boggit wrote on 2024-03-01, 19:19:

When rebooting, I get to here, after which my computer hangs (and will not reboot even on ctrl-alt-del):

This is interesting because it's been noted (by me and others) that an Acer Magic S23 (also a Crystal based card) does a similar thing with some motherboards:

Re: Perfect ISA soundcard, in theory

So I wonder if this is just an incompatibility with some motherboard chipsets? It would be great to have someone like JazeFox to debug it - I'd be interested to hear what they find, because it's my only complaint with the otherwise fantastic Magic S23.

badmojo wrote on 2024-03-04, 23:03:

So I wonder if this is just an incompatibility with some motherboard chipsets?

Could be. I'm receiving a 386SX motherboard today. I will try the soundcard with that, and see if it makes any difference.

for what it's worth I have at least one 286 motherboard that does not like PnP sound chips... it has detection issues with almost every PnP chip - works perfect with old cards using old non-pnp chips
I could never find the issue, it just did not work
the mobo in question is a 286/16 one using the HT12/A chipset - other mobos with the same chipset work fine

Hi!

Time for a new release, centered in bug fixes for known and reported problems and small additions.

I want to thank all users who sent PMs of support and encouragement for my family situation last year. Thank you a lot!

Now, the new version:

Tool updated to v0.81b

Changelog:

• Fixed wavetable sound not working on Opti 931 cards with onboard wavetable.
• Fixed detection of Terratec Base-1 and other AD1816 based cards with ATMEL EEPROM chips. Now these cards will be detected correctly. Anyway there are about 1% of these cards in combination with some mobo chipsets that would need to add the option /FS to be detected properly.
• Improved AWE RAM detection for late EMU8K chips, like AWE64 cards. Now the correct amount should be shown.
• Added option to use a custom IRQ for the IDE port, with new BLASTER optional parameter "Y". Use of "C" is still required. If "Y" is not used, default stadard IRQ will be used, like in previous versions. Example: C168 Y11
• Changed behaviour of /NOPNP detection for ESS and Mozart chips, should improve compatibility with some systems with Non-PnP ESS onboard sound.
• Added Control of FM Reverb (/VRnn) and Chorus (/VUnn) effects amount, only for SB AWE32/64 cards (Values 00 to 99). Note: This works on AWE cards with integrated CQM and with discrete Yamaha OPL / CQM chips, if they're routed through the EMU8K chip. Only a few exceptions are not routed, like CT3930.
  
  
  The download link is updated at the end of the first post as usual:
  UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

boggit wrote on 2024-03-05, 10:52:

I'm receiving a 386SX motherboard today. I will try the soundcard with that, and see if it makes any difference.

Just installed my 386SX motherboard. Soundcard works excellently when using the Aopen IPLAW35 drivers. Unisound now runs without the system hanging, but doesn't seem to enable sound in games and such. Then again, no real need for that, as the real drivers work with this system!

keropi wrote on 2024-03-05, 11:29:

the mobo in question is a 286/16 one using the HT12/A chipset - other mobos with the same chipset work fine

Yup, HT12/A is what I had as well on my 286.

JazeFox wrote on 2024-03-05, 16:11:

[*] Changed behaviour of /NOPNP detection for ESS and Mozart chips, should improve compatibility with some systems with Non-PnP ESS onboard sound.

detection issue with my ess es688 appears resolved. wow! i feel like i'm getting concierge service. thank you for all your efforts!

And there was much rejoicing.

Welcome back JazeFox, we appreciate your work. Thanks for the update! The reverb option is something I was looking forward to have.

JazeFox wrote on 2024-03-05, 16:11:

Hi! […]
Show full quote

Hi!

Time for a new release, centered in bug fixes for known and reported problems and small additions.

I want to thank all users who sent PMs of support and encouragement for my family situation last year. Thank you a lot!

Now, the new version:

Tool updated to v0.81b

Changelog:

• Fixed wavetable sound not working on Opti 931 cards with onboard wavetable.
• Fixed detection of Terratec Base-1 and other AD1816 based cards with ATMEL EEPROM chips. Now these cards will be detected correctly. Anyway there are about 1% of these cards in combination with some mobo chipsets that would need to add the option /FS to be detected properly.
• Improved AWE RAM detection for late EMU8K chips, like AWE64 cards. Now the correct amount should be shown.
• Added option to use a custom IRQ for the IDE port, with new BLASTER optional parameter "Y". Use of "C" is still required. If "Y" is not used, default stadard IRQ will be used, like in previous versions. Example: C168 Y11
• Changed behaviour of /NOPNP detection for ESS and Mozart chips, should improve compatibility with some systems with Non-PnP ESS onboard sound.
• Added Control of FM Reverb (/VRnn) and Chorus (/VUnn) effects amount, only for SB AWE32/64 cards (Values 00 to 99). Note: This works on AWE cards with integrated CQM and with discrete Yamaha OPL / CQM chips, if they're routed through the EMU8K chip. Only a few exceptions are not routed, like CT3930.
  
