1) Have you tried a clean windows 9x install, then installing the vxd drivers.

Unless you have the original driver CD for the 5.1 card, you may need to try a few different driver CDs.

Just be careful using an SB live based card with the 686B south bridge. There is a buggy interaction between the 2 that can cause IDE data corruption.

2) Those settings look correct. Maybe reconfigure the card to use IRQ 5, which I find most compatible. Also note the DOS sound emulation is highly dependent on the motherboard being wired up correctly. If it isn't wired up correctly, then DOS emulation will not work correctly no matter what.

3) As long as you get sound working, the biggest incompatibilities this system will suffer with DOS games are:

a) Those that need a slower CPU than the Athlon can run at
b) Those that get upset when you have EMM386.EXE running, which is required for the soundcard emulation to work.

canthearu wrote on 2020-02-11, 12:04:

1) Have you tried a clean windows 9x install, then installing the vxd drivers. […]
Show full quote

1) Have you tried a clean windows 9x install, then installing the vxd drivers.

Unless you have the original driver CD for the 5.1 card, you may need to try a few different driver CDs.

Just be careful using an SB live based card with the 686B south bridge. There is a buggy interaction between the 2 that can cause IDE data corruption.

2) Those settings look correct. Maybe reconfigure the card to use IRQ 5, which I find most compatible. Also note the DOS sound emulation is highly dependent on the motherboard being wired up correctly. If it isn't wired up correctly, then DOS emulation will not work correctly no matter what.

3) As long as you get sound working, the biggest incompatibilities this system will suffer with DOS games are:

a) Those that need a slower CPU than the Athlon can run at
b) Those that get upset when you have EMM386.EXE running, which is required for the soundcard emulation to work.

1) no, I just tried different drivers without uninstalling them first, installing WDM drivers then changing to VXD like I saw in Phil's video. Should I reinstall windows?

2) to change the IRQ I just change the I7 in the SET BLASTER command to I5 right? What is this "wired up correctly" you mention? All the wiring I have are the front panel LEDs and buttons of this case, and IDE ribbon cables and power. No CD-Audio cable in case that could be the culprit, as I don't have one. I see some DIP switches on the motherboard, one of the jumper sets is for the RAM speed, the other one is for the bus ratio.

1) You can give reinstalling windows a try ... it might work, it might not. Windows 9x is finicky.

2) You need to change it in the SB emulation device under Device Management under windows. The DOS driver should follow that. I'll try to pull out a DOS system and test this.

canthearu wrote on 2020-02-11, 12:26:

1) You can give reinstalling windows a try ... it might work, it might not. Windows 9x is finicky.

2) You need to change it in the SB emulation device under Device Management under windows. The DOS driver should follow that. I'll try to pull out a DOS system and test this.

Hold on, now it worked! changing the IRQ of the SB to 5 made it work in both doom and duke3d! Thanks a bunch man 😁

I just reminded (rather stumbled upon) another issue I forgot to post. Gonna update the OP.

webodan wrote on 2020-02-11, 12:13:

What is this "wired up correctly" you mention?

For the record... This means how the manufacturer implemented the chipset in the motherboard (in this specific case, how the chipset PCI interrupt pins were wired to the PCI slots). If the manufacturer messed the implementation, there is little or nothing can be done from the user perspective.

Yep, your motherboard chipset must support the ability to remap low numbered I/O ports to PCI devices, so the PCI card can listen to the required sound blaster ports (0x22x, 0x388, 0x330). Then it must also have the NMI wired up correctly so it could emulate an ISA DMA transfer like old sound cards did.

If the chipset, or the particular motherboard, didn't offer the correct support, PCI sound cards don't work in pure DOS. Of course, the reality is far murkier then my basic description here, and certain cards do tricks to get around the differing levels of hardware support a motherboard has, but it is really tough to get ISA soundcard emulation working on a motherboard or chipset that doesn't want to do it!

be careful that you only use the first 120gb of that HDD, win9x will corrupt anything past that. if youre reinstalling windows anyway, fdisk the HDD and set up the partitions sonthat doesnt happen. the remainder is enough to add a 2000/xp install, if you're interested.

