Please Help ASAP; ISA Soundcard Jumper Settings

[Shaina11]

I recently received my vintage Yamaha OPL3 ISA Soundcard for a vintage build, I believe it is the Labway brand, the FCC ID is LWHA151A00. (YMF718-S chipset) I need to know what the different jumpers on the card configure, I have provided pictures in the links below. I couldn't find any documentation on this card, thus I am lost as to what the jumper configuration is. There are three jumpers, two on the same one.

Also there are two four-pin connections, I know for a fact one of them is for CD-Audio input, however I don't know about the other one.

Please reply ASAP, I have a deadline to return it if I can't get this thing working.

P.S. One jumper with the two combined is labled JP1, the other is either J10 or J11.

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[RaDiKaL_]

Uff... all I can remember is that one had to use jumpers to set the IRQ value your card would reserve in your system. Perhaps you can find more info searching for ISA IRQ settings or something like that...

In any case, trial and error should eventually get you that card working as long as you have its drivers of course.

 

[Shaina11]

Thanks for the response RaDiKaL_, I just noticed that it might specify what JP1 does directly on the card,(picture linked below.) Apparently JP1 controls Line Out or Speaker Out, but I still don't know about J10.

As for the four-pin connections, I may have to just toy with them to figure it out.

Do you think the generic Yamaha YMF718 drivers from their website will work? Those appear to be almost my only choice. I'm about to try them now.

Once again, thanks for the response, I will have to Google your suggestion.

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[RaDiKaL_]

Nice to see you figured out some of the Jumpers. If you cannot find any other drivers then I hope those ones have worked for you. Good luck.

 

[Shaina11]

Luckily the generic Yamaha YMF718 drivers (OPL3-SAx) from here seem to be working in Windows 98 SE. Also, if you intend on playing DOS games, don't install Windows 98 SE's WDM Yamaha driver, instead use the generic ones.

Apparently JP1 can also disable the built-in amplifier,(by placing both jumpers 2-3, 2-3, i.e. up/line-out as opposed to down/speaker-out) which for me was a must, without these generic drivers and disabling the amplifier, not only was the card loud, but the static level was insane. Almost seemed like the card had a built-in microphone and was emitting the case noise. Now I can hardly hear any static.

At any rate, it seems to be working great thus far, *knock on wood* and the DOS game I've tried has sound, thanks for the help RaDiKaL_.

P.S. J10 is still a mystery.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Grats on getting it working. Brought me lots of memories from my old 386 heh. Out of curiosity, which game are you running on it?

 

[Shaina11]

Wolf by Sanctuary Woods, 1994. I'm running an AMD K6-2 400, thus it seems to be a wee bit fast for this game. The gameplay itself seems fine, but the loading screens go so fast it doesn't have a chance to play the music. And when it shows the sunset/sunrise scene it flies to where you hardly know what happened. And since the scenes go by quicker, the music sadly gets cut short unless I use a hotkey for CPUKiller, but then I get a jerky scene just for the sake of music. And sometimes a certain sound effect in a certain scene gets cut off right at the end.

I've been experimenting with slowdown utilities but they're hardly ideal... Also the evaluation of Mo'Slo isn't working out for me that well. (If only DOSBox allowed use of a physical ISA soundcard... But then the CPU may be too slow due to emulation...)