Guess i should have tested it before asking 🤣

The card isnt detected by operating system. When i run Terratec -s it says: !ERROR! No Maestro 32/96 found in your System!
The card looks brand new, it doesn't have tantalum capacitors but normal electrolytic ones (purple cap jacket). Cap C58 doesnt look damaged.

Any one?

Here are my notes on this card from 2007,
whatever you do, try in plain DOS first, to avoid any windows issues.
This card requires DOS initialisation anyways for the MPU interfaces to work. Either manually or through autoexec.bat.
If it still does not work, maybe try plain crystal CS4232 drivers. You can find the drivers Here (cwd_dos.zip).
The card has an EEPROM with PnP information, on a plain CS4232 cards this can be 'downloaded' and 'uploaded' with a file called Resource.exe.

"Maestro 32/96
This is the latest driver form the Terratec website.
The core of the driver is the multifunctional mix3296.exe
this executable has the following functions:
- Mixer panel in Windows
- Configurator (card eeprom writing) in Windows
- Mixer panel in pure DOS
- Configurator (card eeprom writing) in pure DOS
- required initializer in DOS: with the i parameter.

However this executable may lock up in DOS when using
a pentium II/III. In this case use the v128/v129 terratec.exe
which is basically an older version of the same file.
place this file in the windows/m3296 folder for it to function."

TERRATEC.EXE -V
No IS Plug'n'Play BIOS Detected
No PnP Configuration Manager Detected

CS32INTR.EXE
SB 220 FAIL
MPU401 FAIL
WSS 534 FAIL
FM/OPL3 FAIL

CS4232C.EXE
BIOS Reported No Plug'n'Play cards

CS32MIX.EXE
Cannot find sound card

Is it possible that the card EEPROM is damaged?

[EDIT]

After running CS4232C /O i got the card to respond. And after running diagnostics program i got sound on wave and FM.
But Terratec.exe still rebels.

[Edit #2]

This is what CS4232C.EXE /O reports:

Plug'n'Play BIOS detected
BIOS reported no Plug'n'Play cards
SBPro: I/O= 220, IRQ= 5, DMA= 1
Cannot load D:\CS4232\CWAUDIO.BIN
Using defailt Firmware download

Terratec.exe -S still says no Maestro 3296 detected

[Edit #3]

Testing the game with Duke Nukem 3D shows that there is sound FX, such as voice and gun shots, but no MIDI. I tried a few options in setup but got no sound.
Dead MIDI part?

There are two parts on this card:
CS4232 = Sound Controller+codec+MPU interface (waveblaster header), IDE.
SAM9233/SAM8905 = MPU interface with General Midi Synthesizer, part of which is used as the FM sound generator here, like an OPL3.

Both parts need to be initialised for all things to work. For now, I don't know how to initialize the SAM9233 other then by using that terratec executable. It is a shame, as the 4MB set on this card sounds great...

Something must be broken/wrong since the card isn't detected at all.
I am guessing Terratec only activates the MIDI part of the card since Wave part is activated otherwise.

I dont know how does the card work, but broken EEPROM sounds possible, since it stores data in there for card operation.
Other thing i can think of is dead SAM9233 or something along its path.

You could better post an photo / image of that card.. So whe can identify it our selfs.

Maybe you use the wrong card with the wrong drivers.

I tried the 1.27 drivers as well, they also say no card detected.

required initializer in DOS: with the i parameter.

have you done that ?
also
Cannot load D:\CS4232\CWAUDIO.BIN

This is what i did:
CONFIG.SYS > CS4232C /O
AUTOEXEC.BAT > Blaster set, mixer set

I have added CWAUDIO.BIN from newest drivers into CS4232 directory and now it doesnt report that any more, but it still says BIOS Reported no Plug N Play Cards.

