From: me@yyzkevin.com   
      
   Interesting, I was not aware compatibility was so poor,   I have a snarkbarker   
   mca back when it was released,    I had not had a chance to try it out for    
   games.      I just dropped in one of my systems and sure enough nothing would   
   work,      stack    
   overflow etc due to isr getting called repeatedly.     
      
   I made a small modification to the snarkbarker and wrote a quick tsr to   
   operate as the irq police and I can now play my few test games unmodified    
   i.e. doom... I will have to try some more and see if it is practical solution   
   to games that misbehave.   I'   
   ve been looking at this for all of  1 day so surely I am unaware of most of   
   what is out there to deal with this already.   
      
   I have been working on and off on a pcmcia soundblaster compatible card,      
   generally speaking the only one that ever existed was the ibm 3d sound.      
   Through that adventure I have had some exposure to level vs edge interrupts as   
   found on pc cards,  so I    
   applied a few of my tricks.   
      
      
      
   On Thursday, 29 June 2023 at 09:00:59 UTC-4, Ryan Alswede wrote:   
   > Game software were coded and built directly against an ISA bus Sound Blaster   
   so all the ISR (interrupt service routines) DMA (direct memory access)   
   processes are designed for that bus architecture UNLESS the game writer wrote   
   the methods to handle MCA    
   bus architecture the sound cards will fail to produce results in a PS/2.    
   >    
   > I had the white clone snarky board you see on eBay before returning it and   
   tried the following games and software:    
   > Simcity (1989) - no sound    
   > Raptor Call of the Shadows - only could get some sound when set to Adlib.   
   Sound Blaster settings, game would not start.    
   > Star Trek Final Unity - PS/2 (Model 90 Pentium60 / Model 77 486DX2) machines   
   would crash/lock up with any Sound Blaster settings, Sound Blaster detection   
   in setup would do the same.    
   > Duke Nukem 3D - No sound.    
   > Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition - Had sound, no problems    
   > Windows 98 - Auto detects and installs MS Win 95 driver fine and plays   
   Windows Sounds ok.    
   > Windows NT 4.0 - has popping noise on start and end of Windows Sounds using   
   MS Sound Blaster Driver for NT.    
   >    
   > I also own a Sound Piper 16 which uses an ESS688F Sound Blaster compatible   
   chipset. In DOS games above it fairs the same even though the ESS688F ISA   
   version is celebrated in the DOS game world.    
   >    
   > If you saw Louis' other post about Sound Blaster/MCV, even they admit that   
   their Sound Blaster software doesn't work on MCA and you have to update to MCA   
   versions of their utilities.    
   >    
   > "CAUSE: It is due to the hardware differences in interrupt handling    
   > between the AT bus machine and the Micro Channel machine. Therefore,    
   > Sound Blaster program which is designed for AT bus cannot be used on    
   > PS/2* machine directly"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)