There's a patch somewhere for the screen-shaking issue with Commander Keen 4,5,6. It's available on one of the CK fan pages, and i believe someone demoed it here on RU-vid as well. Maybe check the settings inside the game also, I believe there's something around "VGA" you can change (or maybe that's a setting that shows up when the game is patched).
I'll look into it thanks. It always seems to be an issue on systems with CPUs faster than a Pentium I. There is the "SVGA compatibility" mode but that doesn't seem to work. I really just need to throw together a socket 7 machine. :D
@@DOSStorm It's not about how fast the system is, it's about graphics card used. Some cards just handle their framebuffer differently enough that it causes the stuttering. Matrox cards are especially known for this.
It's a cheap ISA soundcard with excellent DOS compatibility and a wavetable header, I'd argue that makes it pretty good. Slap something like a Dreamblaster S2 on there and it becomes great.
That is a fair point and definitely something worth trying. Mine does have a header! Careful though few other variants with this chip don't even have the wavetable pins soldered on.
I really try my best to pick games that highlight the best and worst qualities of the cards I test. DUNE almost always has a way of revealing bad OPL2 emulation.
it could be better (maybe). i'd look at the drivers that W98 installs automatically. it could be installing the WDM style drivers instead of older, more compatible VXD drivers. the crystal FM is usually good! maybe you could try rebooting into DOS (if you weren't already) and run some DOS games again once you've run Unisound which should initialise it without hassle.
I agree. Crystal FM is usually good! This chip seems to be the exception though. The driver listed here didn't seem to make any difference: www.philscomputerlab.com/crystal-cx4235.html Running in pure DOS might help a bit, I was running these tests under 98SE.
Wow, I have the same case at home, good video kid. I subscribed and liked the video so I am looking forward to more old pc parts that I have getting a second chance in life being used again because your enthusiasm is just to much. Keep up the good work.
I don't know about this card but for me peak DOS-era soundcards was the Soundblaster 16/32AWE with their Gameblaster wavetable card. Oh man, playing X-Wing or Wing Commander on that card just elevated the games to a whole new level. I feel bad for anyone who lived through this dinky card 😆
Waveblaster. The Game Blaster was a pre-SB card that used a couple of SAA1099 chips for stereo square-wave sound. The original Sound Blaster included those chips for backwards compatibility. Later models included sockets but no chips (but you could buy them separately if you really wanted the functionality), and the SB Pro ditched support altogether.
Great video, just wanted to say that I have a crystal card that came to me in a Acer Entra system, who work on win98, and the chip is not a 4235 but a 4237, and it is a great card, it perform well in game like MDK, Half life, or Quake. Maybe they changed somthing on it? if someon know...?
If you know the tunes, you immediately hear it's off. It is the single Crystal chip that is bugged. Still, it's a must in a proper collection. I have 2 or 3.
It's bad, but I honestly think Creative CQM sounds worse, at least in some games. You should try the Adlib "emulation" on Ensoniq Audio PCI / Sound Blaster PCI64/128/Vibra 128 btw. It's comedy gold.
To rub some salt in the wound, IIRC apparently there's two different versions of the "adlib" compatibility of those cards. There's the bad emulation, but there's also another driver that tries to match OPL patches to what it thinks is the closest MIDI patch and some games literally end up sounding like Minecraft note block music, lmfao
what do you think about the Gallant SC-6000? I got one recently and my version even comes with a wavetable header, swapped my Vibra for it and all the bugs I had on dos games like hanging notes and clipping sounds are gone, a lot less noisy than the vibra too
Seems like the noise oscillator is really busted maybe envelopes too. Not sure what 'element' that would be in FM synthesis though. That's what is the most busted in Tyrian imo.
Another benefit of this sound card is that it is ready to uninstall when you get a better sound card… 😂 I think I had one of these back in the day and it turned me off to anything that wasn’t Sound Blaster.
ESS stuff is great for the price. I never had real Sound Blaster cards growing up, and pretty much used ESS Audiodrive stuff in all the machines I had.
These have been around forever and yeah they were always awful. I used to slap computers together at a nonprofit and we’d always laugh when one of the guys got stuck trying to get one of these sound cards working in win 95. Plug and play would configure it to IRQ 14 or some crap. Why???
@@Jay-q3o4w I haven't used a Vibra in a long time but I remember it having some weirdness compared to a real SB16. If you want something cheap try to find an ESS ES1869 or ES1868. They usually go for around $30 or less if you look. Aztech cards like the AZT-2316 are also an incredible value and they pack in a real OPL3 chip. They aren't very sought after and go for under $20 sometimes. The drivers in Windows are a bit picky with those since some of them have some modem stuff built in, but if all you want is DOS compatibility you can use the VOGONS UNISOUND drivers and they work flawlessly.
But back in 1997, not everyone had the luxury of buying those better options, sometimes, the cheap option is all you can afford. Given a choice between PC speaker and this sound card, I would choose the sound card :)
Some of the Crystal sound cards are OK, the ones on the Aztek cards are pretty good. I mean, it isn't crap either, I used them in budget builds. I have heard worse cards where tone/notes were waay off... AD1815 AD1816 are better though, you are right. But why is the LIVE! bad for DOS? You can load Phil's 6 stage drivers (it's annoying and sometimes breaks the OS) but as long as the card is the big EM chip like you show at least I find that the OPL reproduciton is decent. Hell I'd rather a CT4170 over a AD1815 or especially a CX4235....
@@idahofur I have a few Packard Bell branded ones around here, one even with SCSI. It needs a damn driver that I can't find anywhere, and even worse, a VLSI Future Domain chip installed into a socket. I have one on another 8 bit controller, but I didn't want to sacrifice it. I found a CT 1770 with SCSI - right after I'm done my term papers, I'm gonna go play with it. Maybe even make a decent video about it ;)
The crystal sound card that's built into the motherboard of some dual pentium pros work extremely well with good sound even playing DVD in Win98! So I thought why not get the exact same individual card just like the one built into the pentium pro. We'll the sound on the individual isa card was ........not good. Like you said it sounded off. Lesson learned.
