If I run SBCFG.EXE from C:\DOSDRV folder I get the following:

SBCfg - Sound Blaster PCI 128 Configuration Utility, Ver 4.30.
Copyright(c) 1996-1998, Creative Labs., All rights reserved.

fname: C:\DOSDRV\SBPCI.INI

------------------ Current SB PCI Configuration --------------------

PCI Hardware:
Port=C000, IRQ=5

Sound Blaster 16 Emulation:
Port=220, IRQ=7, DMA=1, DMA16=7

MPU-401 (General MIDI, Roland MT-32/LAPC-1) Emulation:
Port=330, IRQ=7

AdLib Emulation:
Port=388

I have opened SBPCI.INI from C:\DOSDRV folder and there are some settings I can change but I see no line for Adlib Emulation or FM. No port address or enable setting (true or false). I have tried to manually add that but I have not been successful with this. I have no idea what correct word to use or would that even work. So far, AdLib emulation remains. If I remove synthfile line from SBPCI.INI or set dummy file I hear no sounds at all. If I set SBEnable=false from SBPCI.INI, I hear no sounds at all. There must be a way to set AdLib Emulation to 'false' somehow. If I remove Synthvol=0 line I get error message when PCI audio driver tries to load and it will simply refuse to load at all.

This is how my SBPCI.INI file looks like at the moment:

[SBPCI]

; PCI Hardware Configuration
PCIPort=d880
PCIIRQ=11

; Ports - MPU-401 and Sound Blaster Device
Port=330
SBPort=220

; IRQs - MIDI and Sound Blaster emulation
IRQ=7
SBIRQ=7

; DMA Channels for Sound Blaster emulation
DMA=1
DMA16=7

; Switches - Self-Config, Sound Blaster emulation enable,
; Joystick enable, CD-DA enable, MM KeyBd enable
SelfConfig=true
SBEnable=true
JSEnable=true
CDDAEnable=false
KBEnable=false

; Mixer Settings - Wave, Synth, and CD volumes
MasterVol=127
WaveVol=127
SynthVol=0
CDVol=0

; Digital Settings
SPDIFMode=0

; Waveset - path and file name of current waveset
SynthFile=C:\DOSDRV\eapci8m.ecw

You can try to get the Yamaha working instead. Download the DOS driver from Yamaha's site, it should contain the DSDMA TSR needed for Sound Blaster sample playback on many systems. Use the LOADTSR batch file when loading the SETUPDS intializer and DSDMA TSR.

Hey thanks alot for this. I did what you suggested and tested Doom and it's working beautifully under DOS! 😀 I had to look for my hard drive. The download link appears to be dead. Fortunately I had downloaded it from Yamaha website before but I'm not sure If I tried this before, at least properly. I had to manually insert DS.INI file from other folder. Now I get everything. I get DMA channel 1 and SB port address and also FM! I also tested Lemmings. Thanks alot dude! 😁

This is a step forward with YMF card but I hopefully get games working better. Wolf3d freezed computer after opening first door. Rise of The Triad freezed computer after quitting game. I managed to complete first level without issues. Realms Of chaos freezed very quickly in the start menu. I did not hear other than FM music.

However some games worked now better. Summer Challenge worked now perfectly with all sounds and Death Rally as well. Crusader froze. I could not load sound setup. I checked that it was set to no sound first. Prince of Persia works now with all sounds! 😀

I will keep playing with both sound cards because some games work better with the other. Assault Trooper works better with CT4810 and it doesn't have FM sounds. Crusader works with CT4810 and naturally it doesn't have FM sounds either.

I also ordered CVX4 from Serdashop because I can try Virtual Sound Blaster with it. Also tandy emulation and Disney Sound Source emulation. I keep experimenting and finding out what works better...

