WIn98 uses PnP, most of the cards you mention do so too - so IRQs in Win98SE shouldn't be an issue.

In DOS on the other hand you need to sort stuff out yourself. First relevant point is that the Creative tools for setting PnP cards under DOS don't support DOS 7.x (i.e. the DOS that comes with Win9x). There are workarounds, but given the questions you are asking here, I suggest keeping it simple, so running pure DOS 6.22 for your DOS stuff.

As for settings, if you want to do Soundblaster-compatible stuff, stick the simplest possible settings with the widest support.

That means you want the card doing SBPro2 stuff on A220 I7 D1, and the SB16/32 on A240 I5 D3 H5 (or 6). These should be accepted by pretty much any card and any game.

One thing to remember with choosing cards: SB16 cards are NOT SBPro(2) compatible, they horribly mess up SBPro stereo. So if you want to do regular OPL3 stuff in DOS, you almost certianly do not want an SB16/32. Instead you either want an original (rare, expensive, noisy, buggy) SBPro2, or one of the better clones with real OPL3, i.e. Yamaha, ESS or Aztech. That means that Plan A isn't a good idea.

Plan B would work fine - although I'd rather dispute the added value of AWE32 when you already have the - far superior - Yamaha GM/GS MIDI. I'd suggest focusing on SBPro2 (+decent MIDI, if only MPU-401 UART mode to attach a separate external module) on the one card and SB16 on the second. Personally I'd choose for an SB16(/32/64) with CQM FM, simply because you already have OPL3 on the other and the difference is a matter of taste and also differs per game.

I have been trying to make similar 2 sound blaster compatible cards in dos to work. Card with OPL3 doing FM and AWE64 doing everything else. I did set awe64 to 240h irq 7, dma 1 and the other card to 220h, irq 5 and dma 3. I also disabled 388h in awe64.
Main problem is how to set the blaster variable since for those dos games that need it. CTCM makes blaster variable to automatically to same as awe64 settings and that works fine for games that use 388h for FM, but what about the games that use the base address to play FM music? If I change base address in blaster variable to 220h but keep rest same as awe64 settings, would awe64 still work?

You can only have one Blaster variable set at the same time.

Generally speaking older games need it more than newer ones, but you can be flexible by using multiple autoexec.bat configs:
1) allow CTCM to set blaster, but then re-set it to the SBPro2 compatible's values.
2) allow CTCM to set blaster, don't modify.
I'd set 1) to default.

Only changing address, not the rest won't work, as games listening to the blaster values won't have correct settings for either card.

dionb wrote:

You can only have one Blaster variable set at the same time. […]
Show full quote

You can only have one Blaster variable set at the same time.

Generally speaking older games need it more than newer ones, but you can be flexible by using multiple autoexec.bat configs:
1) allow CTCM to set blaster, but then re-set it to the SBPro2 compatible's values.
2) allow CTCM to set blaster, don't modify.
I'd set 1) to default.

Only changing address, not the rest won't work, as games listening to the blaster values won't have correct settings for either card.

How does game listening blaster values exactly work? There is a card in both 220h and 240h. How does it matter that all variables are from the same card?

How it works depends on the game. Some take all sound settings from there automatically, others use it to start probe in the install program. If the game takes all settings from there, it needs to be correct. That's not very common but there are certainly examples. Laser Squad comes to mind as one.