Cobra42898 wrote on 2020-02-11, 13:32:

be careful that you only use the first 120gb of that HDD, win9x will corrupt anything past that. if youre reinstalling windows anyway, fdisk the HDD and set up the partitions sonthat doesnt happen. the remainder is enough to add a 2000/xp install, if you're interested.

Oh! thank you very much, didn't know, I assume it's some sort of LBA addressing bug or something. I'll definitely do that, will make file transfers easier if I decide to add thumbdrives instead of the FTP or whatever - can I expect to install XP in the remaining 40 gigs and will it set up dual booting? Or should I do it manually? I know Plop Boot Manager can sort that up for me, but I'd rather have an official way of doing it.

webodan wrote on 2020-02-11, 11:55:

[...]

- Soltek SL-75KAV with some capacitors replaced (most of them on top of the CPU next to some voltage regulators that had to be definitely bad since they were all swollen)

Motherboards of that era in general and Soltek boards in particular were notorious for capacitor plague. Dead right you replaced the bulging ones - but particularly if you're concerned about stability that's not enough. Assume every cap of the type that was bulging is bad. The others may not yet be leaking, but they almost certainly aren't performing nominally, and will degrade further with use.

[...]

but my understanding is that MS-DOS on top of Windows is flaky (playing some DOOM and DUKE3D gives me a bit of flashing text when obtaining items and the sound is a bit sttutery sometimes) so I should pursue DOS mode for better performance and compatibility...

It is. Just do dual-boot with a clean DOS install. 6.22 is best for compatibility with software, but limitations (FAT16) can be a pain. DOS 7.1 is best for newer hardware, but some software (Creative SB16/32/64 PnP drivers!) need work to get them to play nice. With 6.22 you want to install it onto a completely separate medium with max 2GB (an old HDD or IDE-CF adapter with little card)

[...]

3) Of all the hardware I detailed that I'm running and that I have in stock, what would be the best setup to retain as much compatibility with 90s and early 2000s games as possible? I only really care about early DirectX games as far as dx is concerned. How about one of those glide wrappers? any that you can recommend using with one of these cards?

Is the GeForce2 a real Gf2GTS or a Gf2MX? If it's the real deal, that's the card to go for. Gf2MX=Gf4MX, basically, so no real reason to choose the one over the other apart from card-specific features. A Gf2GTS will beat any MX easily. Video memory is pretty irrelevant, with this CPU and a Gf2MX/4MX you're not going to be stretching 32MB anyway.

As for sound, as already mentioned SBLive and derivatives (including the Audigies) and Via 686B southbridges don't play nice ball together. It might work for you, but if you experience bad stuff relating to sound and/or IDE interface, consider a different sound card or motherboard - for Win9x things based on Aureal's A3D(II) are always nice..

For DOS, you have an ISA slot - use it! At best you'll get somewhat dodgy emulated DOS sound with these late chips. Get yourself some nice card with real OPL3 FM and good SBPro2 and WSS support and you're good to go with far less hassle and better sound (even if the SNR isn't as good as on the Live/Audigy). ISA audio can happily co-exist with whatever you do on PCI for Win9x, DOS won't be aware of anything on PCI anyway and Windows supports multiple sound cards. A good ISA card would also work fine for Windows actually.

4) My PC table is shared among a bunch of computers, all of them using a pair of USB keyboard and mouse. So you can imagine where this is going - in my motherboard, I was able to make it work by enabling usb keyboard support, but there is no such option for usb MOUSE, so games in DOS won't detect it. What could I do about this? I tried some drivers that claimed to make the mouse work (it's a Microsoft Basic 2.0 mouse) but still no dice. Should I just find an old ps/2 mouse in a thrift store and go with that? would be much nicer if I could use the same peripherals on all of these PCs.

