Since the late 90s, I have been trying to get into better sound for my PCs, but the Vibra 16Cs and SoundBlaster PCIs were pretty OK for me, and they did the trick. I am far from a computer audiophile and my first and second PCs didn't even have a sound card. My sound systems went (and do currently go) into cars, where impedance matched speakers go through active crossovers, EQs and long story short my 1999 Matiz has 15 speakers 😜

Some time ago I got a damaged AWE32 that needed recapping, a new joystick port, and recently I fixed the SIMM slots on it. The card seems to work fine, all the DIAGNOSE.EXE tests pass, the sound is crisp and good. It is a CT2760 - 8Mb RAM added. It is in an IBM Blue Lightning 486BL2 (some diags put it as a BL3 even, but I had no luck POSTing with the BIOS 3x multiplier in 25 or 33 MHz), that in and of itself is weird. PC DOS 6.1 and WFW 3.11 are installed. It has a Phoenix BIOS.

Aside from an AWE64 PNP in my 233MMX, which I literally inserted and Windows 98SE found and configured, I have absolutely no exposure to such a high end (for me anyways) and complex card, so I don't know what's normal and what isn't - literally new ground for me. I put it in and loaded the drivers from Phil's site:

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/sound-blaster-awe-32.html

sbbasic.exe
ctcmbbs.exe (non PNP, so it didn't even ask for it)
diag404.exe (Some games made no sound)
awedw3up.exe (I don't know how to use this one, there's no installer - when I put the files in the same dir as s16dw, it looks like it installs them but then I get errors and no sound at all in WFW 3.11)
s16dw3up.exe (this one gave me Windows drivers, for all the good that did)
awe32a.exe (would only apply to SC2K, in Windows, so... )

Here's my environment:

And the drivers loaded in 3.11 - Note - I can't change any parameters when I press Setup under Drivers:

Curiously as I try to use the SoundBlaster 1.5 drivers (220/5) it tells me that the parameters don't match what's on the card, but the README tells me that the AWE is backwards compatible with SB16

system.ini:

midimapper=midimap.drv
midi=sbawe32.drv
midi1=sb16fm.drv
midi2=sb16snd.drv
wave=sb16snd.drv
aux, mixer, same as above

I also made a resources map for this machine as it has some nonstandard crap in it:

IOMEGA ISA is a tape drive card - it reports DMA 0 in HWInfo, but recently I got the card to be seen by its software - apparently at IRQ 5 and DMA 1, and that's not adjustable. There are no TSRs for this device, and I have run the computer with the card out of slot. Same results.

My observations so far:

-No SFX in any DOOM (weapon cock, door open) AWE32 (MIDI sound) works fine (soundtrack definitely sounds richer)
-Micro Machines 2 - terrible popping, sound "plays" but sounds horrid, delayed and extremely noisy
-Settlers 2 Gold - SFX and AWE32 sound work superbly
-Burntime - menu sounds different, more refined - something out of mid 90s dance music, as if an entire channel was rewritten. Love it.

Now, let's move onto the main problem:

https://youtu.be/G-fOjBQSL4s (hot water heater was on and shower in use - yay)

What the hell is with the repeating ding? It will eventually stop. Every sound played will do this, and when I start SimCity it tells me that my MIDI is in use. The MIDI Synth seems to work well, but it appears it is on a different address.

Any ideas? I'd really love a seamless Windows experience so I can play around more with this sound card 😁