Update. I tried it on another motherboard, an AMD K5 based one, and similar problems. Windows 98SE reported that the card didn't start and would be disabled.

The card is dead, isn't it?

Apologies if it's bad form to resurrect an old post - but this has all the details of the same problem I have.

My CT2230 (the whole machine actually) was unused for quite a few years, then this week fired it up and all was well with the sound card. The next day it refused to work at all, then after much twiddling with re-installing and trying different BLASTER= settings I got the OPL to work but no digital sound.

Same errors as above from the driver; Error CTSOUND1010: Invalid "/BLASTER=D:x" argument. And from DIAGNOSE; none of the available settings can be used.

Any advice? Sad that this card seems to have died.

Yeah the CT2230 is a nuetered CT1741 IMHO with no way to "physically" set the DMA's. Your card could be dead but maybe something on the motherboard is the issue....

Is it a PCI system? If so, have you reserved the resources you want to use for this card in BIOS for non-PnP devices? Could well be the motherboard letting some PCI (or ISA PnP) device take them. Exactly how to reserve resources depends on your motherboard, but usually it involves selecting the IRQ and DMA and choosing "Legacy/non-PnP" or similar.

Also note that if you're not using UNISOUND, changing the SET BLASTER= setting in AUTOEXEC.BAT doesn't actually configure anything, it just tells games that use the variable where to find the sound card. If the card is not configured and working at those resources, it won't do anything.

Thanks, it's a 486 VLB system with no options for resources in the BIOS. It has VLB VGA and a VLB disk controller installed. Swapped the CT2230 with an Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro II 16 temporarily and the Aztech card is working fine in the 486.

I'll try the CT2230 in another machine. The only other ISA ones I have are P200 or K6-2 with PCI.

VLB only? Then it shouldn't be PnP mess. That Aztech card (MMSN822?) works in exactly the same way as the CT2230 - non-PnP software config and if it can use the resources, the CT2230 should be able to as well. Sounds like something on the card failing.

I initially had some issues with an SB16 in my 486. I'd run the diagnose program and it would try to select different resources every time or complain that it couldn't find any. Maybe you need to do a cold, minimal boot (shift+F5) for it to work reliably, I'm not sure. Right now I just have a SET BLASTER in my autoexec.bat, followed by DIAGNOSE /S, and nothing sound-card-related in config.sys.

But also try this program, which seems to be good at detecting a sound card even without any BLASTER variable or drivers loaded. If it works then that should rule out hardware failure.
http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/Digital_Sound_System

dionb wrote on 2023-08-17, 06:23:

Also note that if you're not using UNISOUND, changing the SET BLASTER= setting in AUTOEXEC.BAT doesn't actually configure anything, it just tells games that use the variable where to find the sound card. If the card is not configured and working at those resources, it won't do anything.

This isn't correct. On the software configured sound blasters, running DIAGNOSE /S uses the BLASTER environment variable to configure the card.

Unfortunately exact same issue on the P200.