Are you using a KVM switch behind that keyboard and mouse? In any event it's trivial to convert PS/2 keyboard and mouse to USB, the opposite can be more challenging - so I'd suggest getting a nice PS/2 mouse+keyboard and an adapter. Please remember that PS/2 *cannot* be safely hot-plugged though.

For the new that's all I'm having. Hope I can get some help here since despite the issues I'm really enjoying retro gaming on this machine, somewhat rediscovering the OS I used to dread in my childhood now that I have a lot more technical knowledge to fix most of its stability problems - might not be nowhere near as stable, but 98SE has been so much faster and more lightweight than any modern Windows! very impressive that it would run so well on just 128 megs of RAM. We're spoiled these days.

With decent drivers, Win98SE can be rock-solid. However you're starting with a Via chipset which doesn't help, adding an SBLive (iffy Win9x drivers at the best of times, downright bad in combination with Via). And there are possibly still bad caps involved. I wouldn't blame the OS if things are flakey as they stand...

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:37:

but my understanding is that MS-DOS on top of Windows is flaky (playing some DOOM and DUKE3D gives me a bit of flashing text when obtaining items and the sound is a bit sttutery sometimes) so I should pursue DOS mode for better performance and compatibility...
It is. Just do dual-boot with a clean DOS install. 6.22 is best for compatibility with software, but limitations (FAT16) can be a pain. DOS 7.1 is best for newer hardware, but some software (Creative SB16/32/64 PnP drivers!) need work to get them to play nice. With 6.22 you want to install it onto a completely separate medium with max 2GB (an old HDD or IDE-CF adapter with little card)

Would you still recommend DOS & Windows on dual boot even if I run that specific DOS software in MS-DOS mode, that is, run it only with the MS-DOS that Windows boots on top of (given that I manage to fix this USB / PS/2 mouse inconvenience)? Also if you do, would they still play nice if I add another hard drive and install DOS on that one, then dual boot them? Turns out that hunting old PCs around the vicinity for years nets you a lot of spare IDE hard drives, particularly if the schools near you were disposing of lots of old 90s computers...

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:37:

Is the GeForce2 a real Gf2GTS or a Gf2MX?

Actually, I'm not sure, but I remember replacing the thermal paste yesterday as i felt the card very hot in the side opposite to the heatsink and I saw it said GeForce 2 MX 400 on the chip. Should I pop it back to the system and check out Everest or the drivers to identify it further?

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:37:

For DOS, you have an ISA slot - use it! At best you'll get somewhat dodgy emulated DOS sound with these late chips. Get yourself some nice card with real OPL3 FM and good SBPro2 and WSS support and you're good to go with far less hassle and better sound (even if the SNR isn't as good as on the Live/Audigy). ISA audio can happily co-exist with whatever you do on PCI for Win9x, DOS won't be aware of anything on PCI anyway and Windows supports multiple sound cards. A good ISA card would also work fine for Windows actually.

Yeah, I did consider grabbing an ISA card, and hopefully one with OPL3, since I did hear some video that recorded OPL3 sound and it was so good I've always wanted one... the problem is that they're pretty fuck*n expensive and all. Considering the feature set you've mentioned and price, which model would you recommend?

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:37:

Are you using a KVM switch behind that keyboard and mouse? In any event it's trivial to convert PS/2 keyboard and mouse to USB, the opposite can be more challenging - so I'd suggest getting a nice PS/2 mouse+keyboard and an adapter. Please remember that PS/2 *cannot* be safely hot-plugged though.

Nah, I just swap the cables around, it's not a very big place so I move the computers around when they're turned off whenever I want to switch. It's just 5 cables anyway (video, sound, kb & m, ethernet).

