I'm not sure what you've been reading, but my TUSL2-C (i815 chipset) can use a Sound Blaster Live in DOS. Since you've got the card already, you might as well give it a spin.

dondiego wrote:

Since pc-pci is out of question and this chipset doesn't support ddma i wonder which sound card could i use. I have a sound blaster live value and i've read they don't require ddma but i'm sceptic about that.

I understood pretty much all of these cards had the same strange requirements.

Without sblink you are going to have hell getting dos sound to work, this is why having native isa or sblink is so desirable. The 810 is better for 9x use anyway and pretty cheap when everything else has dried up.

There are multiple choices for PCI soundcards. I recommend eighter Vortex2 or YMF-724.
Mostly because they are stereo cards. Vortex seems to be the best for pure Win98 from what I read.
YMF-724 has an OPL core build into the chip, and most of them have SB-Link/PC-Pci-Header.
SB-Live seems to be an ok choice, though it is not that great at stereo compared to the other two.

Thanks, no sb-link here. I forgot to mention i also tried loading the tsr with the yamaha but that didn't work either.

Jorpho wrote:

my TUSL2-C (i815 chipset) can use a Sound Blaster Live in DOS

OK i'll try the live then.

Edit: i've tried moving the crystal card to a different slot and now the irq is not shared, i've reserved irq 5 to legacy isa as well but still no luck (as expected).

I've tried the live but it doesn't work either, driver loads but system crashes as soon as i try to start a game. I guess the yamaha should work with the tsr (dsdma) now, i've reserved irq 5 to legacy isa and pci irq is not shared anymore, but i don't think it's worth due to poor windows drivers. Most dos games work under windows anyway.
So in the end i'll keep the crystal card installed.

Maybe's he's having a hard time with driver installation under dos with different cards

I'm also looking for a PCI sound card for my i810 based motherboard! If somebody could help me with that, it would be great.

It's an Aopen, and it does have an SB-Link port. Is it true that the i810 doesn't have DDMA? I've got a 815 and Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 that works in DOS with drivers, and I assumed that was because it supported DDMA, and surely those two chipsets would be very similar.

I know SB-Link is the easy way to get compatibility but it's so hard finding sound cards that have it. If anybody could recommend me a single card that can do in DOS Sound Blaster + General MIDI in a single card that would be excellent. I'd be happy to get another Sound Blaster Live! but I know there are cards out there with better quality. Better quality is very much desirable, but as a minimum just need something that works.

Focus your search on Yamaha based PCI cards. Something like this offers similar DOS support to the YMF-71x series ISA cards (including a genuine Yamaha OPL3 core) when used with an SB-PCI capable motherboard.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/A301-G50-Yamaha-Gatewa … 7IAAOSwvg9XfyuB
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Labway-LWHA411G7-PCI-S … QIAAOSwMpZUoFfs

Sound Blaster Live! will be good, when I tried that card with my Pentium IV build with GA-8IDX board I have good correct sound even in Commander Keen 4-6 and Wolfenstein 3D, and also in later games.

Tiger433 wrote:

Sound Blaster Live! will be good, when I tried that card with my Pentium IV build with GA-8IDX board I have good correct sound even in Commander Keen 4-6 and Wolfenstein 3D, and also in later games.

Are you shure it was a SB-Live? SB-Live sound's horrible when using Adlib in games.
Not just horrible... It sounds like, really bad.
Nope.... For a PCI card, were Adlib is a feature that are needed, then YMF-724 is
probably the best you can get. Unless there is another PCI card that has OPL-Core.

In the end the ensoniq audio pci 3000 (aka SB PCI 64) worked. The dos drivers uploaded by Phil to vogonsdrivers were fake, those were creative drivers for ES1371. Also the win9x drivers for ES1370 are corrupt. I uploaded them here:
https://archive.org/details/es-1370-pci