Perfect WC Soundcard?

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Howdy all,
Still in the process of tracking down bits and pieces to put together a really great Wing Commander machine. Can someone with more experience in such things tell me what the optimal soundcard for WC games is? SB 16, 32, Live, what?

Will not being Plug and Play compatible help me in DOS, or will it just hurt me in Windows?

Is an ISA card really best for running Privateer?
 
Hi LOAF! The real expert is Johnl12, but he seems to be on vacation.

One thing I´m sure is: the music in earlier WC games is A LOT better if your card supports "General Midi".

There´s no problem if the card is Plug and Play compatible, as long as it provides all the DOS drivers.

My sound card is a SoundBlaster PCI 128. I think it´s a great card because the sound is great in Windows and DOS, and it does support General Midi, multiple channels and stuff. And it´s also quite cheap :D Setting it up in DOS is not easy at first, because no such instructions come with the card. However, the drivers are "hidden" in the SB software CD and, once you find them, it´s just a matter of setting up your autoexec and config, which I have mastered after a while of testing.

The only (minor) downside on my sound card is that you NEED to have a powered (amplified) speaker, because the highest sound volume of that card with a headphone or a non-amplified speaker is quite low.
 
Howdy,
Sounds easy enough... does WCP do MIDI music?

For all the DOS stuff's music/effects, I've dug up a Roland LAPC-I MIDI board, for which they all supported (and the original two games were optimized).
 
WCP does not do MIDI music, but it does better. Apparently, for the first time in WC games, the music in WCP is not synthetized by the soundboards. Instead, the CD just plays recorded music, so that any old card can be able to play the music with the best sound quality.

You are right about the Roland card´s music, but I think it does not go well with newer games, because it does not have excellent sound effects.

I forgot one thing about my SB PCI 128: it works with all its sound channels in Windows, but in DOS its performance equals the SB 16 (+General Midi), which ain´t bad, since that the SB16 used to be one of the best cards when the earlier WC games were released.

While chatting with some experts about how to configure the SB PCI in DOS, I was told that making SB Live! work in DOS is a pain.
 
IIRC the Roland only does the music for the later games... the effects are done by whatever Soundblaster I decide on...
 
That´s another option, 2 sound cards. I used to have the best DOS soundcard ever, IMHO, Orchid SoundWave 32, but it had SERIOUS Windows 95+ compatibility problems. It was the best because, in 1993, when I bought it, it worked well in Win 3.1 and "outgunned" the SB 16 in every aspect, since it had more channels, supported General Midi, had an on-board amplifier, and, the best thing, DID NOT USE ONE SINGLE KB of base (or upper) memory.

Shortly after, though, Orchid was "incorporated" to Diamond and Diamond just forgot about my old card, not before it releasing a very, very crappy Windows 95 driver that made it barely able to play some sounds in Win95+. Later on, Diamond itself broke and, since there was no hope of a new windows driver, I removed SW32 and acquired the SB PCI 128.
 
Well, Im not good at these...but can you guys tell us the Perfect Wc Pc hardware?Im going to buy a new Pc these days.
My old one had absolute compatibility with all Wc games in dos or Win95,with o boot-disks etc.

Im asking a lot huh ?At least tell me what I should not have (im speaking about harware) included in my Pc cause it has problems with any Wc.For example I think that SBlive has problems with Prophecy etc..

Sorry LOAF, perhaps I should have done another THREAD for that....:(
 
jeez...

YOU have ALREADY started another thread for that reason, and it´s still "active". :rolleyes:

<edited after reading upper post> help.
 
Well....Im sorry....Dont answer me.My mistake My mistake!
Ill make a new maybe..
sorry again:(
 
Originally posted by TCSTigersClaw
Well, Im not good at these...but can you guys tell us the Perfect Wc Pc hardware?Im going to buy a new Pc these days.
My old one had absolute compatibility with all Wc games in dos or Win95,with o boot-disks etc.

Im asking a lot huh ?At least tell me what I should not have (im speaking about harware) included in my Pc cause it has problems with any Wc.For example I think that SBlive has problems with Prophecy etc..
Click to expand...

Well, thats my post in one of LOAF`s threads..But its already a new Thread..So I put it here,in my last Thread:D

Whatever ,I just need an....anwser.....?..... ?....??:confused:
 
a piece of advice...

