Maybe you could post a picture of your cards, or at least let us know the SBxxxx model number on them.

Just checked, the model is SB0350 on both cards.

Don't know how to upload pics.

Update... so, the Dell GX260 motherboard's onboard sound worked fine when I installed drivers, so that confirms for me its the card at fault (yes, I removed the card to test this. Then I slotted it back in and on boot the card was recognized and drivers began to be loaded).

Going to do further testing later as the manual is unclear on where you're supposed to plug in the speakers (as it lists one "digital out" port which it describes as being for speakers.. but also three different "line out" ports which are ALSO for speakers).

This should be the Audigy 2 ZS.

The digital out port is for digital speakers. Most standard speakers will use the regular line-out (line-out 1 for stereo). On the ZS the first line-out is the third jack counting from the Firewire port. It may be green or gold.

There is a setting in the audio drivers that can enable digital audio only. If you have that ticked, but connected to the normal line-out, you'll get no sound. And if you connect via the digital audio to normal analog speakers, you will get no sound.

EdmondDantes wrote:

So this is kind of a repeat of a post I made in the topic about that Dell motherboard but I figured it might get more answers if […]
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So this is kind of a repeat of a post I made in the topic about that Dell motherboard but I figured it might get more answers if I make it its own topic.

So recently I got a Dell motherboard, and its all up and running now. I have power, Windows XP (SP3) is installed, the Geforce ti4200 works and is running...

The only hitch is the Soundblaster Audigy 2 (which may or may not be a ZS, I'm not sure how you can tell).

For some reason there is NO SOUND coming through my speakers.

BEFORE YOU ASK:

Yes, I disabled the onboard audio in the BIOS.
Yes, I tried different PCI slots.
Yes, I tried plugging the speakers into different jacks on the card itself (its not really clear which one is the speaker jack)
Yes, I made sure the speakers themselves worked.
Yes, I installed drivers.

That last part was a bit strange actually. See my first thought was to use the Audigy 2 ZS driver CD iso you can find here on Vogons, but when I ran that thing's program it said it didn't detect the cards (I have two audigies of the same model). I found another driver installation however which *did* detect the card (I forget where I found this second one) and intalled just fine but... absolutely no sound is coming through the speakers.

And yes, I tested BOTH the audigies I have. Same thing.

Right now I'm just grabbing drivers for the onboard audio, just to test to see if this motherboard can produce sound *at all*. I'm suspecting that my Audigy 2 cards (both of which had also failed to work in my Windows 98se rig) were probably just DOA when I bought them, and I'm honestly hoping that's the case... I'd hate a potential gaming comp to not be capable of sound.

If ya'll can suggest anything else I may want to try or if there's some weird aspect of the Audigy 2s I should know about (I'm honestly thinking of just getting an Audigy 1 since in my mind older = simpler), let me know. I might even be willing to send the Audigy 2s off to a member here for testing.

One thing is I read just now that Audigy 2's come with something called a "Breakout Box." Is this box absolutely required or can you get sound directly from the card?

No, the live drive ( breakout box ) is not required.
I have a Dell 270 too, I remember having difficulties get sound cards to work in it to.
But I was running Win98se. Should be easy in WinXP. Check your bios setting and reset to default.
The Audigy 2zs is plug and play in Win-10 so if you have a Win-10 computer with PCI slot then you can try it there.
Check you resources and driver in "Control panel > device manager" to make sure the card is working okay.
I have several of these Audigy 2zs cards and I am using one right now in Win-10 on an HP 6300 Pro computer.
I have never had one of these cards go bad on me.

For the live drive you can use a standard 40-pin cable.
The black cable is for firewire.

However the live drive is NOT required for the Audigy 2zs to work.
I think the Dell 260 will perform better with Win98se.

Good news guys,

I GOT IT WORKING.

Here's the thing... I don't quite know how I got it working.

So I'll just tell you the steps I took after my previous post:

I decided to make sure the motherboard could produce sound at all, and thus removed the Audigy and installed the onboard sound drivers (making sure to plug my speakers into the MB's sound output). This got me sound and for a moment I was satisfied.

Then I decided to experiment with the Audigy again since I had downloaded more tools and tech videos on the issue... none of which I got a chance to use.

I plugged the sound card into a PCI slot (one of the ones attached via a dell daughterboard because the other two are basically right next to the video card) and started the comp up.

The "found new hardware" dialogue came up and a lot of drivers were loaded, but then it asked me for a driver CD/location.

Now, I had an ISO of the Audigy 2 ZS driver CD (I believe I got it here) so I immediately loaded that up in Daemontools... which caused the box requesting a driver disc/location to disappear so I guess XP can just see virtual CDs like that.

At this point there was still no sound, so I turned off the comp. Now, the last thing was it wasn't clear which of the ports on the back was supposed to be where you plug the speakers in--green seemed the most obvious but the manual also said the orange was for speakers (throughout my attempts to get this card working I had tried EVERY port multiple times). I'd had it plugged into orange for the above driver install, but when I turned off the PC I plugged the speakers into green.

Next time I booted up, I heard the familiar XP startup sound and WHAMMO, Soundblaster working, Geforce working, and I played a quick game of Unreal Tournament (botmatch because this XP machine has no internet access).

My best guess as to what happened? The driver pack I had installed initially had been missing something important, but that something was on the driver CD so when I gave the machine that, it solved everything.

Altho if you guys wanna speculate about other possibilities (card not seated properly, bad PCI slots, computers being jerks that like to troll people, etc) feel free to do so. Anyway I'm posting this in case anyone else ever has the same issue I did.