A few weeks back, we talked about PCI sound card compatibility in Windows 3.1x. And then I went and purchased an Aureal Vortex AU8820 sound card for like $10 bucks. Let's find out how well it works in DOS, Windows 3.11, and a few other OSes in a thread here!
First, you'll be pleased to know that this sound card works with Hannah Montana Linux. Okay, enough of that already... for now 😂. Gosh, that color scheme is beyond atrocious and hurts my eyes.
How about Windows XP? Yep, detected and good to go!
Okay, off to Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Install was a cinch, but.. all I get in the program group is an uninstaller? Really?? No mixer? Yeah.. more on that in a minute.
Things are looking good in the MIDI mapper, nothing to do there! All set.
If we look at installed drivers, we'll see there is a mixer. It just has no GUI. Fortunately, we can control the sound settings via system.ini. Under [Config\MixerSettings], I just changed all values from 32767 to 65535 to give "full volume" everywhere!
Alright, how about DOS? Fortunately there is a TSR you can use to make things work, included in the drivers above. However, it will probably lock up with newer systems. You can pull the "asp4dos" file from Win9x drivers to fix it though, details here: vogons.org/viewtopic.php?…
So, running asp4dos from the command line, we can see the card get detected. PRO TIP: If you install the Win3.1 drivers, you'd best take asp4dos out of autoexec.bat before you reboot, or replace it under the C:\WINDOWS directory before you do if you have a newer system!
So, for the most part, we are done. But there are two more problems to solve. The first is setting audio levels. I think with a vortex.ini file, this can be done with the asp4dos driver. But that was giving me trouble. So I downloaded SBMIX and it worked perfectly!
The next problem? If you run Win3.1x, the real mode DOS driver will uninstall. So after you exit Win3.1x, you need to reload it again. See this post I made today on Vogons that talks about the fix I used with a batch file! vogons.org/viewtopic.php?…
Anyway, there you have it. Now we can do fun things like play MIDI, MP3, and WAV files in Win3.x... using a PCI sound card. Thanks for following along! I'll leave you with a post I just did where we play an MP3!
Happy #MARCHintosh! My virtual Quadra 800 and Compaq LTE 5100 (via PC MacLAN for Windows) are once again participating. You can even print to my Panasonic KX-P2123 printer that is "pretending" to be an Apple LaserWriter 😂. All via GlobalTalk!
If you want to join in on the fun virtually:
* Details for joining GlobalTalk here:
* Once you get access to the spreadsheet, see the Instructions/Links tab. See Line 36 for my setup guide for Windows 11, I used that together with the Debian guide!marchintosh.com/globaltalk.html
There is also a way to get a configuration file of all of the participants via AIRConfig, which is also discussed in the guide! Need to get AIRConfig to your virtual Macintosh? Use a FTP server!
Oookay, the Compaq Presario 5528 is back on the desk! I wanted to spend some more time looking at the MPEG-1 decoder card under Windows 95 OSR 2.5. And I have good news! Time for a quick 🧵
As some may recall, here was the next thing I was going to try: copying over the Windows 95A Media Player to Windows 95 OSR2.5. But as it ends up, that wasn't necessary!! I'll explain.
I noticed something on my Win95 OSR 2.5 install. It looks like the Internet Explorer desktop update installed ActiveMovie Control. And it looks like it is using a default Microsoft software decoder. HOWEVER, notice that standard Windows Media Player is also installed!
Well, looks like we have some modems to test. We better get going 😂. I'm not going to do a full "dial" test, but we will see if we can at least configure them! Time for a 🧵
First things first, just like they taught in science class, always start with a baseline! So, I am going to make a copy of my Windows 98 installation so that we don't foul up the main install, and we'll check out device manager. Looking good! Let's roll.
First modem out the gate is this Creative Modem Blaster V.90 PCI DI5655. We are going to use the Pacman PC to do the testing since it has a very convenient shared ISA/PC slot. In it goes!
My new old stock Tandy 1000 SX is now all configured! As mentioned earlier, I'm going to made a video about it at SOME point. But let's talk about the fun I had today with getting it set up. Was setup 100% trouble free? No. But was it the Tandy's fault? Also, no. Time for a 🧵
The first thing I did was to populate this gorgeous motherboard with a full 640K RAM, and also popped in a NEC V20 processor for the 8088. Flawless! No issues whatsoever with this!
Next up, I jammed in some cards. Network. XTIDE. Multi I/O. Real Time Clock. On boot, we see the XTIDE option ROM screen, so we are now cooking!
Well, after spending way too much time this weekend trying to get my MPEG-1 decoder working on the Presario 5528 from a fresh Windows 95 install, I finally was successful. Let's talk briefly about it in a 🧵 here!
So, first some background: what's the story with MPEG-1 decoders? Well, back when PCs weren't quite powerful enough to play full-motion video, hardware options like this were popular. This machine has a S3 Scenic/MX2 (86C443) chip to do just that.
For this particular system, this chip pairs with an S3 Trio64V+ (8C765) via the S3 Scenic Highway bus. That said, it's fair to say that MOST S3 Trio64V+ cards did NOT pair with a Scenic/MX2, as this MPEG-1 option chip seemed to be FAIRLY short lived.