Dear TCSTigersClaw,

Please:

1 - Do not double post. There´s an edit button. Try it.
2 - Do not hijack people´s threads.
3 - Do not ask the same topic in more than one thread.
4 - Think twice before starting many threads.
5 - Do not "quote" your own post.
6 - READ THE RULES AND FOLLOW THEM.
7 - Do not reply to this post or you´ll probably make LOAF (even more) pissed and get us in trouble. And I don´t think pissing an Admin, even a gentle one as LOAF, is a good idea.

LOAF: Sorry for this trouble. I have also broken a rule myself - doing the moderator´s job - but I am just trying to help and save this thread. It won´t happen again.

Please, folks, let´s go back to our original issue: Does anybody know anything else about a perfect soundcard for WC games?
 
Forgive me again!my mistake again !damn me!thats quote of my self ,I wanted to put it in a new Thread and I made a mistake and put it again here!no no no damn damn damn
My mistake My mistake My mistake

LOAF dont get pissed of
dont get pissed of
:eek: :eek:
 
Here's my 2 cents . ..

I played all the WC games (minus Privateer and Privateer2) on my Win98 run old computer with an integrated sound card taht was a cheap Soundblaster ripoff.

My new computer has an SBLive! (everything possible fidled with and disabled) and Prophecy movies look like an old 486 trying like hell to run WC3, jerky as hell, Academy doesn't have music, and it's casuing me more headaches than it's worth. And SB was such a good name . . .
 
I've used a Sound Blaster 16 ASP with a WaveBlasterII-General-MIDI-AddOn-Chip for some years, and was pretty safisfied with the results:
General-MIDI available for the old games (WaveBlasterII can be set to "Roland compatible"!) and 16-bit 44,1 KHz sound for the newer ones :cool:

Another good choice may be a soundblaster AWE64, which too combines 16bit 44,1 KHz with General MIDI abilities

OK, both cards are not PnP, but IMO they must not be because the good side of this is that they still have jumpers (or DOS utils) to set them exactly to the values (Addr220, IRQ5, DMA1, Midi330) which the old games need (which is not easily possible with PnP cards, is it?) and you should be able to get them to work in windows as well, even if they don't install themselves automatically.
 
Don't worry, TigersClaw -- I'd be happy to talk about a WC-system... maybe we can work out eachothers specifications together, as I'm building one too.

Here's what I'm thinking...

CPU: Pentium III 300-450
Motherboard: I'm trying to find one of Abit's Slot I motherboards (just because I *hate* trying to get a CPU fan in place)-- BX6, BE6 or something of that nature.
Memory: 128 megs should be fine for any WC-related process.
Floppy Drives:
- Get a Dual 5.25/3.5" drive off of eBay -- since older WC games are often on 5.25" disks. Epson and Teac both produced similar drives.
- For a CD drive, any generic DVD drive should be fine. No need to worry about speed.

Video card: 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP... it'll do the Glide stuff in Prophecy and the FSAA rendering (?) that makes the game look better. I'm also sticking a Canopus Pure3D Voodoo daughter card in my sister so I can still run the Prophecy 3dfx test (apparently a Voodoo 1 pass-through card will function alongside with a Voodoo 3+...). You'll also want a RealMagic Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card, for the WCIV DVD.

Hard Drive: I'm thinking 40 gigs should hold just about everything WC... although I'm thinking of getting a really large drive so I can set up a zillion logical partitions and load other old games.

Sound card: Looks like I'll probably go with a SB16 ISA... and I'm going to have a Roland LAPC-I card running MIDI duty for music stuff.

I'm not really sure about a monitor yet -- can anybody reccomend something?

Mouse and keyboard and such are all generic. You'll need an analog joystick for DOS stuff (CH Flightstick looks like what I'll go with... or possibly a Thrustmaster). The original Microsoft FF stick has a Prophecy setup, if you want to pay for a separate digital stick.

Does anyone know anything about gamecards? I'm thinking my MIDI card may need to attach to the port on my soundcard...
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
I'm also sticking a Canopus Pure3D Voodoo daughter card in my sister
Click to expand...
Then you'll have plenty of time to play with your WC system while you're doing jail time.

Does anyone know anything about gamecards? I'm thinking my MIDI card may need to attach to the port on my soundcard...
Click to expand...
Thrustmaster used to make a pretty good gamecard. ISA, two connectors. I don't think it had a specific name.
 
Am..What about the Operating System guys? ?
I think that WindowsXP have probs with old Wcgames in DOS format..;)
 
I think I'm going to run Windows 98 (does the 'test' run in 98?) and DOS 6.22/Win311 (for OFX!... and SkiFree...)...
 
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