Which sound blaster 16 CT number ?

The model number is CT2290

Does this mean there is an issue with the board or the sound card?

AvocadoLongfall wrote on 2024-03-26, 01:48:

Whenever I attempt to setup these games sound blaster 16 sound FX on my i486DX2 66 computer which uses this board; https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/fic-486-gvt#bios , some of the games crash and even hang the system unless I disable sound FX and either have no sound at all or using only midi and then the game works fine. Such examples such as Doom, Doom ii, hexen, heretic and a few others have this issue while games such as Dark Forces, Sim city 2000, Tie Fighter and more do not and run great with sound FX and midi together. I have a sound blaster 16 and cirrus logic 5428 vlb card and vlb io controller. I tried the sound card with a Pentium 75mhz socket 7 board and all the games work fine with that. Could it be the bios rom or settings. Also I checked the necessary IRQ's and in the other game, they work fine as they should and should have worked for the other games I have issues with.

According to this screenshot I would say the sound is not the only problem.

How much ram do you have ? Are you loading EMM386.EXE ? Are you running from pure DOS ?

Judging by the screenshot, it might be running under Windows ?
If so, multiple drivers could be the reason. Some Windows 9x sound drivers do provide a virtual Sound Blaster, for example.
Or it's related to DOS4GW extender, by any chance? If so, try running from pure DOS.
Or try DOS32A replacement, if possible (I say "if possible" because some games have DOS4GW runtime built-in).
If you need lot's of memory, you can try QEMM 9.x which is Windows 9x compatible.
Or use another memory tool, such as Multimedia Cloaking, which doesn't use V86 tricks so much.

I tried the sound card with a Pentium 75mhz socket 7 board and all the games work fine with that.
Could it be the bios rom or settings. Also I checked the necessary IRQ's and in the other game,
they work fine as they should and should have worked for the other games I have issues with.

Hi, maybe it's also the Pentium processor itself that fixes your issue?
Intel Pentiums usually support VME, an enhanced version of V86.

Some 486 processors may support it, but it's hit and miss.
An utility that checks CPUID might help to find out. NSSI can detect VME, too.

More information:
http://www.rcollins.org/articles/vme1/
https://www.navsoft.cz/products.htm

Most of those games aren't going to be fast on a 486 in pure dos let alone having the overhead of win95 running in the background.

Your much better off playing the games from pure dos, if the games still crashes even in pure dos try without loading any drivers and add back one by one till you get the crash to narrow down the cause

I have played the games from pure dos and no luck. I tried every setting for irq in the sound fx area for setup of doom and still crashes. I have 32 megabytes of ram and I do not see emm386.exe in my autoexec.bat

AvocadoLongfall wrote on 2024-03-26, 19:55:

Does this mean there is an issue with the board or the sound card?

Something is wrong with colours in the screenshot. Is it normal? Or am I blind?

Forget the soundcard for now, that must be something very essential: So mainboard, CPU or RAM.
A DX2-66 is one of the most compatible CPUs, so that should be fine. Except you run it without heatsink and fan.
Assuming you are not torturing the CPU, .... then check the RAM first. It is always the RAM.
Also be sure, that you don't use EDO RAM, a typical beginner's mistake.

The colors on the screen, I personalized windows and two its the refreshing from the monitor. And yes there is no heatsink on the DX2 66 presently. Also I am using fast page memory. All 32 megabytes. I also need to get thermal adhesive for the heatsink cause I already have a heatsink somewhere.

AvocadoLongfall wrote on 2024-03-27, 21:01:

The colors on the screen, I personalized windows and two its the refreshing from the monitor. And yes there is no heatsink on the DX2 66 presently. Also I am using fast page memory. All 32 megabytes. I also need to get thermal adhesive for the heatsink cause I already have a heatsink somewhere.

Then please stop testing unless you put heatsink and fan on the CPU.

AvocadoLongfall wrote on 2024-03-27, 19:27:

I have played the games from pure dos and no luck. I tried every setting for irq in the sound fx area for setup of doom and still crashes. I have 32 megabytes of ram and I do not see emm386.exe in my autoexec.bat

We'll use Doom for testing as that'll fix both doom 1 and 2, Heretic and Hexen.

In doom setup set both music and sound to none.

Cold boot the computer direct into pure dos without loading any drivers.
You can do this either with a boot disk which doesn't have a autoexec.bat or config.sys or by hitting F8 just before windows loads and selecting the last option "safe mode command prompt only"
start a game of doom
if it still crashes either the install is corrupt or a hardware issue.
If it works then we have a config issue

but yes 66Mhz needs at least a heatsink.
my own dx2/66 only has a heatsink but no fan. We once positioned a monitor stand in a way that completely blocked the air vents and PC would keep freezing so these things definitely need some cooling

1. Heatsink on the DX2
2. Run 5 passes of Memtest86