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!
Okay, time to explore the Compaq Presario 2200 that I brought back from Dallas! Like all of these, this one is a bit of a mixed bag. Let's have a look in a 🧵 here!
So, first, like 100% of these I have seen, the plastics in the front are very brittle. This front panel has previously been glued on, you can see some glue residue here and there!
Here's the back of the PC. Nope, these systems do not have PCI expansion, and have one "weird" 8 bit ISA expansion slot for a modem!
Let's test a few things that I picked up at the DFW swap meet this weekend! We'll use the trusty Dell Precision 220 Workstation as the test rig, along with Windows 2000. Time for a 🧵
So, first we'll test the Diamond AGP card. It's an OEM card, and after some searching, I THINK it is a Diamond Speedstar A200, with the S3 Savage4 PRO chipset. In it goes! And I lied, I used Windows XP to test this one, I forgot 😂. Anyway, it checks out ✅
Next, we have this card here, I think it's an Nvidia card. Foolishly, I thought it was PCI, but it's PCI Express. I have no use for this! It'll go on the free table at the next event I attend, whatever that is!
Stopped by the Time Rift Arcade before heading to the airport. I'll show some of the games I played in a 🧵
First game was California Speed, at which I am terrible. Played a few boards of tetris too. I didn't play the NES or SNES but did grab a picture of the setup!
I played Elvira pinball, because, well, of course 😂. Also Burgertime, Berserk and Mr. Do
Shopping Geekenspiel's website is always a fun experience for me! I decided to put some of these stickers to immediate use! First, the Dell Precision 220 Workstation now has a proper Dual Pentium III sticker. I placed a few more too! 🧵
I had a Multimedia PC sticker on my 486DX4/100 before I swapped the case, I think! And now I have one again!
I covered up the "crack" on my Gateway 2000 Vivitron 15 monitor, but I might swap this out for a different sticker later that covers more area.
The Compaq Deskpro 6000 is back up and running with a new hard drive. Of course, I hit a few issues along the way, some unrelated to the HDD replacement. Let's talk about them briefly in a 🧵 here!
To get started, I decided to use the Dell Precision Workstation 220 to help with transferring data from the failing HDD to the new one since it was on the desk and is more accessible than the Compaq. We can see we have three HDDs detected (Dell, old Compaq, new Compaq). Good!
Here is the old Compaq HDD (not original to the system) and the new HDD that we will be installing, side by side. On the left, we have a Maxtor Fireball 3 (20GB), and on the right we have a Seagate ST320413A (20GB). The Seagate will replace the Maxtor.