-Does FM/OPL work?
-Does a midi daughterboard work? if you have one.
-What is the system speed in MHz?
-Maybe you can drive the Dream Synth with the CS4232 MPU, but it is a crazy idea:
I think it is done by connecting pin 1 of 'midi-2' header to pin 3 of 'midi-1' header.
I noted the 4-pin header pinout as being: 1=Midi-out, 2=GND, 3=Midi-in, 4=+5V. At least for midi-2.
-maybe you can replace capacitor C58 as per this document, though you don't really have boot problems:
http://ftp.terratec.de/Audio/Maestro/3296/Hel … fikation_GB.pdf

1. From what i hear it sounds like horrible emulated OPL
2. Tried one, no sound
3. 133MHz (tried in Pentium 3 as well)
4. I could try

I don't understand how does the sound card work, what does it first do. From the component diagram from AmoRetro (http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/m3296.jpg) all i can think of is that EEPROM is corrupted or something else like the SAM9233.

1. Yes the FM is 'different', but it means the SAM8905 is alive. The FM is the only downside of the hardware on this card.
2. Not? It is connected to the CS4232, so I expected that part to work using Crystal drivers. Mixer settings?, maybe you need to up the CD channel or something.
3. Good.
4. Yes, but the CS4232 MPU must work first, your answer 2 suggests it does not.

EDIT:

Crazy idea 4 works on my Maestro 32/96. I can get the synthesizer to work by just using plain Crystal drivers and using a wire to connect midi-2-out to midi-1-in.

Attached an EEPROM dump from the Maestro 32/96. Done with Resource.exe.

1. It sounds very horrible 😁 (as in bad choice of instrument recreation)
2. Yup CD volume, now i get MIDI from external daughterboard
3. Ya man
4. I will try this now.

I have programmed the EEPROM using PNP32.INI 272B (Previous EEEEPROM was 273B)
After restarting and checking the EEPROM data it reported 272B like the PNP32.INI file.

What else to try? Terratec.exe still doesn't recognize the card.

[Edit]

MIDI 1 - P3
MIDI 2 - P1

Works with out any problem. I get high quality MIDI music when i run Duke Nukem Setup - Test Music card.
So this means that the MIDI part is operational (yaaaay), but what could be wrong when Terratec mixer/setup wont detect it ??? 😵

Stojke wrote:

I have programmed the EEPROM using PNP32.INI 272B (Previous EEEEPROM was 273B)
After restarting and checking the EEPROM data it reported 272B like the PNP32.INI file.

Not PNP32.INI, load the Maestro.asm I dumped.

Stojke wrote:

MIDI 1 - P3 <-> MIDI 2 - P1
Works with out any problem. I get high quality MIDI music when i run Duke Nukem Setup - Test Music card.
So this means that the MIDI part is operational (yaaaay)

Ain't that something. 🤣
It is convenient to have a midi-out pin on the card, sometimes I solder them on myself.

IT WORKS!

Thank you so much!
I knew it was a bad EEPROM 😁
It now loads terratec with out any problem, i will test it more and report. Thank you so much <3

You are welcome, and lucky I like the CS4232 chip so much. 😀 have fun with the card.

Wish I could us the same trick to revive some dead SB16's.

Hmm. Terratec.exe keeps setting WSS, MIDI1 and MIDI2 to OFF every time. It seems it has problems writing into EEPROM on its own (Where resource works).

Actually, this seems to be the problem with the INI file, where everything is set to disabled 😮

[Edit]

What ever Terratec is doing, is not activating the card.
When i run crystal CS4232C.EXE /O with BIN from newest drivers i get the Crystal part to activate.
Here is the CS4232.INI from M32 folder -

I get that file when i run Terratec.exe and set everything (including IRQ/Etc).

[Edit FINAL]

Finally holy shit, this has been an interesting day.
I have used Terratec -O command to overwrite PnP with CS4232.INI that i fixed to work as i want it to.
I finally understand why some say Plug n Pray 😁

Thanks for all the help!

Just found this topic now and here are some remarks:

The card has a hardware flaw that on faster systems (P166 and faster) the PnP detection fails (or is flaky/partial) or may freeze the BIOS on warm boot. This can be resolved by changing capacitor C58 to 16 V, 1 µF.
I think this basically fits to all problems you report. The hw flaw is explained on the terratec website though.

I would like to notice also that vogonswiki spreads misinformation in this regard as it recommends to use older drivers (which will not fix this issue).