What are the specs for your PC? These cards are speed sensitive and require a -5V rail on your PSU.

And what drivers are you using? There are different versions around and using the wrong version will cause issues.

I also notice that you have the sound blaster emulation set to IRQ 7, which is also being used by the PAS portion of the card. I'd suggest using IRQ 5 for sound blaster.

I’m using a Compaq Deskpro 2000. Pentium 166MMX, 32MB, 512kb cache and the onboard S3 Trio with 2MB.
The PSU has a -5V rail.
I tried to change the IRQ to 5 but the install.exe won’t let me. Can’t change it for both PAS and SB.
About the drivers, I installed those from vogons: PAS16 with SCSI and utils. I did not install the SCSI part though.

Edit: the SB string in autoexec.bat says I:5 and the PAS is set to IRQ7 in config.sys.

I installed the oldest PAS16 drivers I could find, most files are from 1993.
Now the fun starts:
Blaster string says IRQ7 but if I select IRQ5 in Doom (SB for soundfx) it just works!?
Better still, selecting IRQ7 also works 😳.

Configuration for mvsoubd.sys:
c:\proaudio\mcsound.sys d:3 q:3 s: 1,220,1,7 m:1,330,2 j:1

The jumpers on the card are set to default so DMA1, IRQ5 and 220.
When I run INSTALL.EXE I still can not set IRQ5.
You should hear a voice saying „performing IRQ test“ but with IRQ5 you hear „performing IR- performing“ then it stops with a message:,Select a different combination.

I don‘t know what else to try, maybe the card is faulty.

The 166MMX is pretty quick, I'd be interested to see what happened if you slow the machine down by turning one of the caches off. I could be way off but I know I've had trouble with the PAS16 in a fast machine.

Might be worth a try.

DEVICE=C:\PROAUDIO\mvsound.sys d:5 q:7 s:1,220,1,5 m:1,330,2 j:1

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P388 T6

Maybe..... at least set the set blaster line to match the SB settings in the mvsound line and the jumper settings on the card...... maybe??

I found a very old FAQ from back in 1992 https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.g … 1Ap0Ch_ck?pli=1 Since you have the 1st board release with the jumpers before they went to the jumperless releases this very early FAQ would probably pertain. I didnt gleam a lot from it but maybe it can help.

I thought this part was interesting:

1. Reduce to the generic CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. 2. Reduce the computer's CPU speed. Usually this can be accomplished by tu […]
Show full quote

1. Reduce to the generic CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. 2. Reduce
the computer's CPU speed. Usually this can be accomplished by turning
off the TURBO mode or disabling the internal/external memory cache by
going into the computer's CMOS setup. 3. Reduce the computer's bus
speed to 8MHz. The PAS-16 was designed around the IBM AT specification
which uses this bus speed. Please note that this is not the same as
the CPU speed. Once everything works fine at the 8MHz bus speed, you
can experiment with higher bus speeds. 4. Remove other peripheral
boards from the computer, such as scanner boards, tape backup
boards, ... 5. Try the PAS-16 in another 16-bit slot. 6. Try the
PAS-16 in another computer. 7. If you do not hear any sound, recheck
the speaker/headphone connections.

My PAS16 was being installed in a 12 MHz 80286 PC way back in the 90s.
The bus and CPU ran at same speed, I think.

So I'd say that the PAS16 can handle 12 MHz, if it's a clean and stable clock signal.

Also, I'd try to not load EMM386.
It caused me trouble when I tested a PAS16 in a Pentium 133 PC a few years ago.

The PAS16 was made circa 1991/1992, before memory managers really had taken off yet.

Or, maybe, something like QEMM, 386MAX or Helix Multimeda Cloaking is more compatible?
I haven't tried yet. Not sure.

Grem Five wrote on 2024-05-01, 22:58:

DEVICE=C:\PROAUDIO\mvsound.sys d:5 q:7 s:1,220,1,5 m:1,330,2 j:1

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P388 T6

Maybe..... at least set the set blaster line to match the SB settings in the mvsound line and the jumper settings on the card...... maybe??

If I manually change the SB and mvsound lines then there’s no sound at all.
I can‘t turn off L2 cache in the Compaq BIOS so I used SETMUL but that didn‘t work.
Now I‘m going to try the card in a 386SX/20, also a Compaq.