Got my CVX4 LPT sound card today and have already had some success with it. I managed to get sounds working for Wolfenstein 3D in DOS. Now both FM and digitized sounds work. I am using Virtual Sound Blaster driver. I haven't tried QEMM yet. I am not sure if it works with my computer. I will try that later. Seems VSB won't support any other memory manager than QEMM... I also tried Realms of Chaos with CVX4+YMF724 combo. Works! digitized sounds work fairly well in ROC when using CVX4 in VSB mode. Sounds get broken sometimes. If I quit the game and go back it seems to fix the problem.

I had issues using YMF724 sound blaster mode with Wolf3D. Sometimes game would suddenly speed up or freeze. CVX4 digitized sounds sound slightly different. Game otherwise works very smoothly including FM from YMF card. I had to first execute setupds.exe from C:\DS-XG folder or type "setupds /s" in DOS. (If I tried to start setupds.exe after loading VSB driver, it would not start so it must be done before.) Then I went to VSB folder and typed "VSB /L1 /W /A /I7" If I used irq5 instead of irq7, Wolf3D would cut out door sounds almost all the time. I have set Paraller Port to 378/IRQ7 from bios.

Jazz Jackrabbit failed with all sound cards. (YMF724, CT4810, CVX4) even with sound setup set to no sound card as long as VSB, Creative sound blaster emulation or YMF sound blaster emulation was loaded. Cannon Fodder cannot initialize sound card if I choose sound blaster. If I choose Adlib, YMF724 and CT4810 works. CVX4 failed.

I haven't tried to figure out how to stop Adlib Emulation from CT4810 anymore. I am going to take a very long break from that. If somebody knows how, that would be very neat.

CVX4 sound quality is noticeably worse than the other two so I only use that card as a last resort. Other problem is that CVX4 in VSB mode does not work with games that use dos extenders. That seemed to be the problem with setupd.exe as well but only if I ran that executable after loading VSB.

(EDIT, 28 May 2019: I am not trying to say that the sound quality of CVX4 is bad. It just didn't work the best under these circumstances and with my setup. I now tested it using DA converter mode in Pinball Fantasies and compared it with YMF724 using AdLib mode. They sounded the same. Other modes and CT4810 failed.)

I actually managed to get Realms of Chaos and Wolfenstein 3D working with YMF724 properly! I had to type "set blaster=220 I5 D1 T4" on DOS (or autoexec.bat). I thought that loadtsr would be enough because it reads:

-----------------------------------------
@echo off
setupds /s
if errorlevel 2 goto loadtsr
set blaster=A220 I5 D1 T4
goto break

:loadtsr
DSDMA

:Break
------------------------------------------

I read Realms of Chaos error message properly about sound blaster environment variable not set so I figured to try typing "set blaster...". Now it works smoothly. Cannon fodder still fails to initialize digitized sounds. I hear popping sound once but that's it. Wold3D does not crash anymore and it doesn't have strange speed and slowdown moments anymore. Things are moving forward... 😀

If somebody is strugling with YMF card and looking for Yamaha generic drivers... I have attached them on this post. It seems the Yamaha download link is still dead. I have attached the Yamaha dsxgdos.exe file into this post and also extracted that file for convenience. It is not DOS executable but the files inside work under DOS. I used UniExtract to extract that file.

[EDIT: "set blaster=A220 I5 D1 T4" is correct. "set blaster=220 I5 D1 T4" won't let you play ROC with this sound card. I made a typo before.]

[EDIT: I figured out why loadtsr.bat wouldn't make Realms of Chaos work. I just couldn'd read it properly before. If error level 2 is triggered which seems to be the way in my case, loadtsr.bat skips the line where it reads "set blaster=A220 I5 D1 T4". I made proper configuration changes to my autoexec.bat. I simplified the code because I have to execute dsdma to have digitized sounds in games. There's no way around it in my system. No need for if statements. The line now reads
----------------------------------
setupds /s
DSDMA
set blaster=A220 I5 D1 T4
----------------------------------
I hope this is helpful for someone else as well.]

I bought SB Live (CT4830) used very cheap and tested more games for sound support. Now I can play Jazz Jackrabbit directly from DOS with it using 16 bit sounds.

