an0va
Offline
O2star wrote:

I found this neat application for MS-DOS a while back, and it works for the ESS AUDIODRIVE cards too. "SBVOL.EXE," It allows you to adjust master output as well as the master volume of the FM chip. Or even your line input. You can download it here:

http://www.planetzaxxon.com/sbvol.zp

YES

eidoscognitio
Offline

Hello everyone. I just came here thanks to this link http://thump.vice.com/words/Diode-Milli … interview, and I´ve been trying to reach the person whom the article refers to offer him a donation of Two ISA soundboards I have to spare. I can provide pictures, the only downfall is that I live in Venezuela. My email is [email protected] / Peace.

tape_loop
Offline
Portame, bOregon

Hey y'all.

I compiled Adlib II for MS-DOS as well as Windows, nerdtracker II, and Impulse into a .zip file I'm linking here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2NNEF … sp=sharing

Also contained within the file is sbvol.exe, an MS-DOS 7.1 burnable .img, and bootable floppy disk images for 7.1 in a nested .zip file, with instructions on how to install it using that method.

I also forwarded the above poster's information to Diode.

Waiting on an Armada 7770, optical drive, and power cord to ship through EvilBay, and a response from a seller through another commerce site on the specifications of a 7770DMT they are selling(whether or not it has an optical drive. I don't have any floppy media or machines that utilize it anymore! Hunting for my old iOmega zip drives...).

FM TRACKING EXPLOSION TO COMMENCE.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
O2star wrote:

New model to add:

Compaq Presario 1640.

This one has some neat features:

JBLpro Speakers
Tiny LCD display to monitor battery live and things
MAX ram is only 96 mb, but thats ok.
ESS AUDIODRIVE 1869, which is fully sb16 compatible.
smile

Follow-on bump
As I mentioned earlier, I have a Compaq Presario 1625. Finally got around to repairing it and thought others might like some tips with this beast.

1    The BIOS has some funky power control extensions. If you have a dead CMOS bat, after POST it requests that you run a recovery proggy. You can click past this screen to complete boot up or go into BIOS and disable the power options. Disabling the options also saves messing with a recovery partition on your HD.

2    Driver support can be found at HP's site. But for the life of me haven't figured out the Audio Driver download. Its a DOS Exe file and when I ran it, it's just an Info screen advising you to 'run Setup.exe'. SO I went with the generic Win98 driver install which seems to work, mostly.

3    Here's the biggie! AT2 under Windows has no sound! (due to item 2?)  From 'reboot to MS DOS' nada!! BUT when I boot to pure DOS, pushing F8 after POST and selecting 'Command Prompt Only', I've got FM Synth in effect!

4    Dug up some ESS DOS Configure utilities to setup the Address/IRQ/DMA (even though BIOS detected and assigned the Blaster stuff) and a Vol Configure. The BIOS handles the ADR/IRQ/DMA but the volume utility is very helpful with the mixer. The file is ess_isa.zip http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=616

    ANYWAY Adlib Tracker II runs great and the ESS 1869 sounds good, but haven't done a side by side with an OPL. No noise and crisp, not bad. Maybe a little light on the bass.
   All in all, I wouldn't spend too much on one of these if you want true OPL but it does do a good job with FM and of course will handle Schsim, Milky, OpenMPT....
Yogi

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
yogi wrote:
O2star wrote:

New model to add:

Compaq Presario 1640.

This one has some neat features:

JBLpro Speakers
Tiny LCD display to monitor battery live and things
MAX ram is only 96 mb, but thats ok.
ESS AUDIODRIVE 1869, which is fully sb16 compatible.
smile

Follow-on bump
As I mentioned earlier, I have a Compaq Presario 1625. Finally got around to repairing it and thought others might like some tips with this beast.

1    The BIOS has some funky power control extensions. If you have a dead CMOS bat, after POST it requests that you run a recovery proggy. You can click past this screen to complete boot up or go into BIOS and disable the power options. Disabling the options also saves messing with a recovery partition on your HD.

2    Driver support can be found at HP's site. But for the life of me haven't figured out the Audio Driver download. Its a DOS Exe file and when I ran it, it's just an Info screen advising you to 'run Setup.exe'. SO I went with the generic Win98 driver install which seems to work, mostly. PS they don't have the Video Driver so you need to DL from another site, or give me a shout out.

3    Here's the biggie! AT2 under Windows has no sound! (due to item 2?)  From 'reboot to MS DOS' nada!! BUT when I boot to pure DOS, pushing F8 after POST and selecting 'Command Prompt Only', I've got FM Synth in effect!