I see. OK, I'll check around at least for a PS/2 mouse, since I've had no problems in 9x's DOS mode with the keyboard, and I quite like that USB keyboard tbh. Plus, my Microsoft mouse, despite having been great, is pretty busted after so many years of use, so it could see a replacement.

Two more things regarding this topic, can I expect to plug in the PS/2 mouse with a USB adapter to a PC without PS/2 and have it work? (I got a pretty modern ryzen next to this 9x PC and an XP PC) and are there nice PS/2 optical mice around? (you know, cleaning someone else's ball.......................... nah).

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 14:37:

With decent drivers, Win98SE can be rock-solid. However you're starting with a Via chipset which doesn't help, adding an SBLive (iffy Win9x drivers at the best of times, downright bad in combination with Via). And there are possibly still bad caps involved. I wouldn't blame the OS if things are flakey as they stand...

Wew. I've had some rocky issues on an old PIII laptop running 98SE that had a VIA chipset as well, so that helps me target the real culprit of all those crashes and headaches on that particular machine. If I get hooked enough to 9x gaming, I might grab a more decent motherboard. Feel free to recommend any if you want, and thanks a lot for your input!

webodan wrote on 2020-02-11, 15:00:

[...]

Would you still recommend DOS & Windows on dual boot even if I run that specific DOS software in MS-DOS mode (given that I manage to fix this USB / PS/2 mouse inconvenience)? Also if you do, would they still play nice if I add another hard drive and install DOS on that one, then dual boot them? Turns out that hunting old PCs around the vicinity for years nets you a lot of spare IDE hard drives, particularly if the schools near you were disposing of lots of old 90s computers...

By far the easiest solution is a separate HDD for DOS. Just use the BIOS boot sequence to select which one you will boot. Added bonus here is that you can access the DOS drive from Windows, so can use that for file transfer etc.

Actually, I'm not sure, but I remember replacing the thermal paste yesterday as i felt the card very hot in the side opposite to the heatsink and I saw it said GeForce 2 MX 400 on the chip. Should I pop it back to the system and check out Everest or the drivers to identify it further?

Gf2MX400 sounds very plausible. In that case there's no relevant difference between it and the Gf4MX in there now.

Yeah, I did consider grabbing an ISA card, and hopefully one with OPL3, since I did hear some video that recorded OPL3 sound and it was so good I've always wanted one... the problem is that they're pretty fuck*n expensive and all. Considering the feature set you've mentioned and price, which model would you recommend?

There are 1001 opinions on this one. I consider Creative cards to be generally overrated and buggy. A lot of clones are worse, but some are pretty solid. If you want real OPL3, I'd suggest going for Aztech cards, preferably with AZT2316 (non-PnP) chip and discrete OPL3, or AZT2320 (PnP) with integrated, licensed PnP. If the latter, avoid the triangular cards as they tend to have cheap analog parts which makes them noisy. Look here for a list of cards and the various names they can be found under. Alternative would be a Yamaha YMF719-based card. The chip is glorious, but the cards tend to be a bit crappy... same applies to ESS688 cards. The later, more common ESS1868, doesn't use OPL3 anymore but their own ESFM clone - generally considered better than Creative's CQM, but not a real Yamaha.

If you do want Creative, look for the earlier SB16 cards. Check here for a list of cards, features and bugs.

Be aware that SB16 isn't entirely SBPro2-compatible when it comes to stereo. You'll get sound but it won't sound right. Creative has no cards that do both, others do - Crystal CS4236 and C-Media CMI8330 for example, but neither has real OPL3. Avance Logic ALS100 (NOT the far more common ALS100+) is rumoured to do both and have a real (or more often: a fake 100% copy) OPL3, but I've not been able to find one that works to confirm that.

Nah, I just swap the cables around, it's not a very big place so I move the computers around when they're turned off whenever I want to switch. It's just 5 cables anyway (video, sound, kb & m, ethernet).

