Yamaha Rcx 240 Software Vip Plus Download
Melissa Villanueva
I used the instdos.bat in the DOS directory of the included install disc and it appeared to install correctly. It copied the contents of the directory to my HD and added two lines to my autoexec.bat. It then brought up a text mode interface asking me to set the SB and WSS IRQ etc.
According to the readme for this program, I can press OK to exit and save the current settings to the file OPL3SA.INI in the installation directory. However, I got the following error the first time I pressed OK:
WSS I/O Error.
Whenever setupsa.exe is ran (it's inserted itself into the end of my autoexec.bat along with a SET BLASTER line) it comes up with the error ctrlBase:OPL3-SAx ctrl register write error followed by the configuration interface. (Because it's in autoexec.bat, I think it's supposed to make a note of when a valid configuration is entered, and then from then on just print a 'Sound card is ready' message.)
Does anyone know the recommended IRQ and DMA settings for this card, for both the SB and WSS side, and if I need to change any settings in the bios? (My bios gives me the option to assign IRQs to 'Legacy ISA' or 'PCI/ISA PnP'. I don't know whether I need to adjust this or not.)
Is the card inserted all the way into the slot? I got similar errors once because of that.
Also if you have a BIOS option for 'PnP OS installed', set it to NO. The IRQ settings should be set to 'PCI/ISA PnP'.
I've tried it in all three of the ISA slots on this motherboard now, trying to insert it as fully and carefully as possible, and I've tried it with a completely bare system (holding right shift while starting DOS). I've also tried disabling the serial and parallel ports.
The weird thing is that is 'sort of' works until it tries to set the WSS settings. If I press S on the setup screen to test SB sound, it plays a (very very noisy distorted) fanfare sound effect and if I press F for FM sound, it plays a 'wom-wom' sound effect. But if I press W to test WSS or press Enter to save the settings, the WSS error comes up and everything stops working. This happens regardless of what the WSS Base I/O, IRQ or DMA settings are set to.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was due to this motherboard, as the Yamaha was bought to replace a mysterious 'BANNSAN BS-1' ISA sound card that nobody's ever heard of (though it uses a CMI8330A) that I simply couldn't get any response from whatsoever.
I don't think it's a ridiculous idea, it's definitely some sort of resource clash. I have the exact same card and have gotten the exact same error in a socket 7 machine. It works fine in a VLB motherboard so I suspect it has something to do with the PCI bus.
Even "working" though these cards are a pain in the bum in my experience. The mixer just never works in DOS and the levels are all over the place. From memory the Windows mixer software is OK, but for DOS these cards are just not worth the trouble.
Thanks for the info, badmofo. I'll try these other cards soon. Maybe if I leave all the PCI slots vacant, it'll calm down and work right. Otherwise, it's time to ditch this motherboard (and knowing my luck I won't have any ISA VGA adapters).
I can't find any information about that motherboard online. Did you mean XA100 plus? If so, then blimey, because as far as I can tell that has ISA, PCI and AGP on it... weird that the Audician would work there and not on my board.
For OPL3 I can highly recommend you the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro 2 cards. The 16s not so much, as many are quite noisy. As a pure "speech" card you can't go wrong with the AWE64 Gold in combination with an external Sound Canvas or Yamaha MU.
I'm afraid I've tried it all. ? The system is pretty basic: just the HDD and CDROM on the IDE channels, a PCI video card and the Audician ISA sound card (no HDD controller cards, or ISA risers, etc.). I can turn off serial and parallel ports in the bios but it made no difference.
It's a shame because this Yamaha card is near-new but to me it's worthless. I can't sell it knowing that it's a 50/50 shot for compatibility, and there's dozens of these on ebay for those who want a brand new one instead of my opened-and-can't-tell-if-it-works-or-not one. It'll just have to go on the pile of stuff I can't use, and I've already got more 'Creative Live! 5.1' PCI cards than I know what to do with! (I tried the hard-to-find MSDOS emulator-layer drivers for those btw... I could only get sound working with one game: Tequila and Boom-Boom. Weird.)
Hmm. I thought these cards were supposed to work in 8-bit slots as well, so if they do there must be some way to disable the WSS part. Or maybe the card will only do this if you actually insert it in an 8bit slot.
I have a YMF701 based card which allows you to disable the WSS from within the setupsa program (same version of the program, it just displays different options for the YMF701), but given my bad experience with setupsa I'd be surprised if that option actually did anything.
My only other suggestion is to install Windows 3.1 and use the Windows version of the Yamaha software instead, you might find that it actually works in the first instance, or at least lets you disable the WSS bit correctly. It uses the same INI file but from memory, when trying to disable the 'ymersion' rubbish from DOS it didn't work, but in Windows 3.1 it did work. So I concluded that the Windows software creates a valid INI file, and the DOS software doesn't for whatever reason.
There are various version of this this chipset, and I suspect that Yamaha tried to write one driver for all of them, but as often happens when trying to hit 2 birds with 1 stone, neither bird was hit! And these things were released when DOS was on it's last legs, so why test it properly?
I believe ymersion is completely off if you set it to 0 in setupsa. Might be different for 701 though, like the WSS stuff.
And if you use the Windows drivers, does that make the card work in DOS as well? I think you still need to initialize it every time by running SETUPSA /S.
Yes but can you use the windows software to configure it instead of setupsa? You still need to run setupsa for dos, but I'm under the impression that the windows software is the way to go for defining the actual config.
I'm setting up one rig for DOS and Windows 98. I initially set up an Athlon XP , even tested a Prescott P4 both with SB Live 5.1 or Audigy 2 ZS. It went really well, I'm able to play DOS games in Win98 DOS Window or real DOS mode. I can even use USB mouse in DOS!
But now I decided to go for a PIII / PII or K6-2 and I'm trying to select the Sound Card to use. The PCI cards sound great in DOS but it's not the sound I remember from my old Sound Blaster Pro. Today I retested the ALS120 and it was a great experience, set up was easy and all the games work except from Sam and Max (I need to fix it).
So the question is , for pure DOS would you go for an ISA card, is the ALS 120 that bad?, everybody is talking about the Audician 32 plus . Regarding the Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 I don't like the background noise, with Audician I also hear some noise while the ALS 120 sounds really clear.
The Audician 32 plus is overrated. I bought it, used it for a while but boy, it's NOT as good as advertised. Yes it sounds great but it has a LOT of incompatibilities. It's really a Sound Blaster Pro, NOT a Sound Blaster 16 and a lot of games would have issues with it. Also, out of the box it sounds TERRIBLE - you need to edit the configuration file by hand to make it sound decent which seems rather odd to me.
Last Winter, I tested my new HP Vectra and used the Audician as main sound card. Out of 250 games tested, over 30 had sound issues with the card ranging from the game refusing to run at all, to no sound, to reversed stereo, to very low quality sound (16 bit not supported), to weird slow downs, etc. When I popped in my Sound Blaster 16 and retested the games, all the problems went away. Some of these games were really big: Cannon Fodder, Duke Nukem 3D, ... so it was impossible to ignore.
I'm not even sure where the Audician fits - as a SB Pro, it doesn't work great with later DOS games (which is where most compatibility issues could be found) but the card was released around that period so it's odd. On top of that, I found the DOS drivers to be buggy - they use no conventional memory (which is a plus) but it would often not correctly load my volume settings requiring me to enter the program and quit and then magically it would load them even though I changed nothing. Windows 3.1 drivers are extremely limited as well with a very ugly front-end.
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