I didn't find a way to disable OPL emulation for this card either. However if I set SynthVol to zero, it actually eliminates FM volume completely. I can't hear quiet FM sounds If I crank volume high, unlike I did with CT4810 in some games.

SB Live works very well with Dune 2 for example. Now I can play Dune 2 using both YMF724 for FM and SB Live for Digitized sounds. If I try to use SB Pro mode, I hear OPL emulation so I get double sounds. If I use just SB mode in this game, it works great. I'm using older drivers setupds 3.11 for ymf724 card when I use it together with other cards for FM support and set different sb port than 220. this is to set higher volume for YMF724 FM and avoid OPL emulation SynthVol setting getting higher than zero (Yes, for some reason YMF724 gets lower FM volume If I disable SB port from it). Using SB port 220 for YMF cause SynthVol setting to increase at least with CT4810 card. Not sure about SB Live. I do this just in case. Those drivers disable dma mode. It may help to eliminate conflicts. I use newer setupds 3.16 for YMF724 single card mode together with DSDMA.

Cosmos Cosmic Adventures works great as well. It only has FM for music and PC Speaker for sound effects but it fails to play music beyond the first menu If I only use YMF724. Now I can play this game nicely turning SynthVol to zero from SB Live and using YMF724 for FM music.

Cannon Fodder works perfectly now! Finally! 😁 Using both SB Live and YMF724 for that game right now...

Wolf3D and ROC ignores SynthVol setting so no good here either. Lemmings works fine. (For Lemmings it's only for to test SynthVol setting. It makes no sense using any other than YMF card for this game.) SB Live does work with some games and some games cause computer to reboot.

I have now three PCI sound cards insalled in this computer and CVX4 connected to parallel port for mostly just TEMU support at this time. Many games work with sound.

RegTheEvil wrote:

I have now three PCI sound cards insalled in this computer and CVX4 connected to parallel port for mostly just TEMU support at this time. Many games work with sound.

Wow, that is no small feat. Do they work in Windows as well or are they only installed under DOS?

Nice job getting all of this stuff working though. PCI sound cards can be a huge pain. Using multiple PCI sound cards successfully, in DOS no less... that's almost unheard of. 😀

If drivers are installed for multiple sound cards, I am getting issues in Windows if I play DOS games there. (Yes... Some DOS games actually work better in Windows with this PC.) I only use one sound card for Windows (YMF724). It works fine alone. I use all four sound cards for DOS mode. Whenever I don't need CVX4, I disable paraller port from BIOS (that's one of the very few things I can do in BIOS with this PC). If I don't disable it, IRQ settings get messed up for other sound cards. Unfortunately I can't reserve IRQ settings from BIOS. However I am lucky because my sound cards usually get these iRQ's after I disable parallel port. YMF724 = IRQ 5, CT4810 = IRQ 3, SB LIVE = IRQ 7. I had to make the CTSYN.INI settings file for SB LIVE card 'READ ONLY' because otherwise I would get SB IRQ 7 and PCI IRQ 7 causing them to conflict. I have made a huge (maybe a bit overkill) DOS start menu so I can easily choose between different sound cards and settings.

By the way It seems to work fine with SB Live card like this (YMF card setupds/ s SB port = 220.) FM sounds for music from YMF card. SB Live for Mortal Kombat 2 game. Digitized sounds from SB Live. SynthVol setting does not go higher than zero if set to zero. This is good news. OPL emulation does not play simultaneously, at least I can't hear it. Can't play this game with music if I use different SB port for YMF card. It has to be the same with SB Live (both 220). With CT4810, OPL emulation kicked in with this game if I used SB port address 220 for YMF card. SB port must be enabled for YMF card to get higher FM volume. Yes... That's weird but works. Just using YMF724 alone for this game is a no go with this computer. SB Live + YMF combo works fine though! 😀

And Ozzuneoj... From what animation is your avatar from, if I may ask?