I see. OK, I'll check around at least for a PS/2 mouse, since I've had no problems in 9x's DOS mode with the keyboard, and I quite like that USB keyboard tbh. Plus, my Microsoft mouse, despite having been great, is pretty busted after so many years of use, so it could see a replacement.

Two more things regarding this topic, can I expect to plug in the PS/2 mouse with a USB adapter to a PC without PS/2 and have it work? (I got a pretty modern ryzen next to this 9x PC and an XP PC) and are there nice PS/2 optical mice around? (you know, cleaning someone else's ball.......................... nah).

USB HID is one of the few simple 'it just works' protocols. I have ancient 1980s keyboards I can plug into my i7 systems, in fact my son has an old beige Cherry G80-11800 with PS/2-to-USB adapter in his 7th gen Core i3-7100 system as I write this. Note that they don't all work, it can be hit-and-miss buying cheap crap on AliExpress or eBay, but if they work at all they will work everywhere.

[...]

Wew. I've had some rocky issues on an old PIII laptop running 98SE that had a VIA chipset as well, so that helps me target the real culprit of all those crashes and headaches on that particular machine. If I get hooked enough to 9x gaming, I might grab a more decent motherboard. Feel free to recommend any if you want, and thanks a lot for your input!

Via boards aren't necessarily bad, but combining 686B with SBLive is asking for it and leaving possibly bad caps on just makes it worse. Take out the SBLive and the bad caps and it should be solid enough. It's quite likely bad hardware (caps) or drivers were to blame in that laptop too. Personally I'm a great fan of SiS and nVidia chipsets for Socket A, but you lose your ISA slot with those. The only non-Via option for Socket A and ISA is the Gigabyte motherboard with the old AMD750 chipset (I forget the exact name, something like GA-7XE4).

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 16:14:

Via boards aren't necessarily bad, but combining 686B with SBLive is asking for it and leaving possibly bad caps on just makes it worse. Take out the SBLive and the bad caps and it should be solid enough. It's quite likely bad hardware (caps) or drivers were to blame in that laptop too. Personally I'm a great fan of SiS and nVidia chipsets for Socket A, but you lose your ISA slot with those. The only non-Via option for Socket A and ISA is the Gigabyte motherboard with the old AMD750 chipset (I forget the exact name, something like GA-7XE4).

One last thing: I would consider building something that had a good ISA card for DOS + a good WDM card for DirectX and early games on Windows. So there's one piece of this puzzle left; what good card to use for Windows? or should I just use the spare Audigy 2 ZS that I have in order to correct this bad combination of SBLive + VIA 686B? Then connect the Audigy to the line in port of the ISA card or in reverse (idk which one would sound as I'm just theorizing right now).

Thanks again 😀

webodan wrote on 2020-02-11, 18:09:

[...]

One last thing: I would consider building something that had a good ISA card for DOS + a good WDM card for DirectX and early games on Windows. So there's one piece of this puzzle left; what good card to use for Windows? or should I just use the spare Audigy 2 ZS that I have in order to correct this bad combination of SBLive + VIA 686B? Then connect the Audigy to the line in port of the ISA card or in reverse (idk which one would sound as I'm just theorizing right now).

Thanks again 😀

The Audigy 2 ZS is arguably the best sound card out there for Windows 98SE, both in terms of audio fidelity (SNR) and 3D positional audio. It just doesn't like the 686B (Audigy is just a souped-up SBLIve, so suffers from the same issues). With a 686B, you are probably best off with the Aureal Vortex 2, on a card like the Turtle Beach Montego II or Diamond Monster Sound MX300. A cheap, easy alternative is anything with the C-Media CMI8738 chipset. They are actually still being sold new for as little as EUR 5 including shipping from China. Win98 support, even limited DOS support. Absolutely nothing special, but it's sound, it doesn't care a bit about your southbridge and it works in just about every OS on earth (no Win98 drivers on C-Media's site, but there are several on Vogonsdrivers). I'd recommend going for 2nd hand Terratec cards with this chip rather than absolutely no-name new ones. Terratec's Aureon series is solid in terms of analog circuitry.

