Posted by Carl F. on 4, 2001 at 3:38 PM:
In Reply to: Anyone here uses a motherboard without ISA slot? posted by Bugfinder on 4, 2001 at 3:16 PM:
: 1) Someone said at MAME official board that ISA 16-bit sound cards slow down the processor performance so I´d better choose a PCI sound card. Is this true?
Sure, to an extent.
: 2) I want to have a DOS-only computer for use in my cabinet however I don´t see sound card manufacturers including DOS drivers... Do you have any of these motherboards and have sound in pure MS-DOS? How did you install the soundcard if there are no DOS drivers? Have you had to install Windows just to use the sound card installer program, to have sound support in pure MS-DOS?
That may be your only recourse. I decided to forgo the whole mess and install Linux :-)
: 3) People who have already used both Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA and PCI sound cards say that an AWE64 ISA card sounds much better than a PCI sound card. How true is that? I´m looking to a Sound Blaster PCI 128, running away from Sound Blaster PCI 16 (Ensoniq) and Live! because they´re expensive and add nothing good to DOS users, only showing their full feature under Windows.
I couldn't really say, as I've never used an AWE64. You could go even cheaper and get one of the Ensoniq AudioPCI cards; it isn't radically different from the PCI 128.