4    Dug up some ESS DOS Configure utilities to setup the Address/IRQ/DMA (even though BIOS detected and assigned the Blaster stuff) and a Vol Configure. The BIOS handles the ADR/IRQ/DMA but the volume utility is very helpful with the mixer. The file is ess_isa.zip http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=616

    ANYWAY Adlib Tracker II runs great and the ESS 1869 sounds good, but haven't done a side by side with an OPL. No noise and crisp, not bad. Maybe a little light on the bass.
   All in all, I wouldn't spend too much on one of these if you want true OPL but it does do a good job with FM and of course will handle Schsim, Milky, OpenMPT....
Yogi

d0x10
Offline
Finland

Hi,

A bit older message, but thought to still ask: I have Toshiba Portege 3110CT with ESS Maesto-2E (ES1978), running FreeDOS 1.1, found some drivers for the audio card, like a mixture of DOS and Windows drivers (originally for Windows). You mentioned that you looked some forums where people actually did get it to work. Any recollection what forums ?

Thanks !

O2star wrote:

I was under the impression that almost all of the ESS cards are just emulated SB16. Some older ones, may have had an actual opl3 chip on it, but these later ESS ones emulate SB16, hence being SB16 compatible.

The ESS Maestro-2E, is not SB16 compatible. Well, easily. I tried and tried with that one and could never get MSDOS to detect it. I looked on some other forums and people who actually did get it to work, said it sounded very thin and the worst ESS they have heard. So I gave up on the ESS Maestro-2E cards, heh.

Deus Ex Machina
Offline

Hey people! I have a SoundBlaster AWE64 Value, I've been reading here and there, and It's not entirely clear if I can get a decent FM sound using AdlibTracker II. Not sure if this card has OPL-3, tho, or soft-emulated. Any suggestions?

Cheers!

Radlib
Offline
Planet Zaxxon

Unfortunately, AWE64 doesnt have any opl3 chip on the card itself. But you can do other sweet things with it! Such as soundfonts, and other apps for win95/98 that were designed for it. I have an AWE64 gold and use it with Windows 98se, which I run a specific patch editor for the Korg DW-8000. smile

d0x10
Offline
Finland

New models working (at least didn't found these from the threads):

IBM Thinkpad 701c (not sure what card, apparently ESS ES1688)
IBM Thinkpad 770X (probably all 770 models), sound card Crystal CS4236)

these work directly from DOS, no drivers are needed, no Windows either

not sure yet model(s):

Toshiba Portege 3110CT, ESS Maesto-2, ES1978 (needs Windows sound card drivers)

Last edited by d0x10 (Apr 3, 2015 4:41 am)

dan_e10
Offline
O2star wrote:

How can you convert AdlibTracker2's speed/tempo value such as 6/50Hz into regular BPM?

You cant! ha. I have tried so many times, but the time clock within AT2 never will line up with BPM. I can get it close, but it never is exactly BPM. Its a completely different way of keeping time.

Yes it will drift. I have some songs that have about 14 channels.. so i recorded each channel separate, then played them all back together.. and they are not in perfect sync by the end. sad I also have sampled loops from AT2 and put them in Impulse Tracker, which is even more difficult because you have to figure out what is close in "tempo" pertaining to how each tracker calculates time.

Are there trackers or editors that allow you to use the FM synth on the SB16 with external midi?  What I'm thinking of would be something that allows you to edit the FM voices of the OPL and assign them to different external midi channels so you could sequence them from an external DAW through midi; no sync issues since the DAW is generating all the timing.  Does anything like this exist?  Or are we pretty much stuck with editing FM synth params and tracking from the same application like adlibtracker 2?
Dan

2PLAYER
Offline
Rhode Island

adlibtracker 2 has midi capability but i was never able to get it to work with my setup. from what i remember you would just be passing note data though, not instrument parameters.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
dan_e10 wrote:
O2star wrote:

How can you convert AdlibTracker2's speed/tempo value such as 6/50Hz into regular BPM?

You cant! ha. I have tried so many times, but the time clock within AT2 never will line up with BPM. I can get it close, but it never is exactly BPM. Its a completely different way of keeping time.

Yes it will drift. I have some songs that have about 14 channels.. so i recorded each channel separate, then played them all back together.. and they are not in perfect sync by the end. sad I also have sampled loops from AT2 and put them in Impulse Tracker, which is even more difficult because you have to figure out what is close in "tempo" pertaining to how each tracker calculates time.