As for what to connect to what - ideally you want to hook up all cards directly to a mixer or similar, but if you just want a single cable from PC to speakers, you want to put it into the card with the best analog quality. With SBLive/Audigy, PCI wins hands down, same with an Aureon. However if you have say an el-cheapo CMI8738 PCI and something like the Terratec Maestro 32/96 ISA (which you won't have unless you are either very lucky or very rich), stick the speaker in the ISA card.

dionb wrote on 2020-02-11, 20:41:

The Audigy 2 ZS is arguably the best sound card out there for Windows 98SE, both in terms of audio fidelity (SNR) and 3D positional audio. It just doesn't like the 686B (Audigy is just a souped-up SBLIve, so suffers from the same issues).

This is true, but it should be noted that some motherboards received a BIOS update which solved the issue.

For example, I'm using an Audigy 2 ZS on my Abit KT7A, which has the 686B. No problems whatsoever with the last official BIOS.

I managed to get my Microsoft mouse working in pure DOS with a USB to PS/2 adapter and the CuteMouse driver! nice to see that it works. The arrow moves a bit stuttery in windows tho, like it's not as fluid as straight out plugging it into the USB slot. DOS works fine.

Now all I need is a USB hub so I don't need to reach the back of the case for the slots, since this motherboard has no onboard USB headers.

I bought an AZT2316R based sound card today like dillon said I should do, off ebay 2 weeks ago and it just arrived! I've got a bit of an issue though, I don't see any brand on the card so I don't know what model it is. I'll ask the seller so I can get a driver off of here. Is there any way I can identify it on my own?

well do you have a picture of the card?
is there a FCC-ID on it?

ftp://ftp.aztech.com/SUPPORT/DOWNLOAD/sg/index.txt

as it's an aztech chip, it's probably an aztech card :p or OEM variant from them.

imi wrote on 2020-02-21, 10:56:

well do you have a picture of the card? is there a FCC-ID on it? […]
Show full quote

well do you have a picture of the card?
is there a FCC-ID on it?

ftp://ftp.aztech.com/SUPPORT/DOWNLOAD/sg/index.txt

as it's an aztech chip, it's probably an aztech card :p or OEM variant from them.

My card came from Europe so it doesn't have an FCC ID.

I'm gonna write down the chips and features that it has here:

- AZTECH AZT2316R 527

- ANALOG DEVICES AD1845P SOUNDPORT 9537

- YAMAHA YMF262-M OPL

- RCV144DPI, R6729-11, and R6674-16 from ROCKWELL

it has a gameport, line in, mic, line out, what i think is a modem port (it's an rj-11 port labeled TEL), also 6 connectors labeled RADIO, TVAUDIO, MIC1, LOUT1, CDAUDIO1 and CDAUDIO2. I don't see any IDE headers or pads of any kind so I guess this doesn't have a CD-ROM interface at all.

the only numbers that I see on board are: 0211012 on top of the board, and V3.0 on the left side. Also the SRS Labs logo. The card was made in Singapore.

There's also some more numbers on the back that idk what they mean: 050-015403-403 , next to PSC 21 94V-0 . and 3995 written in a different font.

That's all I can see on it.

I can supply pictures if needed.

What's got me really confused is that of all the sound cards listed on that TXT file as having the AZT2316R, all of them have headers on the board for either parallel or some other interface. I'm pretty sure there's none of that on my card, as I simply see no headers on it other than the 6 little ones I mentioned, that aren't tied to any kind of interface.

this?
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/NMkAAOSwRFlc-VWI/s-l1600.jpg

the regular AZT2316 drivers should still work

or these:
ftp://ftp.aztech.com/SUPPORT/DOWNLOAD/Audtel/