (excellent but sometimes it would play its emulated FM instead of using the adlib even tho the FM addresses were deleted.)
CMI8738. (passes through the adlib and sw60xg but no sound at all in windows or DOS games. Everything appears to be working correctly and the PC thinks sounds are playing but they are not.)
Audigy 2 (possibly dead card - windows isnt even detecting it.)
All I really want is an ISA or PCI soundcard that can disable FM emulation and allow the adlib to do it!
ISA: Adlib
ISA SW60XG
PCI: Tried
SBLive (excellent but sometimes it would play its emulated FM instead of using the adlib even tho the FM addresses were deleted.)
CMI8738. (passes through the adlib and sw60xg but no sound at all in windows or DOS games. Everything appears to be working correctly and the PC thinks sounds are playing but they are not.)
Audigy 2 (possibly dead card - windows isnt even detecting it.)
All I really want is an ISA or PCI soundcard that can disable FM emulation and allow the adlib to do it!
When you play FM, does the Adlib play along side the SB Live!? What resources are you using on your Live!? If you select option 4 under the Resource manager, I think that disabled the FM port. Have you tried messing with sbeset.exe in dos? That allows you to configure the card separately in dos, or pull the settings from windows. Only other thing I can think of is mute the FM in the live mixer.
Soldato
Iirc it was option 5 without the FM but that also gets rid of the high DMA which causes more problems for games that need it. In games like Duke3d which differentiates between SB and adlib in the music options adlib works fine and SB is the garbage FM emulation. In games that just have SB/adlib as 1 option it tends to hit the adlib but not always.
I dont think they are playing alongside eachother, that did used to happen on my awe32/adlib combo as the awe also had opl3.
From my knowledge here I think I am best off trying to get a PnP ISA soundcard that can disable the FM emulation but that might not be super easy either.
I dont think they are playing alongside eachother, that did used to happen on my awe32/adlib combo as the awe also had opl3.
From my knowledge here I think I am best off trying to get a PnP ISA soundcard that can disable the FM emulation but that might not be super easy either.
Soldato
It was 220. I’ll put the live back in tonight and try 240!
Soldato
This Creative Sound Blaster article came up on my Google news feed.
It's from a year ago, but I hadn't seen it.
https://custompc.raspberrypi.org/articles/the-sound-blaster-story
It's from a year ago, but I hadn't seen it.
https://custompc.raspberrypi.org/articles/the-sound-blaster-story
Soldato
I've been tempted to play mass effect 1 on PC after getting the Legendary Edition on PS4. I'm most of the way through a paragon Adept play through but I might do a renegade infiltrator on PC whilst doing ME2 on PS4.
I wanted to see how early a PC I could play it on so I dug out my Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+ with 2GB of RAM and my 1950XTX (my oldest PCI-E GPU other than a X600). It meets the specs but it runs at around 20fps, massively CPU limited- the same performance at 720p and 1080p.
I saw an Athlon 64 4200+ for 939 on eBay and got that, as well as a 2x 1GB DDR1 333MHz that I will use with my existing RAM for a total of 3GB.
But then I got impatient and dug out my 975X chipset 775 board and stuck in a Pentium D 940 3.4GHz with 6GB of RAM and a 4830. This CPU really absolute crap in Windows and in the game, and gave me single digit fps.
And now I'm still feeling impatient and want to try Mass Effect on more slightly weird systems
I might get up my Socket M 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo 2GB of RAM and the 4830 to see if that manages any better!
I wanted to see how early a PC I could play it on so I dug out my Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+ with 2GB of RAM and my 1950XTX (my oldest PCI-E GPU other than a X600). It meets the specs but it runs at around 20fps, massively CPU limited- the same performance at 720p and 1080p.
I saw an Athlon 64 4200+ for 939 on eBay and got that, as well as a 2x 1GB DDR1 333MHz that I will use with my existing RAM for a total of 3GB.
But then I got impatient and dug out my 975X chipset 775 board and stuck in a Pentium D 940 3.4GHz with 6GB of RAM and a 4830. This CPU really absolute crap in Windows and in the game, and gave me single digit fps.
And now I'm still feeling impatient and want to try Mass Effect on more slightly weird systems
I might get up my Socket M 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo 2GB of RAM and the 4830 to see if that manages any better!Thanks for this, great read.
I especially liked the q&a section