Are there trackers or editors that allow you to use the FM synth on the SB16 with external midi?  What I'm thinking of would be something that allows you to edit the FM voices of the OPL and assign them to different external midi channels so you could sequence them from an external DAW through midi; no sync issues since the DAW is generating all the timing.  Does anything like this exist?  Or are we pretty much stuck with editing FM synth params and tracking from the same application like adlibtracker 2?
Dan

You may want to look at Frequency Monster 801 http://fm801.kewl.org/app/about/
   It does most of what you asked about, but bad news is it only works with certain soundcards (ones based on the Yamaha YMF72x-74x PCI chip or clones). I opened a thread here about setting it up, on XP and it also runs on Win98.
   Aside from the Yamaha soundcards with the chip there are 'No Names' like Labways or Aopen PCI cards that are usable, and very cheap on EBay.
Yogi

dan_e10
Offline
2PLAYER wrote:

adlibtracker 2 has midi capability but i was never able to get it to work with my setup. from what i remember you would just be passing note data though, not instrument parameters.

It sounds like it may do what I want.  I thought AT2 didn't support midi in.  Passing note data would be enough as long as I can set up patches to be controlled by the midi input.

yogi wrote:

You may want to look at Frequency Monster 801 http://fm801.kewl.org/app/about/
   It does most of what you asked about, but bad news is it only works with certain soundcards (ones based on the Yamaha YMF72x-74x PCI chip or clones). I opened a thread here about setting it up, on XP and it also runs on Win98.
   Aside from the Yamaha soundcards with the chip there are 'No Names' like Labways or Aopen PCI cards that are usable, and very cheap on EBay.
Yogi

This sounds like a good option.  I'm not familiar with the YMF7xx chips.  Are they in some sound cards along side the OPL3, or do they replace the OPL?  On Frequency Monster's site, I only see the requirement that it's an OPL3 compatible card and they list the SB16 and SBPro in their compatibility table.  I'm not sure what's in the computer I have in mind for this.  I think it's a Soundblaster 16 but I'm not sure yet.  Also, is FM801 multitimbral?  It looks like you may be limited to bitimbrality but it's not clear to me.

Dan

Last edited by dan_e10 (Jul 16, 2015 9:25 pm)

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
dan_e10 wrote:
yogi wrote:

You may want to look at Frequency Monster 801 http://fm801.kewl.org/app/about/
   It does most of what you asked about, but bad news is it only works with certain soundcards (ones based on the Yamaha YMF72x-74x PCI chip or clones). I opened a thread here about setting it up, on XP and it also runs on Win98.
   Aside from the Yamaha soundcards with the chip there are 'No Names' like Labways or Aopen PCI cards that are usable, and very cheap on EBay.
Yogi

This sounds like a good option.  I'm not familiar with the YMF7xx chips.  Are they in some sound cards along side the OPL3, or do they replace the OPL?  On Frequency Monster's site, I only see the requirement that it's an OPL3 compatible card and they list the SB16 and SBPro in their compatibility table.  I'm not sure what's in the computer I have in mind for this.  I think it's a Soundblaster 16 but I'm not sure yet.  Also, is FM801 multitimbral?  It looks like you may be limited to bitimbrality but it's not clear to me.

Dan

  The YMF72X line are an all in one PCI interface, PCM, XG Midi and legacy OPL3 core on the same die. There was an earlier YMF 719 ISA chip that was just FM like a SB card. I think Yamaha wanted to move into the motherboard sound market. (some Laptops have the YMF chips, and I have a Sony Viao desk top with a YMF 719 on Mobo) but with the 724 they were too late; the market was moving away from Midi and FM sound to wave/soundfont, so driver support for FM stops at XP (and getting the OPL support in XP is not plug'n'play; the generic driver doesn't support it directly).
   Yes it looks like FreqMonster 801 does indeed support SB 16 ISA cards! Cool; This is new to me, I've only played with it on XP with a YMF 724 card, will have to try it with a SB16 smile
    As to computer: Win98 or XP >200-300MHz, IIRC. There may be issues with an OPL ISA card & XP but GiveIO may do the trick.

Copyright © 2005 - 2014 Darron Broad
All rights reserved.
Freq Monster 801
This application is a 6 note polyphonic, 6 operator frontend for OPL3 compatible sound cards.

So yes, 6 note poly and just about every pram is assignable to a CC.:) Which sounds right with how the OPL3's voices/ops are setup.
Yogi

Strages
Offline
Sydney, Australia

Hey Guys, I am trying to get in touch with Jeffrey Lim to purchase the Stereodisk writer for Impulse tracker, but he isn't replying, anyone know where I can get it elsewhere?

Strages
Offline
Sydney, Australia

It's ok, he replied smile