Initial Testing
DOS
At last count I had tested over 50 games under DOS. This was using the Orpheus II sound card.
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I was impressed with the general compatibility of both the Orpheus II card and running DOS games on a Pentium 4 at 3.4 GHz. Some games do require throttling to perform decently, but the only game I couldn’t make playable was Ultima VII: The Black Gate. Given how notoriously speed sensitive this game is, I was not surprised.
To make the Orpheus II work under DOS, I have reserved IRQ 5 in the BIOS along with DMA channels 1 and 7. Under DOS, I use A220, I5 and D1 for Sound Blaster Pro compatibility and A240, I3 and D7 for the Gravis UltraSound. P330 is used for MPU-401 support.
I also tested trackers like Scream Tracker 3 and Impulse Tracker, and those both worked with the Orpheus II’s Gravis UltraSound support.
MT-32 is well supported with the Orpheus II’s intelligent mode MPU-401. An exception are games that require IRQ support like Gateway. Since the motherboard uses IRQ 9 for ACPI, this conflicts with trying to use it for MPU-401 support. Disabling ACPI in the BIOS and reserving IRQ 9 allows it to work properly, however, I probably won’t bother with this. There aren’t many games that need IRQ support to begin with.
Windows 98
I’ve started doing Windows 98 testing with an install on a 4 GB Compact Flash card. The main goal was to get the Orpheus II and Audigy 2 ZS working at the same time. The intent is for the Orpheus II to support CD Audio, MPU-401 playback, and DOS compatibility, and use the Audigy 2 ZS for Windows digital audio.
So far this appears to work. I plan a similar test with the Orpheus II and Diamond MX300.
I also tested EAX effects with the Audigy 2 ZS and they appear to work without issues.
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Windows XP
I conducted a brief test of Windows XP on a 4 GB Compact Flash card to see if the Audigy 2 ZS would work properly. No issues were noted; EAX playback worked fine and no extraneous noise was present.