  
  The download link is updated at the end of the first post as usual:
  UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

Hi, thanks a lot for your great work, i use unisound in almost all my machines, is amazing

I have a question, i tried to use Reverb (/VRnn) and Chorus (/VUnn) option in my AWE64 Gold, but nothing happen, is gold supported? thanks

This driver is really nice!
Just one question, is it possible to implement an errorlevel (for use in batch files), e.g. errorlevel 1 if driver was not loaded (because of wrong option or soundcard not detected) and errorlevel 0 (only) in case of success? (or vice versa)

I already asked this question in the past and would like to ask it again. This project is amazing, all kudos to JazeFox for doing it, but is there a possibility to open source it? It would be really a shame if all this work and knowledge would disappear one day. Opening this would also allow that more people would have an opportunity to contribute. May be this project would be even useful for another projects, like emulators and virtualization. Would love to see it one day on github, gitlab or similar platform. It's also much easier there to maintain and follow the issues, write the documentation and notes etc. A forum is tbh not the best tool for such things.

Thank you.

Since ESS original drivers cannot be properly "locked" with midito but UNISOUND works I have been testing with this driver now. Using my ESS1868F Card

I stumbled over an issue though: I think the volume of sound effects would need to be adjusted by /VWnn Set Wave Volume level to 'nn' % (00-99), correct?
While I can change the volume via using V, and VF works for synth, I cannot adjust the volume of sound effects or Speech separately. I think it should work via VM, but this doesnt seem to do anything.
The reason I don't want to adjust the volume for speech via V is that it adds a significant amount of noise beyond a setting of like 50, even if everything else is a t 0. So I want to keep that as low as possible.

Update:
I checked a few games now, and this doesnt seem to be always the case:
-Jagged Alliance Deadly Games, (loading audiodrv.dig as driver) -> Voice unaffected by wave setting, always too silent
-Duke Nukem 3D - Sound effects unaffected by wave settings - sounds about right
-Lands of Lore - Voice unaffected by wave settings - sounds about right
-MAG! - Video sound is affected by wave settings

so out of 4 games, 3 are not adjustable and 1 would need adjustments

Hello JazeFox, First of all, I am enjoying using UniSound. I would like to ask if it is possible to add support for the famous Pro Audio Spectrum family of sound cards? I love my Pro Audio Spectrum 16 Studio with SCSI interface and it would be nice to use with unisound and ditch the memory hungry TSR Drivers. Thank you for sharing this thoughtful and brilliant software.

JazeFox, your universal DOS soundcard initializing tool is very convenient. I'm using UNISOUND with ESS AudioDrive ES1688F, ESS AudioDrive ES1869F and Creative Sound Blaster 16 souncards without any issues.

Is there any chance for C-Media CMI8330 and CMI8338/8738 support in a future release?

CMI 8330 is already supported.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-05, 08:46:

CMI 8330 is already supported.

OK, then CMI8338/8738 support probably isn't that hard to be implemented. Soundcards based on this chips do not have proper DOS initializers/"drivers".

Unisound is meant to be used with ISA sound cards as far as I understand. CMI8338/8738 are PCI sound chips and are quite a different story.

Sure. We also may speculate if it was meant to be used with PnP soundcards only, but supports some non-PnP.

What I meant is, that adding support for PCI sound cards is probably a bigger effort than you think. The fact, that cmi8330 is already supported, doesn't tell us anything about how easy it would be to add support for PCI sound cards, even if they had ISA predecessors. Unfortunately the only one person who knows definitely is JazeFox, since this project is not OSS.

Hello everyone!
@JazeFox Great work!!! Thanks for sharing with the community.

I have two cards: an OPTI 82C931 and a CMI8329a

With the OPTI one version 0.81b it works great.

However, with the CMI8329a I am getting the following error
Unknown PnP card [CMI8329] found

If I run UNISOUND.COM /CL I get
Card #1 [CMI8329] AD-CHIP Audio Adapter

I am running the following command as in the help
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 J200 P330

I saw that in v0.75b the support for this card was fixed. I wonder if for some reason it got broken in v0.81b.
Did anyone have the same issue as me with the latest version?

I was searching for v0.75b so I can try if my card works on that version but I did not find it. Can someone please point me to the link?

Many thanks in advance.